by Tony Criddle
“Whiskey Alpha, Whiskey Hotel, confirm tasking over?”
“Whiskey Hotel pick up the ‘boot-necks’ and cover me when I go in. I’ve just passed them about a half a mile up the road from where they were holed up. My crewie has an LMG so I’ll brass up our guests before I give it a try, and you keep their heads down while I do, over.”
“Whiskey Alpha copy that. I’m a few minutes behind you.”
A different voice joined in. “Whiskey Alpha, Surveillance One, copy.”
Then a different voice again. “Whiskey Alpha, two section on VHF, copy. We are still under fire but it’s spasmodic and there is some shelter. The road’s been cut through a small hillock near the overturned Rover and the banks are four foot high. Slight camber on the road and a drainage ditch either side, over.”
“Roger two section. We’re three minutes out. I’ll fly up the left side of the road from the south and spray them first. Confirm hostiles 200 yards behind?”
“That’s an affirmative Alpha, out.”
Nick released the press-to-transmit. “Standby Chalkie, two minutes to go. You’ll be hard pushed to see a decent target so just pour as much copper in as you can.”
“Roger that.” Then with some surprise, “the Doc’s at the door with a Stirling. I thought medico’s were bloody non-combatants.”
“I’ve seen god botherers armed to the frigging teeth when they’re with the marines, Chalkie. Something about not being able to do their Jesus thing if their guys are dead. Just make sure the bugger doesn’t shoot you. I’m knocking the speed back a bit. Here we go.”
Only seconds later Nick Evans raised the nose in a flare and eased to the left. From there the road and vehicles were visible, and the firing line clear. By the time he levelled out his speed was down to a comfortable eighty knots and he could now see the cammoed marines huddled either side of the decimated lead Rover. Almost immediately after a thick straggle of trees ahead erupted in a cloud of smoke and tumbling leaf shards.
Nick was surprised he could hear the thump of the LMG and rip of the Stirling filtering above the bedlam of the flight and the confines of his thick flying helmet. A slight whiff of cordite trickled up from the cabin below. That he did expect.
He banked down-wind right as the trees got more attention, and two hefty thumps rocked the machine as he leaned even harder into the turn. A distracted “Fuck” was all he could manage before he lined up for the road.
“Whiskey Hotel, Whiskey Alpha, show-time. Landing short of the lead vehicle in two.”
Seconds later Nick raised the nose in a flare and eased right with his front wheels still ten feet above the deck. It was a hot LZ and he wasn’t hanging about. The big chopper stopped as the front wheels hit the road and the Doc scrambled to the marines with his bag. Chalkie emptied a half clip up the road as shadows flitted across the few open yards.
Nick’s cab rocked as Whiskey Hotel thundered overhead spitting copper indiscriminately, while shortly after smoke and debris from an explosion mush-rooming high above the trees got his attention. Jesus, that had to be an RPG.
“Whiskey Hotel – Chalkie took out one of the PROVOS on the road. The rest have bugged out towards the border. Was that a bloody RPG?”
“Sure was Whiskey Alpha. One of the SBS guys had it along in case their targets took off in a vehicle. I’ll do another run while you finish the pick-up, over.”
“I heard that boss. I’ll nip out and give the Doc a hand.” Chalkie appeared seconds later shuffling in a half crouch with the folded stretchers. The helicopter felt strangely lonely with him gone. The adrenalin was still pumping fiercely as the crewman dropped the litters beside the doctor, as two cautious marines eased a body from the front Rover, oddly gently under the circumstances. Another was covering them from alongside the wreck. The crewman led them back to the chopper with the body bag, throwing a thumbs up as he did, and the marines returned for the others while Chalkie dragged the corpse to the rear of the cabin.
Nick watched as the Doc readied the wounded, and saw him indicate one stretcher and the chopper. The marines lifted and shifted. There was a rasp as Chalkie re-connected his headset.
“The Doc’s stabilised both of them boss. About two minutes.”
