Dicking was a threat to both our safety and that of the troops on the ground. Trigger and Billy drew up new drills to try to counter it. From then onwards, Apaches never flew over the main gate, we kept all the lights off at night, and we always set off in a different direction to the one we were really headed. That was a pain too, because flying a few klicks out of our way just to fox the dickers added a minute or two to the time it took us to reach the guys. But it was crucial to try to keep ahead of the Taliban’s learning curve.
They learned, we learned; then we had to learn again. It was known as the caterpillar – one end moved first, the rest caught up. And the Afghan caterpillar never stopped moving. The longer the Helmand campaign went on, the more complex the battlespace became.
While the diligent reconnaissance for Operation Glacier continued, the huge demand for Apache support elsewhere kept us frantically busy. It came from all over the province. So much so, at least one of the squadron’s flights was now firing in anger in some arena every single day. We were putting stuff down at a phenomenal rate – far more than we’d ever done before. Whether it was the change in the Rules of Engagement, the increased flying hours, or the enemy’s ever more dogged persistence – or a combination of the three – it was hard to tell. Sometimes, we used our weapons systems as they were originally designed to be used. Others, we just had to improvise – like the day Soggy Arm Field got its name.
We were on a deliberate operation with the marines up in Kajaki one afternoon, covering them as they fought a clearance patrol onto the Shrine and then through the Taliban-held village to its west. The enemy were putting up strong resistance, gritty compound-to-compound stuff.
We trapped six of them out in the open on our arrival and nailed them with cannon. But two of their more dogged companions, firing from the far end of the village, had pinned down a section of marines. A Joint Terminal Attack Controller climbed to the top of Falcon to direct our fire. The JTAC talked us onto the pair’s grid.
We found them by stealth, heading for home and doubling back, coming out of the clouds four kilometres behind them. They were in full white dishdashes, crouched a metre apart at the edge of a track behind someone’s freshly painted white house.
‘That’s them,’ confirmed the JTAC. ‘I’ve had eyes on them since their last engagement. Remove them as soon as possible, by any means.’
They were a challenging target. The village was inhabited; it was crawling with mopeds and animals and we had no idea who was in the house behind them. Rockets and cannon would have peppered its wall and roof, and probably gone straight through them. Due to the Rules of Engagement there was only one option.
‘It’s got to be a Hellfire,’ Trigger said. ‘ROE is simple – but the proportionality bothers me. You’re my weapons guru; can we really chuck a missile into a civilian village?’
‘Positive ID, ROE and clearance to engage doesn’t give us a choice, Boss, but collateral damage and the family in that lovely house does. We wait till we’re closer and use the gun, or kick off to the right and hit them with the Hellfire so the blast disperses into that field. If we get closer they’ll bolt for the house and the family will have Terry Taliban as lodgers…’
A .5-inch calibre sniper rifle would have been ideal for the job. But Hellfire was the only point weapon system we had. It was proportionate in this instance.
‘Okay, Mr Macy. Set me up.’
‘I’ll set you up all right. Set you up to make Apache history.’
The Boss glanced at me in his mirror, lined the crosshairs up perfectly on the ground between the two fighters, and let rip from six kilometres. The Hellfire had not been used on personnel before. We watched the missile rise, fall to its usual angle and impact right on target. When the smoke cleared, all that was left was a two-metre-wide hole in the ground.
‘Delta Hotel,’ the JTAC reported.
The freshly painted wall got one final coat – toffee brown – but on the flip side, the washing was still clean and the house itself completely untouched. It took an age to figure out the battle damage but the JTAC summed up the situation perfectly. ‘I think your targets may have vaporised.’
That night, after the battle, the marines on Falcon watched as the locals came out to collect their dead. The next time we went up to Kajaki, the JTAC relayed their story.
‘The Taliban had a really good look around the crater area for your two guys, but they couldn’t find a thing. Then one of them went about thirty metres into the next field and came back holding a soggy arm. That’s why it’s now called “Soggy Arm Field”.’
The Special Boat Service had done a fair bit of work all over southern Afghanistan with the US Apaches co-located with them in Kandahar. But every now and then they came to us. Our first request from the Special Forces Group arrived six weeks into the tour.
The JHF was just told that it was an op in the notorious Panjwayi Valley – a Taliban hotbed west of Kandahar city. We would be briefed on everything else by the SBS themselves in Kandahar on the night. They’d asked for permanent cover as they expected it to go on a bit. So two flights went over that morning: 3 Flight’s Nick, Charlotte, Darwin and FOG, and the four of us.
I’d worked with Special Forces before, so the mythical aura that surrounds them no longer had quite the same effect on me. They’re just normal blokes like you and me, who prefer to stick to the shadows and happen to be particularly bloody good at what they do. It was Nick’s first SF operation, so he had a grin on him like a Cheshire cat from the moment he got up. Bonnie was straining at the leash.
‘It’s exciting isn’t it, Mr M? It really is.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Bless him.
The other thing I knew about Special Forces was that an awful lot of their missions never went down – but I didn’t want to piss on Nick’s bonfire. He wouldn’t have wanted to believe me anyway.
It was a fifty-minute flight to Kandahar. Around the halfway mark we passed ten klicks to the south of a remote little town called Maiwand. The Boss pointed it out. ‘We studied it at Sandhurst.’ It was the site of the British Army’s second great Afghan disaster: 969 officers and men were massacred there during the Second Afghan War in 1880. A massively superior 25,000-strong native force wiped out the 1st Grenadiers and 66th Regiment of Foot, throwing the nation into shock and precipitating a campaign of bloody revenge. ‘A grim lesson,’ Trigger said. ‘They were betrayed by their local allies.’
It was always odd coming back to Kandahar after a week or so at Camp Bastion. Its giant runway and line of helicopters stretched almost as far as the eye could see, dwarfing our tiny sideshow 100 miles away. Dozens of Blackhawks, Chinooks and Apache AH64As jostled for space. Beside the military colossus of the United States, we were a bunch of pygmies. The Special Forces compound was set discreetly to one side of the sprawling base’s main thoroughfare. Its Hesco Bastion walls were ringed with razor wire.
Bob, the SBS officer running the operation that night, waited for us at the front gate with a couple of colleagues. They both introduced themselves as Bob, too. Three Bobs. The normal SF drill. One of the other two Bobs was the operation’s JTAC. We never found out what the third Bob did.
The Bobs walked us swiftly to a nearby building and down a short corridor. Framed photographs of Sergeant Paul Bartlett and Captain David Patten hung from the wall, their names typed neatly beneath their smiling faces.
‘Sorry about your boys,’ I said. ‘We found them the following morning.’
‘Thanks. It was a crying shame.’
We were led into a briefing room completely devoid of furniture and decoration, except for one table and a handful of chairs. A room for visitors like us, sanitised of all useful information. We would only ever know from the Special Forces what they needed us to know. It was how SF always worked. Officer Bob plonked a laptop and projector down on the table, connected them and began the brief.