Alex Duncan - Sweating the Metal

We are well shielded by the wadi from Sangin town, so anyone having a go from the right would have to be within spitting distance of us, and that is never going to happen. The only real threat is going to come from the left where there is a network of old Russian trenches and tunnels – prime Taliban territory.

We have about six miles to run when the JTAC at Sangin calls us over the radio to advise, ‘Black Cat Two Two, I’ve got reports of rounds being fired at you from the west. You are under contact. Repeat: you are under contact.’

I can appreciate why the JTAC is telling us, but it doesn’t exactly help – there’s nothing I can do anyway. What we’re doing is like walking down a crowded high street with a sign on your back saying ‘Spit here!’ and expecting to get to your destination dry.

I’m focused on flying though and I don’t have a lot of spare capacity because of our altitude and speed, which mean the constant dinking of the airframe, left, right, up, down. I’m scanning the front obsessively – panel, horizon, panel, horizon – right the way to the grid; my focus at a point just in front of the cab; my only thoughts where we’re going and what’s ahead.

Suddenly, with two miles still to run, I notice a huge pall of black smoke and a massive fire in the distance; it’s obviously where the IED has taken out the Viking.

It’s funny how your thought process works; I know a Viking has driven over an IED so I’m looking for a Viking, albeit mangled. Yet I can’t see one. Something’s burning, but it isn’t anything that was once recognisably a vehicle. I’m seeing but not computing; it just doesn’t accord with what’s in my head.

We get closer; a mile, 600 yards to go… we’re still under threat, but I’m manoeuvring hard, there are no impacts on the aircraft that we’re aware of. Then suddenly, the Defensive Aids Suite explodes into life and we’re firing off flares like it’s 4th July in Times Square.

‘BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG!’

There’s a flurry of them every second, along with a warning signal in our headphones, an alternating two-tone alarm that coincides with the flares launching. It must be terrible for the MERT team in the back – they’re not on the intercom but they can see and hear the flares going off. Each one is like a small sun, creating a blinding white light that eclipses daylight. They have no idea what’s going on. Are they RPGs? Are we hit? They don’t know – all they’re aware of is that the aircraft is moving all over the sky and suddenly there’s a series of small explosions around us.

I don’t think we’ve been engaged with a Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) and I haven’t seen an RPG blast or felt one strike the aircraft, so the DAS must have picked up the heat signature from the fire below and interpreted it as a missile launch. It’s done its job – it’s not sentient, just a highly complex computer that uses a series of algorithms to determine whether the heat and light sources it detects are potentially harmful to the aircraft. Either way, the threat has passed and we’re on the target.

I’m still carrying 150kts, so I flare abruptly to shave off some speed. I feel the aircraft slow, so I bank right and apply some pedal. More bank, more pedal; more bank, more pedal… the nose starts to drop exactly the way I want it to and I assist it with a bit of forward cyclic. The windscreen’s now full of Afghan wadi with the blades uncomfortably close to the ground – we’re nose down at a massively steep angle. I pivot the cab through 270° to scrub off more speed and place us where we want to be. In the cockpit, it feels like we’re not far off the vertical, so I know that the effect is amplified several times over for the guys in the back. Done right, the crewmen shouldn’t feel more than 1g all the way round, but the more aggressively you do it, the more g-force they experience. It isn’t pretty but it’s effective.

As I look down, I see the burning wreckage clearly through the screen. The IED must have been huge – the Viking’s tracks have been blown at least 150 metres away and the cab and the main body of the vehicle have literally ceased to exist. All that’s left is a solid, mangled square mass of burning metal about two foot high; everything that was above that level has disappeared into the ether. How anyone can have survived is beyond belief, but we’re here to pick up the three Marines who were its crew, so they obviously have.

As the aircraft pivots round to the right heading and the speed reduces to the correct approach speed, I finally bring the nose up, levelling the cab at the attitude I want for landing into the wind – the smoke from the fire tells me the direction it’s coming from. I can see our makeshift HLS perfectly below us. The Marines have fanned out into a defensive circle with a clear area in the middle for us to put down in.

The dust is building; it’s at the ramp, 10ft, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3… two wheels on… six wheels on, we’re down. It’s not the prettiest textbook landing – we roll forward about three or four metres – but I was coming in so fast in order to keep us safe, there was no way we were going to scrub all the speed off before we slammed into the ground. Kinetic force just doesn’t work that way. The important thing is we’ve arrived, we’re all safe and nothing’s damaged.

The ramp goes down. The dust clears and I can see a Royal Marine in my 1 o’clock. Alex has got someone in his 11 o’clock and I’m thinking, ‘I don’t know why but something’s not right here.’ And it takes me about four seconds before it hits me: his SA80 is on the ground next to him, but he’s stood up and firing with his 9mm pistol, which is attached to his leg via a lanyard that connects to the grip. The firefight has been so intense he’s run out of ammunition and has resorted to his last line of defence. Things must be desperate – you’ve more chance of missing your target than hitting it with a pistol, even at close quarters. Then I notice the puffs of dust around us and the guys that are defending us, and I realise that they’re impacts from incoming rounds.

The synapses in my brain are decoding all the information and giving me a word that sums the whole thing up: ‘Fuck!’ Alex and I shrink ourselves into balls in our seats. I’m making all sorts of silent promises to myself, commitments to give up certain vices if only the rounds keep hitting the ground. We’re trapped and immobile in our seats – perfect illustrations of the term ‘sitting target’.

Griz gives us a commentary from the rear: ‘One casualty on board… okay, two casualties on board…’

‘Where’s the third casualty?’ I ask. ‘We have three guys to take.’

‘No idea,’ comes the reply. ‘Wait one.’

All of this is taking time and the longer we sit here, the greater the risk. Luck, providence, fortune, call it what you will, but with this many rounds coming in, with all this lead in the air, every second increases the likelihood of it running out.

Griz is back. ‘The surgeon said not to worry about the third casualty; we’ll get him later. His injuries are incompatible with life.’

My heart sinks as it always does when I realise we’re too late. Could we have saved him if we’d got in sooner? What if we hadn’t held off for thirty minutes? Whatever rationale you employ, it’s still a nightmare. Part of you regrets playing it safe; the other part of you chides yourself for even thinking about exposing a 99ft flying leviathan to enemy fire. It’s a constant balancing act: the risk to one vitally needed helicopter with its crew and the combat-experienced soldiers that compose the QRF and the MERT on one hand; one or more dying British soldiers on the other. Where’s the line? How much risk is too much?