Sweating the Metal

by Alex Duncan Frenchie

  Intelligence indicated the compound was the base for a Taliban High Value Target (HVT). It was thought it was being used as a weapon and ammunition dump, bomb-making facility and safe house for insurgent commanders all rolled into one. The intel also suggested that the majority of the Taliban HVT’s fighters had melted away following the arrival of British troops in the Now Zad DC. The intel was wrong.

  We knew something was afoot on June 3rd, the day before the operation was planned, because there was a lot of coming and going and all the Flight’s captains kept disappearing. Nichol Benzie finally briefed us later that evening; we received our orders for the operation, which would turn out to be one of the defining battles of the Paras’ tour, with a six-hour firefight that involved almost everyone.

  The plan involved a hundred or so men, encompassing 3 Para’s ‘A’ Company and Patrols Platoon and a platoon of the Royal Ghurkha Rifles, together with some Afghan National Police. The Ghurkhas were based with the ANP in Now Zad District Centre so they, together with Patrols Platoon, were tasked with moving forward and establishing an outer perimeter. Our role was to insert ‘A’ Company into the compound, which they would then assault and capture. Air support would be provided by the Army Air Corps Apaches together with A-10 Warthogs and B-1 bombers from the US.

  We were all quite keyed up because this represented a break from the usual diet of taskings and IRT – something proactive. It was also to be the Apaches first offensive op in theatre. The briefing, led by Lt Col Tootal at the JOC, was packed with everyone from ‘A’ Company there, right up to the level of Section Commander. On the RAF side, there were the crews for the four Chinooks that would be inserting ‘A’ Company – Nichol Benzie and Mike Woods; Andy Lamb and Chris Hasler; Dave Stewart and Mark Heal; and Craig Wilson and me. The IRT crew was also there – they’d be on standby to scramble for any medevacs (medical evacuations). There were also four Apache crews – at any one time there would be two in the air, with two on standby at Bastion to provide continuity of cover when they needed to return to rearm and refuel.

  Stuart Tootal introduced the orders, which basically boiled down to us inserting ‘A’ Company, who would flush out any HVTs at the compound. Any that were missed would be picked up by the troops manning the outer perimeter. The lift was planned for 12:00hrs and our mission meant each of us carrying a third of ‘A’ Company – roughly thirty men each. Nichol and Woodsy’s role was to provide an airborne Command and Control platform for Lt Col Tootal.

  We left Bastion on time the following day in a gaggle formation of four Chinooks, with the two Apaches (call signs Ugly Five Zero and Five One). As soon as we were over open desert, the crewmen in each cab test fired their Miniguns and M60s and made sure they were cocked and ready.

  We flew a straight route north-north-west towards Now Zad and then held at a point about 10km south of the target, waiting for the Ghurkhas and Patrols Platoon to get into position. Nichol and Woodsy took up a position on overwatch at altitude while we, together with the two remaining cabs, dropped to low level and used a steep hill to mask us from any potential dickers while we held, flying in a figure of eight.

  As it turned out, both the Ghurkhas and Patrols Platoon had encountered heavy resistance as they drove towards their respective positions and became involved in rolling contacts. We had our own issues, though nothing like as dangerous as people shooting at us from close range, like the guys on the ground were experiencing. Because the three of us were in a tight figure-of-eight holding pattern, our respective DAS kept mistaking the other cabs for missiles, so whenever we passed one another we were all pumping out flares. That was easily dealt with, but it was an obstacle we could have done without.

  You can imagine after about twenty minutes of holding the tension is starting to build and the adrenaline is kicking in. We are on radio silence so there is no banter between the cabs and not much between the crews; we are all focused on what we have to do. Finally, we get the call to go. We are number two in the formation so we slot in behind Andy’s cab on a north-easterly heading with 50ft on the light and 40 on the noise at about 120 knots. You have to strike a balance on a job like this – we would prefer to fly quicker but that would mean a rougher transit and it’s no good delivering the troops so shaken up that they’re not ready for combat.

