Sweating the Metal

by Alex Duncan

  There was a moment where time sort of stopped. Rich and I were stood there trying to process this but it just wasn’t computing – it’s not exactly the sort of thing that happens every day.

  ‘Come back here! What do you mean the fucking Herc crashed?’ I said.

  And he said, ‘Yes sir, it crashed.’

  We were firing questions at him like there was no tomorrow. ‘Crashed? How? What, did it fall out of the sky, was it shot down, any casualties, what the fuck’s going on?’

  ‘There are no casualties sir,’ he said. ‘We think it landed a bit too heavily as they were going to pick up your passengers.’

  ‘So the mission’s off, then?’ we said together.

  Maybe it was the stress of the evening, the worry over Private Foster and the other missing lads but Rich and I had to walk outside the tent; after everything that had happened I think we both just needed a breath of fresh air. Those ten minutes outside made a world of difference though and we both felt better for the break.

  We went back into the JOC. JP was talking about waking up the IRT crew if they found Private Foster, so I told him, ‘Look, we’re not that tired. I know we’re going to push the limit, but if you wake up the IRT crew, you’re starting their clock now which means they’ll have to go into rest earlier and then you’ll have to bring in another crew, which doesn’t make sense. Just keep us on and we’ll see it through. Hopefully they’ll find him and then we can move all the troops back in.’ As it was, we’d been on duty since 07:00 the previous morning, although we hadn’t been called out – we’d spent most of the day lazing around, so we weren’t inside-out with tiredness. JP considered it and agreed, so we stayed on.

  Sadly, a short time later the news came in that everyone was dreading. They’d found Private Foster’s body with those of his dead colleagues, Privates McClure and Thrumble, under the rubble of the building they’d been taking cover in when the JDAM hit. They wouldn’t have known anything about it.

  The worst twist of all was that the Bowman radio that Rob Foster had been carrying survived the blast intact and it’s thought that a piece of rubble flicked the switch that sent out the emergency signal; he’d been dead all along. We were completely gutted by that and, as you might imagine, the mood in the JOC was very sombre. But there was work to be done – the bodies all needed recovering and the troops we’d moved up to search for Private Foster would all need moving back to their original positions.

  The full details of what happened took almost three years to come out, so all that was known at the time was that the guys had been killed as the result of a JDAM dropped by a US fast jet. As you might imagine, emotions were running pretty high. Later that morning, we were joined in the JOC by the crew of a US Pave Hawk; they wanted to be part of any attempt to recover the bodies because they felt a sense of responsibility. Obviously, because of what had happened, you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife in the tent when they came in. There were a lot of heads down including, I’m ashamed to say, mine. It was difficult not to feel angry towards them at the time. Whenever there’s a blue-on-blue, it always seems like it’s the Americans dropping the bombs and our boys on the end of it, never the other way around.

  All that said, I think it took a lot of guts on the part of that US crew to come in at that time. They must have known how we’d be feeling; it would have been easy for them to hide, but they faced up to it, and I think ultimately we respected them for that. We were all professionals and we had a job to do, so we brushed our feelings aside and soon there was the usual banter between aviators. It helped that the navigator was pretty fit too – blonde, female, really attractive, which always stands out, especially with so many alpha males floating around. She showed us some pretty cool kit that they have which we, of course, don’t. Things like that really highlight the dichotomy between cultures in the US and UK – the US all Gucci kit, no expense spared; the UK more of a make-do, ‘Heath Robinson’ approach. She had a moving map on an iPad-like device and she said, ‘We’ll go this way, and this way,’ and moved the map around, plotting the routes with her finger.

  ‘That’s a pretty impressive bit of kit,’ I said.

  ‘Really?’ she asked. ‘What sort of kit do you guys use?’

  I unfolded a map from my pocket and waved it around and said, ‘There you go. Mk.1 Human Eyeball and that’s our moving map,’ which really made her laugh, and that broke any remaining tension. The difference in the kit that we have access to compared to the US is astounding. You make light of it at times like that, but you know the Americans are shaking their heads and thinking ‘Oh my God, who are we working with?’

