We were happy with the cannon’s accuracy but really concerned about the proximity of our lads. Any rounds that failed to explode could ricochet from the wall and the frag could also hit them at ninety. We decided to fire from behind our lads’ right and over their heads. All the rounds would be travelling away from them, blowing any frag or rock in the opposite direction. Or so I hoped…
Billy needed to make sure his range was stable and accurate; any miscalculation and our rounds would fall short. We were about to do what I had nixed in the simulator-unless there were absolutely no other options.
Without hesitation, Billy called firing and I broadcast the call.
‘Firing now…confirm splash.’
We were about 1,200 metres away as the cannon ramped itself backwards and the first few rounds pumped from the barrel. From this point onwards it was in its optimum position. The remaining seventeen HEDP rounds exited without pause and streaked towards the wall.
At the bottom of the MPD image by my right knee I could see the wall and our lads hiding behind it. The wall Billy was aiming at was at the centre of the screen; the top half of it covered the sunlit
trees. I stopped breathing as the rounds flew in towards the target in an untidy conical pattern, in what looked like slow motion, each maintaining exactly the same distance from the next.
They exploded bang-fucking-on, hurtling rocks and soil twenty metres into the air.
The radio burst into life. ‘One hundred metres north, 100 metres north.’
As we followed the JTAC’s instruction Billy adjusted and opened up at the tree line with another twenty-round burst. The wall had stopped further south.
‘Firing now.’
By the time the nineteenth and twentieth rounds were reverberating through my feet the first were impacting the dry soil and dirt at the edge of the orchard.
A dust cloud mushroomed out of the trees at the edge of the field.
‘Fifty metres further north, fifty metres further north, that’s where the firing point is.’
Jon came up on the radio, the pitch of his voice higher than normal: ‘We’ve picked up the Taliban firing point, just north of your last burst.’
I barked, ‘Put down a burst and I’ll confirm with the Widow that you’re in the right area.’
This was getting better. The Widow and Jon were talking about the same place. I looked down at the boys. They hadn’t moved and the wall was still being blown to bits. Whoever was in this wood wanted protection and had the means to do it.
Billy moved his sight fifty metres further north and Nick and Jon’s rounds impacted right over his crosshair.
‘Good rounds,’ The Widow shouted back. ‘Good rounds.’
‘Wildman Five Zero, Wildman Five One, we’re going to fire into the same area with you.’
I had the fleeting image of two men lying in the shadows behind the shit Nick had just kicked up, then Billy and Nick opened up in a coordinated attack. They took it in turns to pound the target, with no let-up between bursts-one, then the other.
My eyes darted between the devastation and A Company’s 2 Platoon. They weren’t going anywhere fast but I made out some movement between bursts onto the target. I counted four individual movements in the same vicinity before the dust storm closed in; they were either rolling or trying to crawl.
It dawned on me that we hadn’t updated Ops on our mission.
‘Saxon Ops, Wildman Five One. Both callsigns engaging Taliban in tree line as troops withdraw, out.’
After spitting 120 bundles of hell into the tree line, both Billy and Nick stopped when Billy transmitted, ‘Watch and shoot.’
The entire field and wood had disappeared under a dust cloud a hundred feet high. But the lesson we identified earlier was now a lesson learned. No one down there would live to crawl away this time. There would be no rescue party to drag them to safety.
I looked towards the end of the wall, expecting the worst.
‘Look at that!’ I pointed my crosshair at the lads as they got up, brushed off the dust and began to saunter back up the track. I could-n’t make out any stretchers, but I couldn’t see everyone from this angle.
Jon and I kept our orbits tight around the orchard so Nick and Billy could look for leakers-Taliban trying to escape-but we were hampered by low fuel.
‘Widow Seven Zero, this is the Wildmen. We’re going to have to RTB to get some gas. We’ll be back as soon as we can to assist in your withdrawal.’ I thought they might want to hang fire until we got back, considering what happened last time the Apaches left.
‘Widow Seven Zero, good shooting. Thanks, but we’re bugging out and look forward to your return.’ Jesus, these men were made of stern stuff.
