Hellfire (39 page)

‘In the end it’s down to you to decide what you think is safe,’ I said. ‘If you blow it, if you shoot too close and kill someone, the MoD will hang you out to dry. A board of inquiry will acknowledge that you didn’t have sufficient guidelines or safety distances in which to operate the weapon system. But it will find that the cause of death was aircrew error. No matter what the operational risk, you shouldn’t kill someone you are trying to protect.’

I asked the boss his position on the safety distances. His reply was typically politically correct. If in doubt, you don’t take the shot.

‘Then what
is
too close, sir?’ I pressed.

‘I don’t know, Mr Macy,’ he replied.

‘Two hundred metres, sir?’

No answer.

‘One hundred?’

Still no answer.

‘The pressure is on, lads. You need to be 100 per cent sure 100 per cent of the time, and that’s why every cannon, rocket and Hellfire shot will be viewed in slow time by everyone. Any questions?’

‘Yeah,’ Chris said. ‘So what are we going to do about the rockets?’

The rockets were notoriously inaccurate. I had a system of aligning them so they were absolutely smack on but couldn’t get permis
sion to use it. I was using it on my own aircraft when the boss wasn’t around. I wasn’t going to fall foul of the system and didn’t care what he, the IPT, the JHC or the MoD thought. There was no way I was going to cause a blue-on-blue.

‘What do you think?’ I said.

‘Take ’em off and stick more Hellfires on instead. I won’t be using them.’

I could see the concern etched on everyone’s faces. We were weary, bone weary, and fighting a war with no umbrella to protect us from above. If we fucked up, shit would come up and shit would come down and we would be hung out to dry.

We went to watch the video of our weapon releases. Jake flung his arm over my shoulder and we walked in side by side. He gave me a manly hug.

‘Well done, matey,’ he said gently. ‘I wasn’t stepping on your toes when I told you to break off. We were seriously low on gas and I genuinely didn’t think he was ever going to give you clearance to fire that Hellfire.’

‘I know, mate. I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘You don’t have to be sorry to me, Ed. Ever.’

Jake was just too nice for his own good; he didn’t know what I’d apologised for. I ’fessed up.

‘I’m sorry because I was bumping my gums to Simon about you thinking we might shoot before getting clearance and—’

‘Stop it. It’s okay.’ He hugged me tighter. ‘We just need to save as many lives as possible and all get home safely to our families. Now let’s enjoy that Hellfire shot.’

We recounted the sortie from start to finish: the boys on the ground; the fact that the mission was a success; the fact that we couldn’t do it the same way again. We were running out of ways of getting in and out of Now Zad.

We talked about getting fired at, and how we avoided it. I ended up having to write that episode up for the Air Warfare Centre and send it to them explaining how our manoeuvre had worked. It wasn’t rocket science. Pilots had been doing that sort of stuff since the very first aircraft was fired at. This was just the first time it had been used by a helicopter in combat.

We considered ourselves extremely lucky to have got away with it because, whoever the gunner had been, he was bloody good. Jake and Jon said they thought we’d been taken out-they’d seen the rounds go up; they’d seen the aircraft tumble out of the sky.

I admitted I’d pulled out of it far too low. I’d put us in a really poor position against small arms, but it wasn’t a small arms threat that worried us right then, it was an AA threat.

I tried to convince Simon I’d known how low we were. ‘Like that’d stop me crapping myself,’ he said.

We had no footage of our aircraft being fired upon. The TADS moved around and was recording, but we couldn’t see a thing. Jake, ever the professional, had been concentrating on his mission and was already heading back to Bastion when the Hellfire hit.

We had caught the mayhem of the missile impacting. Frame by frame proved we had had a direct hit. It had hit the Turret inch perfect. There was a huge and instant heat source and a cloud of dust and debris, then Now Zad was plunged back into darkness. I forwarded it a few frames and froze it. We could make out what looked like the structure’s skeleton. The Hellfire had blown the thing to bits.

Jon and I made our way next door to tell Widow TOC what they were and weren’t qualified to do. If they were in doubt, I said, they just needed to confirm by calling the aircraft and asking them: ‘Are we safe here?’

