Sweating the Metal

by Alex Duncan Frenchie

  ‘Ugly Five One, Beefcake Two Five, inbound to recover one T2. Can you confirm the LS is secure and cold?’

  ‘Beefcake, Ugly. LS is volcano [i.e. hot] at this time, repeat volcano. Hold off until further notice.’

  ‘What’s our fuel status?’ I ask German.

  ‘We’ve got about ten minutes playtime before we’re bingo,’ he replies.

  I call Bastion and advise them that we may not make it in. It’s a tough call, knowing that a guy’s on the ground and needs us but we can’t get in to lift him and may yet need to bug out. Bastion scrambles the IRT while we fly an orbit about three minutes out from the HLS awaiting clearance. It’s going to be tight. Nine minutes pass; I call up the AH.

  ‘Ugly, Beefcake. Any change?’ I ask.

  ‘Beefcake, negative. Maintain hold, will report change.’

  ‘Ugly, we are bingo fuel, returning to Bastion. IRT en route from Bastion to take over,’ I advise them before dipping the nose and flying us home. About five minutes west, as I’m heading towards the desert east of Bastion, I see the IRT cab pass us on its way to our previous target, crewed by Morris (Mo) and JP. Later that night, we catch up in the crew tent.

  ‘Boss, Mo, how’d it go with that IRT shout to Gereshk earlier?’ I ask them. I pull up a chair and listen to their account:

  ‘It was interesting, to say the least,’ says Morris. ‘It’d been fairly quiet; in fact, we hadn’t been scrambled at all until that point. We’d just been taking it easy in the crew tent as we weren’t long back from lunch. JP had his head down and I was reading when the call came in.

  ‘JP was captain, so he went to the JOC to get the nine-liner while I went to straight to the cab with the crewmen and began start-up. The call came over as a straight T2 – a British soldier who had taken a round through the left side of his torso.

  ‘I think the firefight must have calmed down just after you left because we were on our approach about ten minutes after we passed you. We had trouble getting comms with the ground call sign but the Apache escorting us said, “You’re cleared in, LS is ice.” The ground units popped green smoke for us and we started our descent.

  ‘We came in from the south and the HLS was an area that had trees and bushes on three sides. It was going to be an extremely tight squeeze for us but, as you know, there’s nothing unusual in that – just another day in Helmand, right? You know JP though – he’s a pretty unique pilot so he managed to get in there seemingly with no difficulty whatsoever. Christ, the guy makes even the most impossible manoeuvres seem easy.

  ‘So there we are, landed right on the green smoke. We’re turning and burning, the ground party has gone off the ramp to find the T2, and JP and I were quite happily sat there, scanning the horizon within our respective look-out arcs for any incoming. I happened to look out of my left-hand window and I noticed some Afghan troops there. They were firing and doing that Afghan thing of ducking down in a crouch and firing their AKs above their heads in the general direction of where the enemy might be. You know how it is – it’s like there’s a slight lag between your eyes seeing something and your brain analysing what it is they’re seeing and making sense of it all.

  ‘I looked to my right and I said to JP, “I’ve got some Afghan troops just under the disc on my side.” As I said it I looked past JP and I could see the same thing on his side. “Ah, it appears you’ve got some on your side too. Er… your guys seem to be firing JP,” and I looked down at my side again and sort of did a double take as it dawned on me. We’d landed right in the middle of the firefight – literally. And suddenly we were doing that “shrink down in your seat” thing where you try and make yourself into as small a package as possible – not ideal seeing as neither JP or myself are the smallest of people. We ended up doing that cockpit bullet-dodging dance, where you start moving and bobbing your head around, trying not to keep it in the same place in case somebody is aiming at you!

  ‘Talk about wrong place, wrong time, do you know what I mean? Of all the places we could have put down, we’ve landed on right in the middle of the ANA and the Taliban having a pop at one another. Vulnerable? It felt like we were sat there with a huge fuck-off target painted on us and the words “Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough” written alongside the cab. I hate that feeling – all you can do is sit and wait for the guys to get on and give you the “Clear above and behind” so you can raise the collective and get the hell out.

  ‘After what seemed like an age, although I’m sure it was no more than about two minutes in reality, they found the T2 and walked him on to the back of the ramp. He was bandaged across his left shoulder – I think he’d taken a through-and-through. That was the first time I’d seen the troops fighting in mufti. Most of the British troops were shirtless, in helmet, shorts and flip-flops, wearing their body armour over bare skin; it was that hot. Poor guys, it must be unbearable for them living and fighting in those conditions. I have the utmost respect for them.

