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TUESDAY, 4 JULY 2006

Camp Bastion, Helmand province, southern Afghanistan

2255 hours local

The helicopter god was nearly out of miracles.

3 Para’s A Company had never intended to stay in Sangin; they’d just dropped by to reassure the local elders that we were on their side. Then Intelligence reported that they’d walked right into the hornet’s nest—the Taliban’s only senior command and control location in southern Helmand—and the head shed ordered them to hold out at all costs.

Sangin had been under siege for weeks now; the Taliban had been hammering the place morning, noon and night. Their objective was simple: to injure a British soldier seriously enough to force a casevac helicopter insertion, and take out the ‘cow’ as it landed.

In the meantime they were amassing enough anti-coalition militia to rip the District Centre (DC) to shreds.

Thirty or so Paras were locked down in the platoon house, running perilously short of food and ammunition. Three of them had died a couple of days ago, and another was killed this morning while trying to secure the landing site for a casevac mission launched to recover a badly injured survivor. The Taliban were a hair’s breadth away from bringing down a Chinook with its crew, surgeon, anaesthetist, and the rest of the medical team on board.

We were called into Ops just before last light. More soldiers had been hit. One of them had spiralled from badly injured to critical. He’d last the night, but needed to be in the Bastion field hospital before lunchtime tomorrow. In any other theatre of conflict he’d have been Priority One and flown out immediately.

Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Tootal, Commanding Officer (CO) of 3 Para, only had a brief window in which to pull out his injured and Killed in action (KIA) and replenish the DC with men and supplies. The Taliban usually attacked ferociously at night, melted away before first light, then kicked back in with snipers after morning prayers. But now they knew that a casevac was imminent, we reckoned that rest and prayers would have to wait.

We’d been given permission to fire into known Taliban positions to prevent them from engaging the Chinooks. The enemy could only engage the landing site (LS) from two long, irrigated tree lines and a smashed-up building with four firing ports in its wall. I’d spotted a bunch of empty shells and an escape ladder there, so the ground troops had nicknamed it ‘Macy House’.

Our plan was simple.

Jake and Jon in their Apache had the callsign Wildman Five Two and Simon and I in ours were Wildman Five Three. We would go in all guns blazing. We’d run in from the south with rockets then engage Macy House and the wooded hedge lines with 30 mm High Explosive Dual Purpose (HEDP) rounds as the Chinooks landed from and departed to the north. Bad light, the element of surprise and a curtain of dust from the Chinook rotors should do the rest.

It was blunt and effective, and we were good to go.

Until Whitehall intervened…

The Commanding Officer of the Joint Helicopter Force (Afghanistan) (JHF(A)) called the Officer Commanding 656 Squadron Army Air Corps (AAC) on a secure telephone to explain. He was put on speakerphone.

Major Will Pike, A Company’s OC, had assured them that there were no civilians in that area of Sangin. They had also been made aware that a soldier had lost his life trying to secure the LS, and that a Chinook would soon follow. But the British government would not allow Apaches to use prophylactic firing into known Taliban positions. We could only fire in self-defence, or in defence of troops in contact.

In other words, we couldn’t engage until we’d received incoming fire.

The CO apologised; he’d done everything he could. Whether we risked it was now down to us.

The OC, Major Black replaced the handset.

The surgeon confirmed that the soldier would die without his intervention, but it was down to Squadron Leader Woods. Woody was leading this casevac. He never asked his pilots to do something he wasn’t prepared to do himself.

Eventually we agreed that the Apaches would go to Sangin early and cause a deception. We’d pretend we were out looking for the Taliban firing positions. Just before the Chinooks arrived we’d appear to find them at Macy House and in the woods and engage them; to satisfy the Rules of Engagement (ROE) we’d fire just in front of their positions.

With the plan set and Lieutenant Colonels Felton and Tootal satisfied we were doing all we could within the constraints of the ROE, we crashed out for another couple of hours. We’d be over Sangin at 0300 hours and the Chinooks would land forty-five minutes later—at first light.

We were up at 0115 hours and into Ops for 0130. Kenny, our watchkeeper, briefed us that Widow Seven Six—Sangin’s Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC)—would call the codeword Pegasus when the area around the DC was secure and we were cleared to engage.

