Hellfire

MOOSE TIME

30 APRIL 2006

Dishforth

An Intelligence Officer (IntO) from 16 Brigade briefed us on what we could expect when we got to Afghanistan – a move, my diary had been telling me for several weeks, which was earmarked for tomorrow. I had to force myself to listen, not because it wasn’t interesting, but because there was a lot going on in my head.

The day before we made our move to Afghanistan happened to be Emily’s birthday, and I was trying to work out what I was going to say to her over dinner.

We had been going out for almost five years. Emily was a nurse – a midwife – Scottish and sassy. She’d be putting on a brave face tonight, and so would I.

Both of us hated goodbyes, but this one was especially poignant. We’d just returned from two weeks’ diving in Egypt, during the course of which I’d spent every waking moment that I wasn’t fifty feet beneath the surface of the Red Sea reading books and journals on Afghanistan and in particular the Mujahideen. Anyone that said we’d be back without a shot being fired was talking bollocks, and she knew that as well as I did.

The worst thing was that I was excited to be going and Emily knew that too. It didn’t make either of us feel particularly good. All in all, she was getting a pretty raw deal – as shitty a birthday present as you could get. This wasn’t what I wanted for our last day together.

I forced myself to concentrate. The IntO had come to the bit about hearts and minds – how we’d be helping the people of southern Afghanistan get back on their feet. Perhaps some of this might come in useful during the awkward silences that we’d try to fill tonight.

‘Our mission – 16 Brigade’s mission – is to support the Helmand Provincial Reconstruction Teams. The PRTs will be operating in a triangular area between Camp Bastion, Gereshk and Lashkar Gah.’ He pointed to a section of the map that covered about 150 square miles, 70 per cent of which was open desert.

He went on to give us the big picture. From Camp Bastion our boys would support the PRTs as they went out into the surrounding countryside, establishing contact with the local village elders. The Afghan government wanted us to help them rebuild the infra-structure and become self-sufficient. The job of 16 Brigade was to provide the muscle to stop the Taliban killing the PRTs as they waltzed around the place promising all the good things Tony Blair had to offer.

Most villages had a police station that could act as a focal point for resistance. Part of the British mission was to train Afghan National Army (ANA) recruits and to work with those in the Afghan National Police (ANP) who hadn’t been totally corrupted by the Taliban until they could take over responsibility for the protection of the surrounding landscape.

‘The upshot,’ he said, ‘will be that the neighbouring villages will see how these guys are living the good life and they’ll want to join the party. The Taliban won’t be welcome. Our goodwill will spread like an ink spot on blotting paper; eventually it’ll turn the whole map blue.’

He didn’t mention narcotics once. I was gobsmacked.

I knew that we were part of a UN mandated programme, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), to reinstate a democratic government that could sort out the entire country, not just Kabul, properly train the ANA and ANP, rid the place of terrorists – and halt opium production.

While the US was tasked with destroying the Taliban, HIG and Al Qaeda, the other NATO participants had been given different roles in the reconstruction process. The UK was tasked with ridding Afghanistan of the poppies that made the heroin that accounted for between 90 and 95 per cent of the UK’s smack market, the majority of which were grown along the banks of the Helmand River.

Weaning the farmers off this most lucrative of crops was not going to be easy; the lion’s share of the profits ended up lining Taliban pockets, but their very survival was at stake. It didn’t matter how many bridges, hospitals and schools the PRTs built; the Taliban, HIG and Al-Qaeda didn’t want anything to get in the way of the drugs trade. In Helmand, the farmers were under increasing pressure to scale up heroin production and any village elder dim-witted enough to turn down Mullah Omar and his cronies would be beheaded in front of the very people he sought to protect.

As things stood, there was no one around to stop them. The ANA and ANP seemed to be completely incompetent (and smacked out of their heads) or in the pay of the Taliban. Not unsurprisingly, this was just how the Taliban liked it. In recent weeks it had sent a message to Tony Blair: if he sent British troops to Helmand, we’d come back in body bags.

I stuck up my hand. ‘I’m sorry, sir; I must be missing something here. What is our objective exactly?’

