Sweating the Metal

by Alex Duncan

  Initially, we were held off by the Apache escorting us as there was a firefight going on, but we got clearance within about ten minutes so we started our approach to the HLS.

  Rich flew a tactical descent to scrub off speed and line us up with the target that we’d identified, and suddenly it all kicked off. The ANA heard us coming in so they laid down a weight of fire to suppress the Taliban who were intent on shooting us down. That prompted the OMLT in their Warrior Fighting Vehicles to join in, so they opened up on the compound with their 30mm cannons. That was great in one sense, but it was fucking scary at first: all we could see were loads of lines of red and green tracer being directed against these two compounds.

  Through the NVGs, everything has an ethereal, slightly unreal quality and in some respects you feel quite detached, but it’s still bizarre seeing all this ordnance being fired, knowing that, although it looks quite pretty, it would ruin your day if it were to hit you. AK-47s and RPGs are the weapons of choice for both the ANA and the Taliban, so it seemed like thousands of 7.62mm rounds were flying back and forth, with RPG rounds being traded in both directions and a sizeable amount of 30mm to boot. The image through our NVGs was almost painfully bright and it seemed like the sky was alive with rounds. The air was thick with lead.

  The HLS was really dusty, even by Afghan standards, and I remember thinking, ‘I’m glad I’m not flying this!’ Rich did a beautiful landing and he put us down in the exact spot we needed to be in. We were just behind the line of friendly forces so we were pretty well protected. The ramp went down and the QRF guys fanned out in a protective cordon while the MERT ran off to find the casualty; Rich and I just sat there with the rotors turning watching the fireworks.

  I guess it was still pretty risky – we were within range of fire from the Taliban, but the ANA were so effective at suppressing them that we never really felt under threat. It’s funny how your perception changes and, with it, your attitude to risk. I guess it’s all relative, but even when you’re taking fire, it’s a matter of degrees. It’s one thing being stood at close quarters having someone trading fire with you, but when there’s distance involved and difficult angles it’s another story altogether.

  I don’t recall feeling scared once we were on the ground, and that made me think again of how much easier life is for those of us in theatre than it is for our loved ones back home. To them, you’re going to Afghanistan so they’re worried sick. They don’t know the parochial aspects of life out here – most of what people at home know is gleaned from the media.

  Sex sells, which is this case translates as bullets, bombs and guns. So the TV news, magazines and newspapers rarely show the casual side of life in theatre because it’s dull – the public are fed a steady diet of high-octane ops, with reporters being filmed looking like Rambo in chinos, minus the weaponry, diving for cover as the bullets fly. Ross Kemp speaks breathlessly of the dangers, taking cover in a ditch somewhere in Helmand as the section he’s embedded with tries to fight its way to safety. In short, those at home know that when you go to Afghanistan it’s more than likely going to be bloody dangerous.

  Compared to being at home, yes it is. But the reality is that you’re six degrees of separation from mortal danger, all depending on where you are and what you’re doing in theatre. Those degrees start inside the wire at Bastion, where the biggest danger is from the sun or the dreaded D&V rather than bullets, RPGs and IEDs. The risk is marginally greater at KAF with its regular rocket attacks, but even then it’s not really anything to worry about. Although we’re airborne and we get shot at, it’s a known quantity; I’m in a familiar environment, we’re a moving target and to a degree, as pilots, we’re masters of our own destiny because we can fly tactically – making ourselves harder to hit. To most of us, the risk is negligible compared to that experienced by the real heroes – the guys and girls living in the FOBs out on the front line who patrol and are close to contact with the Taliban every day. That’s how we were able to sit in the cab while the rounds flew, watching the display through our NVGs, and waiting for the casualty to be brought on board.

  We couldn’t have been on the ground for more than about two minutes. The MERT team reappeared with the casualty, the QRF came back on, and as soon as the ramp closed we got the familiar call of ‘Clear above and behind’ from Jim. We never, ever chase them with calls of ‘How long?’ We’re a crew, we work together, and it’s a given that nobody wants to stay on the ground one second longer than we need to. Helicopters belong in the sky and that’s where we want to be so, while it varies from boring to downright fucking scary to be sat on the ground in the goldfish bowl that doubles as a cockpit, we know that the crewmen will tell us we’re good to go the second it’s appropriate.

