Sweating the Metal

by Alex Duncan Frenchie

  There’s to be no rest for us, however. Ten minutes after shutting down and arriving back at the IRT tent, I’m sat back in the same chair with my boots off, cooling down with an ice-cold Coke from the fridge and a nice cool Mars Bar. Chocolate is a rare commodity here for obvious reasons. There’s no chance for me to enjoy this one though. Just as I take my second bite, the phone rings again; we’ve got another shout. I throw the Mars Bar on the sofa and swallow the last of my Coke as I lace up my boots and run once again for the JOC. Here we go again.

  This time, we’re being scrambled for a baby girl at FOB Gibraltar. She’s a T1, suffering from meningitis. This job could really get to you if you let it, and somehow it’s even harder when you’re dealing with kids. We land on at Gibraltar without incident and the baby girl is brought on almost as soon as the ramp comes down. She’s in a bad way. I’ve no idea who her parents are, but my heart goes out to them.

  As soon as I’m away from Gibraltar, the MERT surgeon talks to me on the radio. ‘Guys, we have to take this one to Lashkar Gah,’ he says.

  ‘Negative.’ I tell him, we’re taking her to Bastion.

  ‘No,’ says the surgeon. ‘We have been told by our ops that Afghan civilians have to go to the Afghan hospital at Lashkar Gah. If she goes to Bastion she’s going to take a bed that might be needed for a British soldier.’

  I can tell from the timbre of his voice that he’s unhappy about this. He’s speaking the words but there’s no heart behind what he’s saying. However, the standing orders are explicit: if we are picking up an Afghan civilian, they have to be taken to an Afghan hospital.

  ‘Okay,’ I say to the doctor. ‘Straight down the line; I want you to tell me honestly. Don’t colour your response with your own thoughts or feelings – has Lashkar Gah got the facilities to deal with a case of meningitis?’

  ‘I don’t think they do.’

  I didn’t have to think for very long. ‘Right, then I’ve made my decision,’ I say. ‘My responsibility as aircraft captain is to ensure the safety of all the passengers on this aircraft and to make decisions to ensure they remain safe. Taking this girl to Lashkar Gah will not ensure her safety so we are flying straight to Bastion.’

  When I called the tower at Bastion to advise them of our impending arrival, they tried to direct us to Lashkar Gah, but I was having none of it.

  ‘Bastion Tower, Lobster Three One, negative. We are en route to Bastion with one casualty.’

  ‘Lobster Three One, Tower, do you require Nightingale?’ At last. They got the message.

  ‘Tower, Lobster 31, affirmative.’

  ‘Roger, cleared to land, Nightingale.’

  The ambulance is waiting as we land and there’s a quick handover from the MERT. The girl is whisked off to all the expertise and know-how that British medicine and clinical care can offer. At least this way she has a chance.

  As soon as I’m back at the JOC, I tell JP exactly what I’ve done.

  ‘Don’t worry mate, that’s fine, I’ll sort it out,’ he says. That’s one of the things that make him such a great leader. Do the right thing and even if it goes against SOP, he’ll support you to the hilt. I don’t know what he did or said, or to whom, but I know it caused a stir.

  The reasons for my actions were simple: there was no point in risking the aircraft and crew only to take a casualty to a place where she was not going to survive. We may as well have saved ourselves the bother and stayed at home. Taking her to Lash would’ve been tantamount to signing her death warrant and I wasn’t prepared to do that.

  If the situation arose again I’d make the same decision.

  27

  APACHE DOWN

  Something unusual to break the monotony of day-to-day taskings is always welcome in Helmand Province but, perhaps surprisingly for a war zone, unusual happenings are in short supply. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective, but it’s amazing what you get used to. By now, with several Dets under our belts, most of us were well used to the daily litany of resupply runs, underslung loads, troop insertions and extractions, and yes – to a degree – even coming under fire.