I wanted to know if I was on a UN reconstruction mission, a NATO anti-terrorism mission or the unstated anti-narcotics mission.

‘Our objective?’ The IntO looked surprised.

‘Our role, sir.’

‘We are not in a warfighting role. We’re going to support the Afghan national government – to help the place function as a normal country again.’

‘But would I be right in thinking that the Americans are there in a warfighting role and the UK has signed up for the anti-narcotics role?’

‘I can assure you we… er… 16 Brigade… are not there to rid the country of narcotics, and the Americans…’ He paused. ‘Well… the Americans are the Americans I suppose, but that won’t affect our mission.’

Won’t affect us? The Americans are part of the NATO force and the Taliban had said they’ll send us home in body bags; I could hardly see them making a fine distinction between us.

I sat back in my chair. The whole thing sounded totally fucked-up, but that wasn’t my problem. All we had to do was support our troops on the ground – pretty much what I used to do in my Gazelle in Northern Ireland – and the odd Chinook escort flight.

The IntO – and we’d heard a lot like him before – made it all sound breathtakingly simple. But, of course, everyone knew that it wasn’t.

The thing we needed to cling to – the thing to tell Emily – was that we were there to help. This wasn’t Iraq, where our military presence was based on a dodgy premise and false intelligence. In Afghanistan, we’d be bringing peace and security to a people who badly needed it, we’d be ridding the world of some seriously bad hombres, and we’d be stopping the drugs trade in its tracks.

When I got home, we both managed to put on our brave faces. I’d been on deployment enough times to know the signs: the small talk, the thin smiles, the succession of reassuring glances…

We’d decided to go to Emily’s favourite restaurant, a quiet French one with subdued lighting. I’d called the manager, a friend of ours, to secretly lay on a birthday cake.

God, I thought, let’s get this torture over with.

We were standing by the door, poised to step out into the spring evening, when the house phone rang. I checked the display.

‘KEOGH’.

Captain Andy Keogh was the squadron’s Ops Officer, the guy who was tasked with getting us out to Afghanistan. He was a universally popular workaholic.

‘Hi buddy,’ I said. It was typical of Andy to wish me well on the tour, and to let Emily know he was there if she needed anything.

‘I’ve got some bad news, Ed. You’re not going, I’m afraid.’

I looked up. Emily must have seen the expression on my face. She was watching me expectantly. ‘We’re not going?’

‘No,’ Andy said. ‘The squadron’s going. But you and Jon are staying behind.’ Jon was part of my flight, and a SupFAC – a Supervisory Forward Air Controller. My stomach felt like lead.

‘Why?’ I still hadn’t taken it in.

‘Not enough places, apparently. Two people are going to have to stay behind.’

‘For how long?’

‘I don’t know. A few days, perhaps. Probably something to do with Jake, but I don’t have all the details. We’ll sort it, Ed. I’m sorry. I know it’s the last thing you need right now. I’ll call you in the morning when I know more.’

I put down the phone. Jake was my flight commander; his wife Chloe was about to have a baby and he was going to join us after the birth.

I tried not to look disappointed. It was Emily’s birthday. This was her day. I’d be able to spend more time with her. I did my best to make it look like good news.

She started to clap her hands. ‘You’re not going?’

‘Jon and me are staying back for a few days.’

‘Why?’ She was beaming from ear to ear.

‘I don’t know. I’ll find out in the morning. Andy said it was something to do with Jake.’

Emily’s expression reminded me that there are some birthday presents money can’t buy. But there was something else there too; something just behind her eyes.

I smiled and took her hand. She put her arms around me and gave me a squeeze.

‘Still want to go out?’ she asked me.

I nodded and smiled back. ‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world.’ I meant it too. I had never known a woman like her and not a day went by when I didn’t thank God she’d walked into my life. But we knew what that look meant. We were just delaying the evil moment. In a few days we’d have to go through the same process all over again.

At the squadron, I found out that Jon and I had fallen foul of the rules governing the number of fighting personnel each nation was allowed to have in-country at any given time. The UK had exceeded its quota; even though Jon was the SupFAC and I was the Squadron Weapons Officer we had to wait until some Brits shipped home.

