Sweating the Metal

by Alex Duncan Frenchie

  If I thought Op Oqab Sturga was behind us, I was wrong. The following morning, May 25th, illustrated that fact all too vividly. Sadly it meant the death of one young soldier, and life-changing injuries for two others.

  While we’d been flying the Paras in on the night of the 23rd, Royal Marines travelling in armoured vehicles had provided reinforcement and support on the ground and were only now returning to their bases. As they did so, they were engaged about halfway up the valley, between FOB Inkerman and Sangin, in a rolling contact that lasted about four hours. They were driving, stopping, fighting; driving, stopping, fighting; and they were harassed all the way down the valley as they tried to return to their FOB at Sangin.

  Sadly, the Taliban had managed to plant a massive IED right in the middle of the wadi, within about 500m of the main gate to the FOB, and it sat there waiting for them, inert and silent, until the lead BvS10 Viking – driven by Marine Dale Gostick of 3 Troop Armoured Support Company – rolled over it.

  The phone rings back at the IRT tent and I run to the JOC with Andy Rutter to get the grid and the details while Alex and Griz head for the aircraft. The nine-liner shows we have three T1 casualties; the grid is the Sangin crossing of the Helmand River. Andy races us across Bastion to the pan where Alex is spinning up the cab. As ever, the MERT and QRF teams are ready and waiting in the back. The Apache is already on station because it has been supporting the Marines during their contact.

  As soon as we get authorisation (and for once, it isn’t long in coming) it’s pull pitch, nose down and we crack on as fast as we can. I call the Apache to tell them we’re inbound.

  ‘Ugly Five Two, Black Cat Two Two, inbound your location in figures twenty.’

  The AH pilot keys the mike and, against a background track of 30mm cannon fire, he says, ‘Yeah, Black Cat Two Two, you’ll need to hold. We’re still in contact and the HLS is hot. Repeat, HLS is hot.’

  I acknowledge and fly us along the river to a point about eight miles west of the target and set up in a figure-of-eight orbit there. As I’m flying, I see a young Afghan male of fighting age, sitting on top of a hill in that classic stance that Afghans seem to adopt – sitting on their haunches – and he’s just gazing out over the land, a mobile phone to his ear.

  ‘Clock him,’ I say to Alex. ‘What’s the betting he’s dicking us?’

  ‘Yeah, the fucker’s probably passing intel up the chain to another motherfucker with an RPG who’s waiting to shoot at us,’ says Alex. ‘Here we go again.’

  I take us down and fly close enough to him that, had it been me down there, I’d have ducked, but we may as well be silent and invisible for all the fucking difference it makes. He continues talking on his phone, almost oblivious to our proximity. Now look, I’m sorry, but if you’ve got a fuck-off great noisy Chinook flying within a few feet of your head, you’re going to move, aren’t you? Not this guy. I know there are cultural differences, but there are limits. The whole thing has me worried, so I say, ‘Okay Andy, get on the port Minigun. I want you to put some rounds down on the next hill, see if that gives him the incentive to move away.’

  ‘No problem, Frenchie. I’m ready on your order.’

  ‘Hold one; I’m just going to have a quick sweep around. I want to make sure that if we have any stray rounds they’re not going to hit anybody.’

  It’s as well I do; just as I clear the hill, I see a flock of goats at the bottom. I look back at the guy on the hill, who I thought had been dicking us, and suddenly the threat evaporates. I see him for what he is – a young goat-herder, his gaze on his flock while he sits talking on his phone to a mate in the next valley, perhaps. Then again, he could be all that and still be dicking us. That’s what I hate about this fucking country; nothing is what it seems.

  Suddenly, the man stands up, ends his phone conversation and sets off down the hill towards his flock. ‘Okay Andy, you can stand down mate,’ I say. I let out a sigh of relief and curse my heart, which I realise is beating faster than it should be. I wipe away a bead of sweat that’s running down my face.

  Thirty minutes later nothing’s changed; we’re still holding. I need to think about the mission.

