Ed Macy - Apache

Being on the raised bank wasn’t so good. It put him in clear line of sight of the enemy in the western village. It was surely only a matter of time before they saw him, artillery barrage or not.

He couldn’t be bluffing the Taliban, could he? Surely he would have done that from the relative safety of the ditch. He must have been concussed …

‘As soon as you can, Carl, I need both of our eyes back on Mathew, in case any of those scumbags make a run for him. I’ll tell the chain of command.’

Carl threw the Apache over his right shoulder and rolled her out 180 degrees, giving us both eyes on again. I gave Widow Seven One the news, and heard it echo repeatedly down all the commands. They were desperate to plan their next move.

‘Ugly Five One this is Widow Seven One. Is he alive?’

I’d already told him we didn’t know, and repeated it.

‘Ugly Five One, please confirm if he’s dead or alive.’

Billy had looked through his FLIR. ‘He’s got a heat source mate. A strong one. His extremities are still hot too. His hands are almost the same temperature as the rest of his body.’

It was the strongest sign of life we could get without actually seeing him move.

‘Ugly Five One can confirm he is warm but has not moved. There are no obvious signs of death; assumption is, he’s alive.’

An immediate response from a new callsign: ‘Ugly Five One, this is Wizard.’

Wizard? It was the Nimrod MR2, 20,000 feet above us. They only ever relayed messages from way up the food chain. That morning, it was the brigadier.

‘Ugly Five One, Sunray says do not let anyone get anywhere near the MIA. Ground troops will re-cross the river and recover Lance Corporal Ford ASAP.’

The brigadier had given the order. The rescue was on.

The big question now was would the marines get to him before the Taliban?

I kept my eyes glued to Mathew whilst Carl described the ground to me. Somehow the western village was still filling up with enemy. It was still almost entirely intact; the night’s bombardment hadn’t touched it. Though the artillery shells had left scorch marks on the walls, they hadn’t brought the buildings down. We’d spotted tracer and muzzle flashes from most of the huts, as the Taliban engaged the marines’ firebase on the berm. Whenever we got too close, they gave us a burst too – and a couple of RPGs for good measure.

The river still only had one crossing point. There was only one way the marines would get to Mathew, and that was right past the village. There was no two ways about it – they’d get another horrible smacking, if they got through at all.

Billy was the first to frame the thought. ‘Ed, we’ve got to take on that village. The marines are screwed unless someone flattens it before they get there.’

‘Not to mention what the wankers in there could do to Ford,’ Geordie chimed in.

I told the JTAC and asked for permission to engage.

He didn’t fuck about. ‘Ugly Five One this is Widow Seven One. You’re cleared hot onto the village. Destroy the position in preparation for the rescue.’

‘Copied. The buildings have multiple rooms and look pretty strong. Hellfire may not be best suited. Request fast air to assist ASAP.’

‘I have called for close air support. Do what you can in the meantime. But do not, I repeat, do NOT let anyone get near the MIA.’

We divided up the workload between the two Apaches. We needed to keep one aircraft pointing at the fort at all times so the Taliban knew we’d shoot them if they went for Ford. Carl and I watched Mathew from a half-moon-shaped orbit in the east while Billy let rip on the village. Then we swapped roles. As I slaved my crosshairs up and down the fort wall, Geordie and Billy began their first run from the south-east at 9.03am.

‘Engaging with thirty Mike Mike.’

I glanced up from my TADS to see his cannon rounds tearing into the first of the fifteen huts and buildings, spitting great lumps of earth and rock out of the walls and igniting the straw roof. Billy got off four good twenty-round bursts before Geordie had to break off. Every ten seconds, another three 105-mm shells pounded down on the village too. Two long, barn-like buildings had good arcs of fire up the towpath and onto Mathew. On his second and third attack runs, he planted Hellfires and raked them with 30-mm, collapsing their stone roofs on the fighters inside.

We swapped over. I could still see a series of holes dug into the eastern wall of one of the barns at ground level – little holes a few inches wide, enough to poke a muzzle through. My bet was that the Taliban snipers had covered themselves with mattresses, to protect themselves from our frag. I smacked a Hellfire into the wall and took it down. My adrenalin was up. With my second, I dropped the roof of a smaller building with three sniping ports, ten metres further north. The mattresses wouldn’t get in the way of those puppies, that was for sure. Widow Seven One piped up as we swapped roles again.

‘Ugly, we are taking heavy incoming fire across here at the firebase. Every time you turn away from the village it’s RPG Central out of there.’

We must have killed a fair few by now, but our pummelling hadn’t distracted the bastards at all. There had to be dozens of them down there, but we’d seen no movement between buildings since we’d begun our onslaught. How the hell were they all getting in? Billy broke in as Carl began our third run.

‘Stand by, stand by; he has moved.’

‘Say again Billy?’

‘Mathew Ford has moved. I say again, he HAS moved.’

‘Stand by. Break off, Carl.’ I shuffled my backside in the seat to get more comfortable. My pulse started to race. Carl turned sharply right back into the fort and I slewed my TADS back onto Mathew. His feet and hands were still in the same position. He looked no different to me.

‘Are you sure, Billy?’

‘One hundred per cent. He has moved. He’s alive.’

If Billy was sure he’d seen him move, that was good enough for me. I told the JTAC. This was big news, and it upped the ante considerably. Another tidal wave of chatter burst over the net. Now the marines knew they had a life to save.

But Billy had been thinking.

‘Ed, I’ve got an idea. Ford needs to be moved now. He’s alive, but clearly badly injured. He could be dying right now.’

‘Affirm.’

‘Well, we could pick him up…’

‘Say again?’

‘We could rescue him. You stay up, we’ll go down. One of us gets out and straps him to the side of the aircraft. You know, like our downed aircraft emergency drill.’

‘Stand by.’

If he’d moved he was probably badly hurt, because he wasn’t moving a muscle now. Or he was unconscious. Either way, he needed help fast. I thought it through. It was ludicrous; we had no FLIR and they had no access to the mission net. More importantly still, I’d picked up unconscious bodies before. There was no way one person could shift Mathew to the Apache and strap him on alone. I consulted Carl and he agreed.

‘I know what you’re saying Billy. But we’ve got a U / S FLIR and you wouldn’t be able to lift him on your own.’

Billy paused. ‘Okay, I’ll speak to the Boss.’

He called Trigger on the secure FM net. He’d made a beeline for Camp Bastion’s Joint Operations Cell on his return from Kandahar, to follow the battle and sort out a contingency plan.

‘Negative,’ was Trigger’s response.

‘But he’s still hot and we think he’s just unconscious. We can get him back.’

‘NEGATIVE,’ Trigger said, more firmly still.

Billy wasn’t giving up that easily. There had been no word on exactly when the marines we’re going to cross. He was convinced it was Mathew Ford’s best chance. Thirty seconds later, he came back on to me.