‘No problem. Were there any casualties from that contact?’
‘No. Thanks to you we all got out okay.’
‘Thanks, we’ll stay on this frequency to relay any messages on our way back and will call you inbound later.’
‘Copied, safe flight.’
I was wondering how on earth the young soldier had survived. He must have been a bloody acrobat; those legs were upside down. Lady Luck must have been on our side.
The Taliban could not have escaped north or south because we would have picked them up. They had not egressed through the orchard. The rear of it was too open and they would have been easy to spot in the light cover. They must have died where they were hit, but we couldn’t wait around long enough to find out.
Our troops were safe.
Billy and I only had 510 pounds of fuel left and needed to get back asap.
We turned for home.
I flicked the MPD onto the performance page: ‘RANGE SPEED 117 KTS’. The computer had calculated the optimum speed to maximise our remaining fuel. I set our speed to 117 knots, put Bastion on the centre of the heading tape, triggered the height and attitude hold and let her fly us back home. As Scottie had taught me on my CCT course, she was a much better pilot than I was.
On our approach, we were confronted by the sight of the 3 Flight Apaches still on the ground. I confirmed with Ops that they wanted us to return to Now Zad. We were told to return asap.
When I touched down on the dusty HLS I had 350 pounds of fuel remaining-fifty pounds below the minimum, but what the hell. If I was put in the same position again, I’d bust my limits once more.
When we owned up to our misdemeanour during the debrief later that day, Jon announced he’d landed with just 200 pounds,
half the absolute minimum. The price you could pay for preventing our troops from dying was an engine-off landing back at base if you were lucky, in the middle of the desert if the gods were against you. The chances of both crew members surviving one in an Apache were extremely high. Whether or not the Apache would fly again was another question altogether.
The problem with this job was that if you got it right after taking a risk, you were ‘reminded’ that you took a risk and got away with it. If you didn’t get it right, it was aircrew error-and you would be constantly reminded that you cocked up as you flew a desk for what remained of your career.
Taff plugged into the wing and announced that one of the other Apaches had been shot straight through the tail during the morning’s activities. He said that Pat had begged to go back but had been turned down.
After a quick suck of gas and a rearm we were ready to depart again.
We took off first with Jon and Nick slightly after us.
We’d caused an almighty dust cloud. Billy screamed at me, ‘Come hard left
now
.’
I threw the stick over and banked round, my head shifting to align the crosshairs. Whatever he’d seen had got him very excited very quickly.
I saw Jon’s tail at about forty feet, disappearing into his own dust cloud. They were headed straight for the camp.
My stomach lurched. There was a moment’s silence and then I heard Billy’s voice.
‘They’ve crashed,’ he said in an I-don’t-believe-what-I’m-seeing kind of way.
‘Oh my God,’ I said. The dust suddenly became much darker. They must have gone in hard.
We circled for a few seconds, waiting to see how bad it would be. Both of us knew better than to try to talk to them. They would
speak to us if they could. But I wasn’t counting on hearing anything.
We did two complete orbits before the dust cleared.
‘How the fuck did they end up like that?’ Billy asked.
‘No idea.’
‘I’d better see if they’re all right,’ Billy said. ‘Wildman Five Zero…Wildman Five One. Are you both okay in there?’
No answer.
Then a rather quiet voice came over the ether. ‘Give us a minute,’ Jon said. ‘We’re a bit shook up.’
No shit.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Wildman Five One has had a bit of a heavy landing,’ Jon said.
‘How hard?’ Billy said.
‘Not hard enough to stop us from protecting 3 Para,’ Jon replied. ‘Five Zero is lifting’
We watched them take off, successfully this time.
On the route out to Now Zad Nick asked us to check the aircraft over. I flew up beside it and dropped slowly back, sliding down their right-hand side. Billy and I were looking for damaged antennas or weapons. I flew around their whole aircraft but couldn’t see a single dent.