  We got back to Bastion without incident and delivered the casualty to Nightingale, but I don’t think we’d even sat down in the IRT tent when the next shout came in: two casualties – Afghan nationals, both categorised T1s. A suicide bomber had walked up to an ANP checkpoint near Gereshk and blown himself up. It’s a quick run from Bastion to Gereshk so we were there and back within thirty minutes.

  We shut down, got back to the IRT tent and twenty minutes after landing we were all in bed for, unusually, an uninterrupted night’s sleep.

  19

  THE FIFTH PASSENGER

  There’s a book out there called The Eighth Passenger by Miles Tripp and it’s a stunningly eloquent and articulate account of his life as the bomb aimer on a Lancaster in World War II. It’s so called because the Lancaster flew with a crew of seven; the eighth passenger was fear.

  There is a mission that German and I flew early in August that really brought that home to me. Fear was my fifth passenger on that sortie and for me, it perfectly illustrated the maxim that it’s not always about what actually happens; we’re all wise after the event. How we feel is more often dictated by what’s known at the time.

  The mission involved us supporting a major offensive over four days with the objective of putting some pressure on the Taliban in the Upper Gereshk Valley. The aim was for ground troops to probe and patrol through the Green Zone to try to reduce the number of attacks on FOB Inkerman, which was being attacked every day at around 13:00 hrs with multiple mortar rounds, RPGs and small arms fire. The guys inside were living a miserable existence.

  We were flying as a four-ship gaggle – two Apaches to support two cabs; Eurotrash in one, JP and Morris in the other. For this particular mission, almost two companies of Royal Anglians needed moving over a short distance of something like a mile and a half. They were on the eastern side of the Helmand River and needed to be somewhere on the western side, because they wanted to investigate what intelligence suggested was a Taliban front line combat hospital.

  The plan was to land two Chinooks in a cultivated field that was completely surrounded by trees. Tactically, it was far from ideal because the HLS was looked on from all four sides and the trees provided perfect cover for the Taliban, but that’s how it had to be; the troops we were lifting were at that location. Once we had them aboard, we would fly them across the Helmand River and land in the middle of a field full of maize. That field was just at the bottom of a hill, which was where the building they were going to investigate was sited.

  The mission was risky and my biggest concern was the fact that the sortie was over such a short distance. Given the density of Taliban forces in the Green Zone, if we were landing inside, loading troops and flying them just a mile and a half, we’d be low and slow for most of the flight – the worst combination of all. We’d be lucky to fly at more than eighty to a hundred knots, making us an inviting target, and if Taliban forces were anywhere close, they’d have to be fast asleep or blind and deaf to miss us. To make matters worse, we had a huge number of troops to move – almost two companies’ worth – so we were looking at three separate trips to get them all across.

  JP was flying the lead cab and he’d come up with a plan routing us along the western side of the river. Sangin is on the east
ern side of the Helmand River with a wadi running east to west on the northern side, and on the western side there were some pretty steep cliffs with some very deep cuts – steep-sided, deep valleys really. The plan was for us to set down on the flat desert floor about three miles or so out on the west side of the river and, once cleared in, to approach the pick-up point by flying along the valley floor, which was just deep enough that you could fly a Chinook and it would be completely hidden from view. That element would turn out to be one of the most exciting bits of flying I’ve ever done in theatre; it was just like the scene in Star Wars when the Rebellion Alliance pilots are flying the X-Wing fighters through the Death Star’s canyons as they try to destroy it.

  As we come in, I can see there are some British troops in position on top of the cliffs. They are out of sight to any Taliban forces in the Green Zone. They’ve approached from the desert side and are in Jackals; they are there to cut off any Taliban who escape once the main thrust of the attack on the hospital has come in from the west. I see that one of the Jackals is on fire following a mine strike; it does not do anything to calm my nerves.

