Sweating the Metal

by Alex Duncan Frenchie

  JP had outlined the operation to me and said he wanted me on it. He asked me if I felt happy to fly the mission and I told him I did. The operation was Oqab Sturga (Eagle’s Eye), a helicopter raid involving four Chinooks with Apaches providing support, planned for the night of May 23rd. The objective was to move hundreds of troops to disrupt the Taliban south of Musa Qala.

  The mission profile was for two pairs, separated by five minutes, to fly from Bastion to FOB Gibraltar to collect ‘C’ Company, 2 Para. Five minutes later, both two-ships would fly to FOB Inkerman to pick up ‘B’ Company, and the plan then was for us to insert the troops at a grid between Sangin and Musa Qala for an assault to clear the Taliban from two nearby villages.

  The first two-ship would be led by JP, flying alongside Ian ‘Chomper’ Fortune, with Hannah Brown and Debbers as his wingman. I was leading the second formation, flying with Alex as my co-pilot and German and Stu Hague as my wingman. It was all worked out; JP and Hannah would be four minutes on the ground; we would land one minute later.

  We couldn’t have been more sorted on the planning. JP is a brilliant boss and tactician, as I’ve said, and on the afternoon before the op we’d done our RoC drills outside the tent and then went into crew rest, so the lead-up was perfection. We slept until about 22:00 and got up ready for departure at 01:00. We had the pre-brief, double-checked the weather, and then went into the JOC for the intelligence brief. Then, as had become our custom, all the captains walked out together down to the line. I happened to walk with Hannah that night. We were all wearing red head torches to preserve our night vision and they were giving off an eerie glow.

  The enormity of what had happened to us near Musa Qala a week earlier was really playing on my mind, so I wasn’t exactly brimming with confidence as we walked out. I’d always had the same attitude as most aircrew: ‘It’ll never happen to me.’ It’s how you cope – aviation is a relatively dangerous business; military aviation more so. Flying on the front line? Dodgy as hell. Sadly, I couldn’t think like that any more because events had proven that it could, and did, happen to me. We were so close to going home at the end of tour by then too, so I was more than a little worried; in fact, if I’m being honest, I was shit-scared.

  ‘Mate, I’ve not got a lot left in the tank… I’m scraping the bottom of my well of courage,’ I said to Hannah.

  ‘Come on mate, dig deep. One more mission; that’s it.’

  ‘Hannah, I’ve got nothing left.’

  ‘Come on, Frenchie; it’ll be okay.’

  And with that, we walked in silence to the line.

  When we reached the pan, we peeled off one by one to our respective cabs, but things started to go wrong from the off. JP lifted five minutes early and even though he had ten minutes to do the pick-up, his troops were slow in loading so we had to hold off. Then we had problems getting ours on too, so we were eight minutes behind the timeline lifting off.

  Suddenly, during the transit to the first target area, I heard the radio crackling with shouts of contacts. Hannah saw tracer and it was coming up thick and fast towards both her and JP’s cabs.

  I heard her call ‘Tracer, tracer, tracer!’ swiftly followed by ‘Contact!’ and then it all became a bit Star Wars. There seemed to be fire coming from everywhere. She and JP were both flying really aggressively to try to get in and somehow they managed to land and get their troops off. Then RPGs started flying across the sky as the Taliban tried to take out their cabs. Bob Ruffles, who was now her No.2 crewman, and Dan Temple both opened up with the Miniguns, returning fire on two separate locations. Then a heavy machine-gun opened up and it was absolute carnage. But somehow they flew evasive manoeuvres and escaped the kill zone.

  Alex and I, and Stu and German are both eight minutes back, but we can hear Hannah calling ‘Contact!’ and see the weight of fire that is ranged up at them. It looks like the night sky over Berlin during World War II, as the Lancasters dropped their bombs. We have a choice. There’s a secondary HLS picked for precisely this reason – so that we’d have an alternative if the primary became too hot.

  ‘Why not use the secondary HLS?’ asks Alex, echoing my thoughts. His comment makes me realise that I’m not the only one fighting my nerves.

  The problem is that the Paras are already engaged in heavy combat against the enemy and if I use the alternate, it will take the troops I have onboard at least fifteen minutes to reach the engagement zone and support their mates.

