by Ed Macy
Taff saved me the embarrassment of inquiring.
‘The boys get free Otis Spunkmeyer muffins from the MWR, don’t they? And bring them back here by the truckload. They were about to hit their “best before” date, so I’m making them eat ’em, see, for being greedy. That’ll learn ‘em.’
The challenge was to eat five as fast as they could. The winner dropped out and the remainder had to do the challenge again. The numbers worked out perfectly.
‘When I was at a Navy Seals base in the States they had something called the Subway Challenge.’
‘What’s that?’ Gifted asked.
A blond lad with boyish good looks, he was the youngest member of the team; every mother’s dream. Fresh from school he turned up on his first day in the army wearing a T-shirt with ‘GIFTED’ emblazoned across it. The name stuck because he wasn’t.
I began to regret opening my mouth, but they pushed me for an explanation. Little did I know I’d just inspired them…
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Felton stood at the far end of the bird table and sucked thoughtfully on a cigarette. How anyone could smoke in this heat was beyond me, but it was the way the CO did it that cracked me up. He pinched the tab between the very tips of the index and middle fingers of his right hand, keeping it as far as possible from his lips until the moment he seemed to force himself to take a drag, face contorted, as if it was a freshly lit fuse that might detonate at any moment.
‘The Rules of Engagement, gentlemen…’ Legs crossed, left hand on his hip, he started to outline, in that soft, well-spoken way of his, exactly what we could and could not do while we were in-theatre. If it wasn’t for the seriousness of the brief and the fact that Felton was one of the youngest, toughest, no-nonsense colonels on the circuit, we’d have been forgiven for thinking we’d walked into a sketch for Comic Relief.
The ROE briefing was always going to be a bitch; I’d need to keep my wits about me. So far, our enemy were armed with little more than small arms and RPGs. But we already knew they weren’t afraid of the Apache, the weapon system that had been billed as a quantum leap in the way the British Army would fight future wars. The Taliban were medieval in their fighting methods-but also in their brutality. The boffins called it asymmetric warfare. All we knew was that with a handful of rudimentary weapons the bad guys had levelled the playing field.
Lieutenant Colonel Felton took a last drag of his cigarette before dropping it into the dregs of his coffee. I checked the battery level on my digital voice-recorder and placed it on the edge of the bird table, next to the map that depicted our area of operations. The temperature in the long metal tube that housed the CO’s HQ was unbelievable. I glanced at the blokes propped around the table. Simon, Billy, Pat, Tony, Carl, Nick and the others seemed to be taking it in their stride. If I was the only one suffering, I didn’t want them to know.
‘I know how much you’ve been looking forward to this,’ Felton said. There was a groan from the floor. ‘There are basically two different scenarios in which the ROE apply. The first is where we’re told to go and destroy a target deliberately-a known Taliban HQ, for example. Deliberate Attacks are covered under a document called the “Targeting Directive”. It’s for pre-planned targets only and will have been cleared by government, with signatures all the way to the top. So, if the Intelligence community find a Taliban set-up at a particular location and we confirm it’s definitely there, and the authority is given from Whitehall, then that is a legitimate target under the current guidelines. Is that clear?’
Billy nudged me and muttered in my ear: ‘They’re giving with one hand and taking away with the other.’
Yup, I thought. Legitimate, maybe, but once all those checks and balances had been attended to, it wouldn’t be us who’d be inflicting the damage, it would be fast air in their Harriers, B-1Bs and A-10s.
But the fun and games had only just begun.
‘Fast air don’t have it all their own way,’ Felton continued, ‘because the target set also has to conform to the collateral damage matrix. Each of the nations out here has different ideas over what constitutes collateral damage.’
Someone opened the door behind us and a blast of air from the furnace outside blew through the HQ, scattering the ROE sheets across the bird table. Beads of sweat dripped from one lad’s nose. I forced myself to focus on what the CO was saying.
‘The second scenario and the rules that affect you basically fall into two categories: self-defence and when you want to take specific action against a target for a reason other than self-defence.’ The second category was obviously the hot potato.
