Ed Macy - Apache

We never went up with any personal possessions on us; that meant no wallet, no family pictures, no wedding rings and certainly no US dollars – the currency used around camp – which would ID you in an instant. It was imperative to sanitise yourself entirely so as not to give the enemy any ammunition to break you during interrogation. A small crack was all they needed, and they’d prise it open until it was as wide as a house.

‘So you’re married are you, soldier? Kids too, I see from the picture in your wallet. You want to see them again? Maybe we’ll pay them a visit. I’ll call my friend at Leeds University to pick them up from school for you. Maybe we’ll slice them up in front of you like fucking salami – unless of course you want to talk to us…’

I carried Emily’s angel everywhere. I thought I might buy time proclaiming my belief in another world beyond our own. No religion at all was scorned by the Taliban. They weren’t to know that it was my family album and every letter I’d received. It was also a symbol of hope that I’d get back alive.

All we carried in the air was an official ID card with the ‘Big Four’ pieces of information that the Geneva Convention obliged us to reveal – name, rank, army number and date of birth. Our dog tags repeated the Big Four; we hung them around our neck alongside a vial of morphine which we could self-inject.

I kept a photo of Emily and my son and daughter in my locker, along with some spare batteries, a softie jacket, a pair of gloves, a cloth, a bottle of glass cleaner, my flying helmet, night vision goggles, survival jacket and a sleeping bag.

As we left the hangar on the fifty-metre walk to the rearming bays where the Apaches were ready to go, two aircraft were landing – 3 Flight completing their familiarisation.

It’s hard to forget your first sight of an Apache in the flesh. It still made me stop and stare. Its huge menacing shape, bristling with weapons and silhouetted against the deep blue sky, growing ever bigger as it closed on us. No single feature of the machine, from its angular and callus-like front profile to its chunky stabilator tail wing, was designed to please the eye. It was lean, purposeful and businesslike. Nothing was superfluous: every single bolt added to its killing power. Ugly, sure; but to me, a picture of perfection. Beauty and the beast wrapped into one.

‘Hey, Boss… Just because you’ve got the front seat today doesn’t mean you’re going to get it on every sortie.’

‘You’re obviously confusing your position as the Weapons Officer with my position as Boss,’ Chris said. ‘Get in and drive.’

It made sense for him to be in the front today so he could concentrate on what was below us while I gave him the guided tour.

Corporal Hambly, the Arming and Loading Point Commander, was waiting for us. He was in charge of the aircraft on the ground. He supervised an eight-man team whose sole job was to get us airborne. Simon Hambly stood by a wing, with an intercom plugged into it so he could speak to us in the cockpit when we started up. Whilst he was plugged in, he owned the Apache – not the Weapons Officer, or even his boss.

‘A Load Charlie for you, isn’t it sir?’

‘Yes thanks, mate. Just sightseeing today.’

Load Alpha was just Hellfire, Load Bravo only rockets. Load Charlie was our default load – a split weapons load on the pylons: two out of the four on the wings held Hellfire rails, the other two rocket pods. What you took depended on the mission. We weren’t going to put any rounds down today, but we never left base without a full complement just in case.

I did a quick walk around to double check that the protective covers had been removed from the weapons, intakes and exhausts.

‘All okay with the aircraft?’

‘She’s gleaming, sir. Cryptos loaded; be nice to her.’

I clambered up the right side of the Apache’s alloy skin, using the grab bars, and lifted up the back-seater’s heavy canopy door. It clicked open and hung there as I contorted myself onto the high, firm, flat seat. The Boss was already in.

Thirty minutes to takeoff.

The rear seat of an Apache was like a throne, high above the worker bees buzzing around below. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as comfortable. The foam pads on the seat and back were really tasty when we first got the Apaches, but after three years of heavily laden arses they had completely flattened. Anything more than a few hours in the cockpit these days and it felt like you were perched on a bag of golf balls. That was when the arse dance began, moving from one cheek to the other to try to alleviate the pain. Some of the guys resorted to half inflated therma-rest pillows.

The cockpit was like a sauna. The Afghan sun had beaten down on it all morning. Beads of sweat swelled up on my brow. A bank of controls and instruments faced me: buttons, switches and knobs of every shape and size – 227 in total, and every one designed to feel different so you could recognise them in the dark. Most of them were dual-or triple-purpose, which gave them a total of 443 different positions. Every action could require a combination of button pushes, so the number of potential combinations ran into the thousands.

One five-inch-square Multi Purpose Display screen sat each side of the control bank. We could bring up anything we liked on them, from the TV images filmed by the TADS lenses, to the digital script and diagrams of whatever we asked of the on-board computers. There were well over 1,500 different pages – engine pages, fuel pages, comms pages, weapons pages and radar pages. To the far left of the control bank was an alphabetical keyboard for typing data into the computers, or texting messages between Apaches.

A pioneering helicopter pilot of the 1930s would still have recognised the pedals, cyclic stick between my legs (controlling speed and direction – gripped by my right hand) and the collective lever below my left elbow (for height and power – gripped by my left). But that would be about it. He’d be mighty confused by the myriad triggers and buttons on both.

Because there were so many systems to test and configurations to set, achieving takeoff from cold required more than 1,000 button pushes. It took thirty minutes without any snags, fifteen at a mad push. Any quicker and we’d be switching things on in mid-air without knowing if they were going to work.

I inserted a key into the master ignition switch on a panel to the left of the collective then twisted the switch from ‘Off ’ to ‘Battery’. A few seconds’ pause as the battery leaked life into the beast, then the distinctive ‘click-click’ of the relays. The Up Front Display (UFD) – a panel top right of the controls showing critical information and faults digitally – lit up. The machine was stirring.

I closed the canopy door and flipped my helmet onto my head, making sure that my ears didn’t fold inside it (that would be agony in half an hour) and tightened the chinstrap. I plugged in the communication cord and the ongoing conversations of four different VHF / UHF and FM radio channels burst into life inside my helmet. The four channels were: the Joint Terminal Attack Controller’s net for us to communicate with the guys on the ground who needed us; the Coalition air net in Helmand so we could talk to other aircraft; the net back to the JHF; and the intra-Apache net to talk or send data to our wingmen and other Apaches in the squadron. In addition, there was a permanently open internal intercom for the two pilots to speak to each other. The Boss’s was the fifth voice in my ear. The sixth and seventh voices boomed through. ‘This is right wing; how do you read, sir?’

‘Nice and clear, Si. What about me?’

‘Clear as a bell, sir. Left wing check in.’

‘Loud and clear, Corporal Hambly.’