Ed Macy - Apache

The drama of the missing presents now gripped the squadron. Trigger finally stepped in on Christmas Eve. He told 3 Flight their presents were safe and sound with the RMPs. 3 Flight tried to pretend they’d never cared about them in the first place. Honours were just about even – though we still had a score to settle with Darwin-the-Rat.

HQ Flight were up early on Christmas Day for a deliberate tasking. We had to escort a Chinook on a series of resupplies to the three most northern district centres. It was tedious stuff and went on for hours. We were in the cockpit – air or ground – for most of the day. It was bitterly cold and the weather was dire: low cloud and drizzling rain. Camp Bastion turned into a quagmire, and we squelched all the way to the flight line.

‘Like Christmas in the World War One trenches,’ Carl moaned. ‘But without the footie.’

Kajaki was furthest away, so it was our first destination. We went the long way round – low through the eastern mountains at 1,000 feet – to avoid SAM traps. We hadn’t seen the mountains in the rain before, and it was an eerie experience. Great slabs of glistening silver-grey rock towered either side of us, punctuated by puffs of marshmallow cloud. It felt like we were on our way to Middle Earth. Everything was deathly quiet; we were on silent drills because of the Chinook’s insecure radios.

Carl could see well enough to fly, but there was no harm in having a backup in shit like this. So for the only time on the tour I flicked to the radar page on my left-hand MPD and switched on the Longbow’s Terrain Profile Mode.

The US Apaches flew without their Longbow Radars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Initially designed to help destroy armoured columns, the Americans said they were no use for counterinsurgency. They swapped them for more weapons weight. Our Rolls Royce engines were strong enough to carry the Longbow and all the weapons we’d need.

The Longbow’s Ground Target Mode was extremely handy for spotting vehicles at a distance, or well out of the TADS line of sight. It pinged anything moving or static up to eight kilometres away, in any direction. But Terrain Profile Mode was even more useful on a sortie like this. The Longbow mapped out the lie of the land up to two and a half kilometres in front of us. On the MPD, it showed terrain below us as black, terrain within 100 feet of us as grey and terrain above us – terrain that we’d hit – as white. It projected an electronic zigzag graph across our monocle so we could identify the hills and valleys ahead of us. TPM meant we could fly in all weather, day and night, at ultra-low level, at great speed and totally blind. Carl got us through the spooky mountains off his own bat, but it was always nice to know TPM was there if we needed it.

After Kajaki, we hit Now Zad, then back to Camp Bastion, south down to Lashkar Gah where the Chinook had passengers to pick up, Bastion again, and finally back up to Forward Operating Base Robinson near Sangin.

The clouds finally began to clear on our last leg over the desert, treating us to a perfect blood orange sunset.

‘ I can see clearly now the rain has gone …’ I started to sing.

There was never going to be a better moment.

‘Five Zero, Five One; there’s something rattling by my door. Check the nearside of my aircraft with your TADS, will you?’

Billy pulled level with us and Trigger swung his Day TV camera onto our cockpit.

‘Ho, ho, ho!’

I’d taken off my helmet for a few seconds and pulled on a red and white Father Christmas hat to give them a wave. For the first time since we’d got up it began to feel like Christmas Day.

We were back too late for turkey and stuffing in the cookhouse, so we scrubbed up and joined the squadron party. It was being held in our newly acquired recreation tent. A stage and makeshift bar were set up, the place was rigged out with tinsel and a sparkly silver tree, and we all piled in to enjoy a rare drink.

Alcohol was banned for all British troops across Helmand. On Christmas night a special exception was made and everyone was allowed two cans of beer. Only the four IRT / HRF pilots had to stay dry. They went to the party in full flying rig ready for the call-out if it came. Luckily, it didn’t.

Every section performed a sketch, taking the mickey out of all the squadron characters. These could go on for hours, but the good ones were comic genius. Instead of a sketch, 2 Flight played us a film they’d spent countless hours crafting, a pastiche of Top Gun with footage from the movie edited in.

The highlight of the evening was Darwin’s Kangaroo Court; all the better because he had no idea it was coming. As soon as the entertainment finished, he was held firmly by both arms and tried then and there. The charge: ‘Wilful betrayal of the Warrant Officers and Sergeants’ Mess by forming a secret alliance with the officers – namely, by telling them who had their Christmas presents.’ The jury agreed it was a most heinous offence. There was a prosecution, a defence and the Boss was the judge.

‘Right, bring in the guilty bastard.’ Trigger opened the proceedings. The evidence was presented with all the venom of a Stalin show trial. Darwin was left with little choice but to plead guilty.

‘Guilty is the correct plea,’ Trigger decreed. ‘You have been convicted and I hereby sentence you to wearing your flying suit and helmet throughout the whole of your next evening meal in the cookhouse.’

We sat on our cots at the end of the evening and opened our presents. The Boss joined us, and set up his camcorder so he could send the video home to his kids. We took it in turns. I opened my kids’ presents first and then Emily’s. She’d written Open Last on one; by the time I got round to it, everyone else had finished.

‘Right, Mr Macy, only one left.’ Trigger grabbed his camera. ‘I’m going to film you opening it.’

I undid the bow and unwrapped a beautiful little red box. I thought it would contain cufflinks or something, but there was a tiny Christmas stocking inside it. In the stocking was a tiny card. I couldn’t speak.

‘Come on Mr Macy, what is it? Hey guys look, is that a tear on Macy’s face? Macy’s crying!’

I rediscovered my voice. ‘I’m not crying; my eyes are sweating. And take that camera out my face.’

‘So what’s she written then?’

She’d written four words. Congratulations. We are pregnant .

I raced to the telephones. Emily was four months gone. Going back to Afghanistan wasn’t planned, and we never dreamed we’d be this lucky. She kept the whole thing a secret for as long as she could so as not to worry me.

‘Don’t worry about me, I’m just relieved I can tell my family now. Don’t do anything stupid; I don’t want to be forced to name him Ed Macy. Especially if he turns out to be a girl.’

‘ Ed Macy ?’

‘Yes, that’s what he’ll be called if you do something stupid. Are you carrying the angel?’

When I got back to the tent, all the others had gone to sleep. I poured myself a whisky from the emergency-only bottle I kept hidden in the bottom of my bag. I was going to be a father for the third time and I was the happiest man in Camp Bastion. That was worth a dram in the dark.

The only downside about Christmas on operations was that it finished. Afterwards, the squadron hit the usual post-big occasion blues. We were halfway through the tour, with another two months to go and no more cans of Christmas beer to look forward to. And fatigue was setting in.

The longer we were out here, the more knackered people looked. Since everything we did was devoted to saving life or taking it, the mental pressure was intense – and not only in the air. One sloppy drill by a young refueller or one of the boys loading weapons on the flight line could be catastrophic. Keeping 100 per cent focused for 100 days without a break was tough, especially if you were eighteen years old.