  An hour or so later, we both flew up to Kajaki to recover the bodies. There’d been so much effort put into finding Rob Foster because we really believed he was out there, alive and alone. It was a crushing blow to us all to learn that he’d died. When they brought his body out, I felt awful. I had all sorts of thoughts in my head; all the stuff in life that this guy will never get to experience, all the lost opportunities. He was only nineteen, as was Private Aaron McClure. Private John Thrumble – the oldest – was just twenty-one.

  I watched them bring Robert Foster’s rifle and his kit out – they were all mangled up. It’s funny how your mind works; I became so focused on that, and it got me thinking about the fragility of life. I don’t know why it affected me so much – it’s not like it was the first death we’d dealt with, but there was something really poignant, sad and hopeless about the futility of it all. I was feeling really melancholic and introspective.

  I guess it might have been because this was the first Det I’d done since Guy was born. Being a father had given me a completely different perspective on it all. I felt a much greater insight into the family’s loss and had a real empathy for the poor lad’s parents – all the love, the experiences, the laughter and those rites of passage that everyone takes for granted that he’d never get to do. None of those poor soldiers would, not any more. Three young lives snuffed out, just like that. That was hard to bear.

  Rich and I took off with the Pave Hawk and we ended up flying a complete reversal of what we’d done earlier that night, moving all the troops back to where we’d picked them up from. It was a long, very emotional and hard day’s flying. After we’d shut down, I went to the showers and stripped off; I wanted to wash all the cares, the grit, the grime – all the thoughts of that long, hard night – off of me. It was pretty busy – at around 07:00, it was the time that everyone was getting ready for a new day in Helmand. I saw the OC Forward, Major Jules Face.

  ‘Alright, mate. Here we are again. Start of another day in paradise, eh?’ he said.

  ‘Not for us, sir. It’s the end of a very long one. You know how you saw us at the evening brief yesterday? We haven’t stopped. That’s a good twenty-four hours on duty. I think we must have moved somewhere in excess of 160 people; 160 people there, 160 people back again.’

  I got that fuzzy feeling again, where every cell in my body seemed to be vibrating. I felt wired but drained; a paradox of emotions and feelings. It’s hard to grasp how long we’ve been on duty. Days are measures of time divided by sleep, not by the cycle of night and day. So when you don’t sleep the days become longer and ‘yesterday’ becomes a redundant concept.

  I was dog tired. I could have slept for a week. But there was no chance of that because in a few hours we were up again for more of the same.

  The end of Det couldn’t come soon enough.

  23

  HISTORY REPEATING

  I know one swallow doesn’t make a summer, and I guess by the same token the difficulty I had getting home at the end of my Det in summer 2006 shouldn’t have meant that history would repeat itself in 2007 – but it did!

  Rich and I were positioned on the IRT/HRF for the last three days of our Det, and I still had concerns about making it back to KAF for the TriStar home – even more so now that the Squadron Leader’s personal Herc wasn’t an option. By September 3rd – our last day at
Bastion – things were looking even bleaker for me.

  We were handing over to ‘A’ Flight, 27 Sqn who were taking over from us to form 1310 Flight, but Squadron Leader John Murnane, their OC, had made it clear he wasn’t prepared to take on any kind of tasking without one of us from ‘C’ Flight being on board the cab. JP tried to argue against it, but to no avail.

  JP rang me that afternoon and the news wasn’t good. ‘Frenchie,’ he said, ‘I’m really sorry but you’re going to have to stay an extra day.’

  ‘Sir, you’ve got to be joking. We’re supposed to be going tomorrow!’

  ‘I’m so sorry, mate. Get your kit packed and take it on the cab with you. You can then bring it straight to KAF at the end of the sortie and still make the flight home. They want you on the jump seat with them tomorrow while they do a standard resupply tasking to Inkerman and back. You’ll be there to give them some advice, so that they’re entirely happy with what they’re doing.’

