by Sandra Lee
There was more to come.
The US military had again dispatched the AC-130 gunship. During the Vietnam War era it was dubbed ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’, but now it went by its more threatening nickname of ‘Spooky’.
Night had fallen and the Americans were about to reclaim the dark from al Qaeda.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The distant drone of the Spooky had risen to a roar as the aircraft swooped over the valley floor, drowning out everything for a couple of kilometres and sending a tsunami of sound down the valley behind it like a shockwave after a blast.
Jock Wallace was lying on his hand grenade listening to the traffic over the radio and looking down the valley through his night-vision goggles when he heard the Bossman give the Spooky call sign.
‘You are one five mikes from your loc,’ the Bossman told the pilot.
Jock instantly recognised the arcane language of signallers. It meant the AC-130 gunship was fifteen minutes from the Shahi Kot Valley, or as it would look on the Bossman’s logbook, 1–5 M away.
You bloody beauty, Jock thought, remembering the earlier thunderous run that afternoon.
US soldiers like firepower; the bigger the better. They like vehicles that have been cut down and armed to the teeth with 50-calibre machine guns and high-tech infrared equipment and long-range sophisticated communications equipment. They like a sniper rifle that can shoot 1600 metres and they like the sniper who can shoot it further even better. They like their Special Operations task force teams and gunships to have names that strike fear into people’s hearts: names like Dagger, Cobra, Sword, Mako and Apache. And they really like their air support to be awesome. Spooky was just that.
Jock decided to be the bearer of good news. He was lying, literally, on top of a bloody carpet of wounded and those that were still conscious could do with an injection of confidence, although he wouldn’t mention the hand grenade.
He told the blokes nearest to him that a gunship was coming in and everyone lifted.
‘You could see everyone rise up a centimetre on the ground,’ Jock says now. ‘And word passed around that the Spooky was coming and everyone was like, “Yeah, fucking great, about time.”
‘Everyone knows what an AC-130 can do. They are the top shit — you wouldn’t move on the ground with one of those chasing you and, if you did, you wouldn’t be there for long.’
Jock had some unfinished business. Immediately after spreading the word, he reached down under his chest where he had nestled the grenade ten minutes earlier after taking care of the RPK machine gunner and several al Qaeda and Taliban swarming out of their caves. He felt like a chook sitting on an egg, only this one was infinitely more lethal than the ones he had watched over as a child at home in Tamworth. With the Spooky inbound, Jock had no need for the grenade.
Jock was careful to wrap his right palm entirely over the grenade’s safety bail, keeping the pressure firm and constant. With his left hand, he reached into his ammo pouch where he’d slid the grenade pin. He peered down and gingerly reinserted the pin into the grenade, making it safe. Jock arched his body to one side and pushed the grenade into his webbing, nestling the explosive next to the other two grenades. He wouldn’t leave it, he might need it later. Shit happens.
Satisfied, Jock breathed a sigh of relief. We might just get out of this yet, he thought to himself.
Jock had mentally ticked off more than ten minutes when his ears picked up the distant drone of the Spooky. It was unmistakable. The fast movers operate at enormous speeds and disappear from sight before their bombs reach their target. The Spooky gunship, by contrast, is a slow-moving fire platform that operates at a low altitude. And its four Rolls Royce turboprops have a signature whine.
A converted C-130 Hercules transport plane, the gunship has been turned into a heavily armed fighting machine that is highly effective in providing surgical CAS and more than able in performing reconnaissance missions, escort roles, and combat search and rescue (CSAR).
The gunship’s infrared thermal imaging gives it an unbeatable advantage in poor weather and at night, and because it is a slow mover, it can remain over station longer, effectively giving it another crack at the enemy with its sophisticated side-firing weapons system. The firepower includes a 25mm Gatling gun toward the front of the aircraft and a 40mm rapid-fire Bofors cannon and a 105mm howitzer toward the rear. The Gatling gun fires 1800 rounds per minute, more than enough to inspire confidence among the men under ambush on the ground below, including Jock Wallace.
