Hellfire

GO-GO-GO

SUNDAY, 4 JUNE 2006

Camp Bastion, Afghanistan

1030 hours local

1115 hours

1120 hours

1130 hours

Two Apaches headed for Now Zad from Camp Bastion at 1130 hours on the dot, with no idea of what lay ahead. Exactly five minutes later, the Chinooks took off with the first elements of 3 Para on board.

The battle was being run from the 3 Para Ops tent – the JOC – so we could only listen to 3 Flight’s transmissions in our own Ops tent. And their scant sitreps gave us little sense of the full battle. Worse still, the CO 3 Para would be flying high above Now Zad, and the Chinooks’ insecure radios would only transmit when absolutely necessary for fear of compromise.

The mountains around Now Zad and the distance between us meant that even if we tuned into the ground troops’ frequency, we wouldn’t be able to hear a thing. The Apaches had good comms back because of their altitude.

We gathered round the radio operator to pick up whatever crumbs we could.

The air-conditioning pipe was on overdrive but the tent was roasting. It was like trying to chill a bucket of warm beer with an ice cube.

The first we heard back from them was that they had arrived on station. The place looked quiet. It wouldn’t take long to discover how wrong they were.

1155 hours

1200 hours

1205 hours

‘Providing covering fire,’ Chris called.

It must have been madness on the Mission Net because he was speaking to Pat on the Apaches’ inter-aircraft frequency. They couldn’t follow transmissions from Bastion on this one, but for us to be able to hear them was a real bonus.

‘I can’t see into the compound they said the firing is coming from,’ Chris said. ‘I’m going to fire a witness burst into the next field.’

At that point we knew they had joined the fight.

We listened intently for any sign that we should be cranking up the next brace of aircraft. The boss was following the battle in the JOC next door. We tried to get in but it was already heaving. He told us to wait in our Ops room.

Everyone gathered in our tent to find out what was happening. After two and a half years of hard sweat the squadron was finally doing what it had trained to do. We’d been bashing our heads against a brick wall for the last few days, and were bursting to join the fight. The ground crews wanted to load up Apaches and welcome them back empty. The signallers wanted sitreps to pass onto command and the techs wanted to patch up bullet holes and send the gunships back into the ring.

The next voice we heard was Pat’s. He was picking off Taliban in the alleyways of Now Zad.

Jon and I exchanged a glance. I grabbed Dickie Bonn. He reached for the phone and spoke to the OC. ‘Suggest we stand to, sir.’

The OC instructed us to wait. ‘The battle’s being run from Now Zad and a stand-to hasn’t been requested,’ Dickie relayed.

‘No one in Now Zad’s going to be thinking about this. We need to—’

Pat interrupted my gripe over the loudspeaker.

‘Wildman Five Two. Sitrep as at twelve-twelve hours. Taliban contacts all over the place. Engaging to the south-west of the target area. Out.’

A quick glance at Jon and Billy and I could see they were as uncomfortable as I was that we were still in the Ops tent.

Jon could never remain motionless at the best of times, he just physically couldn’t. When he was standing, his hands were always tapping or altering the position of anything within reach. When he sat, he constantly lifted his heel and flexed his toes. Even when he was in his camp cot in complete darkness I could still hear him twitching in time with the music from his iPod. At least I hoped that’s what it was.

He was tap dancing like Gene Kelly right now, and checking the time every sixty seconds. I wasn’t much better. My watch was closer to my nose than it was to my wrist. If I bellyached, bleated, commented, complained, griped, grumbled, objected, protested, remarked, whined or whinged one more time, I would officially become the Grumpy Old Man of 656.

Over the Common Tactical Air Frequency (CTAF) we heard, ‘Wildman Five Two this is Saxon Ops. Send endurance. Over.’

I nearly gave him a round of applause. There was no reply to the boss’s request, but we knew how much gas 3 Flight had; we needed to move.

We were dying to get out and mix it up with the Taliban. And if we weren’t scrambled soon the boys on the ground would end up taking casualties.

Both Apaches were now involved in separate contacts. The place seemed to have gone berserk.

Billy had finally had enough. He went up to Dickie Bonn. ‘Look, we’ve got to mount up and we’ve got to have the spot and target maps. We need to walk now.’