  ‘Right guys, time’s running out and I’m not prepared to go back and refuel.’

  Returning to Bastion for more fuel would be tantamount to signing a death sentence on the casualties – time is something they don’t have. I need to conserve the fuel we have, so if we can’t go forward and we can’t go back, I’ve got one option: down. I’ll land in the wadi below us and we can wait on the ground until we’re called in for the extraction.

  I pick the wadi because it looks almost impossible to access and its banks are too steep to climb. A scan of the area reveals nobody within two miles of the spot I’ve chosen and time-wise, it’ll take them longer to get to us than we’ll be there for. Of course, it’s sod’s law that as soon as I apply the brakes and complete the after-landing checks, the Apache will clear us in, isn’t it? And that’s exactly what happens…

  ‘Okay Alex, rebug your RadAlt to 10, I’ve got 20 on the light,’ I say. ‘I’m going to fly us in low and dirty.’

  My head is full of memories of the 17th, when I’d been flying at 20ft and 160kts and we’d still been hit, so I’m determined to fly even lower this time. I’ll stick rigidly to 10ft. For this mission, as well as the MERT, I also have an ITV camera crew onboard who are filming for the third episode of Doctors and Nurses at War.

  I pull power and lift us above the wadi and, completely oblivious to the fact that they are recording the audio from the intercom, I jokingly say to Andy and Griz, ‘Right, Rules of Engagement are easy – if it’s bearded and looks at us, kill it.’ Of course, my comment makes the final cut and is played to a primetime audience on ITV seven months later when the programme is broadcast. It’s not like I was ever going to be able to deny it was me – I mean, how many Chinook pilots does the RAF have who speak with a French accent?

  I’m at 10ft now as we’re running in, and the needle on the airspeed indicator is at 150. I’m wringing all the power she’s got out of the collective. I’m flying so low insects on the ground are running for cover, and I’m moving the cyclic like I’m whipping egg whites as I throw the aircraft around. If anyone’s trying to get a bead on us, I’m going to make their job as near fucking impossible as I can.

  We are well shielded by the wadi from Sangin town, so anyone having a go from the right would have to be within spitting distance of us, and that is never going to happen. The only real threat is going to come from the left where there is a network of old Russian trenches and tunnels – prime Taliban territory.

  We have about six miles to run when the JTAC at Sangin calls us over the radio to advise, ‘Black Cat Two Two, I’ve got reports of rounds being fired at you from the west. You are under contact. Repeat: you are under contact.’

  I can appreciate why the JTAC is telling us, but it doesn’t exactly help – there’s nothing I can do anyway. What we’re doing is like walking down a crowded high street with a sign on your back saying ‘Spit here!’ and expecting to get to your destination dry.

  I’m focused on flying though and I don’t have a lot of spare capacity because of our altitude and speed, which mean the constant dinking of the airframe, left, right, up, down. I’m scanning the front obsessively – panel, horizon, panel, horizon – right the way to the grid; my focus at a point just in front of the cab; my only thoughts where we’re going and what’s ahead.

  Suddenly, with two miles still to run, I notice a huge pall of black smoke and a massive fire in the distance; it’s obviously where the IED has taken out the Viking.

  It’s funny how your thought process works; I know a Viking has driven over an IED so I’m looking for a Viking, albeit mangled. Yet I can’t see one. Something’s burning, but it isn’t anything that was once recognisably a vehicle. I’m seeing but not computing; it just doesn’t accord with what’s in my head.

  We get closer; a mile, 600 yards to go… we
’re still under threat, but I’m manoeuvring hard, there are no impacts on the aircraft that we’re aware of. Then suddenly, the Defensive Aids Suite explodes into life and we’re firing off flares like it’s 4th July in Times Square.

  ‘BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG!’

  There’s a flurry of them every second, along with a warning signal in our headphones, an alternating two-tone alarm that coincides with the flares launching. It must be terrible for the MERT team in the back – they’re not on the intercom but they can see and hear the flares going off. Each one is like a small sun, creating a blinding white light that eclipses daylight. They have no idea what’s going on. Are they RPGs? Are we hit? They don’t know – all they’re aware of is that the aircraft is moving all over the sky and suddenly there’s a series of small explosions around us.