  They might have been happy but I wasn’t, and sadly there was nothing I could do. The mission was for a pair of cabs escorted by one AH to take an underslung load from Bastion to FOB Inkerman at exactly the time of day when Inkerman gets hammered. You could set your watch by the Taliban; they were malleting the place every day from around 13:00, so that was a concern although, ironically, it turned out that they took that day off and the base wasn’t hit. If it was a relief for us, it must have felt like Christmas come early for the poor guys at the FOB.

  As we got close, the AH picked up some ICOM chatter about us coming in and orders for the Taliban to ‘get the weapons ready’, but we’d learned over time that it was more often than not just a load of hot air – it was probably some idiot in Gereshk watching us and making a radio call to his mate, knowing that we were listening.

  As the lead cab went in, I could hear a buzzing noise above my head. I was distinctly uncomfortable with that, because sat in the jump seat you’re directly under the forward gearbox. Noise from there never amounts to anything good, and there was a massive vibration emanating from it, which seemed to be getting worse. I got one of the crewmen to listen to it and he agreed, so I said to the guys in the front, ‘Fellas, we’ve got some vibration from the forward gearbox,’ and I thought they’d say that we’d drop the load and go straight home, except they didn’t.

  The captain came straight back with, ‘Okay, but we’re going to carry on with the mission as planned,’ and I thought, ‘You’ve got to be shitting me!’

  By this point we were on the eastern side of Inkerman doing the run in, and as we were descending to low level the vibration was getting worse. It started to emit a regular pulsating noise and I was just about to say something to the pilot when there was an almighty bang right above my head. I scanned the instruments; as we were levelling off, the pilot was pulling power to arrest our descent. I looked at the captions on the caution advisory panel and it was displayed right there in front of me: No.1 Hydraulic Failure.

  I thought, ‘Okay, we’re already at low level, we’ve got an underslung load, what would I do? Okay, two options: ditch the load at Inkerman and put down there, or ditch the load and fly straight back to Bastion. I don’t care what he does, as long as he makes a decision and makes it now.’

  He did. But it wasn’t what I expected.

  ‘Okay, we’re going to drop the load at Inkerman,’ he said (Good decision! I thought) And then the flight commander, who was in the left-hand seat said, ‘Okay then we’ll carry on as we briefed – we’ll go south of the wadi at Sangin and we’ll just hold there and wait to regroup with the other cab.’

  By this point, I’d had enough.

  I switched my intercom to live and told him, ‘Right, this is what you’re going to do. We’re going to fly straight to Bastion right now. We’re not going to wait for mutual support from any other aircraft; you have got to land as soon as possible. We have an emergency, so secure the hydraulics and we’ll crack on. If we have to crash-land, we’ll do so in the desert and we’ll have somebody pick us up within five minutes, but we are not holding over Sangin to await the others. We’re going.’

  Fortunately common sense prevailed and that’s exactly what happened. We got back without incident and after the aircraft was shut down, he asked me if I had any comments, so I said, ‘Yes. Know your SOPs. Land as soon as possible. Do not fuck around waiting for anybody else so you can go back as part of a formation. If you’re going to smack into the ground, do it in the desert halfway to Bastion, not in the wrong side of the Green Zone!’

  In fairness, these guys had just touched down in Afghanistan from the UK; it highlighted the difference in thinking. You just arrive in theatre and your head’s in a different place. I’m at the end of a two-month tour, we’ve taken fire, we’re attuned to the differences of operating in a war zone and they’re second nature to us. I guess it proved the value in having an experienced captain from the outgoing Flight on board. That said though, it was the last thing I wanted on my last day in theatre!

