Sweating the Metal

by Alex Duncan

  We are transiting to the HLS and I am looking at the Apache escorting us thinking how glad I am to have it along when, completely apropos of nothing, I see the most beautiful shooting star arcing between us; it’s absolutely awesome – I’ve never seen one last as long as this one. Then my cognitive function kicks in: a shooting star at 4,000ft, climbing up instead of descending? Get a fucking grip, Frenchie; it’s a rocket! And then I work it out. Someone has fired a Chinese 107mm rocket at us and missed. Those things are evil – they’re already breaking Mach 1 as they leave the firing tube. If they’re aimed in the right direction, you’re toast. That really wakes me up and refocuses my mind.

  The Apache goes on ahead to check out the HLS and comes over the radio to report that it is ‘cold’ – good to go in. Craig says, ‘I’m putting 100 on the light so bug the RadAlt to 80 on the noise. I’m going in fast and low, into the bottom of the wadi and we’ll look for the grid.’ As Craig flies the approach, I am talking him down on his height and speed so he can remain visual.

  We crest a hill and drop to low level. Craig makes a steep turn and, after a quick look at the grid, I see the marker held by one of the soldiers – it’s our signal.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got it,’ Craig confirms and then greases us down in what has to be one of the most beautiful landings I’ve ever seen at night, particularly as I can see nothing whatsoever of the landing site in the last few seconds. It is a perfect zero speed landing and if ever a zero speed landing was required, it’s now. When the dust clears, both Craig and I have an ANA soldier literally five feet in front of us. And between them and the front wheels of the aircraft there is a one-metre deep ditch – literally three feet from the wheels. Directly behind us there are another three or four ANA just feet from the ramp. They’ve performed a perfect demonstration of ‘All Round Protection’, except they’ve fucked up their drills and made the landing site so small that only a perfect zero speed landing would prevent total disaster. And luckily for everyone that’s exactly what Craig delivered.

  In the cockpit, I am anxious for us to get airborne again. A bizarre thought comes into my head that I can’t chase away: ‘If an RPG hit us now, would it hurt?’ The troops on the ground run forward with Lance Bombardier Mason on a stretcher. He’s only eighteen – no more than a kid really – and is bleeding profusely. The entry wound is on his left shoulder. The bullet has hit the back plate of his armour, bounced off and come out through his chest, missing the main arteries to his heart by millimetres.

  The Apache comes over the radio. ‘Guys, you need to lift. Enemy have got the HLS zeroed and are setting up to launch.’ I can hear the sound of the AH’s 30mm chain gun raining fire down on enemy positions across the airwaves.

  ‘Ramp up,’ says Jonah, just in time.

  ‘Lifting,’ says Craig.

  ‘Clear above and behind.’ And with that, Craig pulls pitch and we lift into the sky. Seconds later an RPG slams into the ground exactly where our cab had been.

  ‘Fuck, that was close,’ I say out loud.

  ‘Thanks for that, Captain Obvious. I don’t know what we’d have done if you hadn’t been here!’ Jonah quips. That breaks the tension: laughter fills the space over the intercom.

  We always ask the medics what sort of exit they want, as we can climb to height and transit back with a more stable run; it takes longer because you lose speed on the climb and descent, but it’s safer. Or we can fly at low level; it’s significantly faster, but it’s a lot rougher.

  The doctor’s voice tells us all we need to know about our casualty: ‘We’ll go as fast as we can on this one; we’re just trying to stabilise him.’

  We make the flight back in record time and the medics are waiting for us as soon as we land. We later hear that our casualty was back in the UK within forty-eight hours, stable and on the road to recovery, which gives everyone a lift. It’s a lovely feeling when you know you’ve made a difference and someone has lived who, had we not performed as we did, might have died.

  We start shutting down. Craig and I discuss the sortie. The blades are still spinning.

  ‘Mate,’ I say, ‘that was the most amazing fucking landing I’ve ever seen! It was tighter than a gnat’s chuff in there and you nailed it.’

  Craig being Craig plays it down. ‘Nah, it was nothing special. You’d have done exactly the same.’

  I nod in agreement, knowing full well that I’d never have been able to execute a zero speed landing in the dark like that one.