  When we are three minutes from the drop point, the crewmen in the back of the cabs give the troops a three-minute warning so they can organise themselves and their kit – check weapons and ammo and basically get themselves ready to run straight out the back as soon as the ramp drops. Craig gives the crewmen their Fire Control Orders.

  ‘Okay guys, you are clear to engage any target you see is dangerous. I would rather you wait for my orders or advise me of potential threats first. However, if the delay caused by you doing so means that a potential threat is going to endanger the aircraft, you have my authority to open fire without reference as per the Rules of Engagement.’

  The RoE are something that most people back home never think about, but they define every element of how we operate in theatre. Adherence means you stay legal. Failure to observe them leaves you personally liable to murder charges and court martial. The firing of weapons in theatre for any given scenario has to be cleared by lawyers in the Army Adjutant General’s Corps, and we operate under clear legal constraints; the RoE give us clearly defined parameters as to when we can engage those identified as enemy and pre-planned ops have to be cleared in advance. The lawyers want to know everything before they’ll grant us authority to operate under less restrictive rules – what’s the worst-case scenario in terms of collateral damage, risk to civilians etc. Ultimately, we can return fire at anybody firing at us, but with certain provisos.

  Mostly, it’s all about proportionality, and that means using the most appropriate weapon for the job. It’s not so much of an issue for an infantryman armed with an SA80, a 9mm sidearm and some grenades, or even for us, given that the cabs only have machine-guns on them. But it’s a real issue for the Forward Air Controllers who direct and coordinate close air support. They can bring a disproportionate weight of firepower to bear on any target, so it’s imperative that they are meticulous about what they use and how it’s directed. It’s all about using the minimum force to achieve the objective, which basically means that you can’t use a 2,000lb bomb or Hellfire missile on a lone Taliban gunman if you’ve got a less destructive weapon available.

  The target compound that we’re headed for is L-shaped. About 30m due north is a field roughly 150m wide, 100 deep – Chris and Andy plus Craig and me will be landing there, while Dave and Mark will be landing at a smaller field about 200m to the south-west. I wanted to line our cab up on a south-north heading so that when the ramp came down, the troops could run straight off with their weapons pointing toward the target compound rather than landing front or side on, where they’d have wasted valuable seconds looking for it.

  I brief Craig on the run in, having acquainted myself with the route via intel pictures and maps: ‘Okay, you want to turn left now, head west and maintain low level. In ten seconds you’re going to see a track – there you go – and you’re looking for three buildings close together.’

  ‘Roger that. Got them.’

  ‘Okay, I’ve got the compound. At the next compound turn right and head north.’

  We’re running in to the target with a minute to go now. I can see the village building up below as more and more compounds appear closer and closer together, often linked one to the next. There are no women or children around and I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It’s nothing I can put my finger on, more a general sense that we’re in the ‘Badlands’ and people are going to start shooting at us.

  We’re on the approach now. Craig says, ‘Okay, I’m going to delay to see what dust we get from Andy as he lands on, then we’ll slot in.’

  Andy goes in and there’s no dust whatsoever so we go straight in next to him. Craig flies in carrying a lot of speed but it’s tacticall
y sound – it’s more aggressive and dynamic but a moving target is harder to hit. He flares the aircraft, standing it on its tail and using the belly of the cab to scrub off speed.

  ‘Okay mate, 50ft and 22kts, you’re in the gate. Commencing the approach; 40ft and 16kts.’

  The rear crew come in with height calls: ‘20ft; 10; 8; 6; 5; 4; 2.’

  We’re bracing ourselves for a dust cloud that doesn’t come. A slight bump as the wheels settle on and the suspension compresses slightly and a metre or so of run on. Craig applies the brakes, the rear ramp goes down and, in less than five seconds, all thirty of the fully-armed and kitted up Paras who were sitting in the cab have charged off. Their blood is up; they sense the enemy and they want to get at them. They’re off the cab like rats up a drainpipe.

