Letters From War—Missions

By Donald Harward

We were cruising along at 135 indicated. I had “Band on the Run” (the old Paul McCartney/Wings song) stuck in my head and was singing it loudly enough to break through into the intercom occasionally. The big bird—our cargo ship—was close behind. I could feel the steady thump, thump, thump of those big blades beating the air into submission somewhere behind us. The outside temperature was a very “pleasant” nine degrees Celsius but the windshields and the well-sealed doors were keeping everything toasty warm inside my Italian “sports car” of a helicopter. With my singing breaking into the intercom through the “vox” every once in awhile, I’m sure Kaz thought I was a little off my rocker that morning, but who cared? “Band on the run… Band on the run”…I didn’t know too many of the rest of the lyrics, but the melody was rocking away in my head! Earlier, before we launched, Gerry had been banging away playing the song on “Guitar Hero” and I had made the mistake of listening to him play. Now the darned thing was stuck in my head for the day!

“What a day!” I announced loudly over the intercom. “Another day in the ROA!” (Republic of Afghanistan) I intentionally left out the word Islamic because it just doesn’t rhyme as well; so for me, it’s just ROA. What a day, indeed. We had the wind at our back, and someone had given us the keys to a fifteen-million dollar helicopter with a tank full of gas, and a credit card. Now just how bad could that be?

How bad could it be? Well, several thousand feet below our comfortable cockpit was a world turned on its very end. The nearby road was scarred every couple of hundred metres with burned blotches where men had met their fates from the blasts of RPGs or IEDs. If we were to fly much lower than we were, it would place us within the engagement range of small-arms fire. In the airspace above and all around us were fighters with their wings laden with bombs. On any given day, some of those bombs would find their mark after falling several miles through the atmosphere. In other places in the sky, tankers orbited refuelling various aircraft and, at lower altitudes, other helicopters made their way methodically along to various destinations. At the end of some of those days, not all of those helicopters would taxi back into their revetments or parking spots, and men with long faces would sit in a noisy mess hall and stare into their cups of coffee, their thoughts far, far away.

The US Army calls the area here “battle-space”, a term which describes not only the surface of the planet but all the cubic miles of sky which lie above it. All of that space is carefully managed, and being able to move about within it at any time is a matter of careful planning and control. Just as choreographers work out every step in complicated stage productions, so do the controllers manage some parts of their battle-space. They orchestrate all the moving parts of this air–land battle, and somehow keep it safer and moving along. Not only do they manage aircraft, but also long pointy mindless projectiles that originate in fiery births from the muzzles of cannons to live short, arching lives before finally becoming fire themselves. We have an expression here: “Big sky; little bullet” to describe flying in the proximity of artillery. I don’t know if any aircraft have accidentally been hit by flying six-inch shells but the potential is definitely there.

For combat pilots, it has become a matter of routine to work with this system in lieu of more traditional air traffic controllers. The language spoken between the various controlling agencies probably sounds like some secret code (which I guess it is, in a way) to anyone who hasn’t flown in this world. Oh, by the way, you do “live” in this world, you don’t just work or fight in it. It becomes so pervasive and overwhelming that it actually becomes your world. There is no getting away from the hassle, hustle and bustle of a fast paced military lifestyle. Except, perhaps—just occasionally—for pilots. We get to have little moments of escape every once in a while and, on this day, I was having mine. Sure it was at Kaz’s expense; this day, he was the flight lead with all the attendant responsibility and workload while I was flying as his co-pilot. For me, it was “mental vacation” time. Let him worry about all that navigation, fuel management and radio call business. I was working out the lyrics for “Band on the Run” as we flew through the rugged mountains. Yesterday, I had been the flight lead and he had been co-pilot, and the cards had been reversed. Of course, in truth, the co-pilot can never get a complete mental vacation—he still has to look out for birds, unmanned aerial vehicles, other helos and occasional tracer rounds—but you get the picture.