To keep ourselves busy, we flew the simulator and practised our weapons drills; then, when there was still no call to head for Brize Norton, we nipped over to 664 Squadron and asked if we could borrow one of their Apaches so we could stay current. Very obligingly, they said yes.

On 5 May there was still no sign our departure was imminent. I decided to head for Catterick Camp; 664 Squadron were doing their Annual Personal Weapons Test – something everyone in the armed forces had to go through to ensure that we knew the pointy end of a gun from the butt. I decided to take the opportunity to test out an idea I’d been toying with for a while.

We carried a personal weapon in addition to our sidearm in case we were shot down on operations. The short-barrelled SA-80 carbine was the only rifle allowed in an Apache, but because its handle jutted into the cockpit, restricting our escape route in an emergency, we had to remove it and screw it back on if things went pear-shaped. This had always struck me as certifiable. If I were lucky enough to survive a crash, the last thing I’d want to do was fumble around with my carbine handle while the Taliban were launching an action replay of Rorke’s Drift.

My idea was simple – fire the weapon without it. And today was the first chance I’d had to put it to the test.

I arrived at the range and was immediately confronted by a huge staff sergeant with a shaved head, straight out of Central Casting. Listen in, you facking lot! Watch and shoot, watch and shoot! Bring me my facking brew…

I unscrewed the handle of my SA-80 and dropped to the ground, facing the pop-up targets in Lane 6. A long shadow fell across me. I squinted against the sun to see Staff Sergeant Tank, hands on hips, looming over me.

‘You can’t fire your weapon without a handle,’ he boomed for all to hear, adding ‘Sir’ as an afterthought.

Patience, Macy. ‘Staff, this is how I’m going to have to fire in-theatre,’ I replied as courteously as I could manage.

‘The rules clearly state that you are not allowed to fire it without a handle.’

‘I know what the rules say, Tanky, I’m a Skill at Arms Instructor too,’ I said, marginally less diplomatically. ‘Do you know why you’re not allowed to fire it without a handle?’

He looked as if he’d just been asked to solve differential calculus on University Challenge.

He mumbled something incomprehensible.

‘So, you’re telling me not to do something but have no idea why…’

Staff Sergeant Tank stood there grappling for an answer.

‘The reason they insist that you fire this thing with a handle is because it has a short barrel, so, as there’s nothing to grip, you might end up shooting your fingers off. Let me assure you, however, that it’s not going to happen to me. Take a look at this…’

Ten minutes later, I’d done the business. The handle made no difference at all. I’d rested the rifle in the crook of my left arm, taken aim and fired. I tested the method on targets at 50, 100, 200 and 300 metres, in the prone, kneeling and standing positions. I placed the bullets squarely where they were supposed to go and listened for the tannoy.

‘Lane 4. Fail.’

‘Lane 5. Pass.’

‘Lane 6. One Hundred Per Cent Awarded Marksman.’

‘Lane 7. Pass.’

I’d not dropped a single round. Tanky had his back to me now, but I didn’t need to rub it in. The important thing was that I knew I could fly minus the handle and, if the shit did hit the fan, count on taking some of the fuckers down if I found myself in my own private version of Zulu Dawn. I’d broken a few rules, but so what, I figured the rules were supposed to be there to protect me.

A few days later, on 9 May, we got our first message back from the boys via MSN-Messenger. They were still at Kandahar Airfield, which I now knew as KAF.

Bastion isn’t ready. No one is doing any tasking.

We don’t expect to do any for a while. Everyone is ground running the aircraft. Then we’ll airtest them.

It was all routine stuff, but it did nothing to ease my frustration. There was still no word on when Jon and I’d be leaving. I felt as if we were participating in our very own Phoney War-lolling around in a deckchair waiting for the Hun to attack.

It wasn’t long before he did.

On 17 May, there was a newsflash on Sky. Fighting had broken out in southern Afghanistan and British and NATO troops had been involved. The details only came through the following day. Ninety insurgents were reported dead in Helmand. There was no news of any British casualties. Jon and I felt like a couple of caged tigers.