  It’s the first time I’ve landed in an enemy compound and I can feel my heart pounding in my chest. It isn’t always about what happens; more often it’s about the expectation, the foreknowledge there are people out there with weapons locked and loaded and pointed at you. The Taliban are synonymous with Rocket Propelled Grenades or RPGs – a weapon we very much fear because they could really ruin our day.

  RPGs are exceptionally light, portable and easy to operate. The launcher is little more than a 3ft steel pipe with a grip and trigger about halfway along and a cone at the rear to dissipate the blast that a round produces on launch. They fire unguided rockets carrying a high-explosive warhead that detonates on impact. They were designed as anti-tank weapons, but being inert and non-sentient they don’t get hung up on what they’re used against. One of those hitting a Chinook is either going to break the cab in two or blow us out of the sky. Neither option is particularly appealing. The downside for the operator is that they’re inaccurate over distance, so he needs to be quite close to the target to have any chance of a hit. That means he’s going to be exposed and visible.

  My eyes are darting all over the front and sides of the aircraft looking for threats – enemy gunmen or RPGs lining up or coming out of the wood line immediately ahead of us.

  ‘Come on,’ I say out loud. We’re a sitting duck here, except we’re loaded with ammunition for the guns and 1,600kg of fuel, so we’re like a duck sitting on a bomb.

  As soon as the Paras’ feet touch the ground, the radio sparks into life with calls of ‘Contact, Contact!’ as they’re engaged. So much for the intelligence that said resistance should be light to non-existent. There are enemy in various positions and the Paras are taking heavy fire from inside the compound. We’re immediately behind them so that means we’re taking fire too.

  ‘Scan your arcs, guys. If you see a threat, take it out,’ Craig warns the crewmen. It’s daylight, so tracer doesn’t show and you can’t hear the telltale ‘crack’ of rounds coming in over the noise of the blades. The only way you know you’re taking fire is either from the ‘tink’ sound that rounds make when they penetrate the skin of the aircraft, or the spiderweb of cracked glass that occurs when they hit the windscreen or chin bubble. Basically, you’re either going to be dead or wise after the event. I think the only thing that saves us that day is the fact that we are shielded from view of the enemy by the height of the compound wall.

  ‘Ramp up, clear above and behind,’ from the back. And not a second too soon.

  ‘Pulling power, lifting,’ says Craig and we’re up.

  Due to concerns over dust from Andy’s aircraft, the brief is for us to depart to our 12 o’clock for a sharp left-hand turn followed by a climb to fly south at height, but Craig decides that, as there is no dust, he’s going to depart with a right-hand turn and fly over a 1,500ft high range of hills to the East of Now Zad and hold in this area. It’s a spur-of-the-moment decision, made on impulse, that quite possibly saves our lives. As we later learn, an enemy team were dug in with an RPG at around the point where, had we departed and turned left as briefed, we’d have been flying at 50ft at around 20kts. Had we followed our planned route, we’d have been low and slow, directly over them at the most vulnerable stage of our departure, giving the RPG firer an unobstructed shot at the cab’s underside. It would have been like shooting fish in a barrel. Unfortunately for the Taliban, the team was overrun and killed by Paras.

  Meanwhile, Lt Col Tootal had discovered that the Chinook is a far from ideal Command and Control platform, due to its poor comms fit (no secure radio at that time) and poor visibility. Nichol therefore landed near to where ‘A’ company had been inserted and the 3 Para CO joined Major Will Pike, ‘A’ Company’s officer commanding on the ground, where he felt better able to coordinate events. Nichol was called in to extract a Taliban prisoner so he returned to Bastion.

  We fly a holding pattern for a while in case we are required to perform a medevac, but our fuel level gets dangerously close to bingo so we return to Bastion and shut down. The plan is for us to stand down and be ready to lift again three hours later to extract the Paras but as the aphorism goes, no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. At this point, all the ground units – Patrols Platoon, ‘A’ Company, the Ghurkhas and ANP – are engaged in protracted firefights with large numbers of determined enemy forces.