“Rodger that.” Nick hit the press-to-transmit “Whiskey Alpha, pulling pitch in two.”
“Rodger that Alpha. I’ll pass down your port side from ahead, firing as you go. Any further shots?”
“Some random from the left a few minutes ago. One hit us, but nothing serious – over.”
“Rodger that. Running in hot in one minute.”
Whiskey Hotel thundered past as Alpha lifted, and Nick sensed rather than saw another explosion on his left. When he had enough forward speed he banked hard right and headed for Newry.
“Whiskey Hotel, Alpha. Newry will have dispatched a clean-up team by now. Hang around until they get here.”
“Whiskey Alpha, roger. I’ll have a look near the border.”
Then Chalkie got his in. “The wounds aren’t life threatening boss but the Doc reckons they’ll be painful. We were bloody lucky as well. One of the rounds that hit us was less than an inch from the tail rotor cables.”
Nick was finally coming down again. “Okay Chalkie. I guess we’ll save the aerobatics until later then.”
They were landing in the compound within fifteen minutes.
Nick Evans presented at the Palace several months later to receive his Military Cross, the one with the striking purple and white ribbon. And by then the navy saw him as someone who could be going places as a possible future leader. The system was eager to hang on to him and his CO let him know it, but a break point loomed a few months after that.
Sure the flying was great, the squadron way of life was kind of satisfying, and the few close friends he’d made were in that narrow, insular world, but the coin had a flip side too. The marine lieutenant killed in that dubious border clash had been a sometime mess and drinking oppo, and he’d operated with the sergeant who’d been invalided due to his wounds a few times as well. And to him the clincher was the dreadful injuries a close navy mate suffered in a vicious, indiscriminate bombing. It was almost impossible to tell the good guys from the bad ones over there, yet they all thought god was on their side. It was just like when he was young. He listened to his boss, but in the end Nick Evans resigned. He’d had enough of being manipulated.
By then there wasn’t much he felt strongly about nor anyone he felt that close to. He became a rolling stone who liked to fly choppers, and it didn’t really matter much where. Nick thought he’d largely survived childhood intact, but traumatic experiences can slip into a troubled adulthood as sinuously as a camouflaged viper into a rock bed.
Chapter Two
Some things seem inevitable when you’re a kid, so no surprises that Nick Evans copped the occasional clip around the ear when he was young. He’d never suffered any real physical abuse though, and halfhearted clips he could handle. It was a sense of communication or belonging that he’d never known. For him childhood was more about survival than living.
Nick was begotten by an argumentative, lapsed-Catholic father and a belligerent ‘chapel’ mother, and why they’d ever had sex, let alone got married, was a mystery. Any topic was good for an argument, even the mundane allowing them to twist the knife in deeply, but if it was vaguely theological that was a bonus. And what religion Nick should be brought up in was never resolved of course, so he grew up with no religion at all. Their fervent but incomprehensible bickering isolated Nick from a seething, antagonistic adult world, yet he was always in the middle of the animosity.
He tried the odd tear to break it up at first, then by swinging off any loose clothing he could reach, but nothing worked. In the end he learned to ignore it and slunk off to his room instead. Inevitable, their bitterly antagonistic marriage did implode, though surprisingly it did go on until his eleventh year. Nick didn’t even remember when his father moved out only that he hadn’t seen him at breakfas
t for a while. The aftermath was more noticeable.
From then on Nick never lived in one place for more than a few months at a time, constantly shunted between semi-aloof parents, detached grandparents and the occasional, unfamiliar aunt. He’d thought about scarpering even then, but there was always the threat of boarding school if he didn’t shape up, and as he got older things did get better. Sure he was fed and clothed adequately, and the antagonism did abate, but even so he decided not to stay in Cardiff any longer than he had to.
A decent set of ‘A’ level results was his passport out. Nick’s younger years had made him taciturn by nature but under it he was fairly smart, and an escape into avid reading hadn’t done him any harm either. When he reached his late teens he realised it was crunch time.