During our couple of hours of broken sleep there had been another huge firefight. The Taliban had used mortars, Chinese rockets, recoilless rifles, Rocket propelled grenades (RPGs), a plethora of machine guns and small arms. We’d responded with B1 bombers, 105 mm light guns, Javelin anti-tank missiles, 81 mm mortars, .50 cal machine guns, machine guns and small arms.

‘It’s the fucking Alamo out there.’ Kenny was a Lynx pilot and an ex-Para with over thirty years’ experience, and he knew the score.

‘Only bad news from me, I’m afraid,’ Jerry said. Jerry was an RAF Flight Lieutenant, our Intelligence Officer. ‘The threat remains very high and the risk to the CH47s is off the scale. They may not know there will be two, or have the exact time of your arrival, but Taliban intercepts have confirmed that they know we have injured men in Sangin, and they know a cow is coming.

‘They’ve ordered all anti-coalition militia—every man with a weapon—to close in. The Apache is the only weapon that can really hurt them, and intercepts over the last twenty-four hours have been full of talk of bringing one down. More specifically, we have heard them say, Bring in the Stingers and fire when they arrive. The mosquitoes are scared, so don’t be afraid to shoot them down. Their morale is very high after the recent killings and they believe their plan to use up our ammo and force a resupply has worked. Any questions?’

The silence spoke volumes.

‘Then all I can say is good luck…’

The chocolate bars were dished out on the short walk to the aircraft. Jake immediately paid for the privilege of eating into Jon’s private stash.

‘Do you actually know what time it is Dolly?’

Jake had got his nickname during our Apache training, when he shaved the odd hour off our fourteen-hour working days. As often as he could manage it, his family came first.

Jon restrained himself from singing the Parton theme tune to 9 to 5, but he never failed to lift our spirits.

Sangin

0300 hours

‘Widow Seven Six this is Wildman Five Two and Five Three. We are a pair of Apaches with four Hellfire missiles, thirty-eight rockets and 600 cannon rounds. Confirm you know of our deception plan?’

The JTAC would only speak to us on the secure frequency when we arrived in the overhead.

Jon and Simon set up a high orbit opposite each other around the DC, like two circling buzzards.

‘Widow Seven Six affirmative. I don’t care what you do as long as you get the injured out and reinforcements in. Confirm L Hour?’ The JTAC wanted to know what time the Chinooks would hit the LS.

‘Wildman. L Hour is set for Zero-Three-Forty-Five hours. H Hour is set for Zero-Three-Forty-Three hours. Confirm all men are east of the canal and no civilians have been seen west of the canal.’

‘My position is at the building just west of Bridge Two over the canal. I have the injured with me. There are no troops further south or west than my position. Copy so far?’

We copied. The DC lay on the east side of the canal. To its south were trees and buildings that hid the Taliban. To its east the town sprawled for a couple of hundred metres to a now empty marketplace and gave the attackers concealed avenues of approach. The dry wadi spread east beyond its northern entrance, splitting the town in two. The gap allowed heavy weapons and recoilless rifles uninterrupted fields of fire from the north and protection to melt away without fear of a follow-up. North-west by a hundred metres was the fast flowing Helmand River and the only safe avenue of approach for the load-carrying Chinooks. The canal stretched south as far as the eye could see, its tree-lined bank affording the Taliban a highway along which to move up to Macy House and the irrigation ditches surrounding the LS.

The JTAC, the protection party, the injured and the dead now occupied the only building west of Bridge Two. The LS was a 150-metre wide, 300-metre deep field south-west of them.

‘And we haven’t seen a civilian this side of the canal for weeks,’ he continued. ‘But be aware that the Taliban know you’re here already. We’ve heard their commanders telling them to aim at the cow first-then the mosquitoes.’

We flicked onto the insecure Common Tactical Air Frequency (CTAF) so the Taliban could get the full benefit of everything we said. Jake began by telling us that he was looking to the south down the canal near Bridge Three ‘where the Taliban killed our soldier’. Confirming he was dead may have raised their moral but we hoped it would also persuade them a Chinook wasn’t inbound.

