Ed Macy: Hellfire

I pointed the nose in the direction of the general’s house.

On the way, I checked the map and noticed that the general lived in an area that the instructors used for confined areas – a place that was extremely difficult, if not nearly impossible, for a helicopter to land in – though it wasn’t on the cheat-maps.

I flew cautiously around the outside of a clearing that constituted the confined area. Every time I looked down, it looked smaller and smaller. I drew this to the big man’s attention.

‘So get me in there before we run out of fuel,’ he demanded. ‘Farrar’s in a bad way.’

I stared at the tiny gap in the trees, hoping for inspiration. It was touch-and-go. I didn’t know what to do.

‘Are you going in or what?’ Half-drowned by the crackling comms and the scream of the Gazelle, Palmer’s voice still managed to sound like a megaphone.

Make-your-mind-up time, Macy. Palmer wasn’t interested in debates or discussions. He wanted decisiveness and action.

What was the right answer? What was I supposed to do?

I took a deep breath. ‘No sir. I’m not going to make it.’

There was a pause, then: ‘Nor could I. Take me home.’

I breathed a sigh of relief. But Palmer hadn’t finished with me yet. As we approached the airfield, he reached forward and chopped the engine on me.

Suckered again…

I applied my autorotation skills, dumping the collective lever I had in my left hand to store the energy in the blades so I could use it to cushion the landing. We dropped like a stone and the tone of the blades rose an octave as they freewheeled faster and faster.

At about fifty feet I pulled up the nose to slow the speed and as we dropped through twenty-five feet I gave the collective a sharp pull to arrest the rate of descent. The speed was now about thirty knots and we’d dropped to five feet as I levelled her off by pushing forward on the cyclic between my legs and pulling up slowly on the collective, using up the stored energy. I could hear the blades slowing and at the point we would have fallen out of the sky we touched down. We were running fast and bouncing around a bit but I’d got her on the ground before finally skidding to an untidy halt; scraping a slight zigzag in the grass in the process. Engine-off landings were not my strongest point.

With sticky palms, I sat there waiting for Palmer to issue me with fresh instructions. Instead, he pulled on the rotor brake, threw off his straps and opened the door. This time, he really was finished. Just before he unplugged his helmet he said, ‘Do you have any points for me?’

Me? Points for him? I just wanted him to get out before he produced another hoop for me to leap through.

‘I’ll let you into a little secret, Corporal Macy. If you keep that up you might live long enough to fly the Apache. No debrief points. Well done.’

With that he bounced me off my door one last time before gently closing his and taking off across the grass. When he was several strides from the helicopter, it dawned on me that I’d passed.

MAY 1997

1,500 feet over Crossmaglen, South Armagh, Northern Ireland

‘Gazelle Five, this is One Zero Alpha. All callsigns are now firm, over.’

I pulled the transmit button on the cyclic. ‘Gazelle Five, roger, wait out.’

I put the Gazelle into a shallow turn and turned to the guy on my right. ‘Look down now, Scottie, and you can see where each brick in the multiple is. The most important element of working with foot soldiers is to identify where each and every man is. If the IRA kick off you need to know exactly where to look.’

Scottie peered down through the bug-eyed canopy. ‘Hellooo,’ he said, pretending to wave to the men on the ground. Not that they stood a hope in hell of seeing us; we were stooging around above them at 1,500 feet. A ‘brick’ was half a section-four men – the British Army’s standard unit in Northern Ireland. A multiple is three or more bricks.

I was sitting in the left-hand seat, the commander of Gazelle 5, an aircraft with 665 Squadron, 5 Regiment Army Air Corps. 5 Regiment was the AAC’s Northern Ireland Regiment to which I’d been posted for five months the year before.

Scottie, my pilot, was sitting in the right-hand seat. My job today was teaching him how to support foot multiples, a skill I’d acquired during my first posting to Northern Ireland four years earlier. As laid-back as Scottie appeared to be, he was also a damn good pilot. We were both sergeants and had known each other since I’d arrived in Dishforth after graduating from Middle Wallop. Scottie was a ‘posh jock’. He had a soft accent and a high-pitched voice that got even higher whenever he got excited. He spent most of his money on cars, clothes and watches.

Scottie took over the flying so I could use the camera.

‘One Zero Alpha has just entered Lismore,’ I said, ‘and taken up positions by the first house on the right. One Zero Bravo is behind them on the Dundalk Road covering the rear to the north.’ I gestured for him to look out of the window again. ‘One Zero Charlie has moved forward on the Dundalk Road to cover the south.’

One Zero Charlie was on both sides of the road, with an RUC policeman, looking along a straight stretch with good avenues of approach.

‘One Zero Charlie is in the most vulnerable position,’ I continued, ‘because a vehicle can approach from the south, take a shot and scoot off. You need to keep an eye out along the Dundalk Road in both directions. If you see any vehicles, yell, because I’ll need to warn the multiple commander. Large vehicles like covered tipper trucks and lorries could contain an IED. Keep a watch for them.’

‘Okay, Ed.’

Before the multiple moved off again, I needed to scout ahead to find its vulnerable points-areas of particular threat in the vicinity.

‘One Zero Alpha, this is Gazelle Five. I have identified all of your men. Can you send me your VPs for this area, over?’

A broad Ulster accent responded. ‘One Zero Alpha, aye, we only have the one. Once we move forward up Lismore we’ll cross a junction on our left leading south along Lismore Park. Can you see it, over?’ The multiple commander was clearly a guy with local knowledge.

I could see the junction he meant. I told him it was clear.

‘Gazelle Five, roger, over.’

‘That’s a bad crossing for us, mate,’ the Ulsterman said. ‘We’ve been shot at from that road before and the bastards have escaped onto the Dundalk Road and got away to the south, over.’

‘Gazelle Five, roger, wait out.’

All of this was new to Scottie, although it shouldn’t have been. Not that I blamed him. There had been a procedural breakdown in the way Gazelles had been supporting multiples in Northern Ireland and without remedial action I knew that more of our boys on the ground were going to die.

The threat level was high. Aside from IEDs and ambushes, it was the era of the South Armagh Sniper, a guy armed with a .50 calibre sniper rifle who’d taken out seven of our lads in the past five years. He was still out there. Our job was to provide top-cover, to scout ahead for anything that constituted a potential threat to the multiple on the ground. The Gazelle was an ideal platform for this role. Thanks to its powerful high-resolution, thermal-imaging camera system, we could stare down the throats of anyone down there, even from this altitude.

‘Look along this road on my TV monitor, Scottie, and you’ll see a lone vehicle at the dogleg bend facing south. That’s a good shooting position, and the car is facing in the escape direction.’

‘How do you know if it’s a threat?’

‘You don’t yet. You need to see if the engine is warm on the thermal camera and to see if anyone is in the car or ready to jump into it.’