Ed Macy - Hellfire

My watch alarm went off and I forced open my eyes. It felt like only minutes since I’d crashed out.

I was shagged out, absolutely ball-bagged. We all were. We’d finished Op Augustus a couple of days before, and had been out the whole of yesterday. We hadn’t got more than a couple of hours’ sleep.

I strapped my head torch round my wrist then pulled on some shorts and a pair of desert boots. My flying suit was at the aircraft.

I joined the others at the Burco boiler. There wasn’t much chatter. What was there to talk about, except how completely fucked we were? I had my own coffee maker. I threw in some ground coffee Emily had posted to me, poured on boiling water and pushed down the plunger without waiting long enough.

It was pitch-black outside, but as warm as an English summer’s day. You could wander about in no more than a T-shirt and there was no chill to your skin. The nights were also absolutely, totally still, not a breath of wind.

We blundered our way to the Ops room, across ditches and berms. The Chinook IRT/HRF pilots and loadies fell in alongside us. Brews in hand, everyone was quiet. We’d got to the point where we didn’t really want to wake up. We were going through the motions, following where our exhausted bodies led.

Simon and I now flew as one pair and Jake and Jon the other, in what had become the newly constituted 2 Flight. Jake had turned up several weeks earlier following the birth of his first child, a little boy, Finn, at the end of May.

His arrival had coincided with a squabble over which flights were getting the most action. Dan’s 1 Flight and Pat’s 3 Flight had gone head to head, with 2 Flight-us-left on the sidelines. Some form of organised rotation would have sorted things out in an instant. It was all a bit ridiculous.

Jake’s response was typically phlegmatic. ‘I don’t care how many hours I fly or how many missions I do or don’t go on,’ he’d said, when we told him the score. ‘I’m not here to indulge in a load of bitching about who gets the plum jobs and which flight is the boss’s favourite. I only care about two things: doing what we’re asked to do, to the best of our ability, and getting home safely. And now I’m ready for a brief.’

Between then and now the Taliban had seriously raised the stakes.

We knew they were planning a spectacular; they’d set their hearts on either taking a District Centre or shooting down a helicopter.

Now Zad, Sangin and Musa Qa’leh were all under increasing levels of Taliban attack. Our lads were barely holding their own, and at considerable cost. The bases were grandly named District Centres – but, in fact, each held no more than a platoon, so the CO 3 Para was constantly forced to shift troops to whichever location was in most imminent danger of being overrun. We were forever chaperoning Chinooks, moving men between one DC and the next.

A Company 3 Para had moved into Sangin on 21 June, right on the doorstep of what our most secret order believed to be the Taliban’s southern headquarters. They were ordered to hold it at all costs. They were under heavy fire morning, noon and night. The cost was high. Five British soldiers had been killed in nine days.

Our job had been to pound the few hundred metres around the DCs pretty much 24/7. The troops on the ground were knackered, we were knackered, and the Chinook crews were two steps beyond zombie mode. They were having the toughest time of all.

Where they’d failed in Now Zad, the Taliban were succeeding in Sangin and Musa Qa’leh. They had good fields of fire onto the DCs and were hitting and killing British troops on a regular basis.

We were at our most vulnerable when flying casevac sorties, as the enemy well knew. The risk evaluation to the flight and medical crews on board the Chinooks was now so extreme they were only cleared to go into Sangin or Musa Qa’leh if an injured soldier would die unless he got to hospital in an hour. Now Zad was heading in the same direction. Even with the Shrine shielding the LS, we were running out of ways of getting safely in and out. The minute that happened, the troops would go without resupplies – like those holed up in Sangin and Musa Qa’leh.

In the meantime, intelligence had picked up plenty of Icom chatter between Taliban commanders about taking a helicopter out. There were reports of at least one shoulder-launched missile and possibly an anti-aircraft gun in the area.

We’d flown supporting missions throughout, even though the air temperature was regularly near 50°. Our operating limit of 44° Celsius was finally increased to 49° on 5 July, so at least we wouldn’t have the book thrown at us if we fucked up while flying beyond the Release To Service (RTS).

Now Zad, Sangin and Musa Qa’leh had been under sustained Taliban attack for a month solid. Because we’d been flying our aircraft around the clock, we’d been ordered to ‘slow-fly’ them for a week or so – cut the hours right down – but that was easier said than done; it was like the Alamo out there.

Jake glanced at his watch and groaned. ‘This timetable is killing me.’

‘Three and a half hours ahead of the UK?’ I croaked. ‘Where the hell did the half come from?’

It was common sense that 3 Para were on local time: they worked with the locals. Seven in the morning was 0700 local, and bingo, breakfast was served. Fast air worked differently. A B1 bomber from Diego Garcia, a Nimrod from Lossiemouth, an F15 from a ship in the Arabian Gulf and a pair of Apaches from Bastion could all be working together, so we all worked on GMT. To airborne assets there was no 0700 local; it was 0330 GMT and breakfast arrived in the middle of the night.

We still had to integrate with ground units, of course, so 0330 local was midnight to us, and that was when the codes changed and all the frequencies flipped over. It was barking mad. The codes changed, we were briefed, and we went back to bed again. It made sense that the changeovers took place at the quietest time; most attacks were during the day, it was heavy on the aircraft, and it was hot. But months passed before some bright spark worked out we could simply change over at the 1900 evening brief and everyone could get a solid night’s sleep.

However, for now, this was just the way it was.

The Ops tent was lit up like Wembley Stadium. We stumbled in and gathered round the map table. I was starting to wake up.

One of the Chinook boys checked the weather computer and came back with the forecast min and max temperatures, wind speed and direction. It was going to be red hot, a ten knot westerly blowing dust.

Kenny, one of our watchkeepers, told us what had happened in-theatre over the last twenty-four hours. ‘Now Zad’s being fired at again regularly. Half an hour after last light, the rounds started once more.’

The Taliban waited till it was dark, extracted their weapons from wherever they hid them, set them up, and started firing into the base. Half an hour of mortars and rockets then they’d stop. They knew our reaction times. They’d wait another hour or so then start again. Ken said Now Zad was also receiving accurate fire from a sangar that they were calling the Turret.

Then came briefs on Kajaki, Musa Qa’leh, Sangin, FOB Robinson and Gereshk. It always followed the same order – clockwise around the DCs and Forward Operating Bases – ending up at Helmand’s HQ in Lashkar Gah. We learned what had been happening to them physically on the ground, the routes, callsigns and timings of any patrols due out.

We then went on to the J2; intelligence. Jerry, our IntO, gave us his interpretation of any reports that had come through.

We were taking over IRT/HRF tonight. Jake and Jon were the IRT, callsign Wildman Five Zero. Simon and I were HRF, Wildman Five One; he and I were qualified in both seats and swapped regularly to keep up our flying and shooting skills. For this duty Simon would be in the front, I’d be in the back.