Neither of us was looking out for Taliban. We were too worried that we might miss the open ground when we did fire and hit their positions by accident. I’d spent the best part of four hours truing up the rocket launchers before we went to bed. It was strictly against the rules, but given the circumstances the CO had allowed me to do so.

I’d balanced an inclinometer on the live rockets and adjusted their launchers to the correct angles before tightening them. It broke every rule we could think of, and then some.

Jake had grabbed my shoulders with both hands and looked me straight in the eye before asking if I was 100 per cent sure. I told him that as long as he could shoot straight they’d work.

If we missed the target and hit the woods, or worse still our own troops, I’d be directly accountable for tampering with a live weapon system. They had to be bang-on, or I’d be banged up. Second chances were in short supply right now.

It was still dark. I could only make out the landscape from the thermal picture on the right-hand Multi-Purpose Display (MPD) screen just above my knee. The fields were dark and the river pitch-black, but the two tree lines positively glowed.

I aimed the Target Acquisition and Designation Sight (TADS) crosshair between them. Holding it steady I squeezed the laser trigger and pushed a switch.

T10 appeared at the bottom of my MPD screen, below the thermal image.

I now had the position stored, but the fear of an inquiry forced me to double-check it. I knew Jake would be doing the same a hundred metres further north.

We discussed looking for mortar base plates and heavy machine gun positions to give the Taliban something to talk about then lased and stored our firing positions in front of the 100 metre tree line on the LS.

T11…

‘Wildman Five Two this is Wildman Five Three,’ I called. ‘I have detected Taliban hiding in the buildings to the south of the DC.’

I hoped they’d assume I’d located whoever was waiting.

T12-right in front of Macy House.

‘Wildman Five Two,’ Jake said ‘I have Taliban in both tree lines to the south-west of the DC. Stand by.’

Neither of us had so much as begun to look for the Taliban.

We called the JTAC and he confirmed that the Taliban commanders were telling their men to stand their ground and fight.

It was now 0330 local.

The bluff and counterbluff had continued for the best part of twenty-five minutes-but they knew our ROE better than we did, so we just had to sit tight until the time was right.

Jake decided it was time to raise the stakes.

‘Wildman Five Three this is Wildman Five Two. Fireplan: we will engage the Taliban in the trees to the south-west of the DC with Apache rockets. Copy?’

‘Copied.’

‘Then we will use the Apache guns. You shoot at the buildings to the south. I will shoot at the trees. Copy?’

I copied.

‘We will fire from the south on my order. Kill all of the Taliban. Read back.’

I read it back as Simon banked us gently towards the south.

It was beginning to get light, but not light enough to bring colour to the silhouettes of trees, the canal that ran from Bridge Two or the rooflines of the town.

Four klicks to the south of the DC Simon and Jon turned back in a perfectly obvious and synchronised manoeuvre. We were nice and high so we stood out against the rapidly lightening sky.

We began to run in at forty knots.

Simon made the call we’d been waiting for on the secure inter-aircraft radio. ‘I have two rotary icons on the FCR in the desert to the north-west. The Hardwood callsigns are inbound to Sangin and on time.’

‘Widow Seven Six this is Wildman,’ Jake called the JTAC on the secure frequency. ‘Chinooks inbound; confirm we are clear to engage.’

I felt our nose dip and level again as Simon increased to ramming speed. A quick glance left with the naked eye confirmed Jon was 500 metres away and on level-pegging with us. We were in full view of the Taliban.

‘This is Widow Seven Six. Pegasus. Clear hot. Clear hot.’

I pressed T10 and called ‘Come Co-op’ to Simon after I actioned the rockets.

‘Co-op,’ Simon replied.

The MPD confirmed everything I needed to know: co-op bottom right and T10 bottom left. My crosshair was smack in the middle of the field and I was hands off. The Apache would hold the TADS on the position without any help from me. More importantly I could see where Jake was supposed to be firing.

Please be dead on. Please hit the target…

‘Running in to engage Taliban positions with rockets,’ Jake said. That should encourage them to look south.

The range was counting down above T10.

3.5KMS…3.4KMS…

‘On Jake’s executive word of command, Simon: match and shoot.’

‘Match and shoot with Jake,’ Simon replied.

The crosshair was static and Simon lined up the rocket steering cursor by adjusting our flight path. We were a hair trigger from firing.