  I’m dying inside, gripped by a fear I can’t show because this is what leadership is. This is where I earn my money. This is what comes with rank. I want to put the aircraft somewhere else; anywhere else, but I have to fly into the fight. Every cell in my body is trying to run in the opposite direction – to safety and away from danger. Running into danger is counter-intuitive, but it’s what we have to do. The Paras in my cab are needed to support those that JP and Hannah had on board, for the fight on the ground.

  Whatever lies inside me stays inside me, and I win the struggle between my face and my feelings because I’m the captain of this aircraft, and I have to lead my crew and another aircraft into the fight.

  ‘C’mon guys,’ I say. ‘It probably looks worse than it is.’

  We have eight minutes to think on what awaits us at the LS and it’s the longest eight minutes of my life, a million times worse than when I nursed 575 down at Edinburgh. That was sudden, reactive. It wasn’t brave; it wasn’t courageous – I just flew my aircraft and my training kicked in. This? This is a world apart from that. It’s fear on another level.

  ‘Right Frenchie, you should be visual with the landing site. 12 o’clock, where all that tracer fire is. That’s it. Nav complete,’ says Alex, smiling.

  I laugh and the feeling lifts me just enough. There’s nothing for me to hold on to going in, but I’m smiling and – outside at least – I’m strong. ‘Stay cool, stay composed, appear ready to confront what’s ahead and the crew will follow,’ I keep telling myself.

  ‘Right guys, this is what they pay us for. Andy, I want you on the starboard Minigun for the approach and Griz, make ready on the M60,’ I tell the guys in the back.

  We’re about two minutes out now. More tracer starts coming up but I’m focused on flying the aircraft and nothing else matters. As Alex gives me the pre-landing checks and I find the gate, suddenly it all stops. What the fuck? Griz and Andy take over with the height calls, and I settle the rear wheels on before lowering the collective to get the nose down. Six on, and we’re down. The ramp goes down, the troops rush off and Andy’s on the intercom saying, ‘Clear above and behind.’ I pull power and we’re away. Just a trip to Inkerman now, lift the troops, insert them at the second village and we can all get the fuck out of Dodge.

  I transition and start to fly over a wadi at around 100ft when my peripheral vision catches a massive flash to the left, and the fabric of time stretches and becomes elastic. It’s ‘bullet time’ and everything slows.

  ‘R… P… G!’ I shout, but the words seem to take forever. It’s flying straight for us and I watch its fiery tail describe a lazy line behind it. I’m transfixed as I watch it s… l… o… w… l… y and inexorably head for the cockpit.

  I look down and see it through the glass panels below my pedals as it flies under my feet. It’s so close, I feel I could put my hand out and grab it. The tail crackles and sparkles as it passes underneath me, jetting purple and yellow fire that is close enough for the reflection to dance across the instruments in the control panel. My NVGs show it in green, but it’s close enough that I can see it through the gap where the tubes meet my eyes.

  Instinctively, I lift my feet off the controls as though by leaving them there they’ll burn in the rocket’s tail.

  Then German calls ‘Contact!’ as he sees an explosion to the right of our aircraft and another RPG flies harmlessly behind us, where it hits the ground beneath and explodes.

  ‘The Taliban have got two firing points,’ says Alex and I’m thinking, ‘For fuck’s sake, not
again. Surely not again?’

  Almost unbelievably, we’re away and time reverts to normal speed again. The danger is behind us – for now.

  Suddenly, the radio comes to life and I hear Stu Hague call, ‘Contact, 3 o’clock!’

  I look right, and I see tracer arcing towards the sky. I’ve never seen anything like this. There’s so much tracer and rocket fire coming up you could have walked across it to Sangin. It’s like an unholy union between the opening scenes to Saving Private Ryan and the lobby shootout in The Matrix. Hannah and JP are ahead of us, and again we will have to follow them in.

  I guess Hannah and JP’s location as I can see more tracer flying upwards south of our position. During the planning phase I wasn’t happy with JP’s planned routing away from the target. It’s the only time I’ve ever disagreed with his plan. I’d explained my thinking and my intention of routing a different way, one that I considered presented less danger, and now I’m pleased I’d done so because I can see the guns on their aircraft putting rounds down all the way down the valley from Inkerman to Sangin.