  ‘Once we got the guy on board and got the all clear, I don’t think we’ve ever lifted so fast; JP did an over-the-shoulder departure away from the firing line and we got back to Bastion with no further incident. What really made this one stand out was their JTAC, an elderly RAF officer. He was a Flying Officer – I guess given his age, he’d come up the ranks and taken a commission. He arrived back at Bastion earlier this evening and came and found us.

  ‘“Are you the guys who flew in to pick up the T2 at Gereshk earlier?” he asked, and I nodded.“I’ve got to tell you, the boys thought that was fantastic, utterly brilliant. You’ve got their eternal respect now, do you know that?”

  ‘I was like, “What do you mean?”

  ‘“Well, you know that field that you landed in? It’s just in front of where the Sergeant Major had been driving his quad bike with a trailer on the back. The trailer had gone over an IED which blew it to pieces and that woke the Taliban up and they launched the firefight that you landed in the middle of. I was trying to raise you on the radio to tell you to hold off as it was too hot but the next thing we know, you’ve arrived in the middle of the firefight, picked this guy up and disappeared. Well as far as the troops are concerned, the guys think you’re brilliant; they reckon you’re going to come in regardless of what’s going on and pick them up – any time, any place, anywhere! You’ve no idea what a morale boost that was for them!”

  ‘With that, he made his excuses and left. I have to say Frenchie, I know that the guys on the ground value the service the IRT delivers, but I had no idea how much. It might have been more by accident than design, but I think that little error with us landing when the LS was hot has raised our stock with the boys on the ground.’

  ‘Fucking hell, Morris!’ I say. ‘Bet you were glad to get out of there! Kind of makes you appreciate the simple and bizarre calls we get, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah, always interesting those, although not for the casualties obviously! We’ve had some really weird ones. I know Elle Lodge on “A” Flight got a shout to pick up a guy from a FOB who’d been doing press-ups in his tent and a dog ran in and head-butted him really hard. How weird is that? Similarly, JP and I picked up an Afghan kid that had been kicked in the head by a donkey – the boy survived but he was in a really bad way.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I reply. ‘I picked up a T1 from one of the FOBs, a British soldier who’d been stung by a hornet. He’d gone into anaphylactic shock and it was really touch and go.’

  ‘Can’t remember who it was, but one of the IRT crews was recently scrambled to pick up one of the Army’s sniffer dogs that had fallen ill. That really gives some indication of just how important they are to the overall mission here,’ offers German. ‘Also, Alex Townsend had one that really fucked every one off; you hear about it?’

  ‘Don’t know. What’s the story?’ Morris asks.

  ‘Fucking outrageous. You know how we had that spate last year of the ANA and the ANP shooting themselves in the foot? I think it was an update on that. Guy had swallowed some ca
ustic soda or something. It came over as a T1 and when they got there, the guy just walked on to the ramp. He’d drunk the caustic soda the night before, didn’t say anything at the time and then mentioned it in the morning so he could get off the front line for a while.’

  ‘Those ones really piss me off mate,’ Morris says. ‘You’re risking the cab and twelve people at least – the MERT, the QRF team and obviously all the crew – and you break your neck and it’s all for nothing.’

  There’s nothing like a good moaning session to get everyone going; we’re really cooking on gas now! I throw something else into the conversation.

  ‘The ones that really get me are those that fuck with your head. I had a T2 that I picked up from Now Zad, a Taliban IED maker. Quite ironic really; he’d blown himself up making a bomb. What really bothered me about this one was that when he’d blown himself up, some of the shrapnel hit a little girl who was nearby, severely wounding her. We couldn’t pick her up due to the rules that only allow us to pick up ISAF troops, the Taliban and civilians hit by crossfire between us and the Taliban. We had no remit and no authorisation or responsibility to pick her up.’

  ‘Fuck man, that’s just wrong,’ German offers.

  ‘Personally,’ says Morris, ‘I’d have left the Taliban guy to die and taken her instead.’

  ‘Me too mate,’ I say. ‘Me too. But it’s one of the realities of war I guess; the Taliban was of immense value from an intelligence perspective. She was “only” a little girl so he was hooked up and she wasn’t. It’s an impossible decision to make because, either way, the outcome would have been potentially bad.’

  ‘That’s realpolitik in action my friend,’ adds Morris. ‘It ain’t pretty, but it’s the way it is. I’m just glad it’s not our call. It’s way above our pay grade. Did Hannah tell you about the Taliban gunman she was called out for on the IRT?’