If, for example, the enemy below was about to lob a mortar round at our boys on the ground-we would be allowed to engage without consulting the chain of command, as long as we had ‘reasonable belief’ that the person in our sights was the enemy.
Somebody next to me made a choking sound. If the CO heard he didn’t show it, but the civilian in the chair behind him clearly did; I saw him glance up sharply from his notepad like an eagle-eyed schoolteacher. We were never told who this individual was, but in his conspicuously smart clothes, God bless him, he might as well have had ‘Whitehall’ stamped across his forehead. He was probably a lawyer of some description; maybe the pen-pusher who’d drafted this nonsense in the first place.
How the hell were we meant to know who had hostile intent when just about every male in Afghanistan carried a weapon. In the middle of the Green Zone a primitive house and a few livestock was all that most could afford, but they were never without an AK47 and a moped. How were we to know the difference between a farmer out patrolling his crop or the Taliban out patrolling? With a distinct lack of uniforms it was impossible to distinguish the enemy from the Afghan Army, Afghan Police, Afghan Security Forces and some other discreet security forces.
An unsettled feeling started to gnaw at my stomach. I stuck up my hand. The man from Whitehall peered at me over his glasses. The CO paused and gave me an encouraging smile.
‘Yes, Mr Macy.’
Lester W. Grau, a CIA analyst who’d studied the tactics of the Mujahideen against the Soviets, had been high on my reading list. As the Squadron Weapons Officer, I was expected to know everything about the Taliban’s capabilities, but I’d also wanted to get inside the heads of these bastards. What I’d learned was simple and frightening. We were up against an astute, resourceful enemy that would never give up. In the 1980s, a handful of armed resistance fighters had gathered the populace and had seen off the mightiest army in the world. And no Soviet general had had to pussyfoot around under a set of unworkable guidelines.
‘How do I demonstrate they have hostile intent?’
‘Very good question, Mr Macy.’ The CO reached for another cigarette. He was clearly in no hurry to answer it.
My hand stayed up. ‘And what happens if they’re still armed, but looking for cover? How do I know they’re not going to continue the fight after we’ve run low on fuel and buggered off? How do I know whether they’re farmers scared out of their wits looking for somewhere to hide, or Taliban looking for defensive positions from which to continue the fight?’
I paused and looked around the bird table at my fellow pilots before turning back to the CO. ‘What then, sir? What do I do?’
The CO lit his cigarette and took the smoke deep into his lungs. He shook his head. ‘Your call, Mr Macy.’
My call?
The existence of hostile intent would be judged on evidence presented via our TADS camera footage and the camera didn’t always see everything.
Jesus…
As I walked back to our billet I thought about the nightmare we now found ourselves in. It wasn’t the CO’s fault; he was just the messenger. This was down to the politicians. They were sending us to fight their war in a bird that cost £46 million a pop; a bird that was on trial every bit as much as we were. We were both expected to perform flawlessly-with our arms now tied behind our backs. And if I put so much as a foot wrong, because I didn’t have crystal bal
ls and couldn’t read the enemy’s mind, I’d find myself court-martialled for not knowing whether the enemy had hostile intent.
No one else was subject to this level of scrutiny.
As they prepared to rain shells on a position ten kilometres away, the artillery boys weren’t asked to file a report stating that their enemy had hostile intent.
Nobody would ask 3 Para to explain themselves.
The fast-jet pilot who dropped a bomb on a grid wasn’t called to task if he made a mistake-his authority came from a guy on the ground.
But we were well and truly in the crosshairs.
If we got it wrong we’d find ourselves in a court of law and the first-ever deployment of the British Army’s Apache weapons system would be judged a complete failure. We’d be crucified by the media, the politicians and the Whitehall bean-counters. The Apache would be branded a white elephant-a £4.13 billion mistake.
The press hadn’t helped by spouting shite about the Apache programme since the outset. Every time the attack helicopter programme came across a hiccup they would wade in and blow it out of all proportion. It was just an excuse to have a go at the politicians for spending more money than ever before on a single piece of hardware, but Joe Public had swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Due to the bad press, it had already failed in their eyes.