The JTACs moved around a lot. There were only a handful of them, and they were in demand all over the theatre. The one I was
speaking to that evening was pretty much the senior JTAC at the time.

Jon as the SupFAC explained what had happened. It was nobody’s fault, he said. You must let your lads know what to do: tell us what they want, where they want it and when. We’ll do the rest.

The JTAC listened and nodded, and then explained that his guys had strict ROE guidelines to follow and some of them worried about just telling an aircraft to crack on.

That was that. No ruckus. Lessons taken onboard. New policy implemented. The learning curve was getting steeper for everyone.

‘Just one thing,’ he said, ‘before you go…’ He pointed at my cheekbone. He thought I’d been fragged.

Action Man figures had their trademark scar down the right cheek. Apache pilots did too. If the monocle were to move one millimetre it would be disastrous for our ground troops. One millimetre at about two centimetres equated to a 150 metre error at three kilometres. We couldn’t risk even 0.1 millimetre, so we dug it into the cheek bone and locked it tight. The weal normally took about half an hour to disappear.

The protective ring was missing on my monocle and the high G had cut an arc under my right eye.

‘Nice work, Ed,’ Jon said. ‘Looks like you’ve had some much-needed cosmetic surgery.’

Four days later, when Charlie Alpha was back in Bastion, we found out they’d had their first full night of peace after we’d fired the Hellfire. Icom chatter had been detected and a Taliban commander had been heard saying that the mosquitoes had a weapon that is silent and deadly. It comes from the sky without warning and kills everything.

The DC hadn’t been shot at again from that vantage point, and for the next three nights there was no sustained fire against the DC.
The Taliban had got smacked up a treat. The tables had truly turned in Now Zad.

The troops hadn’t been able to patrol into that area to see what had happened to the AA gun, but between us we reckoned he’d fired somewhere in the region of eighty rounds per burst. It wouldn’t all have been tracer-it’d probably have been every other round-and he’d loosed off four of them. That was an absolute shed-load of ammunition, and he might have stopped firing simply because he’d run out. I liked to think it was because the rounds that I fired back made him run for cover.

Because we never had proof we’d hit the gun or the gunner, we had to assume that they were both still operational. He wasn’t a known player, so intelligence couldn’t confirm if we got him or not. From that point onwards, everyone dreaded getting caught over Now Zad. If the gunner was still alive, he’d had his warm-up. He would have analysed what went wrong, and he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

The truth was that we’d got away with it by the skin of our teeth. The guy was better than anyone could have imagined. How he got to that level was beyond belief. I certainly didn’t want to fly over him twice.

The Intelligence guy confirmed our suspicions about the night sight. In other words, we could be seen day or night, wherever we were. It was open season on Apaches.

Now the pressure was really on. We knew that they wanted to bag one. They were constantly shooting the Chinooks on the ground but had failed to kill one…so far. They’d been taking potshots at us as well; Pat and Tony had two holes in their fuselage to prove it. Tony went on to collect a lot more too.

Now they’d brought in the one weapon system that we couldn’t defend against. RPGs we could survive, assuming they were lucky enough to hit us. SAMs we prayed the aircraft could deal with. The
geeks at RAF Waddington said it could, but it was yet to be proven. But an anti-aircraft gun could kill us.

They could now do so, day or night. The Taliban wanted a spectacular-to break into a base or to take down an aircraft. They’d come within inches of both today. The charred remains of an Apache would do nicely, as far as they were concerned. We’d got away with it this time, but there was still a weapon out there that potentially had our name on it.

Uppermost in everyone’s mind was the fact that, because the sun was so bright in Afghanistan, you couldn’t see tracer by day at 1,000 feet. We wouldn’t know the blind death was heading in our direction until it hit us. If our encounter with the AA gunner had taken place in daylight, the first clue to his presence might have been when we were hurtling out of the sky, breaking into small pieces as we went.