  I don’t think we’ve been engaged with a Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) and I haven’t seen an RPG blast or felt one strike the aircraft, so the DAS must have picked up the heat signature from the fire below and interpreted it as a missile launch. It’s done its job – it’s not sentient, just a highly complex computer that uses a series of algorithms to determine whether the heat and light sources it detects are potentially harmful to the aircraft. Either way, the threat has passed and we’re on the target.

  I’m still carrying 150kts, so I flare abruptly to shave off some speed. I feel the aircraft slow, so I bank right and apply some pedal. More bank, more pedal; more bank, more pedal… the nose starts to drop exactly the way I want it to and I assist it with a bit of forward cyclic. The windscreen’s now full of Afghan wadi with the blades uncomfortably close to the ground – we’re nose down at a massively steep angle. I pivot the cab through 270° to scrub off more speed and place us where we want to be. In the cockpit, it feels like we’re not far off the vertical, so I know that the effect is amplified several times over for the guys in the back. Done right, the crewmen shouldn’t feel more than 1g all the way round, but the more aggressively you do it, the more g-force they experience. It isn’t pretty but it’s effective.

  As I look down, I see the burning wreckage clearly through the screen. The IED must have been huge – the Viking’s tracks have been blown at least 150 metres away and the cab and the main body of the vehicle have literally ceased to exist. All that’s left is a solid, mangled square mass of burning metal about two foot high; everything that was above that level has disappeared into the ether. How anyone can have survived is beyond belief, but we’re here to pick up the three Marines who were its crew, so they obviously have.

  As the aircraft pivots round to the right heading and the speed reduces to the correct approach speed, I finally bring the nose up, levelling the cab at the attitude I want for landing into the wind – the smoke from the fire tells me the direction it’s coming from. I can see our makeshift HLS perfectly below us. The Marines have fanned out into a defensive circle with a clear area in the middle for us to put down in.

  The dust is building; it’s at the ramp, 10ft, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3… two wheels on… six wheels on, we’re down. It’s not the prettiest textbook landing – we roll forward about three or four metres – but I was coming in so fast in order to keep us safe, there was no way we were going to scrub all the speed off before we slammed into the ground. Kinetic force just doesn’t work that way. The important thing is we’ve arrived, we’re all safe and nothing’s damaged.

  The ramp goes down. The dust clears and I can see a Royal Marine in my 1 o’clock. Alex has got someone in his 11 o’clock and I’m thinking, ‘I don’t know why but something’s not right here.’ And it takes me about four seconds before it hits me: his SA80 is on the ground next to him, but he’s stood up and firing with his 9mm pistol, which is attached to his leg via a lanyard that connects to the grip. The firefight has been so intense he’s run out of ammunition and has resorted to his last line of defence. Things must be desperate – you’ve more chance of missing your target than hitting it with a pistol, even at close quarters. Then I notice the puffs of dust around us and the guys that are defending us, and I realise that they’re impacts from incoming rounds.

  The synapses in my brain are decoding all the information and giving me a word that sums the whole thing up: ‘Fuck!’ Alex and I shrink ourselves into balls in our seats. I’m making all sorts of silent promises to myself, commitments to give up certain vices if only the rounds keep hitting the ground. We’re trapped and immobile in our seats – perfect illustrations of the term ‘sitting target’.

  Griz gives us a commentary from the rear: ‘One casualty on board… okay, two casualties on board…’

  ‘Where’s the third casualty?’ I ask. ‘We have three guys to take.’

  ‘No idea,’ comes the reply. ‘Wait one.’

  All of this is taking time and the longer we sit here, the greater the risk. Luck, providence, fortune, call it what you will, but with this many rounds coming in, with all this lead in the air, every second increases the likelihood of it running out.