Kaz is a great guy to fly with. With a thick Jersey accent and a short temper, there is never a dull moment. Take some time to get to know him and, in short order, you can find that big red button, which, I have discovered, is fun to push occasionally. Because he talks with his hands, for added entertainment, I like to push that button while he’s flying and watch things get downright amusing. The man can’t talk without moving his arms—well, not properly, anyway. But he sure can complain; he ranks right up there with the very best of them. If the day is a seven-hour one, it’s too long. If it’s a two-hour one, it’s a waste of time. If lead is doing 120, we’re too slow. If we’re doing 140, the helicopter is too rough. I just love it. I keep trying to guess what might piss him off next or at any particular time, but honestly, I can’t. He’s an American original! Like everyone else here, I just love the guy. I love to hear the bitching and look forward to future complaining with eager anticipation. Call me weird, but it sure is fun!

Recently, the war seems to have got much worse for both sides. Everyone is suffering more than I can remember happening in the past. With ever-increasing numbers of soldiers pouring into the “battle space”, it is only natural that there is an increasing amount of contact with the enemy or “NCF” (non-coalition forces) as they have become known (there are so many different groups jumping into the fray here against the West that a single term was needed to describe the guys who shoot at us for a living).

With all the forces out there poking around in the bush, the need to re-supply them has increased proportionally. The helicopter has become the workhorse of the theatre, and pilots and machines are getting a real workout. I remember my comfortable days driving a jet around the atmosphere. Even though I flew an average of 85 hours a month for years, it was nothing like flying helicopters. Nowadays, 80 a month would be a vacation and a nice dream. No sir, we routinely knock out between 100–200 hours a month, every month! Frankly, I am amazed at the reliability of the machines. Almost daily, I log seven to nine hours, with only one start and 10 to 12 sorties! Just yesterday, we did 17 sorties, logging 9.5 hours!

Without getting into the tactics, suffice it to say that certain phases of flight can be a real rollercoaster ride. We get no points for a smooth landing—it’s always a slide in behind a barrier after a steep approach or “S-ing” or some other technique. Takeoffs are the same drill. Get speed fast, manoeuvre it like you stole it until you have enough speed, then it’s aft cyclic and a firm pull on the “up” lever to gain that all-important altitude. Combat pilots everywhere will agree: altitude and speed are life—and we like to live! It is not like that all the time, but if we go into a “hairy” LZ, then we bend that thing around until we’re safely back at altitude.

Another great feature (not!) of expanding war zones is the slow creep of influence from the “clerks.” I believe my earlier writings might have mentioned these office dwellers occasionally. Some of them are great people, but others are warrior wanna-be types. The latter are downright stupid and very difficult to deal with. Since they have only an academic understanding of what combat is like, they gravitate toward that understanding. Since they are not actually participating in the fight stuff, they feel like they need to compensate (over-compensate) for not having paid their dues facing the wolf.

But as any field soldier knows, the clerks’ text books belong in classrooms and are only useful for providing information about things like the specific weight of something you are going to carry. When it comes to tactics, that is a different story. All the mountains of experience of Vietnam, the Gulf and who knows where else doesn’t equal an anthill of useful information in relation to “the ’Stan.” Here, if you want to know what is going on, ask that dirty sergeant over there or strike up a conversation with those warrant officers over there in the corner of the chow hall. Those guys with their soiled uniforms and stained patches will give you the real story. They have learned from the school of hard knocks and they come into their own out there on the battlefield. The better they become out there, the further apart they become from the clerks that live “inside the wire.”

A great example of the lack of understanding the clerks have for the combat crews is the speed limit of 20 kilometres per hour on our base. Yes, I did say 20. That’s 12 American miles per hour. Vehicles do not easily travel that slowly. In order to do so, they tend to remain in low gear, which causes the engine to run at a faster speed, thereby generating heat. Heat which (in what is the hottest place on the planet sometimes) cannot be dissipated because at 12 miles per hour, there is NO airflow! To add insult to injury, the military police hang out around the flight line access roads with radar guns looking for “speeders!” It’s true—I’m not making it up. They have nothing better to do than to issue traffic tickets to people “speeding” along at 25 kilometres per hour; ask me how I know!