It wasn’t until later in the day, when a message came through on MSN from Chris, a member of 3 Flight, that we learned Apaches had been involved.

There was a lot of information to absorb here. The guys had seen action. Serious action. A ‘show of force’ normally meant a fast jet streaking over a bunch of troublemakers at low level as an implicit warning: next time, it would be a bomb. Low level for a jet was low enough to be seen but still above the SA band. A show of force by an Apache at 125 feet – no wonder he’d been fucking shot at, I thought. What happened to high level?

I couldn’t understand why they were in Panjwai either; it was in Kandahar province, thirteen miles west of Kandahar City, well short of the eighty miles to Helmand. Chris was a small bloke with a big sense of humour. This was no joke, though. I could read his excitement between the lines as well as the relief. RTB. Return to base. We’d been lucky – on the squadron’s first outing, I’d nearly lost a couple of mates and we’d damn near lost a helicopter.

As I reread Chris’s message, one line in particular filled me with a combination of excitement and trepidation. ‘Hornet not afraid of AH (Attack Helicopter).’

So, the Taliban wanted to mix it with us. Then bring it on. But please let me be a part of it. It sounded mad, irrational, even to me, but I had been twenty-one and a half years in the armed forces, with half a year left to go, and this was what I’d trained for.

Later that day, I read that a Canadian JTAC had not been so lucky. She’d been killed in an RPG attack when the Taliban launched an assault on their position after the Apaches, low on fuel, had been forced to fly back to KAF. She had been the first female NATO soldier to be killed in Afghanistan.

Within a few hours, the news channels reported the crowing response of Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban. ‘The Taliban consider themselves at war with British troops in Afghanistan,’ the Mad One trumpeted. ‘There will be a wave of suicide attacks as we step up our fight against the government and its allies.’

According to Mullah Omar, there were people queuing around the block to don explosive vests and pick up Kalashnikovs, he had twenty-five mid-level commanders in southern Afghanistan, and his forces there were armed with anti-aircraft weapons.

Well, this was shaping up to be a ding-dong tour.

Several thoughts popped into my head. I wondered what John Reid was making of all this. What about our reconstruction mission? The Mujahideen tactics I’d read about in Egypt seemed to be alive and well. And when the fuck were Jon and I going to get our marching orders?

I got the answer to the last question later that day. Jon and I were due to leave on 20 May, in two days’ time. Whatever the ins and outs, we were on our way at last – and not a moment too soon. The Brits were engaged in heavy fighting down south and the Americans were doing their bit by sending the bombers in – big heavy B-1Bs armed with 2,000-lb GPS-guided JDAMs; bombs would do a whole lot more than rattle the bars of the Taliban cages.

The night before I left, Emily was on night-shift at the hospital again, hoping to deliver Jake’s baby, and I was at my desk doing some cheerful last-minute admin-signing my tax forms, upping my military life insurance and checking the details of my will – when the phone rang. I raised it to my ear.

‘Andy…’ I said cautiously.

‘Just checking that everything’s okay for tomorrow and wishing you well for the tour, Ed. Remember, if Emily needs anything, she only needs to pick up the phone.’

Transport had been laid on from the base to Brize Norton, a journey of around six hours. From Brize, we’d fly to Kabul. It was going to be a long day.

I went to bed early and slept so soundly that I never heard Emily return from her shift.

The next morning we got up, ate breakfast and drove straight to Dishforth. Neither of us said much and the weather wasn’t helping – it was tipping it down.

The car that would take us to Brize was already waiting.

I chucked my bags in the boot and turned to say goodbye to my girl. She was sitting at the wheel of her car, window down. The wipers were doing their best against the rain and I could see that Em was struggling too. God, I hated this. We both did.

I leaned in and gave her a kiss. ‘Love you,’ I said.

‘Love you too. I suppose there isn’t any point asking you not to do anything stupid…’

I kissed her again. ‘See you in three months.’

I watched her go until I lost sight of the tail-lights in the rain.