  I swiftly depart FOB Inkerman to fly the approach to the second village, which goes without a hitch. We’re clear in, the troops are off in double-quick time and I get the ‘Clear above and behind’ from Andy. I pull pitch, while going backwards initially, and once I get a bit of speed I simultaneously apply bank and a lot of pedal to whip the aircraft round, almost around my own shoulder. Must be careful with the rate of yaw though – too much and the aircraft will lose some of its inertia, making it uncomfortable for the guys in the back. For once it’s nicely done!

  We’re now away from the target. So far, so good; no contact. Suddenly, I hear Stu over the radio calling ‘Contact!’ Oh crap! That’s what I get for being smug!

  An RPG just misses him as he’s transitioning. He’s doing 40kts; he’s at about 50ft so he’s both low and slow. He’s in 99ft of Chinook and vulnerable as hell… and it flies right by! How the fuck have they missed?

  I don’t know how we escape, but we do. It shouldn’t be possible. All that fire, a sky full of lead and explosives, and not one round shares the same space and time as us at any stage. Nothing hits the cab.

  We’re not going back to Bastion though; not yet. We have another mission to fly as a four-ship, extracting some other British soldiers from a grid in the desert. As dust landings go, it’s horrible – one of the worst I’ve experienced before or since. A complete dustbowl full of aerials, tents, troops, without any visual references at all, so having faced a barrage of fire, we have to keep our nerve and execute perfect landings.

  There’s nowhere to overshoot; JP’s to the left of me, Hannah in front and Rich to the right, so it’s all about making sure I don’t fly into them or straight down into the ground. It’s right first time or death and destruction; no pressure then! You might think, ‘Yeah, so what? You’re helicopter pilots; it’s what you do,’ but there’s difficult and then there’s nigh-on impossible, and you don’t get to cry off the really hard ones. This is real life, not a PS3 game – we’re playing without extra lives and we only get one chance.

  Still, I nailed it. As difficult as my landing may have been though, it couldn’t have been harder than Stu’s, as he had to contend with my dust too. Yet he executed a perfect ‘controlled crash’ and landed exactly in the right position next to me. It’s called a controlled crash when you lose all your references at 20ft and rely on your technique and trimming of the aircraft. And that’s exactly what he did. There aren’t many others who would have got that aircraft in. We quickly got the troops on and lifted off.

  Then JP calls me on the radio. A point about JP – he never does that. Ever.

  ‘Black Cat Two Two, Black Cat Two Three, are you ok?’

  I look at Alex and he says, ‘What the fuck?’

  ‘He must be shit-scared for us. It’s not like him at all.’

  ‘Yeah, Black Cat Two Three, shaken not stirred!’ I reply, and with that we begin the forty-minute transit back to Bastion.

  Now’s the time the banter starts. It’s one of our ways of reconnecting with reality. It’s usually intensely personal stuff, which is cool because we all know each other, but predictably I’m an easy target because of my French heritage. The guys have had a field day since we got shot down.

  ‘I’m surprised they managed to hit the world’s only fighting Frenchman.’

  ‘What’s the difference between a Frenchman and a piece of toast? You can make soldiers out of a piece of toast…’

  The feeling when we land on at Bastion and shut the aircraft down is electric. I feel so alive! We all do a walk-around to inspect the cabs on landing, see if we’d picked up any holes. It’s amazing – you come through a shitstorm like that with so much lead flying around, and you can’t conceive that you haven’t taken some rounds – it’s like walking through a rainstorm without getting wet. But that’s exactly what all of us did. What are the chances?

  We walk back to the line to sign the aircraft over to the engineers the same way we walked out, four captains. All four of us walking in and looking at each other and we’re all but speechless. I mean, what can you say, really? Words somehow don’t seem enough; you don’t know how to articulate it. I think all of us are surfing a wave of elation; we’re hyped up with all sorts of emotions still surging through our bodies and none of us can stop smiling. It’s the strangest feeling. We embrace in a huge group hug in the hangar and, finally, I’m spent – utterly done in. I think the adrenaline has worn off. It’s a funny hormone that one – when it runs out, it’s like it’s replaced with an all-consuming fatigue. I’m empty.