‘Engaging with rockets,’ Jake called on the secure radio before switching back to the Taliban frequency.

3.0KMS…2.9KMS…

‘Wildmen engaging in five…’ Jake paused to allow the JTAC a final opportunity to call off the firemission.

Nothing…

‘Three…two…one…’

2.8KMS…Rockets peeled off both sides of our gunships with a whoosh.

I couldn’t bring myself to look out of the cockpit window…

Their time of flight (TOF) crept down on the MPD.

TOF4…

Four seconds to impact and they were far too high on my screen to judge if they’d hit.

‘Hardwoods have about three klicks to run…’ The tension was getting to Simon too.

TOF3…

The rockets were still too high and fading fast to a pinpoint glow.

‘Engaging,’ Jon called, for the benefit of the boss back at Camp Bastion.

TOF2…

They began to drop down the screen, but far too slowly for my liking. Then they disappeared entirely.

What the fuck…?

TOF1…

Two huge dust clouds blossomed right under my crosshair.

My focus shot up the screen; Jake’s rockets had also landed bang on the button.

‘Get in…’ I punched in T11.

Both sets of rockets had landed safely.

The TADS jumped right in front of the 100 metre tree line. I deslaved the lock because the rockets were so accurate. I moved the crosshair to a gnat’s knacker away from the foliage and called to Simon to match and shoot again.

A gentle right bank followed by a roll out, then another set of rockets rippled off our gunship and landed with pinpoint accuracy. They too disappeared just before impact as their thermal signature matched the surroundings. A confirmatory glance told me Jake had matched us shot for shot. Simon and Jon were doing a storming job.

‘Hardwoods have about a klick to run,’ Simon said.

‘Switch to guns,’ Jake responded.

I had already slaved the TADS to T12.

I pushed up the weapon select button and the rocket symbology on my MPD was replaced by 300 rounds of cannon.

With the crosshair twenty metres in front of Macy House I let rip with a ranging burst. Ten white hot pins of light dropped down the screen. My heart started to pound as they passed through my aiming mark and headed towards the building. They ploughed into the ground with a metre to go, kicking up a column of earth and dust fifty metres high—enough to screen the LS from the sniper’s positions.

‘Fuck…that was close…’ I changed the burst limit to twenty.

‘Not close enough for my liking, but I’d still aim off a bit if I were you,’ Simon replied before updating us on the secure radio. ‘Hardwoods are about to cross the river and come into view of the Taliban.’

I deslaved the TADS from T12, adjusted the sight, lased and fired a twenty-round burst. I felt every one of them through my calf muscles as they poured off the gunship like steel rain.

I switched to the field south of the LS and ripped up the ground in front of the trees with a series of twenty-round bursts of HEDP bullets.

‘They’re over the river,’ Simon called.

It was getting lighter by the second. I could now see that the south was well and truly blocked from view.

I switched my fire to the right, next to the canal bank.

Jake switched his left, further up the tree line.

We opened up in unison, providing a clear avenue for the Chinooks. Cannon rounds stitched their way along the edge of their approach path as they flared to land. The dust rolled south as the monstrous machines hit the ground. I fired fifty metres to their south-east and Jake did the same to their south-west-far closer than we had considered safe twenty-four hours ago.

No sooner were they down than they had lifted again.

We kept on ploughing up the LS until they were over the river and in the sanctuary of the open desert.

‘Checkfire,’ Jake ordered.

I stowed the M230 cannon.

The entire field was a dustbowl with a lone building in the north-east corner. A succession of Paras made their way over the bridge like ants in the pale dawn light. As the dust cloud drifted further south the last of them crossed into the DC.

‘Wildman this is Widow. That’s us all across safely and not a single shot fired.’

‘End of firemission. You’re clear back to Bastion. Thanks for the support-and stay on this freq for a Taliban update.’

We were only a mile from Sangin when he called back to explain what he’d meant. One of his interpreters with a radio scanner had heard a senior Taliban commander asking why they’d failed to shoot down the cows and the mosquitoes.

Their reply said it all: ‘The mosquitoes were firing at us and we couldn’t shoot…’

‘Wildman copied,’ I said. ‘I don’t think we’ll get away with that twice…’