Now picture a smallish SUV driving along the dusty perimeter road—“hurtling” along along at some 22 kilometers per hour. The three soldiers inside are Aeroscout pilots who have just finished flying. They still have loaded assault rifles and pistols with them, which they might have used a few hours earlier. The reason there are only three of them and not four is because the fourth is in hospital—still in surgery—with a bullet in his abdomen, which came up through his hip. When that vehicle goes through the radar trap and is stopped for doing 22 km/h, how much cooperation do you think the MP is going to get from those guys? Do you think the MP might possibly be in mortal danger himself?

We have to deal with the clerks every day, but like the guys in the SUV, while we also live on base, we work outside the wire. My mind often stays outside the wire, and sometimes, my ability to accommodate the clerks and their little American world inside it is a bit limited.

My first memorable meeting with a clerk came after a long (and bad) night during Desert Storm. I had been up for so many hours that I felt too tired to sleep. My head was buzzing from flying all night long. Walking back to my quarters in the safety of my base, I was wearing only my dirty flight suit, which was devoid of rank and insignia; it had only coarsely drawn “O+” symbols on the chest, back and arms. While going over the previous night’s mission in my head, a piercing voice entered my consciousness. Through a fog of exhaustion, a person came into focus in front me. He was a lieutenant-colonel, immaculately dressed from head to foot with all the latest battle stuff—all of which looked new and clean. I studied him from head to foot without really hearing what he was saying (we were supposed to wear all of our gear all the time—some sort of uniform policy—but hey, the war was 50 miles over my left shoulder).

Finally, I focussed enough to actually hear him. He was saying (screaming, by now), “Soldier, where’s your Kevlar?” Meaning, where was my helmet? I thought for a second and said, “I don’t know,” and proceeded to walk straight through him, bumping him solidly as we met. When I turned, a few metres past him, to look back, he just stood there staring at me. A clerk, I thought, and walked back to my room.

Now you can just imagine the influence clerks might have with this expanding battle space thing. It takes air-conditioning-hogging rooms full of them to manage all this stuff. Hell, in their padded chairs inside their buildings of plywood or concrete, they account for the majority of Gatorade consumption in theatre. We, on the other hand, can’t seem to get Gatorade or other sports-type drinks on the flight line; there is always a shortage. When working in heat or long hours, one needs to drink lots of fluids. Keeping hydrated and with a steady supply of electrolytes gives one the edge and fends off the ever-present headache waiting to overshadow a day, even one in which “Band on the Run” is beating out its rock and roll rhythm in one’s head.

I could go on and on about clerks, but I think I’ll hold right here for now because I believe they deserve an article all of their own. Back to the battle space and mission thing. (I’ve strayed a bit, but it was fun, don’t you think?)

Think of the aircrew, now, and what they have to deal with. Firstly, they are flying in Afghanistan, which is not the most hospitable place on the globe. Secondly, they are flying in helicopters, which have their own agenda. Remember that part of what they are always trying to do is to disintegrate suddenly and catastrophically. Then crews have to deal with about 300 radio calls an hour—and the intercom and radio systems in helicopters are not exactly what you find in the cushy cockpits of business jets. And, of course, they also have to do several things at the same time: look out for a flight of Apaches coming down orange route, contact hornet nest control on frequency 277.5, coordinate fuel at the upcoming stop and negotiate crossing the restricted airspace you are about to enter at 6,500. Whew, that takes longer to write than the time it takes to actually do it! So if you can juggle all those balls at once—and look cool while doing it, contact me right away—I’d like to see your resume; I have a job for you.

Looking at it that way, no mission is ever “routine”. The only routine parts are: always having to get up early, attend briefings, eat, preflight, jump in, crank up, shut down, call maintenance, and crank up again, taxi, take off and so forth. We might fly to the same destinations but never twice in exactly the same circumstances. Therefore, even the re-supply missions have their own unique set of variables to challenge us on any given day.

Like everything else in life, maybe it’s better to just treat each flight as a unique challenge and see where it takes us. Most of us will end up sitting at a corner table in the chow hall tonight with our heads buzzing, enjoying some light conversation with fellow pilots. For some others, their tables will be silent and the food only picked over lightly. A small percentage will be there only in memory; those who have just had their last flights—their “rendezvous with destiny.”