I nodded. ‘It’ll take us ten minutes just to reach the aircraft and get in, and a minimum of thirty to start it up.’ On top of that, I told him, Now Zad was a twenty-minute flight away and it’d take us another ten minutes to RIP (Relief In Place) so the boys received seamless firepower from the Apaches.

‘Pat and his men should be breaking station at about 1330,’ Billy said. ‘That means we need to lift at 1300 latest.’

Dickie tried again but we were told to wait.

1230 hours

Billy was beside himself with frustration. Jon looked close to exploding. Nick was thumbing through FHM and letting us know that we worried too much.

1258 hours

Major Black came running into our Ops tent. He went straight to the signaller. ‘I want to know 3 Flight’s endurance.’

He turned to us. ‘How long until you’re ready?’

He hadn’t once warned us to be ready. But he wanted us to go and he wanted us to go now.

We were the IRT and HRF crews on thirty minutes’ notice to move so he could have answered his own question.

Nick-until that moment preoccupied with the challenge of tautening his torso in twenty-eight days – gave a pretty convincing impression of a coiled spring. ‘We are ready; we just need spot maps and a detailed brief.’

Smart of him to step in before one of us exploded.

The OC’s reply made our jaws drop. ‘There aren’t any left.’

The red mist descended in front of my eyes. In the time we had spent waiting we could have had a couple of sets made up. We would be the only players on the battlefield not having a clue what anyone meant. We were going to look like a bunch of complete twats. Jon dragged me away a second before I went into meltdown.

As we ran out of the tent we heard the signaller shout, ‘Sir, they need to pull off at thirteen-thirty.’

We weren’t going to make that, and I hoped the Taliban weren’t listening because 3 Para were about thirty minutes away from having no Intimate Support.

We sprinted for our Land Rover.

‘Fuck the RIP,’ Jon shouted. ‘Let’s just get off the ground quick. We need to be in the air by 1310.’

1303 hours

My head whacked the roof of the Land Rover with one hell of a thump then I was thrust violently back onto my seat. The engine was revving so fiercely I could barely hear myself think. The door wouldn’t close properly and dust filled the cramped space. I was thrown to one side, and before I could protect myself I was lifted clear of the seat and my head hit a large nut on the underside of the roof bars. This time it really did hurt and I was seeing stars.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ I snapped at whoever was driving in the front with Nick, ‘I know we’re in a hurry, but I want to get there in one piece.’

The outside temperature was ludicrously high and it had turned our hard-topped Land Rover into a furnace.

To add insult to injury, Billy and Jon were laughing like drains.

I felt the lump on top of my head and wished my hair wasn’t shaved so close to the bone. A thick pelt of hair might not have cushioned the blow, but it would have soaked up some of the blood.

My eyes were watering and the dust swirling around the cabin clung gratefully to any available moisture. I must have looked like a clown.

A few seconds later, Jon was catapulted upwards and cracked his head on the bare steel.

‘What goes around comes around, Jonny boy.’

We all burst out laughing. The tension was immediately released; and boy, did it need to be.

There was no made-up road from the Ops tent to the helicopter LS; it was just a stretch of desert that now resembled a mogul field. Each time a heavy vehicle transited round the outside of the camp, it carved an ever-deepening track into the compacted sand. It made for one hell of a ride.

We’d debated the best way to cross this sea of ruts last night.

‘I’ve done shit loads of off-road driving,’ I boasted. ‘Jungles, deserts, savannah, bush, you name it. The best way across is to go max chat.’

Jon took a more methodical approach. ‘If you go really slowly the vehicle will last longer.’ He had a calmer variation on most themes. As an ex-tanky, he didn’t fancy fixing another vehicle in a hurry.

I disagreed. ‘A fast rattle and a few sharp bumps are kinder to the vehicle than huge changes of angle or bashes against the rocks – not to mention the risk of getting stuck.’

Jon’s min-speed theory was definitely not going to be tested on this occasion because 3 Para were being shot to bits by the Taliban and we needed to expedite.

Unfortunately, months of traffic had turned the fine sand to talcum powder and the breeze was coming from behind us at its usual 10–15 mph. We needed to drive faster than the wind to prevent being engulfed. Driving blind, unable to see the end of the bonnet when there was around 200 million pounds’ worth of helicopters strewn all over the HLS, was unthinkable. So was driving over two-foot-high speed bumps at 20 mph, but the choice was simple: hold on.

The Land Rover came to a sharp but spongy stop. We waited a couple of seconds for the dust to settle before running the final forty metres to the Apaches.