  There is no proper pan at Bastion at this stage, so the cabs just sit on what is essentially a large gravel pit. We don’t know when we’ll be required so we stay close, removing our helmets and body armour and wearing our flying suits tied around our waists. We gather by our cabs and chat among ourselves, releasing the pent-up tension that’s left over when the adrenaline subsides. We debrief, talking about how well the mission went, what lessons we’ve learned, what we can do better next time.

  Mark Heal and Dave Stewart missed their target and ended up landing in the wrong compound about 300 metres away from where they were supposed to be. Nobody died; their element of ‘A’ Company worked out where they were and made their way over the ground to their starting position, but it’s an easy mistake to make out there – it’s an exceptionally difficult place to navigate in and you’re relying on the GPS, which in Mark and Dave’s case was running on the wrong setting. Aviation has to be a no-blame culture. That way, everyone is honest about their mistakes and you learn from them. It can, and does, happen to everyone.

  We see the first two Apaches return for rearming and refuelling so we know that the fighting is pretty hardcore. This is the first time the Apaches have been used in anger out here but word is that they have impressed both the pilots and, perhaps more importantly, the guys on the ground. It was reported that there were many in the MoD, Government and the military who wondered where the Apaches could possibly fit in the great scheme of things. They had the potential to be another military white elephant, but very quickly they are proving themselves adaptable, fearsome and indispensable.

  Eventually, we get the call and lift off to return to Now Zad. About ten miles out, I see a massive cloud of black smoke hovering in the haze. I’m wondering what has caused it and thinking there must have been the mightiest firefight. Is it a vehicle? Is it on our side, or the enemy’s? It turns out that it’s a very dry field that has just taken the wrath of an Apache’s 30mm HE cannon. Several Taliban lay dead in it and the tinder-dry stubble has caught fire.

  By this point, Craig and I have progressed to the west side of the town at height and are looking down on events below, when I become aware of a voice over the radio coordinating close air support down on the ground. Its call sign is Widow Seven Zero, a Joint Terminal Air Controller or JTAC, known colloquially as a Forward Air Controller. The call sign belongs to Flt Lt Matt Carter, an officer in the RAF Regiment attached to 3 Para who will go on to be awarded the Military Cross in part for his actions on this mission.

  He was with Patrols Platoon. They had come under heavy contact from a number of enemy combatants based in and around a farmhouse. The platoon had got to within a few metres of the house but then became pinned down in two groups behind two walls, separated by a gap of about fifty metres. He was trying to call in some air support to deal with the guys in the farmhou
se but was unable to at that stage because he couldn’t be certain of the Paras’ exact locations. Also, the walls they were taking cover behind were only thirty metres away from the house so they were Danger Close – missiles, rockets and cannon don’t discriminate between friendly and enemy forces. The only way he could be sure was to run through the gap to see for himself.

  The Taliban started firing at him as soon as he started running but he made it across in one piece and slumped down behind the wall. Although he could see the house clearly from where he was, the Apaches were a lot higher up and further away – around two kilometres from his position. It was imperative that they identify the Taliban’s position accurately and, given the proximity of friendly forces to the target, the choice of ordnance was vital too; there’s a real chance of fratricide with rockets at that distance, due to their spread on impact, and it’s even close for the 30mm cannon – although the 30mm is accurate to within three metres, Carter’s position relative to the target was still outside of what’s considered safe distance back in the UK. So he had to get it right.

  Back in the cab we can tell he’s having a lot of difficulty getting his message across to the Apaches. We can hear the intensity of fire that he’s taking down there, because every time he keys the mike we can actually hear the RPGs flying over his head and the frantic sound of the guys around him returning fire, the sound of heavy machine-guns engaging and the noise of rounds zipping past and hitting the ground next to him.

  Lt Col Tootal’s voice comes over the radio. ‘This is Sunray. Can any Chinook to the west of Now Zad assist Widow Seven Zero and describe where the Engagement Zone is?’