Awesome Flying…
Y
ou can pay a lot for a thrill ride nowadays. If you are flush, a couple of hundred quid might buy you a trip
in a helicopter somewhere. But money couldn’t buy the trip we had…
…The flight was meant to last just fifteen minutes, but we realised that something had gone awry after fifteen minutes and we were still circling the Green Zone around the Helmand River at quite an altitude. The crewman (who was actually a woman) manning the machine gun on the rear ramp of the helicopter came over and told us that we were on hold as there was a ‘contact’ going on near to our landing zone.
This brought where we were and what we were going into sharp focus. I have to admit that my throat went dry. A contact. A fire-fight of some description was underway near to where we would be landing. We circled for a good ten minutes, the crewman now with both hands on the gun ready, scanning the ground…and then she smiled.
She came over to me and told me to pass the message that the ‘contact’ reported was just the Afghan National Army celebrating by firing off a load of weapons into the desert. No contact at all. No bad guys shooting at good guys. No good guys shooting back – just some wild exuberance!
And then we lost height quickly. Like a roller- coaster going over the edge of the first incline. Sharply we dropped. The negative-G of this pushed my stomach into my mouth and I sat back in my seat. Already strapped in tight, and held almost immobile by my body armour. I closed my eyes for a second or two. When I
10 Envoy Summer 2011
opened them I looked to my left and through the open rear ramp I saw we were low…very low, and going fast. The crewman with her gun ready.
Swinging round through a valley, and then over a hill and down the side of the cliff face on the other side. Using the maneuverability of the airframe we went low and fast across land that could house insurgents who wanted the ultimate prize…to bring down a ‘Mosquito’ (as they call helicopters). But there was no chance of that. The brilliance of the flying and the capabilities of the aircraft meant they just wouldn’t be able to target us. They wouldn’t be able to keep up.
We sped over the land, now over green trees and fields irrigated by the Helmand River and the canals that feed off from it, now over open scrub and desert. Low, low, lower…almost treetop height, and as fast as I could ever imagine a chopper going. And then with a swirl in the air, a sharp turn and the nose of the helicopter rising to decrease our speed quickly we came into the helicopter landing site of the Patrol Base, our destination.
As we touched down my hand was already on the buckle of the safety belt and within seconds the back ramp was fully down and our bags were being thrown off while we ran down onto the gravel. A quad bike appeared and our bags were loaded into it, as we ran around the corner…into the faces of people ready to board the chopper for their return flight.
Within minutes, I can’t remember how few, but it was very few, hectic time moved so quickly, the whole turnaround of bags, people, mail and
Sergeant Alex Ford reports from Afghanistan
equipment was complete and the helicopter was on it’s way back out towards Bastion…and my team and I were in a Patrol Base in the middle of Helmand Province, Afghanistan.
Into the Night I was standing in the middle of the road. I suddenly realised that this was a ‘bad thing’ to do, as the weak lights from the check point behind silhouetted me against the compound wall. Immediately I crouched down. I scanned the tree-line in the near distance and looked across the field. My night vision was slowly coming in, as my eyes got used to the darkness.
It was only about 8:40pm and it was already pitch black, with only a sliver of light from the moon breaking through the clouds. In Afghanistan, when it’s dark, it’s dark as there is very little ambient light. The light pollution we are used to in the UK just doesn’t happen out and the darkness was absolute. Without the Night Vission Goggles I wouldn’t be able to see a thing.
I was out there waiting for a helicopter, but it wasn’t on time. The nearest of my team was inside the compound some 20m away. Even so, I felt, very, very alone. The noise of the frogs and the cicadas in the fields nearby suddenly caught my attention. Inside the CP the hum of the generators providing us with electricity drowned out this noise, but away from the gennys, the ambient noise of rural Afghanistan became clear. Just a quiet, but audible, drone of insects and amphibians.
The rustling of the trees in the wind was now the only sound. I yawned. I looked at my watch, almost twenty minutes had passed.
www.raf-ff.org.uk
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