  ‘I just hope we don’t have to go back there tonight – with the Taliban having the HLS zeroed now, I wouldn’t fancy revisiting it!’ Craig says.

  Just then I feel a tap on my shoulder. I look round: Woodsy has walked up the ramp and is standing there with a sombre look on his face. My heart sinks.

  ‘Guys, I’m really sorry but you’re going to have to go back.’

  Craig and I just look at one another and shrug. There isn’t much else we can do. The Taliban are waiting; they saw us on the last mission and fired at us. Now we’re needed again so we’re going back. It isn’t a nice feeling.

  ‘What have we got?’ I ask.

  ‘A patrol went out to support the one you’ve just picked the casualty up from, and was engaged. You’ve got a T1 with serious injuries – potential traumatic amputation to his arm.’

  We spend a few minutes debating our strategy. We need another Apache to escort us for starters, as the one we’d had for the first sortie remained on station to support the guys on the ground and is still in contact. We debate using one of the vehicles that had been hit in the ambush for a diversion, with the AH firing at it and causing an explosion so the enemy would get their heads down, but that isn’t an option. In the end, it’s decided to move the casualty to an alternative landing site.

  I am the handling pilot for the first leg of the return – aside from anything else, I think Craig could do with a break after the last sortie. Our Apache has gone on ahead to recce the new landing site, so we hold off in an orbit about fifteen miles or so from the grid and remain visual with him. We have quite a wait. Long enough, in fact, that the standby Attitude Indicators topple because I’ve been flying circles at the same altitude for so long the gyros are confused.

  One of the most impressive elements of the Apaches is their ability to engage the enemy from distance. The imagery they can see on their screens from the Target Acquisition and Designation Sight system they’re equipped with is quite incredible – its array of lenses includes a 127-times magnification day TV camera that can read a car number plate from over 4km away. It means they can rain fire down on an enemy that can’t see them, and that’s exactly what they were doing as we sat in orbit and watched.

  The firefight is clearly still going on because both Apaches are now involved. I watch transfixed as both aircraft are illuminated by the muzzle flash from their 30mm cannons, which are delivering hell to the enemy on the ground. Those M230 cannons fire 10 armour-piercing High Explosive Dual Purpose (HEDP) rounds every second, and they fragment on impact like a grenade. You really wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end.

  ‘Have some of that, motherfuckers!’ I say out loud.

  ‘Quite!’ says Craig.

  I have a thought: ‘Er, how much fuel do we have?’

  Craig does the calculation. ‘About twenty minutes of playtime.’

  ‘How long ago did we get the call?’

  ‘About forty-five minutes, an hour at most.’

  ‘Okay. So we’ve got a T1 casualty down there who’s already been moved to an alternative LS and he’s been bleeding badly for at least forty-five minutes. Actually, it’s going to be longer than that – that’s when we got the call. What are our options if we don’t get clearance to go in before we reach our minima?’

  ‘Er . . . nearest refuelling site is at Gereshk. Let me see . . . twenty minutes there, fuel another twenty minutes and then twenty minutes back. Another hour at least. The guy is never going to make it out alive.’

  Craig
tries to raise one of the Apaches over the radio, but they are both still busy engaging the target area and trying to clean out the enemy. Eventually, he gets through.

  ‘Ugly Five Zero, Hardwood One Three. We’re going to position further up so that we can get on station quicker once you clear us in. We’re almost bingo fuel.’

  ‘Copy that, Hardwood One Three.’

  I’ve just started flying us in the direction of the LS when the AH comes back over the radio:

  ‘Hardwood One Three, Ugly Five Zero. We’ve got a grid for you but we’ll need another few minutes to suppress the area because it’s still hot.’

  ‘Negative Ugly Five Zero,’ said Craig. ‘We’re bingo fuel; it has to be now or not at all.’

  The radio goes quiet for a few seconds, like the AH pilot is thinking.

  ‘Okay, Hardwood One Three. You’re clear in, grid reference 41SPR71405 46516. One of the ground units will mark the target to aid you with a visual reference.’