As we started our final descent, the loudspeaker told us to get our helmet and body armour ready. Ready for what? Nobody told us and it didn’t seem to matter much because somehow the threat – whatever it was – seemed a long way away.

As we banked I got my first real look at Afghanistan. The mountains looked majestic beneath us. Kabul itself looked dusty and exotic as it swam in and out of the heat haze. Smoke from a number of fires hung listlessly at the edge of the city. I thought for a moment that it might have been the result of some kind of attack, but an old RAF hand behind me said that it was always like that. Carbon emissions legislation wasn’t high on Hammid Karzai’s agenda; the ‘Mayor of Kabul’, as he was known, had more pressing problems to solve.

We landed in Kabul at 0615 Local – 0245 in the UK – and joined the queue to get processed into theatre. Jon and I joshed about the place we now found ourselves in; the airport was a cross between a junkyard and a high-tech arms fair, with rusting Soviet-era transport aircraft mixing it with gleaming F-16s and NATO and UN helicopters. Neither of us could believe how hot it was, or the smells that assaulted our nostrils.

When we got to the head of the queue we were ushered into a tent and, after showing our ID cards, were pointed towards a cargo trolley where our bags from the UK flight awaited us. From here we’d board a C-130 Hercules to Kandahar, where the rest of the squadron was assembled.

We took our seats in the Herc and waited for it to take off. The rear ramp remained open to allow what little ambient air there was onto the aircraft.

We weren’t the first on board. To our right was the fattest bloke I’d ever seen in the armed forces, a Territorial Army captain, awash with sweat. Next to him were two other members of the TA: a skinny major – Little to his Large – and a female sergeant major unenviably close to a small open urinal that was bolted onto the bulkhead that separated the flight-deck from the cargo area.

A loadmaster appeared and handed out ‘white death’ boxes containing our rations for the flight.

The big bloke was eating out of it almost before the box had left the loadie’s hand. Jon and I watched in amazement as he stuffed two whole muffins into his mouth, holding his helmet beneath them to catch the crumbs. He then fell asleep.

Upon being woken by the loadie a short time later and told the plane was about to take off, the captain slapped on his helmet and ended up with so many crumbs clinging to his sweat-soaked skin that he looked like he’d suffered an outbreak of scabies.

A moment or two after we were in the cruise, a Para corporal celebrated the fact that the train had left the station by climbing over everyone to get to the urinal. He beamed at the female sergeant major as he vigorously relieved himself. This, I imagined, was not contained in any in-theatre threat brief she’d ever attended. A few hours in Afghanistan, poor thing, and she looked like she was ready to go home.

The rest of the flight was relatively normal, except for the fact that the two loadies stood by the side doors during takeoff and landing, watching for missile launches. In their hands was a ‘pipper’ connected by a bungee cable to a box that controlled the flare launchers on the Herc’s fuselage. It was all very Heath Robinson.

Unlike Kabul, Kandahar was flat. The first thing that assailed us on landing wasn’t the heat – although it was like a furnace – but the stench. The smell of excrement in the air was unbelievable and it forced its way into the aircraft even before the ramp opened.

As we made our way onto the concrete, a bus drew up. It was painted in garish greens, reds and yellows and was festooned on the outside and inside with chains, from which a bizarre assortment of pendants dangled and jangled.

As we took our places, the bus seemed as if it might collapse under our weight as the driver, an Afghan with very few teeth, revved the engine noisily to signal his impatience. An RAF warrant officer, the guy who’d told me about Kabul’s fires on the earlier flight, noticed my expression and told me to relax. The bus had no first or second gear, but he promised it would get us there.

I was about to ask where ‘there’ was when I saw a huge tented city through the windscreen.

We pulled up by a marquee-like structure alongside a sign that said, ‘Cambridge Lines’. We went in, got processed again – ‘Had we had the mine-threat brief, the medical brief and several other kinds of brief?’ We had, thank God, back in the UK – before finally being released through a flap on the opposite side.