  ‘Dunno. What’s the story?’ I ask.

  ‘It was somewhere near Gereshk. He’d been captured after he’d been wounded in a firefight and he absolutely did not want to get on board. He was trying to fight the stretcher-bearers even though he was restrained. They found a razor blade on him when they searched him. He’d obviously wanted to hurt them even though they were trying to help him.’

  ‘Is it just me that feels more of an affinity for the Brits we pick up?’ I ask. ‘I always felt a greater level of concern when it’s a UK national or British soldier that we pick up.’

  ‘No, it’s not just you mate,’ say German and Morris. Morris goes on, ‘I guess it just hits closer to home – you can identify with them more, you have some sort of picture of their existence and their life back home so it has greater gravitas, more meaning.’

  ‘That’s exactly it,’ I say. ‘It resonates more because there’s an instant affinity based on shared experience and culture. It doesn’t matter how I try and rationalise it and if I’m honest, I feel a bit strange that I feel like that, but it’s not something you have any control over, is it? It’s just the way it is.’

  ‘You know how we pick up so many children?’ asks Morris. ‘What amazes me is how they always tend to arrive with a relative – usually a father or grandfather – and if it’s a girl we’re picking up, they’re always more concerned about her status and her religion than they are with letting the doctors deal with her injuries. The medics are trying to lift her dress up to treat severe leg injuries or traumatic amputations and she’s trying to cover herself up because her father’s stood there. That always strikes me as a terrible shame; one of the cultural differences that we don’t seem to be able to bridge.’

  Just then the phone goes: two long rings. The guys have got another shout.

  German and I make our excuses and head back to our tent. One more day down; another day closer to home.

  18

  SIX DEGREES OF RISK

  We finished the month providing IRT support to Operation Chakush, a British-led NATO operation which had started about a week earlier in the area between Heyderabad and Mirmandab, just north-east of Gereshk. Chakush, the Pashto word for ‘hammer’, was designed to kick the Taliban out of the area and keep them out, and it involved around 1,500 mostly British Forces drawn from the Light Dragoons and 1st BN Grenadier Guards together with some 500 ANA.

  We were seeing a lot more ANA-led ops against the Taliban on this Det, assisted of course by UK troops from the Operational Mentor and Liaison Team, or ‘OMLT’. Nevertheless, it showed that the Afghans were taking a hand in dealing with problems themselves, which in itself was a remarkable improvement on how things had been previously. Even this early on in our tour, I’d already noticed quite a difference compared to my deployment in the summer of 2006. We weren’t necessarily coming under fire more frequently, but we were flying a greater number of IRT missions. What it illustrated was that the Taliban were evolving and had started to adapt their tactics – there was a massive spike in their employment of IEDs.

  The Afghan National Army had been leading an operation attacking two compounds near Sangin with a trench system between them, and one of the ANA soldiers had taken a round. It was late at night when we got the call to scramble; he was categorised T1.

  As per usual, we were up and away in no time. As captain, I went to the JOC to get the details while Rich, Jim and Bob went straight to the cab to get her up and running. Rich was the handling pilot, while I was doing nav.

  We were flying on NVGs, which always makes for an interesting experience. The technology behind this vital bit of kit is something of a paradox, as it’s both amazingly simple in concept, yet complex in application. At its most basic level, the goggles work by converting whatever light there is into electricity, boosting that electricity, and then turning it back into light. It’s easy to take a small electric current at one end and produce a bigger flow at the other – it’s what amplifiers do, although you probably most commonly associate them with electric guitars or sound systems.

  In practice, NVGs gather all available ambient light – cultural, moonlight, starlight and infrared – through a lens on an image intensifier tube (IIT). Light is made of photons (particles of light) which the IIT converts into electrons (subatomic particles carrying a negative electric charge). Those electrons hit a very thin charged disc called a photocathode, which amplifies them, releasing millions more electrons, and they then hit a phosphor screen, which converts them back into photons. As there are now millions more photons than originally entered the lens, what you see is a much brighter monochromatic green two-dimensional version of the original scene.

  Although the photons that hit the IIT are carrying light of all colours, these colours are lost when the photons are converted to electrons. The phosphors on the screen are deliberately chosen to make a green image, because the human eye can decipher more different shades of green than any other colour. As NVGs display a two-dimensional image, there’s no perception of depth, which can make flying quite a challenge since distance and closing speeds are very difficult to assess. It’s something you get used to though.

  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.