Another bonus is that the sophisticated weapons system provides dual-attack capabilities, using two guns simultaneously and attacking targets up to a kilometre apart. To Jock, that meant that the Spooky could take care of both the enemy trying to kill him and the al Qaeda forces coming out of Marzak, or other fighters filtering into the valley.
As Jock proudly says: ‘It can carry shit-loads of ammo.’ Perfect for taking out hardcore al Qaeda loitering in the hills.
The Spooky also has a spectacular array of electronic countermeasure flares and chaff that can thwart potential attacks from al Qaeda’s anti-aircraft weapons of choice, the SAM and the RPG. When engaged, it looks like a meteorite shower cascading from the tail of the aircraft, almost like a rain of fireworks tumbling from the Sydney Harbour Bridge on New Year’s Eve.
Jock was doing his magic, searching for the Bossman on a clear channel and handing the radio handset to the forward air controllers, Vick and Achey, who spoke directly to the Spooky’s battle management centre located in the bowels of the aircraft.
The distant drone of the Spooky had risen to a roar as the aircraft swooped over the valley floor, drowning out everything for a couple of kilometres and sending a tsunami of sound down the valley behind it like a shockwave after a blast.
The electronic-warfare officer on board the AC-130 made sure the aircraft was protected from potential enemy fire and the gunship’s fire-control officer engaged the targets and let rip, spraying the jagged terrain with deadly bursts from the Bofors and the howitzer.
Phoop, phoop, phoop, phoop, phoop, phoop. Phoop, phoop, phoop, phoop, phoop, phoop. Phoop, phoop, phoop, phoop, phoop, phoop.
The aircraft flew repeated pylon turns over the Shahi Kot Valley, opening up on the eastern ridge then cleaning up in the north, near Marzak, and coming back for an assault on the western side.
‘The AC-130 saved our lives. He came droning in over the top of the mountains,’ Jock recalls. ‘And the next minute, his guns arced up … They just kept doing circles and shooting the shit out of anything that moved. He really changed the situation of the battle. The enemy then couldn’t move because he had thermal imaging, and if they moved at all, or were out in the open, then the AC-130 gave them a pasting. And he pasted quite a few of them. Prior to that it was just non-stop battle.’
The Spooky stopped the northern ground assault dead in its tracks and laid down effective suppressive fire on both ridges. When the enemy heard the plane overhead, they took cover in their caves.
Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters had slowed their attack, hampered by the night. While dogged and ferocious combatants, they were not as well equipped as the Yanks. Few had access to high-tech night-observation devices (NODs) or night-vision goggles, and couldn’t see the enemy down below them with the naked eye. There was little ambient light as a blanket of cloud had obscured the moon. But the disadvantage of darkness hadn’t brought a complete stop to the battle, and the enemy were not about to shut up shop for the night and grab a bit of shut-eye.
They were in a fight to the death and still had their mortars, which were pre-registered and still exploding in the halfpipe. But in using them they exposed themselves to the Americans’ superior technology, which had come into its own with nightfall.
‘We were all excited when night came,’ Sergeant Major Grippe says. ‘After that last gunfight, things settled down and we brought in more B-52s, more JDAMs, and killed a whole bunch of arseholes. Then our AC-130 flew overhead and started en
gaging enemy targets because they could see with thermal devices and forward-looking infrared. They started really hammering some positions that we really couldn’t see, and [they were] giving us some guidance and some situational awareness of where the enemy locations were.’
Some of the men from Charlie Company had worn their NODs instead of packing them in the rucksacks they abandoned when they first came under fire that morning. Each time al Qaeda fighters edged out of their caves and launched a mortar, the soldiers fixed their location and fired, which brought return fire from the machine-gunners, effectively confirming the enemy positions.
They recorded the grid coordinates for the FAC on the ground, who called in CAS to the gunship. The soldiers also used the laser sights on their rifles to identify an enemy mortar position, effectively guiding the Spooky to its target. The laser was invisible to the naked eye but clearly visible to the high-tech sensors on the gunship. The soldiers on the ground would paint the target with an infrared bead and the AC-130 would point and shoot.
