Ed Macy - Apache

Everyone’s workload was horrendous because we were still brand new – we were developing and learning lessons on the Apache and changing procedures every single day. Everything had to be evaluated and reported, be it weapons functions for me, aircraft threats for Carl or the flight envelope for Billy.

Afghanistan took its toll physically too. The climate – wind, sand, heat and cold – was relentless. Young guys came back looking like men. Undisturbed sleep, as our Crew Rest Period rules required, was the last thing we got in a sleeping bag on a camp cot with perpetual aircraft noise and people coming and going all night.

Cumulative fatigue was the official name for it – burnout for short. It was hard to spot because we were all weathering at the same rate. As the tour went on, the Boss made a point of policing Crew Rest Period ever more religiously. He had to give direct orders.

‘Geordie, bed, now! ’

It would be left to his 2i/c to police the Boss, who was the most reluctant of all to leave the JHF. One or two started to get a little fractious, but most were too professional for that. People became quieter, preserving their energy for the job. The senior guys had to make a real effort to keep up the banter and morale.

Little accidents could happen easily. For pilots that might mean overtorquing an engine; for Groundies, putting rockets in the wrong tubes. Billy dragged all the pilots in for a brief the day after Boxing Day, and warned them to be careful about getting bitten by the aircraft.

‘My advice is, take a little bit longer doing everything you do. You may all think you’re absolutely okay. I promise you, you’re not.’

The constant stream of VIP visits was yet another addition to our workload. It wasn’t just the political party leaders – a constant stream of defence ministers, foreign ministers, shadow defence ministers, shadow foreign ministers, military chiefs and foreign military chiefs passed through Bastion. They thought they were doing us a favour, showing their solidarity with the chaps. We could never tell them they were a pain in the arse. VIPs tied up valuable airtime and resources; they all needed to be choppered about, and of course they all wanted to crawl all over the Apaches. Even Billy started to get bored with his bigwigs speech.

The one VIP we always had time for though was General Sir Richard Dannatt, the Chief of the General Staff. After years of faceless chiefs burying their heads in the sand and toeing the government’s line, General Dannatt infuriated the Prime Minister by speaking out – questioning policy in Iraq and calling for better soldiers’ pay and housing. A true soldiers’ friend, his honesty made him the most popular chief we’d had in a generation, and perhaps since Monty. He was also Colonel Commandant of the Army Air Corps, so we liked him even more.

General Dannatt’s latest visit coincided with this period. Trigger showed him around the flight line, Billy did his spiel in the aircraft and I went last with a weapons brief. ‘Right sir, this is our Ops Room and this is Mr Macy,’ Trigger said. ‘He’s going to show you some gun footage.’

‘Terrific, I’m looking forward to this. Where do you want me?’

I escorted him to a chair. I’d prepared shots of a missile attack, a rocket attack and a gun attack from a big contact south of Now Zad a few nights previously. Before I ran the tape, I gave him a quick description of the contact’s location with the help of a large-scale map of Helmand province stuck to the white partition wall upon which we projected the gun tapes.

Everyone takes down posters differently. I always remove the bottom blobs of Blu-tack first. And I thanked God that I did that morning.

As my hands moved to peel off the top blobs, my right palm brushed over a laminated surface. Something had been stuck on the partition wall behind the map.

I froze.

‘Something wrong, Mr Macy?’

I flashed Trigger a look, and knew he’d guessed what – or more precisely, who – was lurking behind the map.

‘No sir. Blu-tack’s a bit stiff, that’s all. One second.’

In one fluid movement, I managed to slide my right hand underneath the map and Rocco, unpeeled them both and dumped them under a table.

There was a muffled groan from the JHF’s back room.

‘Well done, Mr Macy,’ Trigger said with enormous relief.

General Dannatt looked puzzled. With Rocco subdued I played the tape and the general left looking very pleased with our shooting.

As usual, the culprit never came clean. He denied everything, but I blamed Geordie. Only he would have had the balls, panache and sheer stupidity to have attempted a 24-carat Rocco blinder.

The Boss took longer to get over it.

And from that moment onwards, Rocco mysteriously disappeared.

Just before New Year, we had another bitter reminder of the dangers lurking in the south of the province. A lance bombardier from 29 Commando Regiment, Royal Artillery, was killed when his vehicle drove over a landmine in the Garmsir area. A young lad with him lost his right leg.

Billy stuck a Hellfire and a shed load of 30-mm into it to stop the Taliban getting their hands on it. They later named a forward operating base in the desert after the killed soldier; FOB Dwyer became the permanent 105-mm gun emplacement to support the Garmsir DC.

There were strong suspicions the landmine had been planted by the Taliban – another tactic we were seeing more often. The Mujahideen wrought havoc for the Soviet Army by burying antitank mines in their path.

The New Year did give us something to look forward too, though. By the beginning of January Operation Glacier was ready to go.

Nine weeks of tough and dangerous work had gone into it. There had been a few false starts and a fair number of close shaves, but the southern Information Exploitation Battlegroup had stuck it out. By 1 January, Colonel Magowan’s men declared they were ready for Operation Glacier to go noisy.

The Taliban main supply route from Pakistan had been mapped. Not only did the battlegroup know their enemy’s main base locations, but they’d also pinpointed tunnel systems and ammo dumps. They’d discovered that they moved covertly between them disguised as local farmers. Now they were ready to destroy the lot. The marines’ .5-inch calibre Barratt sniper rifle was pointing right at the heart of the Taliban octopus, and they were about to pull the trigger.

They had located five enemy concentration points, each performing a different function in the Taliban’s sophisticated logistics chain: pampering, preparing for and then pushing their warriors into battle. These had been designated as Operation Glacier’s primary targets.

The plan was to prosecute one target at a time, moving steadily northwards. The furthest, more than twenty kilometres south of Garmsir, would be hit first (Operation Glacier 1), and the closest – two kilometres south-east of the Garmsir DC – would go last (Operation Glacier 5).

As each attack proceeded, survivors and forward groups would be funnelled north, and with their command chain broken, the old men in Quetta would have nowhere to send reinforcements. The retreating Taliban would finally be trapped in one killing zone at Garmsir.

They were going to follow the example of the old bull at the top of the hill, one of the marine officers explained. ‘The bull’s young son says to him, “Dad, let’s run down and jump on one of those cows in that field.” “No son,” the old bull replies. “Let’s walk down, and jump on them all.”’

Brigade believed that the destruction of the Taliban’s southern MSR would leave their operations in turmoil across half the province, and that they’d be unable to mobilise enough manpower for anything more than the odd pot shot on the Garmsir DC. Once they were on their knees, the southern battlegroup would make sure they kept them there.