  The Apaches are on station providing overwatch; they clear us in. We have a time on target – it’s all calculated by JP, who is a brilliant tactician, so we know it’s going to be dead on. We are familiar with his methods – ‘You’re going to come in on this heading at this speed for this amount of time, and then throttle back on this heading on the approach.’ Let’s say you normally fly the approach at 120kts for three miles. You decelerate for the last mile and you’ll average 60kts, so you’ll be in the gate at the target. So JP has worked all that out to the last second and, as usual with him, that’s where we are; time on target is exactly as he’d planned.

  The wadi we are flying through on the run in is very narrow and very deep so JP goes in ahead. Because we want to arrive close together, I am as close behind his cab as I dare – certainly no more than twice the span of our rotors. And when I say that valley is narrow, there can’t be more than the width of one rotor either side of us, so there is no room for error. Luckily it’s dead straight, because there isn’t enough width for us to effect a tight turn – the rotors are simply too close to the valley walls. Tactically, you could argue it isn’t brilliant, but it is the best option and with the Apache on overwatch, as good as it gets. JP has chosen this particular wadi for the run in because it is stripped of vegetation, so there is absolutely no cover and nowhere for any Taliban to lie in wait.

  The sense of speed and noise is awesome – obviously, you need a frame of reference to feel and see speed, which is why 160kts at height doesn’t feel particularly fast. Over the ground you get some sense of perspective, but where we are – in a narrow valley, flying at speed below the level of the ground on either side, just a cab’s height from the floor – it is breathtaking. With our two cabs flying so close and in such an enclosed space, the noise outside must be deafening.

  We’re getting close now, I can see the Green Zone starting to appear ahead and below me as I look through the floor bubble, and suddenly the AH calls us on the radio.

  ‘Beefcake Two Four, Ugly Five One, we’re picking up ICOM chatter. Be advised Taliban forces may be moving long-barrelled weapons and RPGs near your location. ICOM seems to be saying they should concentrate on the helicopters.’

  I turn to Rich. ‘For fuck’s sake, we so don’t need to know that.’

  He shakes his head. ‘What the fuck use is that? Talk about stating the obvious. So he’s basically telling us that the Taliban are out there and might be waiting for us. And we can do what about that, exactly?’

  We know there are people out there that have the weapons and desire to shoot us down, it goes with the territory, but you keep your awareness of that fact at the back of your mind where it belongs. Otherwise it gnaws away at you and the fear builds. If the AH had said he had the Taliban in his sights and was about to engage, fair enough. Telling us that there were Taliban forces waiting for us – what good was that to us, other than to divert our focus just when we needed it to be on the job at hand? I know the AH crew were only trying to help, so I can’t blame them too much; I guess you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

  So we’re running in and I can really feel my heart pumping. My senses are amplified and the adrenaline is flowing now, I’m wired on it. I’ve got that metallic taste at the back of my throat and I can feel my palms sweating into the calf-leather flying gloves that encase my hands as I work the cyclic and collective.

  The end of the valley is in sight. JP has aimed to get us into the southern end of the target because the Green Zone is at its narrowest there, meaning there’s less cover for the Taliban to hide in. He makes sure we take the shortest route in and immediately we’re out of the wadi and over the Helmand River.

  ‘JP’s going to come hard left. The target is currently in your 10 o’clock, one and a half miles, heading 010,’ says German. ‘Past this tall hedge in the 10 o’clock, visual?’

  ‘Visual,’ I reply, and it’s an effort just to say that one word as I’m concentrating on the low-level flying, JP, the enemy, the navigation, my fear and, most importantly, not fucking up the approach.