The realist in Jock Wallace had been disinclined to let the presence of the Spooky seduce him into thinking everything was on the up-and-up, but the warplane had put on a sensational show and handed the men in his slice of the Shahi Kot Valley what now felt like a bona fide get-out-of-jail-free card. To Jock it spelt relief and his fear that they might not make it back to Bagram alive was starting to subside again, if only fractionally. And the troops sardined into the bottom of Hell’s Halfpipe had risen to the challenge and once again refused to say die.
Jock allowed himself a quick thought about his mum, Margaret — or Stix, as he affectionately called her — at home on the south coast of New South Wales. He knew she’d be worrying about her youngest son, as she always did when he was away on operations, but she never showed it, out of deference to him. She respected his tenacity and didn’t doubt for an instant his capabilities, but she was a mother, and mothers worried. It was all part of the job description.
Jock had tried to put her mind at ease and wrote frequent letters from the frontline in an upbeat tone, filling them with information about life on base.
22 February 2002
Dear Stix,
We are in good spirits and making best use of the time, preparing our equipment and studying our area of operations. You should see our cars, they look so awesome and brimming to the teeth with weaponry, everywhere we go people look at them in awe.
Jock even sent back the tiny bottles of Tabasco sauce from the MREs for his brother James’s partner, who liked the spicy sauce, and souvenirs from Afghanistan for James so James could get a feel for what his younger brother was up to on the other side of the world, fighting the war on terrorism.
Just before Anaconda began, Jock wrote to his mum.
Dear Stix,
The show is about to start for us, so will be a bit busy for a while. Hope everything is okay with you. Try not to worry — I get into more trouble on an average day in Australia. Will write again soon.
Love,
Martin.
P.S. When we beat the Poms at soccer the whole mess just pissed themselves laughing. Nice. Poms didn’t think it was so funny.
But Jock had never been in this much trouble ever — not on an average day in Australia or an extraordinary day anywhere else.
He had no idea how he’d tell his mum about the past twelve hours. In fact, he reckoned it was probably better not to.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The enemy couldn’t guarantee a direct hit so they opted for the airburst to maximise the chances of knocking the medevac chopper out of the sky. For the pilot it would have been like flying through a deadly hailstorm.
JOCK WALLACE WAS IN the pitch black of Hell’s Halfpipe with his night-observation monocular slung over his right eye, tuning into the radio. Lieutenant Colonel Tink had passed information to the HQ from Major General Hagenbeck, and the news, as welcome as news ever could be in a war zone, was subsequently forwarded via the radio to Jock.
Hagenbeck had finally dispatched two modified Black Hawk choppers to medevac the wounded. Once the most seriously wounded of the 28 injured US soldiers were safely en route back to their base at Bagram, the plan was to send a second lift to extract the isolated company. Both lifts would be escorted by Apache gunships with the Spooky prowling overhead. The medevacs were on the way, but no time had presently been scheduled for the final extraction.
‘Roger, that. Out,’ Jock said, passing the word to soldiers nearby.
Sergeant Robert Healy had been right. Papa Spooky had come in and fixed the problem. The AC-130’s recent pasting of enemy positions had had the desired effect and the battle had slowed to an intermittent gunfight with sporadic small-arms and machine-gun fire coming from the surrounding ridges. Spooky had eradicated the threat from the north and the B-52s had taken out the staging base at Marzak; and the soldiers in the halfpipe breathed a sigh of real relief.
Jock had turned from rifleman and radio operator to ersatz medic.
The sub-zero conditions that came with nightfall began to cause new problems for the injured men, most of whom were jammed solid in Jock’s part of the halfpipe. Apart from their original injuries, many were at risk of hypothermia. Hagenbeck had delayed Operation Anaconda twice previously, once because of a lack of aviation fuel and secondly because of the appalling weather conditions when excoriating sleet had made it impossible to air-assault the troops in. There was no danger of rain now, but the temperature wasn’t doing anyone any favours.