He was embedded with his father’s sister, a waspish, unhappy spinster, when he made the decision to move on. Old before her time, she had turned nagging into an art form, and no matter what it was about it was always his fault. In the end he trudged off to the local recruiting depot and applied to fly with the navy.
Apart from a trip on the scenic railway up Mount Snowdon, the train ride to HMS Sultan, near Portsmouth, was the only one Nick could remember going on. And this time he didn’t have much of a choice. It was some way from his native Cardiff, but it was where senior naval officers and university deans sorted out the wheat from the chaff. He didn’t share the knowledge he was going until he’d booked the trip.
Nick rocked up to Cardiff’s main railway station on a cold and gusty morning forty-eight hours before the interviews. A nagging apprehension was mixed with a sense of elation as he moved hesitantly towards the black, greasy locomotive, but the elation was short lived. Random swirls of damp, musty steam cavorted ominously around his legs, while demonic panting from an idling engine seemed to mock his limited years and shallow experience. The realisation hit home hard. He’d made his choices and life now had plenty of time to throw him the odd curve ball. He gulped nervously, knowing that failure wasn’t an option, but he’d done his homework.
And travelling a day early was part of it. He’d absorbed a fair bit from John Winton’s book We Joined the Navy, a comical but fairly accurate portrayal of naval selection boards around that time, but on the journey south-east poured over it yet again. Some serious thought went into new areas as well, and by the time he got to Fareham station he had a plan. Not surprisingly the trip passed as if someone had hit fast forward.
A cab took Nick the ten miles south to ‘Sultan’s’ wardroom. Manned by the obligatory naval guards, the carved sandstone and contorted iron gateway was grand enough, but to his young eyes the ornately pompous officers’ mess seemed just about as imposing as it got. His pupils dilated and his mouth opened slightly when he paused in front of the masonry and brick portals of an early Victorian vintage.
Nick signed in with the wrinkled, elderly hall porter guarding the foyer. The retainer gave him a quick run-down on mess rules and meal times, and with a theatrical groan, hefted Nick’s light suitcase up to a dark, timbered bedroom. If he thought Nick was on the early side he never mentioned it, but then again he’d stopped being interested in what young officers got up to years ago.
He was allocated one of dozens of dark, wood-panelled rooms the navy called a cabin, and it was about the size he expected it to be. It didn’t take long to stow his gear and after he was left to his own devices. Amen. He didn’t waste what time he had contemplating.
It would be Monday morning before the board kicked off, so other hopefuls wouldn’t get there until later on Sunday. And with most of the regulars on weekend leave the mess was largely his for the next twenty-four hours. A curious Nick ambled through those dark, polished rooms and corridors for hours, perusing and analysing.
Oversized, smoky oils were draped at regular intervals around the wall-spaces in that labyrinth of a building, and as would be expected in a naval ward-room most of them were ships and seascapes. And just like the book hinted, the intensity of colours, the direction of lighting and wind, and the subjects and seascapes themselves said a lot if you had time to look for it. Nick did. No surprises for him on the Monday.
Later, after some intense perusing, one particular room grabbed his attention. A brightly polished brass plate on the thick oak doors advertised it as a conference room, and like the other communal spaces it wasn’t locked.
Several upholstered chairs planted precisely down one side of a large, polished table, intimidated a single, lonely chair on the other side. It was a tad lower, and looked less upholstered as well. This was obviously where the important stuff happened. He took his time, even peering intently through the smeared glass of the panelled windows. But he hadn’t finished yet.
It was six on the Sunday evening when Nick wandered into the bar where a noisy bunch of subalterns got his attention. He bought a round, and it wasn’t difficult to pick the brains of anyone with a view on interview boards. The subalterns were obviously working at getting half-tanked before heading ashore. By the time Nick trudged into dinner he was feeling confident but kept to himself. Some of the board could be amongst the older, more senior group that trickled in around him.