  Griz is back. ‘The surgeon said not to worry about the third casualty; we’ll get him later. His injuries are incompatible with life.’

  My heart sinks as it always does when I realise we’re too late. Could we have saved him if we’d got in sooner? What if we hadn’t held off for thirty minutes? Whatever rationale you employ, it’s still a nightmare. Part of you regrets playing it safe; the other part of you chides yourself for even thinking about exposing a 99ft flying leviathan to enemy fire. It’s a constant balancing act: the risk to one vitally needed helicopter with its crew and the combat-experienced soldiers that compose the QRF and the MERT on one hand; one or more dying British soldiers on the other. Where’s the line? How much risk is too much?

  ‘Ramp up, clear above and behind,’ says Griz, so I pull in maximum pitch, nose down and we disappear, leaving the Marines to it. The two we’ve got on board are in a bad way, but both will go on to survive; one has extensive burns, the other has had a traumatic amputation of his lower leg. Their dead colleague was the Viking’s driver, Marine Dale Gostick.

  However, we still need to get them back to the safety and assistance of the hospital at Camp Bastion, which means flying along the Sangin Valley again. We’ve been lucky once; can we ride our luck a second time? Speed and low altitude are our best defences, so I wring all available power from the cab as I route us over the Russian trenches on the west side of the wadi – not only is it the most direct track back to Bastion, but it also has the benefit of being the most difficult point for the enemy to get a bearing on us from.

  As soon as we’re over open desert, I ask the medics if they’re happy for me to climb, and get the reassuring message that both casualties are stable and time isn’t an issue. I pull in the power and the cab responds to my input on the collective, taking us up to altitude. We arrive back at the sanctuary of Nightingale HLS at Bastion without incident.

  As it transpires, Dale Gostick and the other two Royal Marines we lifted were returning to base on the last operational day of their tour. Six months of fighting, six months of risk and fear and depravation, six months of worry for their families, and on the last day one dies and two incur life-changing injuries. It makes no sense, but the thought comes anyway: so near and yet so far.

  I can’t help thinking about the impact these injuries have on the guys that are out on the front line, fighting on our behalf. Imagine you’re a Royal Marine. You’re fitter than a butcher’s dog, at the absolute peak of human endurance and fitness. These guys can run up mountains without breaking a sweat, they undertake triathlons for fun, and their bodies are testament to all that man is capable of. They’re like machines; the complete antithesis of the average aircrew with our soft bodies, pampered existence at KAF and two-month tours.

  The guys at the front take their fitness for granted. Just like the two in the back of my cab who got up this morning and probably went through the same routine that they’ve done every morning in theatre. Suddenly, in less time than it takes to read this sentence,
their lives are ripped apart and changed forever. Having to learn to walk on one, maybe two, prosthetic legs; the long road back to fitness after months in Selly Oak and Headley Court; wasted muscle, torn bodies, all the upheaval and heartbreak. How do you come back from that? Your athlete’s body is now broken and wracked with pain. And then there’s the guilt of surviving when your best mate and oppo has died.

  It’s funny how some things strike you more than others, but all of us were particularly concerned about the two Marines, so I wandered over to the hospital after dinner to seek an update on their condition. What really lifted me was the knowledge that both patients were as high as kites on morphine, and not only conscious, but had spent most of the evening flirting with the nurses and taking the piss out of one another’s injuries. I felt buoyed up on the walk back to the IRT tent.

  That sortie marked my last kinetic op on the Det, although it was also the third op since I was shot down that involved my aircraft taking fire. After that, my nickname of Frenchie was temporarily replaced by the equally apposite ‘Bullet Magnet.’

  35

  SERENDIPITY

  My feet rested on my body armour as I sat opposite JP in the crew tent. We’d been chatting for some time, but to be honest, I didn’t hear much after he said what basically amounted to, ‘Ah, Mr Duncan; for you, the war is over.’ On the conclusion of our last sortie on that day, May 28th, my crew and I would fly back to KAF to await our flight home. But before we left, he had one more surprise up his sleeve: our final mission would be an air test.