I took the first available opportunity to cough up a lungful of dust. The light wind blew some of the remaining powder from my body, but it was too hot to cool me down.

1308 hours

Taff, the Arming and Loading Point Commander, was ready and waiting. The ALPC was in charge of the Apache all the time it was on the ground, even when the aircrew were onboard. It was his responsibility to load and unload all its weapons and fuel, and to check that the aircraft was safe during starting and shutdown. The helicopter was under his safe and ever-watchful eye until he disconnected his intercom lead from the wing.

Taff had a big smile, an eight-man arming team, many thousands of cannon rounds, hundreds of rockets, over twenty missiles, two Apache pilots and over forty million pounds’ worth of helicopter under his command and control. It was a lot of responsibility for a corporal who got paid the same as our squadron clerk.

‘All the blanks are out and the tee-fifty pin is stowed, sir.’

The small metal T50 pin sat under a cover on the Apache’s nose, just in front of the co-pilot gunner’s window. It had a long red and white flag attached to make sure we didn’t take off with it still in place. With the pin removed, the yellow-and-black, dog-bone shaped initiation device – the same as the ones in both cockpits – was automatically armed. Their job was to initiate the detonation cord threaded round the side windows, blasting both canopies fifty metres. In an emergency, it would be Taff’s job to initiate the explosion if we couldn’t.

Billy yelled his thanks.

‘I’m going in the front, Ed – jump in and get her started.’

Billy began to run round the Apache checking that all the blanks that kept dust and debris from every orifice had been removed and she was ready to fly.

I was still trying to take in what he’d said. We had fully briefed the mission, monitored whatever we could of the battle and authorised the flight, gearing everything towards me being in the front seat as the gunner and commander, and Billy in the back seat as the pilot and captain.

Every military flight required prior authorisation signed by both the aircraft captain and the authorising officer. It declared the exact conditions of the flight: which Apache was being flown, the flight date, who was captain, who was in which seat, which survival jacket they were wearing for escape and evasion purposes, the ETD and the ETA. It then outlined the mission: takeoff location, route, landing location, mission number, outline mission details, any limitations (like the minimum height), and if there were any fuel restrictions. If any of these details were altered, the authorising officer had to be informed and the authorising sheet amended before the flight.

I was puzzled by the late change, but the flight was on Billy’s authorisation as he was captain. I wasn’t in a position to order him into the back seat as briefed. I could have refused to fly until we went back to Plan A or changed our authorisation – but the time for that had long since passed. I wasn’t being anal. If we got shot down, the authorisation sheet would wrongly identify which of us was where – and that could have serious repercussions in the post-crash, escape and evasion phase.

I knew Billy would have some reasonable justification – but that didn’t stop me wondering if he just wanted to go in the front so he could do the shooting. Either way, there was no time to argue. We needed to get off the ground asap, then tell Ops and have the appropriate discussion when we got back.

It was only early summer, but the weather was unbelievably hot and taking its toll on our troops. Everyday tasks appeared a hundred times more difficult and ten times slower to perform. The sun only seemed to have one goal – to punish us for being somewhere we couldn’t call home.

My combats were already damp with sweat and clung uncomfortably to my body. As I climbed up the blisteringly hot skin of the starboard side of the aircraft I noticed that Billy was also struggling. Grape-sized beads of sweat tumbled down his face, which was contorted with concentration.

I felt much older than my forty years in this heat, but my brain felt like an eighteen-year-old’s, buzzing with adrenalin and fired up by the prospect of the impending battle. I knew Billy felt the same; we didn’t need to discuss it. We were both WO1s and had a shitload of military experience between us.

656 Squadron Army Air Corps was the first and currently the only Apache squadron in the British Forces capable of deploying to a combat zone. We lived to outwit the enemy and survive to fight another day. It was utterly addictive and nothing could compare to it. At that moment I genuinely believed it would be better to die today at the hands of the Taliban than to rot into old age, swapping war stories in my retirement home.

Today would be fun.

I heaved open the door and clicked it into place above the entrance to the rear cockpit. I stretched across, inserted the ignition key and twisted it to On.

The beast began to stir as it sucked life from the battery and the relays kicked over. The Up Front Display sparked up and confirmed that there was full fuel – no faults so far.

The UFD also had a digital clock fed by two GPSs:

13:10:08… 13:10:09… 13:10:10…