Apache. Ed Macy

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СКАЧАТЬ from Camp Bastion. It was too dangerous to land Chinooks anywhere near it, and a ground resupply couldn’t break through the besieging Taliban’s lines without a full on battalion-strength attack.

      The guys holding the other four DCs just stuck it out with sheer grit and the odd Apache gunship in support. As the RSM of 3 Para declared with relish, ‘We’re paratroopers – we’re supposed to be surrounded.’ It was a hell of a feat, especially as so many of the lads were on their first operational tour.

      It was all a bit of a far cry from the public aspirations of the man who signed the deployment paperwork, Defence Secretary John Reid. He told the House of Commons that he hoped the troops would come home having ‘not fired a single bullet’. He’d also somewhat optimistically termed the mission ‘nation building’.

      Actually, between June and October 2006, the Paras and their supporting cap badges ended up firing a total of 450,000 bullets, 10,000 artillery shells and 6,500 mortar rounds. In addition, and between May and August 2006 alone, the sixteen Apache pilots of 656 Squadron put down 7,305 cannon rounds, 68 rockets and 11 Hellfire missiles. I don’t think it was quite what John Reid had in mind.

      Our defiance came at a heavy price. A total of thirty-five servicemen were killed in that first six months: sixteen in combat, fourteen when a Nimrod MR2 spy plane crashed, four in accidents – and one committed suicide. A further 140 were wounded in action, forty-three of them seriously or very seriously. It all meant we didn’t have much time for nation building.

      And there lay the real problem. It wasn’t just kinetic – we were also fighting a war of minds. We could carry on killing Taliban forever. But it wasn’t going to win over the local Afghan people in whose name we had come. We had to deliver them a better life, and soon. All we’d achieved so far was to turn their streets, orchards and fields into lethal battle grounds.

      Most Helmandis were still perched on the fence, waiting in the time-honoured Afghan way to see which side looked like winning. British soldiers were welcomed wherever they went; there was little love for the Taliban. Yet if our presence made things worse, they’d cosy up to the other side soon enough.

      The Taliban knew that too. They understood that reconstruction was pretty bloody hard with a war going on. There’s an old Afghan phrase their mullah leaders loved to quote: ‘They have the watches, we have the time.’ They didn’t need a spectacular knockout blow – just a constant, paralysing war of attrition.

      The squadron’s first foray into Helmand had been quite something. I sat on my cot and wondered what this tour would bring. The Taliban were becoming more successful at killing us as time moved on. They learned lessons quickly from each contact and adapted immediately. By sheer luck we hadn’t yet lost a helicopter but it was only a matter of time. They’d been getting better whilst I’d been planning my retirement. I’d be the one playing catch up, not them. I needed to be lucky every second I was in the air; they only needed to be lucky once. There were no two ways about it – for the first time in my whole military career, I was genuinely concerned that I might not come home alive.

      ‘You know what Billy? I’ve got butterflies.’

      ‘Yeah, right. Probably that Gurkha curry in the Kandahar cookhouse.’

      Billy was not in a sympathetic mood. He was too busy hanging up his impossibly well-pressed uniforms.

      There was no point letting it gnaw away at me; however I played it, what was for me wouldn’t pass me. I couldn’t wait to climb back into the cockpit and get stuck in again. I’d always loved being on operations, ever since my first Northern Ireland tour as a young Para.

RIDING THE DRAGON

      The sixteen pilots in 656 Squadron could not have come from more diverse backgrounds. My route to the Apache cockpit had been one of the longest of all.

      I was born and grew up in a seaside town in the North-East. It was a holiday resort for miners until package holidays were invented and the miners stopped coming. After that, most folk worked for the local steel factory and chemical works.

      Dad was an engineering fitter at the chemical works, and Mum brought us up. My brother Greg was only thirteen months younger than me. We did everything together; we were known as the terrible twins. Other kids’ parents banned us from playing with them. No surprise really; we nicked our first milk float when we were three and four.

      My parents’ unhappy marriage finally fell apart when I was eleven, and Mum wouldn’t let us live with Dad. Without a father’s firm hand, my teenage years descended into chaos. Greg and I ran riot. We always stuck up for each other, no matter what the consequences. One day when I was fourteen, Greg burst into my science class bawling his eyes out. ‘Ed, I smacked the RE teacher in the face,’ he tried to explain. ‘It wasn’t on purpose. He was taking the Mickey out of me…’

      My science teacher, Mr Hastings, didn’t take kindly to his own class being interrupted in this fashion and leaped down the classroom to intervene. There were a few seconds of confusion as Greg clung onto my desk while Mr Hastings tried to heave him to the door. Greg wasn’t budging, so Mr Hastings hit Greg’s arm with the bottom of his fist to dislodge him. I flipped. I jumped up and launched myself into Mr Hastings’s midriff with both arms out-stretched. The teacher went head over heels across another desk, sending children, books and chairs flying. They all landed in a heap on the floor, but Greg and I didn’t look back, and sprinted all the way home.

      It was the final straw. Both of us were expelled and sent to different schools. We were split up for the first time in our lives.

      I missed my brother terribly. My new school was a rough one and when I was goaded I fought back. I spent most of my time there fighting all comers – alone. Six months into it, I started missing lessons. In my last year I rarely went at all.

      Mum was too busy running a pub so I wasn’t missed at home. I’d often spend weeks away, sleeping wherever I liked. The woods were my favourite place, and I lived by stealing food and poaching fish to sell to local pubs. I was turning wild.

      On my sixteenth birthday, I was old enough to choose who I lived with, and Dad was waiting with a big smile on his face. He straightened me out, forced me to use a knife and fork again, to keep myself clean, and eventually got me a metalworker’s apprenticeship.

      I enjoyed training to be an engineer and wanted to be like Dad, but I hated the job. I was trapped indoors in a routine life I didn’t want. At night, I’d drink and fight.

      Dad remarried and got the person he always deserved; I got three new brothers as part of the deal. They were great lads and all of them joined the army. I’d found my way out.

      Two months after my eighteenth birthday, I enlisted in the Parachute Regiment. I didn’t particularly want to be a soldier, and I only asked for the airborne because The Paras was on TV at the time. It looked like a good challenge.

      ‘You’ll never pass, son. You haven’t got what it takes,’ my dad said. It was a textbook case of reverse psychology, but I didn’t recognise it as such at the time. It gave me all the determination I needed to pass P Company.

      I was posted to 2 Para. I got one hell of a kicking as a crow – military slang for a junior paratrooper – but everybody did in those days. It was the СКАЧАТЬ