  Craig takes over flying for an aggressive approach. I’m calling distance and speed again and we’re both looking for the marker, which we see ahead of us as we’ve been briefed. We land, the ramp goes down and Rob leans out into the night looking for the casualty. His voice comes over the intercom, ‘Er guys, there’s nothing fucking moving out there. I’m going off to see what’s happening.’ He grabs his rifle and walks off but is only gone for a few seconds. He’s not happy.

  ‘Fuck! It’s the wrong fucking landing site!’

  ‘What do you mean, wrong landing site?’ I ask.

  ‘Wrong landing site – as in, we’re not supposed to be here. Some idiot didn’t remove his fucking marker when we picked up the first casualty earlier. For fuck’s sake, let’s get the fuck out of here!’

  After all the debate getting the casualty moved to an alternative landing site, we’ve landed on at the last place in the world that we want to be: the same landing site we took fire at earlier.

  ‘Hardwood One Three, Ugly Five Zero, you want to get out of there. The enemy looks like they’re preparing to fire on your position.’

  ‘Clear above and behind. Let’s get the fuck out of Dodge,’ says Jonah but Craig is ahead of the game; he is hauling the collective upwards as soon as he hears the word ‘above’. And as we lift, it’s like Guy Fawkes’ Night down below us. The Taliban seem to let loose everything they have onto the spot where seconds before we’d been turning and burning.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ says Craig, echoing what we are all feeling. ‘How lucky was that?’

  ‘Lucky?’ says Rob. ‘What’s lucky about landing on a hot HLS twice in one evening?’

  ‘Lucky because we must have landed on at exactly the moment the Taliban had their heads down or were reloading. Lucky because the fuckers missed again.’

  It’s bizarre, the first time you come under fire. Your head is so full of the job at hand that you don’t get a chance to be scared – you go into automatic mode and you’re working flat out doing what you’ve been trained to do.

  Almost as soon as we take off again, we see another marker for the correct HLS. Craig pulls a couple of tight turns and flares the cab to reduce airspeed for the descent.

  ‘100ft, 80 knots, you’re in the gate,’ I say and the guys take over in the back with height and dust cloud calls.

  ‘At the ramp,’ says Rob.

  ‘20, at the centre,’ says Jonah.

  ‘10, 8, 5 . . . at the front door.’

  ‘4, 3, 2, with you . . .’

  ‘1. Two wheels on . . . six on. We’re down.’

  ‘Ramp going down,’ says Rob. ‘Okay, the medics are off, the QRF are out now in defence.’ The swirling, blinding dust cloud settles and clears and I can see again. I look over my shoulder to the rear cab and I can see a figure walking up the ramp . . .

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ I say to Craig. ‘The T1 . . . the guy with his arm hanging off? He’s walking up the ramp unassisted, smoking a cigarette. What the fuck are these guys made of?’ Andy Stockton’s arm is all but missing below the elbow, and what remains is only held on by a few strips of muscle. He must be in agony, but he looks for all the world like he’s taking a stroll through the Sussex countryside.

  Once again, I’m amazed at the conditions that the MERT guys work in. It’s dark in the back – no lights means less chance of us being hit by ground fire (there’s no point making the enemy’s job easier) so the only illumination is from green glow sticks. It’s hellishly hot, dirty, dusty and cramped. The dust grates at your throat as you swallow. We’re used to it – as Chinook pilots it goes with the territory. But these guys are medics, many of them drawn from the TA where their day jobs see them working out of climate-controlled, clinically clean, safe and hygienic hospitals. What a contrast. All that, yet they work uncomplainingly, in impossible conditions, and perform miracles on badly injured soldiers.

  The biggest killer in military penetrating trauma is blood loss; lose enough and you can’t get oxygen from the lungs to the brain. It’s also an avoidable killer. In Vietnam, over 9% of the men who died did so through bleeding out from an arm or a leg. Nobody should ever die from bleeding out via a limb injury and with the advances in knowledge and equipment the medics now have in theatre, almost nobody ever does.

  Soon after, the QRF and the medics return and we get the all clear from Rob at the ramp.

  ‘Lifting,’ says Craig as we transition away.

  ‘How’d you like us to fly this?’ I ask the doctor.

  The answer comes back the same as before: ‘Fast as you can, please. We need to get this guy back asap. He’s lost a lot of blood.’