  The sun’s coming up as we go into the JOC to report and deliver an unprecedented four accounts of coming under fire. Strange… tired as I am, I can’t imagine sleeping.

  I mull over the past few days and I am convinced there’s nothing I or anyone else did that any of us wouldn’t have done again. We just did what we had to do, and then got on with the next mission. A lot is said and written about courage, but I’m still not sure what it is. I’ve heard it described like a bank balance – that each of us has a finite store to dip into before it runs out – but I don’t think it’s like that. I think it’s sanity that runs out. Courage is either there or it’s not, but it’s stock doesn’t run down if you have it. Too much combat, on the other hand, will drive you insane.

  34

  95% BOREDOM, 5% FEAR

  A police officer friend of mine memorably described police work as nine hours of boredom interspersed with ten minutes of adrenaline. What lifts it above the mundane and leaves you drained at the end of every shift is that you never know when those ten minutes are going to come, so you’re permanently on edge, ready to react.

  My numerous Dets in theatre have shown me that being a Chinook pilot isn’t that different – it’s 95% boredom and 5% fear, except you don’t know when that 5% is going to swamp you. The only thing I knew for sure by this point was that I’d had more than my share of adrenaline and kinetic ops.

  Obviously at this stage of any Det it gets harder to keep your eye on the ball, but you can’t slacken off simply because you’ll be going home soon – that’s the quickest way to die. Tiredness becomes your constant companion simply because of the tempo of ops and the shortage of cabs and crew in theatre, but there’s nothing you can do about that except man up and get on with it.

  Even though the sun was up long before we got to bed after Oqab Sturga, we were back out on ops and airborne by 15:00 the following day, flying Des Browne, the then Secretary of State with dual responsibilities for Scotland and Defence. As has been widely reported, Gordon Brown was never popular with the military, given his bizarre decision to make the Cabinet post of defence part-time. The fact that we were committed in both Afghanistan and Iraq at that time made it all the more inexplicable.

  We were flying mail and supplies around theatre; at one point the crewmen had Des Browne helping to unload the mail, which we joked was about the only good thing
he ever did while in office. We dropped him off at Gereshk and then returned later to pick him up and bring him back to Bastion. Now, some people might have considered just landing in the Green Zone and going: ‘Okay Mr Browne, we’ve arrived at Bastion. Best of luck. Bye!’ then putting the ramp up and flying away. Me? I couldn’t possibly comment.

  Later that evening we were on the IRT again. We were scrambled to FOB Inkerman to collect a T2 – a British soldier had taken a round through his leg. The flying was an absolute nightmare; it was red illume, as dark as a witch’s tit over Helmand, and it took me forever to get down because I couldn’t see the ground and we had no horizon, even through the NVGs.

  We started our descent from 3,500ft, over an area hemmed in by three mountains, so there was no way I was going to rocket down like I normally would. All I could rely on was a map and our GPS, so I was hoping that both my map-reading skills and GPS were accurate! I could only muster the courage to descend at 250–500ft per minute in the total blackness. You do the maths, but it felt ten times longer knowing the mountains were there, with us in the middle of them, and no way of seeing where we were in relation. Far away, the lights of the town and the fires in the desert merged with the stars so we didn’t know which way was up and which way was down.

  I had to use white light as well my NVGs to carry out the approach but even then I had to overshoot once, as at 30ft I lost all sight of the ground and the cyalume box used as a landing aid. The second attempt wasn’t much better, but this time I trusted my trimming and the aircraft flew itself to a ‘positive’ landing. We got in – just – and got the casualty back to Bastion.

  We were also scrambled to take a ‘Compassionate A’ case from Kajaki to KAF – a British soldier whose mother had suddenly taken a turn for the worse and was dying. That’s one of the great things about the Armed Forces: if someone close to you is ill or dying, they’ll move mountains to get you home yesterday, regardless of rank or where in the world you are. They’ll even divert a TriStar full of troops just to get that one person to where they need to be. We scooped this guy up, landed on at KAF, where we taxied to the end of the runway and stopped next to a C-17 waiting with its ramp down. He was straight off the cab, onto the waiting C-17 and they were away, straight back to England. After that, we flew back to Bastion and shut down. We weren’t called out again that night.