‘You have got to stop these guys going into shock, so you have to keep them warm,’ Jock says. ‘I had my pack right in there amongst the wounded and there’s no point in my cold-weather gear just sitting on top of my pack when these guys actually need it.’
Jock had no hesitation in pulling it out and giving it to the wounded. ‘It sort of goes two ways with me. It was all my free shit from the Americans. I wasn’t happy about that, but in the same boat it was their shit and their soldiers, so I figured, righto, bang. I was just carrying it.’
The casualty collection point was a bloody bog. The melting snow had turned parts of the ground into muddy puddles and the blood from the soldiers’ wounds had turned it into a slimy mess. Torn uniforms and discarded bandages were strewn everywhere.
The most seriously injured soldier, Sergeant Andrew Black, had lost around a litre and a half of blood but so far Doc Byrne and the well-trained medics from the 10th Mountain Division had managed to save his leg. Black was heavily sedated, but other soldiers with lesser wounds weren’t and had been lying in the bowl suffering, some for nearly twelve hours.
Jock kept an eye on the soldiers closest to him, making sure they had their bandages changed when needed, wrapping them in cold-weather gear and passing equipment to the medics when required.
He made idle chit-chat with some of the young soldiers to quietly check that they weren’t about to slip into unconsciousness while the doc and the medics concentrated on keeping the Priority Ones alive.
‘How ya goin’, mate?’ Jock would ask, his Australian accent cutting through the silence.
Among the Americans, it stood out and never failed to get a positive response that usually involved some mention of the crocodile hunter Steve Irwin, whom the soldiers had watched repeatedly on the telly at home and variably described as ‘that crazy mofo’ or ‘awesome dude’.
‘Not bad, bud. When we gonna be medevaced out?’
‘Real soon, mate, real soon. The birds are on their way now.’
‘We gonna make it?’
‘Bloody oath, mate, we haven’t come this far not to make it.’
Jock monitored the radio out of Bagram and beyond, and cracked jokes in a hushed whisper with the soldiers who just wanted to talk to make sure they were still alive.
Jock considered the range of reactions from the wounded soldiers. Some, like the sar-major, were oblivious to danger and had kept right on going. Sergeant Healy ignored the pain from the shrapnel lodged in his body and s
oldiered on. In any other circumstance, the two non-coms wouldn’t be able to walk, but adrenaline, leadership and a courage they would never admit to had pushed them on. They were hard at it.
Healy was organising his soldiers and making a manifest for the Black Hawks with Doc Byrne, working out the logistics of which soldiers needed to go first. Black was priority number one. By rights, Healy should have been on one of the choppers too, but he, like Grippe, was having none of it. Healy planned to stay until every last man from Charlie Company was on the extraction choppers. The 34-year-old soldier and father of three didn’t care how long it took; he was not leaving his men behind.
‘Without that leadership and direction and experience on the ground we would have been history,’ Jock says. ‘And [Grippe, Healy and Peterson] really came to the party, and earned every dollar they ever made. They can definitely rest easy at night knowing they did their bit and more.’
Some soldiers who had sustained frag wounds showed amazing courage and didn’t report their injuries to Doc Byrne in the bowl. Instead, they turned up at the Spanish Hospital at Bagram the next day to make sure their wounds had not been infected before getting back on a chopper and heading out to finish Operation Anaconda.
But not all the soldiers acted honourably and Jock remembers the odd one or two who disgraced themselves in the eyes of their fellow soldiers.
‘I remember nearly shooting one of the whingeing wounded, this little prick who had nothing wrong with him compared to the injuries around him. He was just moaning like a dog,’ Jock says. ‘I just felt like slapping him. Obviously you have to have a bit of compassion but even the medics thought it was a bit inappropriate at times. I remember one of them telling him to shut up and telling the other one to juice him up with some morphine just to shut him up.’
If Jock had got hold of Healy’s medevac manifest he would have put the whinger at the top of the list, just to get him away from everyone else. They were in enough trouble as it was; the soldiers in the bowl didn’t need an oxygen thief to bring them down with his whingeing and whining.