When I’d joined the army twenty-two years earlier, this was not how I’d imagined it would be.
But fuck it, I’d come this far, and the people around the bird table were my mates. Some of them-Billy and Geordie, for example-had been with me damn near the whole time I’d been on the path.
One way or another, we had to find a way of making this work. Or else the Taliban, who didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘rules’, would shoot us out of the sky and decorate their caves with our entrails.
For the past seventeen years I’d bent the rules every which way to get to where I wanted: here, on Ops, with the greatest weapons system in the world, in the stinking heat of an Afghan summer.
Why the hell should I stop now?
Later that evening, as the sirens went silent after a rocket attack, the groundies came bursting into my room.
‘Sir, sir, you’ve got to come quickly.’
I dived from my bed thinking we’d lost a man or an aircraft. Then I was told they were about to start the Subway Challenge.
‘You and your big mouth.’ Billy smiled and grabbed his pistol.
‘Wait for me,’ Jon shouted.
Inside one of the huge US-built relaxation facilities was a gaming area, movie area, coffee bar, games area and a 150-feet-square music room jam-packed with instruments. We entered the music room to see the groundies gathered enthusiastically around three six-foot tables, arranged in a triangle.
Half a dozen foot-long Subway sandwiches had been laid end to end in front of each of the competitors.
Airtrooper Howson-Challenger Number One-was your typical prop forward and played rugby at club level for civilian teams as well as the army. He looked as if he could have swallowed every one of his Subways without pausing for breath.
Gifted looked at the contents of his table as if they were a series of incoming Hellfires.
Which just left Tiny, who looked as though he was about to try to eat several times his own body weight.
‘My money’s on Howson,’ Billy said before Jon or I could wage a bet.
I bagged Gifted.
‘Three, two, one, go,’ Taff called.
They all started at a nice slow pace. Facing each other; matching each other bite for bite. Tiny was being advised not to drink anything because he wouldn’t be able to fit a single Sub in.
They had an hour in which to eat their own height in Subs. The winner would be the first to finish, or the one to have consumed the most when the clock chimed. Anyone that barfed would be instantly disqualified, unless he ate what he’d just thrown up. I’d seen a Navy Seal eat seven feet of Subs in thirty minutes in Atlanta.
They were all finishing their third Sub with thirty minutes to go. Everyone had placed their bets. The music room had glass windows and curiosity got the better of everyone who passed them. The place was packed with Brits, Americans, Canadians, Italians, French; you name it, they were there. The banter was ear-splitting, but Gifted, Howson and Tiny continued to match each other munch for munch.
Forty-five minutes in, Gifted was fading, halfway through his fourth Sub.
‘Gifted’s going,’ the opposition shouted.
He grabbed the bucket from under the table and chundered explosively to a chorus of laughter and a flurry of fresh bets. Howson was now the favourite by a country mile.
The two remaining tables were pushed around to face each other as the noise got louder and the contest became ever more gladiatorial.
Five minutes away from the final bell, both reached for their sixth and final Sub. They’d clearly begun to tire.
Tiny threw down his Sub, folded his arms and looked Howson in the eye. Realising he too was unlikely to finish the whole two yards, Howson followed suit and took a slurp of Gatorade. There was uproar; both of them looked as sick as pigs.
‘Two minutes to go,’ Taff shouted.
A sprint finish was now a dead cert.
‘One minute.’
Howson moved his Sub, positioning it for the perfect draw, but Tiny kept his nerve and barely blinked.
‘Forty seconds to go.’
Howson picked up his Sub, almost in slow motion, and held it a foot from his mouth, directly in the path of Tiny’s steely gaze.
‘Thirty seconds.’
They were locked in complex mental calculation. If they started too soon and had to stop, they’d lose the contest.
I knew which way Howson’s pendulum was swinging. He reckoned that he’d easily out-bite Tiny.