SIEGE

In March 2006, 16 Air Assault Brigade’s elite, twenty-five-strong Pathfinder Platoon deployed to Helmand province. Their primary role was to pave the way for the 3 Para battlegroup’s forthcoming deployment. The last time the Parachute Regiment had been involved in heavy fighting was during the Falklands conflict in 1982-two years before I joined up-and they weren’t expecting much of a ruckus this time round. Their only task was to provide security while reconstruction got under way…

Travelling in heavily armed WMIK Land Rovers with Pinzgauer 4x4 trucks as support, the Pathfinders put in long-range patrols across the province. They were attacked almost immediately by Taliban, and engaged in virtually continuous combat for the rest of their tour. By the time they left the province, the 3 Para battlegroup had suffered the loss of fourteen soldiers, one interpreter and another forty-six badly injured.

In June, US forces moved out of Musa Qa’leh and the Pathfinders, who had already spent some days in the town, were ordered to relieve them. What was meant to be a six-day occupation until relief by A Company 3 Para turned into a six-week nightmare.

The compound they shared with local police came under daily attack from small arms, machine guns, snipers, RPGs, mortars and
a sangar-busting 82 mm recoilless rifle. A Company were ordered to hold Sangin and CO 3 Para informed the Pathfinders that he did not have the resources to relieve them.

Living conditions were grim, with dust, temperatures of nearly 50°C, and dwindling supplies of food and water. Even the rules of engagement were against them. They were prevented from firing until they had physically seen a weapon being raised against them. To make matters worse, some of the ANA and ANP they were working with were either high on drugs or tipped off the Taliban, the Americans had a habit of carrying out operations they didn’t tell their allies about, and directives kept coming back from the top brass in Northwood that they were using too much ammunition.

The Pathfinders must have thought we were on a bungee cord. I lost count of the number of times I’d been crashed out to Musa Qa’leh. I had every firing point committed to memory and knew the place as intimately as Crossmaglen. The fighting was just as ferocious as at Now Zad and Sangin but luckily for the Pathfinders, they never had that many serious injuries; lucky, because it was impossible to get in and out safely by air.

One Chinook trying to pull out injured lads was shot up four times and the crew had to go back for another bird. It was so dangerous the lads were told to ration themselves because they would not be resupplied by air.

Finally, after over a month and an average weight loss of a stone each, they were reinforced by a bunch of Danes in armoured vehicles. The Danes took five days to get into the town because of the tenacious resistance of the Taliban. Unfortunately, the Norsemen brought a new problem with them. Once they were in they couldn’t get out, and they began to eat the Pathfinders out of house and home.

A huge operation to resupply Sangin and to build up its defences was mounted by 3 Para. Once this was complete all efforts were
directed towards pulling out the now emaciated Pathfinder Platoon and replacing them with two platoons of Royal Irish.

Yesterday that mission failed badly.

We lost three soldiers trying. Musa Qa’leh has a high concentration of Taliban and a long Green Zone in which they could move virtually at will. It was in the Green Zone that the Taliban ambushed the armoured recce cars, killing a JTAC and two members of the Household Cavalry. We flew our arses off in support of the beleaguered troops. Jon and I had to swap aircraft because we had flown the arse off the one we started in.

After firing the Hellfire just over two weeks ago, we were sent to KAF for three days to sort out the broken aircraft. The technicians worked us hard at KAF. The Apaches were getting a bit ragged and the techs needed us to test them morning, noon and night. It wasn’t without risk either.

We had a four-hour lull late one night and decided to go for a pizza instead of having a late dinner at the all-night American Dining Facility (Dfac). We stood outside the arctic-trailer that was Pizza Hut on the boardwalk-a large wooden walkway with trailers scattered around it acting as shops.

The place was mobbed with soldiers of every nation. Weapons were being handed over to each other so photographs could be taken-
this is me with an Armalite
-and it all seemed a bit surreal.

‘It’s like leaving the jungle in Nam and going to Hanoi on R&R,’ Jake said as he waited to be served. As he did so I heard something that reminded me of my days as a paratrooper in remote outposts of Northern Ireland. It came very quickly and the pitch change made me squat before throwing myself under the Pizza Hut trailer.

‘Hey dude, it’s not—’ Jake was cut off mid-sentence as I covered my head in the foetal position.

There was a huge crash followed by two more in rapid succession only a couple of hundred metres away.

I crawled to the edge of the trailer and as I started to get up everyone else was diving for cover.