  There are some things that we really enjoy doing, and generally they are the things that we know are going to have the biggest impact on the guys at the front. For all that we as aircrew gripe about the conditions at KAF, and Bastion to a degree, we’re just sounding off – we know we have it good by comparison. It’s in the nature of the beast to complain; all military people do it, it’s in our DNA. But the guys at the FOBs and PBs, not only are they living in spartan, primitive conditions – in some cases without running water or proper toilets, living off basic rations – on top of all that, they get malleted by the Taliban when they’re inside, and attacked when they venture out on patrol. So anything we can do to improve morale is good from our perspective and we’ll go out of our way to do it.

  The thing that takes up the most room in the cabs is mail and it’s the one thing we never turn down because we know how important it is. So much of it comes through – what with the letters, welfare shoeboxes and the guys going mental on Amazon and Play.com – we get it by the four-tonne load! The guys really appreciate the welfare boxes. We get quite a few that come to us at Bastion and KAF but we take them all to the troops at the FOBs and hand them out there because it lifts their morale so much. We’ve been known to literally stack the aircraft floor to ceiling. The guys are used to it now and prioritise handwritten mail and then squeeze in whatever else they can.

  We flew a fair bit of mail on May 10th, which started out as a fairly routine day, but finished anything but. We were operating out of KAF on the task line with the call sign Daybreaker Two One, flying with Hannah who was in Daybreaker Two Zero. It had been a long day that saw us flying all over the province with supplies, post and other assorted items. Towards the end of the day, we were en route to FOB Inkerman and FOB Robinson. Hannah was leading the formation and I was her wingman.

  Robinson and Inkerman are near Sangin, and the two bases are very close together. Instead of us each having two loads – one each for Robinson and Inkerman – Hannah takes my load for Inkerman and I take hers for Robinson. That means we won’t be risking two cabs by us both dropping a load at each base. Hannah has completed her drop at Inkerman and I am at Robinson; I’ve got my passengers off and am waiting for the pax that I have to pick up. Bob Ruffles is getting excited – he gets impatient after about two minutes on the ground; although in fairness, I do too.

  ‘Wankers!’ he says. ‘If they can’t get their fucking act together, we should just fuck off and leave them. It’s not fucking difficult, is it? Maybe they’ll be ready next time then!’ Fuck me, his Det Tourette’s is getting worse by the day!

  ‘Got the painters in, Bob?’ asks Coops.

  ‘Ha fucking ha.’

  ‘Must admit, I’m a bit fucked off myself,’ I say. But I have a well-tested plan to calm the tensions in the air.

  I dig out a dog-eared copy of FHM’s 100 High Street Honeys that Alison gave me before I left for this Det. It’s well thumbed and quite knackered, bearing the battle scars of a hundred pairs of mitts pawing over its pages.

  ‘Okay boys, pick a number between one and a hundred,’ I say.

  ‘Five!’ from Bob.

  ‘Fifty-six!’ – Coops.

  ‘Twenty-two!’ from Alex.

  ‘Okay, and I’ll go with ninety-five,’ I say, writing them all down on my kneeboard. Now for the hard part.

  I flick through and see who has picked the fittest girl of the lot. It’s a bit like playing Top Trumps for High Street Honeys, except we make up the scores and rip the piss out of each other – and I’m judge, jury and executioner!

  Bob and Coops lean in to the cockpit through the gangway as I turn to each girl in the magazine.

  ‘Fucking hell! You fancy her?’ says Bob as I turn to No.56. Her name is Kayleigh and she’s the girl who corresponds to the number Coops picked at random. ‘She looks like the Loch Ness Munter!’

  I turn to
Alex’s ‘choice’ – Donna, No.2. ‘Hmm,’ we all say. ‘Not ba—’

  The radio bursts into life and we freeze as we hear the words that all aircrew dread, signalling that an aircraft is in grave and imminent danger and requires immediate assistance.

  ‘Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Ugly Five One Mayday!’

  Alex and I look at one another and almost simultaneously, we both say, ‘What the fuck?!’

  ‘Daybreaker Two One, Ugly Five One, we have an engine on fire. We are going to land at Robinson.’

  ‘Ugly Five One, Daybreaker Two Zero, stay where you are. We’ll intercept your location for a visual inspection,’ cuts in Hannah.

  The Apache is in a slow orbit at about 2,000ft, so Hannah quickly pulls in the power and climbs straight up so that she’s visual with the AH. It might sound daft, but aircraft warning systems aren’t immune from the odd gremlin, so it’s possible that it’s just the Apache’s fire-warning circuit that’s gone nuclear rather than its engine.