The second the prop forward looked up at Taff, Tiny swiped his Sub and went at it like a termite on speed. Howson rammed his down his throat and removed three inches in one go.
The noise was deafening.
‘Ten seconds,’ Taff bellowed.
Howson was doing his best to swallow and Tiny was still going the chomp-swallow-chomp-swallow route.
‘Five…’
Tiny had another eight inches to go.
‘Four…’
Howson swallowed hard and tore off another three inches. His cheeks looked like an overpumped airbed.
‘Three…’
Tiny was seven inches away from glory.
‘Two…’
Tiny grinned and gave Howson a cheeky wink.
As Taff called, ‘One’, Tiny took a huge three-inch bite of his Sub and placed the remainder on the table.
The crowd went crazy.
‘STOP,’ Taff yelled.
Knowing Tiny only had to swallow his last mouthful to win, Howson lost the battle to keep his last couple of Subways down. His head disappeared into his bucket.
A huge roar and a round of multinational applause egged Tiny on to finish and set the new Afghan Subway Challenge record: one hour and six minutes.
‘Gee!’ an American girl shouted. ‘What does he win?’
‘He gets his Subs paid for by the losers,’ I said. ‘And they pay for their own.’
VISITING THE SHRINE
A couple of days later, I found myself on a mission to Camp Bastion. I’d familiarised myself with the area around KAF; an airtest or two had given me glimpses of the mountains and the desert, but the trip to Bastion was my first foray into the Helmand region.
Our tasking was to escort a Chinook, callsign Hardwood Two Two, to Lashkar Gah, where it would drop off some personnel. From there we’d fly directly to Bastion where another Chinook, Hardwood Two One, would lift off and RV with us. All four of us would proceed first to Now Zad, then to Musa Qa’leh, with the Chinooks dropping off and picking up men and materiel along the way. After the round-trip, we’d land at Bastion and remain forward-deployed there for six days. We’d been getting wind of some kind of operation-the reason f
or calling us forward.
We were two Apaches, callsigns Wildman Five Zero with Simon in the front and Jon in the back, and Wildman Five One, with Billy in the gunner’s seat and me behind him.
‘Wildman Five Zero Flight are two Apaches and one Chinook, ready for departure,’ Simon said as we lined up on Foxtrot taxiway.
‘Wildman Five Zero Flight, you are clear to depart Two Three Foxtrot,’ the American controller replied.
The Chinook lifted off first and we started to roll down the taxiway. I quickly tucked in behind it, our Apache hanging off to the back left, Jon to the back right. All three of us hugged the desert floor till we were away from KAF, then the Chinook shot up to altitude.
I turned to Billy. ‘That’ll change when we get back.’
‘What will?’
‘That procedure: the Chinook going up first.’
‘I see what you mean,’ Billy said after a moment’s thought. ‘That was all wrong, wasn’t it?’
Had someone fired at the Chinook while it was climbing to altitude, our two Apaches, supposedly its escorts, would never have seen the threat-and the Chinook, which had no armour (all Chinooks received their armour later in the tour), would not have withstood the shot.
One of the Apaches should have popped up to altitude first, to maintain a hawk-like vigil for the second Apache’s climb to height. Once we were both up, we could then provide cover for the Chinook’s ascent. The Apaches were built to take small arms fire and they could handle a missile launch; the Chinook couldn’t. And we all knew that the Taliban would have given their eye teeth to shoot down a ‘Cow’-their name for the big, lumbering RAF helicopter.
Well, not on my watch, I swore to myself. We’d need to talk to the Chinook boys and fix that procedure at the first available opportunity.
I looked down. We were crossing into the Red Desert-so named because of the colour of its remarkable three-hundred-feet-high dunes. From the air they looked like rust-coated waves rolling inexorably north from Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan and threatening to engulf the south-eastern city of Kandahar.
The desert was impassable by foot, almost impossible to cross by vehicle, and was uninhabited except by nomads who only ventured onto its fringes in winter. As far as NATO pilots were concerned, the Red Desert was a friend; being devoid of people, it was also devoid of threat.