  I fly a really tight left-hand turn to slow us down for the target. The Apache is in contact with the troops on the ground and they’ve popped smoke, so we have visual on their location. JP goes forward and right, so I go slightly to his rear and left. We want to get in as fast as possible, so I keep our speed over the ground high and leave it to the last minute to slow down. As soon as we are on short finals, I flare, then bank the cab, booting the pedal; the idea is to use the belly of the aircraft as an airbrake. We pirouette nose down, I add a touch of forward cyclic to stop us climbing and with the tail at a 40° angle to the ground, all the speed falls away. It’s aggressive flying, but it works – I want to be as unpredictable as possible because anything I can do to make us more difficult to hit has to be good.

  We land on and it runs like clockwork. The troops are waiting for us in the field ready to move, and their mates who we are going to move on the second lift are fanned out along the treeline, defending the LS. Our pax are on in double-quick time – it seems like we are on the ground for less than thirty seconds before I hear the crewman say we’re ready to lift. I pull power and we’re away.

  With just a mile and a half to run, we’re at the drop point in no time. I see JP make a tight right turn with loads of flare on the descent and I’m thinking, ‘Fuck, he’s landed in the jungle there!’ because it’s a maize field and the vegetation is so high and thick. It’s incredible to watch because his downwash flattens everything as he sinks groundwards. It’s just like the parting of the Red Sea.

  There’s no way we are going to get into the same field – it’s just too small to accommodate us both. I pick a field to the left.

  ‘BANG!’

  ‘What the fuck was that?’ asks Rich as the centre windscreen cracks and we see a mass of blood and feathers. ‘Bird strike,’ I say, my nerves already on edge. ‘That helps!’ I flare the cab for the descent. The maize goes wild, flattening in our downwash. I spot a small sapling in our 1 o’clock and it flattens too until the downwash subsides and it fights back, popping up just high enough to miss the forward disc.

  Things have changed since Vietnam, where the Hueys would come in to clearings too small to land in, and the pilots would use the disc to chop the trees down and make it larger. The tensile strength of the blades is different – the Huey’s were solid steel whereas the Chinook’s are lightweight and far less durable by comparison.

  The ramp is down as soon as we hit the deck, the troops run off and, within seconds, we lift again and are away. The rest of the mission runs like clockwork and we land back at Bastion, tired but pleased at a job well done.

  I’m exhausted – partly because the flying has been so intense, but it’s more than that. I feel wrung out with the stress. Okay, the mission went without incident in the end, but how the hell did we g
et away with it? All the warning signs were there; we were in Taliban territory, we were big and bold, low and slow in places, just waiting for it to happen. There was nothing we could do; we were a big fucking target in the sky. All it needed was a few Taliban with their heads turned skywards, RPGs on their shoulders and that would have been it. Even if they couldn’t see us coming, they must’ve heard us. And there was the ICOM chatter that they were laying in wait for us with weapons ready. What the fuck was wrong with them? They missed a huge opportunity, and we ended up scoring an impressive goal in their backyard.

  I was already on edge, but the ICOM chatter had me even more focused and my senses amplified. Every nerve cell in my body felt alive, alert to the danger. My heart was pounding like it was ready to jump out of my chest and all along I felt like I was just waiting for the rounds to hit us. So while all that was going on, I had to be 100% focused on flying the aircraft, getting my passengers down safely and making sure we were where we were supposed to be. I had no spare capacity and as soon as we turned for home, I felt all the adrenaline disappear, leaving me utterly drained.

  I think back to the briefing before the sortie, learning that the pick-up and the drop-off points were so close together, right in the middle of the Green Zone. It seemed like a suicide mission. There was no way to vary our route in or out, so we just had to get on with it and the fear was my constant companion throughout, like a fifth member of the crew with nothing to offer.

  We do the missions because we feel compelled to – because the guys on the ground have an infinitely more dangerous job than us and they rely on us. Partly it’s also down to good leadership, and in JP we had that and more. He was someone that we trusted implicitly. Also, there was a good chance he’d been privy to intelligence I hadn’t seen; the bottom line is there were clearly good operational reasons for the mission and I knew JP would have looked at the plan upside down and back to front. He would have deconstructed it, looked at it in its component parts and worked out how best to put it back together, so I had faith that the profile we flew was the best one under the circumstances.