  It takes Hannah about two seconds to confirm the crew’s worst fears.

  ‘Ugly, Daybreaker Two Zero, confirm smoke from your engine,’ she says.

  ‘Daybreaker Two One, Ugly Five One, we are landing where you are now, repeat, we are landing now at your location.’

  Bear in mind we’re sat forward in the cockpit some 60ft ahead of the ramp and in my mind, all this is going on above and behind us. I wouldn’t say I was panicking… but I can visualise the Apache literally directly above us, with one engine out and he’s coming down fast. The laws of physics don’t allow for two solid objects to occupy the same space and he’s landing right where we are. We need to get the hell out of there… and fast!

  ‘Bob, get everyone off or everyone on, or fuck them, just get the fucking ramp up. We’re going NOW!’ I scream. Maybe not the most eloquent or articulate I’ve ever been, but I think it conveyed the urgency of our situation clearly enough.

  He sprints for the ramp and, literally within a second, I hear him on the radio with a reply.

  He doesn’t even finish his sentence. I hear the words ‘Clear above and…’ and I’m pulling the collective, demanding every inch of power the two engines can spare. The gearboxes whine in protest and the blades fight a battle that the air can’t win. I push the cyclic hard forward to get the nose down and hear the engine note rise as we lift and propel forward, gaining speed.

  ‘…behind’ comes the rest of Bob’s sentence, as I shout over the radio, ‘Daybreaker Two Zero is clear of the area.’

  Arse. My voice isn’t usually that high. I’m going to pay for that later.

  Despite me pulling full power it feels like we’re travelling at half-speed, but I guess that’s as good an example as I’ll find of perception distortion. It’s quite common when you’re stressed or under threat, and that’s exactly how we feel. I am literally waiting for the AH to attempt to perform an unnatural coupling with our Chinook, an unnatural coupling which is only going to end one way… badly!

  I’m bracing myself for impact but it doesn’t come. I pull a sharp left and look… which is when I see that the Apache is still at about 1,500ft!

  It must have seemed bizarre to everyone but us – the urgency in my voice, the panicked lift off with the ramp barely up, the hardcore nose-down turn. We were lifting up and away like the ground was opening up beneath us, and all the while the AH is almost leisurely descending from altitude. Hannah’s up there with a bird’s-eye view of the whole thing from 2,000ft and she’s doubtless thinking, ‘What the fuck is up with Frenchie? He seems a little stressed!’

  I had to pull something out of the hat, so I got on the radio and said, ‘Ugly Five One, Daybreaker Two One, I’ll position behind you and shepherd you in. If you have any problems, we’ll be right there to lift you.’

  It’s unlikely, but there’s still a possibility of the AH landing badly and slamming into the HLS. An AH is like a flying tank. They’re armoured, literally bullet-proof, and carry enough armament and firepower to prosecute a small war on their own; but all that comes at a cost – weight. With one engine out, they wouldn’t have enough power to hover and there would be no opportunity to go around or run on if they get the landing wrong. It has to be right first time or not at all. And if the worst happens, I want us in a position where we could be on the ground within seconds to pull them from the wreckage and extract them if need be. I want them to know we’ve got their backs.

  ‘Daybreaker Two One, Ugly Five One thank you.’

  And with that, the pilot brings the aircraft down in a textbook one-engine landing; it’s perfection. She settles on to the ground, her pilot shuts the remaining engine down and that’s it – job done!

  It’s such a difficult thing to do, because with only one engine, when you start pulling power, there’s only so much it can give to the NR. The impulse then is to increase the pitch to get more lift, but the engine is already maxed out and has no more to give so the NR will actually slow down. When the rotor slows down, lift decreases, and that means you accelerate towards the ground faster. When you’re in that position, normally, the collective will be up somewhere near your armpit and with the NR dropping, you have to lower the lever, which is completely counter-intuitive – it’s utterly alien to every pilot. But the AH pilot does it beautifully. The Apache just wafts down to the ground and it’s almost graceful.