Metaphorically speaking he flew through the exams and tests over the next few days, and the navy was glad to get an alert, knowledgeable young man like him. Within a few months he was on his way to the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth.
It was a warm April afternoon in the following spring when Nick topped the steep descent into the picturesque coastal township. His wheels were an elderly but reliable Hillman Minx. A decent ‘banger’ had been in his sights for some time and he’d held down a paper round and a weekend job to pay for it, but none-the-less he’d been pleasantly surprised when his father presented him with it on his eighteenth birthday. True Nick had been getting along better with him since reaching his late teens, but it had still been unexpected.
And although quaint wasn’t a word in Nick’s dictionary, he couldn’t think of anything else to describe the stone, brick and warped wooden facades of that pretty diminutive port. Most of the buildings were ornate and antique, and the River Dart itself was clustered with acres of moored yachts and motor cruisers swinging haphazardly on a docile, ebbing current. Antiquated ferries puffed across those quiet, friendly waters, and the harbour itself was protected by stolid Napoleonic fortresses crouched at its gaping river mouth like guardian gargoyles. If you ignored the cars it had probably looked much the same 300 years before.
The next day was a Friday and Nick’s joining instructions said to report to the parade ground by noon. Again he was taking no chances and had booked a room in a local pub the night before. He knew an overnight train arrived at Plymouth station mid-morning, he’d checked it out, so noon must allow for those arriving on it to be bussed to the college. The new entries would get oriented and kitted up over the weekend and he didn’t intend to stand out.
At ten minutes to noon a hired bus led him through an avenue of blossoming beech onto the tarmacked surface in front and below the imposing, weather-stained college. Several youngsters edged slowly towards the disembarking crowd and elderly chief petty officers, their faces hewn from weathered stone, herded them into a resemblance of an orderly group. It took a while before everyone was assembled with their baggage amid a hum of light-hearted joshing and banter. Nick figured that it was all about to change.
A tall, pale recruit dressed in sports jacket and calvary twills ran slim, sensitive fingers through his long, unruly hair, before confronting the nearest CPO.
“I say old chap, can you suggest anywhere local that will put my wife up for a while?”
The other chiefs turned as one, their faces defused and blotchy, and if looks could kill the recruit would already be putrefying. It took several long seconds before the Chief could trust himself to speak. When he did, his voice was low but vibrant with anger.
“If the navy wanted you to have a wife it would issue you with one. Now get back in line or I’ll break your bloody leg
s.”
It set the tone for the next twelve months.
Chapter Three
Flying helicopters was to be Nick’s thing, but it was some time before he climbed into one. Apart from some grading flights in a light fixed wing at an airfield near Plymouth, the college was all about naval traditions, vocational academics and relevant technology. But Nick’s stay there wasn’t all work. He was a natural sportsman amid a plethora of excellent facilities, and although the extensive boat handling was compulsory he enjoyed driving the mix of motor and sailing craft he had to qualify on. Truth be known he became quite good at it, and that wasn’t such a bad thing at a naval college. Even so, a busy twelve months passed before he started flight training at an Air Force Flying School in Yorkshire.
The six months it took to complete elementary flight training was more like it. The first taste of that ecstasy pilots feel controlling a third dimension. That was followed by basic chopper training at a naval air station in Cornwall. Depending then on whether it was to anti-submarine or trooping choppers cadets were bound, they headed for Dorset or Somerset. It might have seemed it, but their direction wasn’t actually their choice at all, and they went where the navy needed pilots at the time. Either way the survivors learned to fly, fight, and to operate in difficult places for the next year.
And while Nick was training Ulster became a weeping sore in the British breast once more. He was funnelled towards trooping with the Royal Marines.
Wrestling with the tactical stuff was definitely on the fraught side, but finally Nick graduated with a good pass on a clear but bitter Friday in an early Somerset spring. He walked into a different block on the following Monday, along with several others, as a qualified pilot. Supposedly he was one of the big guys now, but he knew he still had things to learn. His first combat tour was only months away and that was going to be pretty serious.
