Apache

Trigger came back after lunch to lead the routine mission debrief. Standing up for us in the face of the CO was a brave thing to do, but he didn’t see it like that. As far as he was concerned, he’d just told the truth as he always did. If an officer lied, he had no integrity. Without integrity, how could he lead his men?

He admitted that this was a defining moment in his career, though – because he most probably wouldn’t have one now. I told him I’d never forget what he’d done, and I never will. We didn’t bother discussing our situation any further. It was out of all our hands now – Trigger’s included.

The eight pilots, the guy from Intelligence, the Ops Officer and the Boss filed back into the Tactical Planning Facility and watched the gun tapes on the five-foot-square screen. It taught us some pretty interesting things about the morning.

There were RPGs everywhere. We’d missed most of them because our screens were small and we were obsessed with Mathew. More than 100 were fired at or past HQ Flight while we were on station; the majority in volley-fire from the south-east – the bottom of the treeline and the village.

We checked out Billy’s FLIR tape and saw just how hot Mathew had been throughout the mission. He was glowing, and his temperature never dissipated, despite the cold. It meant he had circulation. His heart was beating throughout. I didn’t know whether that made things better or worse.

Billy’s tape made it clear that Mathew had never moved. We replayed it three times at the point Billy thought he had – then realised his shadow had moved as the sun rose.

Alarmingly, 3 Flight’s tapes revealed just how many Taliban had been piling down the eastern side of the fort in their attempt to encircle us: literally dozens of them, using a kilometre-long drainage ditch as cover. Almost everything Charlotte and Tony fired had been to suppress that lot. No wonder they went Winchester.

Overall, we estimated that there had been between around 100 of them to the north and east of the fort. It was impossible to tell how many more lay in wait in the village, the fort’s buildings and the tunnel systems, but we reckoned on at least twice as many again. They must have been coming in from miles away; they’d had enough warning.

As the tapes played themselves out, it became ever more obvious how small Zulu Company’s chances were of crossing the river again. Once the Taliban had reinforced, even a battalion of 600 infantry couldn’t have taken the place.

Last, we watched 3 Flight’s coverage of their orgy of fire as we flew out of the fort. The extraction took a total of fifty-five seconds – during which they’d put down a total of £324,000 of rockets and missiles – £5,890 every second. Nobody in the forty-nine-year history of the Army Air Corps had ever fired half as much ordnance so quickly from one aircraft, and we doubted anyone would again.

At the end of the brief, there was a knock on the TPF door and the Chief Technician popped his head round.

‘Boss, got your aircraft damage report here.’

Trigger groaned.

‘Go on. How bad is it then?’

‘Not a bullet hole anywhere.’

‘Really? You sure?’

‘Not one. I couldn’t believe it myself. I got the lads to look at them twice. It’s gen. Not a single round hit any of the four of them down there.’

That spooked us. Tony the bullet magnet had been hit on three separate occasions in Afghanistan. No hits seemed impossible.

The Ops Officer concluded the brief. ‘There were no Rules of Engagement issues, the weight of fire was proportionate to the task and we have no damages to report this time. Do we, Darwin?’

Tony grinned. ‘No, sir.’

‘Well, Geordie, how do you think you did on your six-monthly handling check?’ Billy delivered his assessment without waiting for an answer to his question. ‘You failed. You broke every rule in the book – and you can refly in the morning at o-six hundred.’

‘I’m never getting in an Apache with you again,’ Geordie muttered. ‘Not ever.’

It was getting dark by the time we left the facility. Billy told me he was going up to the hospital to have a quiet word with the doctors. If Mathew’s death was going to prey on our minds, we needed to understand it better. We needed to know what else we could have done for him.

The Royal Navy Surgeon Commander in charge of the hospital told him that Mathew had been hit by a round in the upper right temple. The injury was fatal; he would have died from his injuries even if he had been shot on the hospital’s front doorstep. His body may have lived on for a few more hours, but the damage to his brain was unsurvivable, no matter what anyone did. Mathew was effectively dead the moment the bullet hit him.

Billy and I were silent as we walked to cookhouse for dinner. It was a desperate end to an appalling day.

An older Royal Marine wearing a WO1’s rank slide stepped out in front of us. ‘Excuse me gents, did you two fly at Jugroom Fort today, by any chance?’

We nodded.