  I think the pilot got a Green Endorsement for that, and quite right too, because he only had a small area to get down onto and he popped it bang in the middle. Also, the aircraft was fine – the engineers performed an engine change in situ and it was eventually flown out.

  All’s well that ends well, then.

  28

  MILLION DOLLAR BILL

  A couple of days later, we flew a routine tasking out of KAF that saw me undertake a technique I’d never tried before, with the Chinook operating right on the very edge of its capabilities.

  The airflow over a Chinook is at its most efficient when it’s off the 10 o’clock. This doesn’t mean that we fly sideways to achieve best-efficiency of the rotors, and anyway, the difference is so slight as to only really matter in extreme circumstances. I considered the circumstances extreme enough on this sortie, though, that I needed every bit of help I could get.

  Alex and I were flying as No.2 to Hannah on a routine tasking day out of KAF. The bulk of the day was pretty uneventful – a series of routine admin and mail runs to various locations in the Upper Gereshk Valley. Our final sortie late in the evening saw us at Bastion where we lifted two cabs full of troops en route to Kajaki, where they were destined to relieve two units there that had experienced quite an intense period on the front line.

  We flew the route from Bastion at high altitude as the ridges surrounding Kajaki Dam go up to 6,000ft plus. Hannah was ahead as lead and our Apache escort called the Widow call sign at Kajaki to obtain clearance. Hannah was cleared in straight away, while Alex and I went to hold further up the lake.

  If I’m honest, we were more or less doing a bit of war tourism, so I wasn’t complaining. There are worse places to fly a holding pattern than over the forbiddingly beautiful lake and surrounding topography at Kajaki – it’s not like you could ever grow bored of the view. We ended up holding for some twenty minutes, a lot longer than expected, before Hannah advised us that she was lifting. I repositioned the aircraft at low level over the lake pointing to the south-west, in order to see her as she came out flying over the dam.

  There are two ways in and out of Kajaki. You fly over the dam to get in, but as the landing site is so low in the valley, you need to watch your speed as you cross it and ensure it remains above 60kts or you end up flirting with Vortex Ring, a phenomenon in which the rotors lose lift at speeds below 30kts and a rate of descent above 500ft per minute.

  There is however a sluice gate further to the east-north-east of the dam which is literally a cut in the mountain. You fly through it at 50ft with the sides of the mountain close on each side, pressing in on you and making you feel sma
ll even though you’re in 99ft of aircraft. You end up following the Helmand River as it winds down the valley, which increases the distance to the landing site and allows you to carry more speed on the approach. This is what I opted to do for my run in.

  Everything has limits and that includes the Chinook’s capabilities. Regardless of what it can do in ideal conditions – cold and as close to sea level as possible – the higher and hotter you go, the greater the impact on what you can lift. So Afghanistan in summer – very hot and very high – is not exactly ideal. For this sortie, we were tasked and limited to picking up twenty-one soldiers.

  As soon as I landed on, Bob came over the intercom. ‘Er, two minutes, Frenchie mate, we’ve got somebody approaching and he wants a chat. It looks like we’ve got at least thirty blokes here. I’m going off-intercom.’

  Five minutes later, he’s back.

  ‘Okay Frenchie, this is the deal. We have twenty-one guys as flagged on the task sheet to go back to Bastion. We also have twelve guys with their kit for R&R. They didn’t get on a Chinook yesterday, as it broke down, so they missed their TriStar home. The dickhead in the tasking cell obviously didn’t think of putting them on another cab so they’re trying to hitch a ride.’

  Shit. I don’t want to leave them here, but how the fuck am I going to get airborne with that many bodies?

  ‘Okay, let me think about it for a minute,’ I say.

  The clock for R&R starts as soon as front line troops leave their units, so if they stay fourteen days at Kajaki, or their aircraft goes tech and they spend nine days waiting for a replacement, it makes no difference. Regardless of if or when they get home, as far as their parent unit is concerned they’ve had their fourteen days R&R. It sucks, but that’s how it is.

  I want to take them but I have a problem: the aircraft’s available power. What we have in hand is enough for us to lift one-and-a-half tonnes above the limit given to me by the taskers and, if I’m honest, I’m not sure my trusty Chinook can even achieve that.