The boys had extracted to the east of the wadi where they were going to be pulled out by Chinooks. The extraction of 3 Para was going without a hitch until a US B1 bomber did a show of strength.
The CO wanted to warn the Taliban against following them across the wadi and decided to let them see what he had waiting for them if they tried it on. The B1 was a huge aircraft with great big engines, designed to fly at altitude. Down here it would be a SAM magnet for any ManPAD operator.
Jon and I were on the southern edge of the town. The B1 would fly between our positions and we couldn’t wait to see it up close.
When it appeared, it flew over the mountains at 5,000 feet and crossed Now Zad from south to north. It passed between us with little drama until it nosed up and exposed its engines to the town. The second it opened them up to climb away I nearly shit myself.
‘Missile launch short range left eleven o’clock,’ Bitching Betty screamed at me.
‘Missile launch,’ I shouted to Jon over the radio.
‘Missile launch too,’ he shouted back. My mouth turned to liquid aluminium and my scrotum shrivelled.
‘SAMbush…’
The second the Bitch said it, I started counting down. Flares were pouring off both sides of my Apache; my eyes were peeled, scanning the sky for streaks of smoke heading towards me.
Five…
I knew not to manoeuvre until after five. I could see Billy highlighted in the glow of the flares.
‘Widow Seven Two, this is Wildman Five One. Did you see a missile being fired at us?’
Four…
I was trusting in the Air Warfare Centre’s reassurance that we’d be okay, but I was fucking shitting it.
‘Negative.’
Three…
‘Did you hear a bang over Now Zad that could be a misfired missile?’
Two…
‘Negative.’
One…
And with that I flung the Apache onto her left side to change my profile relative to the ManPAD operator.
Jon and I climbed, looking for smoke trails.
Nothing.
The Chinooks appeared on my radar and we went back to what we were supposed to be doing; we concentrated on getting the men out.
The extraction went like clockwork from this point on, but all four of us remained very spooked.
We were diverted to pick up a US casualty in the middle of the desert on the way back but other than that the trip was uneventful.
On our return the lads were eager to hear how many Taliban we’d killed. The honest truth was we didn’t know and never would. I vowed from that point onwards never to count. Killing didn’t bother me; to me it was part of the job. My countrymen voted in a government. That government had sent me here under strict ROE. I complied with these ROE and that meant killing bad people. End of. I got paid at the end of the month and if I was lucky, I might even get home to spend it.
During the debrief, it became very clear to us that we had killed whoever had been in the woods. The boss told us that the intelligence hit to the north, the one we had just shot up in the woods, was actually 3 Para’s target. We wondered why he hadn’t told us this at the time. The boss claimed he didn’t want to divert our attention from the primary task of protecting 3 Para.
I was fuming inside. Had we been armed with that knowledge we could have got Nick to leave the area, fly over the top of 3 Para and use the TADS to observe and ID the guy from a distance. That way 3 Para would have got a bit of protection and we would have been able to report what we saw. We could have ambushed him on the CO 3 Para’s orders, instead of the target sitting in a wood waiting for me to deliver a young Paratrooper into his sights. The thing that made me most angry wasn’t his meddling from a distance; it was his complete lack of trust in our ability to do the right thing.
We never did find out if a SAM was fired at us. I was comforted to know that Jon shared my faith in the system, even if all four of us admitted to being terrified in those few seconds.
Billy did have a good reason for sticking with his seat, and he was quick to apologise. He knew it would only take thirty seconds to swap, but couldn’t have lived with the thought of a soldier dying if we arrived even ten seconds later.
The boss never did thank us for saving the day; not that I expected it. The only thanks I needed was knowing that the guy 3 Para were chasing hasn’t been heard of since. One way or another, he must have ended up dead.
SUNDAY, 16 JULY 2006
Camp Bastion
0325 hours local
My watch alarm went off and I forced open my eyes. It felt like only minutes since I’d crashed out.
I was shagged out, absolutely ball-bagged. We all were. We’d finished Op Augustus a couple of days before, and had been out the whole of yesterday. We hadn’t got more than a couple of hours’ sleep.