  After saying my farewells, I managed to get straight on to a Herc to KAF – JP was as good as his word. He’d sorted my main kit and put it on the wagon with the rest of the Flight’s and I joined them all at the Dutch cafe on the boardwalk. We were sat by the bar, which had wi-fi, and I was drinking a good cup of coffee so it even felt half-civilised – well, as far as it can be at KAF! Iain Cuthbertson walked over to me and said, ‘Hey Frenchie, your son is walking mate!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I was just on the phone talking to my missus and Ali was with Guy at our house and he took his first steps!’ I couldn’t believe it – he could have waited! It’s like ten hours before I get home and I’ve missed it!

  The flight home from Afghanistan was unremarkable other than for the fact it left on time, and when I got back to RAF Odiham Ali was there to meet me with Guy. She was holding him upright and he took two or three steps straight into me. Boof! The perfect welcome home.

  It didn’t take long for the magic to evaporate though. It’s always the same when you get back – your head is in a different space. Nothing’s the same for you; you’re back and the contrast with what you’ve left is immense. We have to readjust; but for Ali, and I guess all the WAGs, it’s just another day. Their lives have adapted to us not being there and they have a routine, and suddenly there’s this big, hairy man invading and upending everything they’ve taken for granted.

  You can just imagine – Ali’s cleaned the house, dressed up, made an effort and I come back and dump my filthy kit in the hall. She’s got her arms around me, she’s kissing me, but you can bet your life she’s got one eye open, looking over my shoulder, and she’s not thinking, ‘I love him so much, I’m so glad he’s home.’ No, she’s thinking: ‘For fuck’s sake, there’s a trail of his filthy kit all along the hallway and I’ve just cleaned it!’

  In fairness, I think she lasted a week before she said, ‘Move this dirty, stinking bag and get your kit out of the way!’ She was pretty fucking threaders with me then!

  I was left in no doubt the honeymoon was over.

  PART THREE

  INTO THE LION’S DEN

  24

  BACK IN THE BLACK

  There was something different about my deployment to Helmand in Summer 2008 that became apparent even before I arrived in theatre. I felt more apprehensive than I’d done for my previous Dets, but perhaps that was down to my son Guy, who was approaching his second birthday. He was walking and talking and there was real interaction between us, so I knew that leaving him and Ali for two-and-a-bit months was going to be a wrench.

  The landscape on the ground in Afghanistan was greatly different, too. We’d be supporting 16 Air Assault Brigade again, although it had a new CO in the form of Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, who’d replaced Brigadier John Lorimer. 3 Para had a different personality following the appointment of its new Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Huw Williams. His predecessor, Lt Col Stuart Tootal OBE, DSO had resigned his commission
in protest at what he regarded as the appalling treatment and conditions of British soldiers.

  In terms of the ground picture in Helmand, a de facto border now existed east of Garmsir along the banks of the Helmand River, dividing British-held from Taliban-held territory in what was essentially a stalemate. Despite us having over 8,000 troops in theatre at this stage, only a hardcore of around 1,500 were front line infantry units, the rest being support arms to enable them to fight. Consequently, we were outnumbered by a Taliban force which was receiving reinforcements from outside Afghanistan. Our arrival in theatre was to coincide with US Marine reinforcements, who assisted 16 Air Assault Brigade in an attack to break the stalemate at Garmsir.

  The Taliban might be a ragtag enemy in flip-flops and pyjamas, but they’re a formidable foe – they are tactically astute, display astonishing tenacity and are unquestionably courageous, given their propensity to fight regardless of the rate of attrition they suffer.

  The war in Afghanistan is often described as asymmetric – basically the concept of conflict between the powerful and the weak – but I sometimes wonder if it is us who are the weak partner. Sure, we have superior weapons, tactics and equipment. We have body armour, fast jets, heavy artillery and armoured vehicles. We have vastly greater numbers of troops, who are considerably more experienced and capable than those we face. But we’re not fighting on a level field. We are constrained by a moral and ethical code, and the binds and rules of an army of lawyers and theorists who abide by the tenets of the Geneva Conventions. We fight an enemy with no uniform; an enemy that is indistinguishable from the civilian population we seek to protect. It’s a David vs. Goliath conflict, and we all know who won that particular fight. The outcome of the war in Afghanistan is by no means certain.