There, we were greeted by the cheery sight of Pat, the 3 Flight Commander, lolling behind the wheel of a Land Rover. He was brushing flies away with his cap, but fighting a losing battle.

We piled into the vehicle and set off towards our accommodation. As we wove in and out of the tents, the smell that had greeted us on landing seemed to be getting worse and worse.

‘What is that?’ I asked eventually, as Pat ground through the gears.

‘What’s what?’ he said.

‘That smell.’

‘It’s shit, Ed. What else can I say?’

‘Where’s it coming from?’

‘You’ll find out soon enough.’

Five minutes later, we screeched up in front of a white, semipermanent, single-storey structure, approximately twenty metres wide and sixty long. As aircrew, Pat said, we were fortunate to be given ‘hardened accommodation’ – ours was one of the 200 identical tin hutches lined up in this part of KAF.

Jon and I grabbed our bags and prepared to enter our new home, but before we got as far as the door a gust of wind, stoked by the fires of hell, blew through, bringing with it a smell that eclipsed anything we’d experienced so far.

With my hand clamped over my face, I asked Pat again: ‘What the fuck was that?’ And this time, to shut me up, he offered to show me.

After threading our way through several alleyways we found ourselves facing a huge circular shit-pit. The giant 150-metre pond – filled with gravel and God knew what else, and fed by a giant revolving arm – was right next to our accommodation block. It was that fucking big we could spot it on Google Earth before the camp itself.

There was a huge sign:

‘So now you know,’ Pat said, with a resigned shrug. ‘Either of you sleepwalk?’

Safely inside the hut, though still not entirely removed from the smell, we were led to our room. I was greeted by Billy and Mick, an old ex-Para mate, now the Regimental QHI.

‘Ed, Jon,’ Billy said cheerily from the edge of his bed, to the right of the now firmly closed door. ‘Come and wave hello to Andrea.’

‘Are you delusional?’ I asked. Andrea was Billy’s wife.

Billy pulled a face. Only then did I notice the laptop beside him. ‘She’s on MSN, you idiot.’

I dropped my bags and peered around the edge of the screen. Andrea beamed at me. She gave me a fuzzy wave then the ticker tape flashed.

‘Hi Ed.’

I leaned over Billy.

‘Hi Andrea.’

While Billy and Andrea cooed sweet nothings at each other, Jon and I settled ourselves in. The room was cool and comfortable, with only the merest hint of Eau de Shite to spoil the ambience. There were Glade air fresheners everywhere. My bed was back left; Jon’s back right.

When Billy had finished his chat, he and Mick filled us in on the latest news. Although the squadron hadn’t yet fired a shot in anger, it had loosed off a Hellfire. The day before, a French Special Forces convoy had been ambushed – they’d suffered one KIA, two MIAs and had been forced to abandon three vehicles in the desert. One of them, ironically, had been stuffed full of Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) equipment. It could not fall into enemy hands, so Pat had been dispatched to take it out with a Hellfire and Chris finished it off with a hundred rounds of 30 mil. Other than that, in the wake of them dodging RPGs and Chris using up two of his nine lives, things had settled down a bit – apart from the odd bit of bitching that some of the guys were getting more flying hours than others.

Billy then said he had to nip out, but suggested I got online to tell Emily I’d arrived safely.

Ten minutes later, my girl’s face crackled into view on the screen of Billy’s laptop.

She took one look at me and promptly burst into tears.

Knowing that something radical was required, I stuck my hands up on my head and moosed her.

How to explain ‘moosing’?

Some years earlier there had been a dare going round the squadron. In the midst of a shag, the bloke had to place his thumbs on his forehead, fingers upright and splayed like antlers, then take a look at himself in the mirror. That was it. The trick was not to get caught; the girl was never supposed to find out.

I failed dismally, and had a great deal of explaining to do. Emily found it so funny that, from then on, we used it as our special greeting. If I was out and about and happened to spot her, I’d moose her and she me.

Through the graininess of the connection, I saw her raise her hands to her head, give me a couple of shaky antlers, and break into a brave smile.

I moosed her back and then, together, we both pressed the button that severed the connection.

There are times when antlers speak louder than words.