  Once again the medics are waiting for us as soon as we land on back at Bastion and, within minutes, they have Stockton stabilised on a table in the operating theatre. He’s lost his arm but they have saved his life.

  By now it is around 04:00 and all of us are done in. If it’s tough for us, you can’t imagine what it’s like for the crewmen. I honestly don’t know how they do it. They have different but interchangeable roles and they may swap about on the same sortie, but basically the No.1 crewman is the primary interface with the outside for loading and unloading. The No.2 crewman will generally stay at the front of the aircraft and is more involved with the mission; he’ll do the radios, look at navigation and give a tactical review of what’s going on. When we’ve got the MERT on board, they’re doing all that plus whatever else they can – putting on tourniquets, applying pressure to bleeding arteries. To be honest, I think they have the hardest job of all and they don’t get enough recognition for it.

  Craig and I are sat in the cockpit waiting for the rotors to slow down so we can apply the brakes and stop them altogether. We’ve been up since the previous morning at 08:00 and flying since around 20:00 the previous night, so we’re beyond tired. My whole concept of time is skewed as I sit there. It’s a concept too far for a brain that’s been on the go for eighteen or more hours. Right now, my bed – even in the IRT tent – is all I want. I’d trade a week at home for it, right here, right now.

  Woodsy appears. He’s not smiling. I look at Craig, who looks back at me, our faces impassive. This is Groundhog Day.

  ‘Guys, it’s bad news, I’m afraid. I’m really sorry but you’re going to have to go back to the same area. That patrol has got a KIA – Captain Jim Philippson.’

  My heart sinks. It had to happen sometime – someone had to be the first; but why now, why him? He’s the first British casualty of our deployment to Helmand Province. It hits hard. It’s difficult to believe now, looking back across a sea of Britain’s dead in Afghanistan that numbers over 360 at the time of writing, but Capt Jim Philippson was the first to die in Helmand from enemy action.

  ‘There’s more to it than the KIA,’ Woodsy continues. ‘There are a lot of guys bogged down in a firefight with enemy forces that have been there since the first T1 you picked up yesterday evening. We need to insert a company of troops in support so they can flush the enemy forces out. And don’t f
eel obliged or think you’ll be judged if you turn this down; you’ve all worked more than hard enough. I can always raise the other crew.’

  We look at each other – Craig, Rob, Jonah and me. We’ve all got the beginnings of a beard. The shower I’d taken before getting into bed seems like another life ago. We are all stinking, wide-eyed and knackered. Jonah, Rob and I nod.

  ‘No, we’ll do it,’ Craig says. ‘There’s no point breaking in another crew when we’re already this far down the line. Keep them fresh for duty as rostered. We’ll do the insert.’

  Back in the UK, it’d be illegal for us to fly this tired, for this long. But then again, we wouldn’t be flying as low as we do here either. Here, Concealed Approach and Departure means we can fly at whatever height and speed we want. In the UK, when we say height commensurate with safety of the aircraft, it means when I’m flying at 20ft I’m flying at 10 knots. In Afghanistan, if you’re flying at 10ft, you want to be flying at 150 knots! That’s what’s going to make it safer. We’re stretching all sorts of rules and regs but we’re in a theatre of operations during a war and people’s lives are at risk. We’re willing and just about able. Different rules apply.

  We take off again at first light flying as part of a three-ship formation with two Apaches in support, freshly armed and refuelled. A whole company is spread across three Chinooks with Craig and me in one cab, Nichol leading the pack from another and Scot Eldridge flying the third. In the event, it is pretty straightforward; we drop our element of A Company, 3 Para and are then diverted to FOB Robinson along with Nichol to repatriate Capt Jim Philippson’s body to Bastion.

  We are more than a little ragged by the time we lift from FOB Robinson. It is like looking at the world through a veil, like we are six degrees of separation removed from events; they are happening but there is a weird kind of lag to everything, as though space–time has become distorted.

  My hand is on the switch ready to arm up the Defensive Aids Suite as per normal, the minute we are about to lift, when out of nowhere, Craig yells, ‘For fuck’s sake Frenchie. Fucking arm up the cab!’