Apache

‘You… fucking… wankers…’ Simon breathed.

A few seconds later, the Paras’ commander made it official. ‘Wildman Five One, Widow Seven Four. That’s two KIA confirmed. We’re bagging them up now.’

The Taliban would have been monitoring their every move, so the Paras made a swift withdrawal to the helicopter landing site with the bodies and the Chinooks came back in to pick them up; again, under our watchful eye.

On the flight back to Camp Bastion, Simon and I tried to figure out what the hell had gone wrong. If only someone had known about the raid. I understood the procedure, but right now it was incredibly frustrating – a real double-edged sword. Within thirty minutes of the shout coming in, we could have had a couple of Apaches giving them some cover. We might even have kept the two guys alive.

A silence fell between us. I knew what Simon was wondering, because I was wondering it too. Was Patten or Bartlett still alive by the time the Taliban got their hands on them? For their sake, I prayed they weren’t. If they were, the awful terror they must have experienced in the last desperate minutes of their lives was too unbearable to contemplate.

‘You know what, Ed?’ Simon said eventually. ‘If it was me, I know what I’d do. I wouldn’t give those bastards the satisfaction.’

I’d been having exactly the same thought.

That flight back to Camp Bastion was the first time I really understood why aircrew were no longer issued with gold sovereigns. You couldn’t buy your way out of trouble in this place. These people weren’t interested in our money.

Of course, none of us thought the deployment was going to be a walk in the park. We all knew what the Mujahideen had done to the Soviet helicopter gunship pilots they captured; we’d all heard the horror stories. Yes, our Apaches were as mean and powerful as they looked, but that didn’t mean we were untouchable. Our intelligence briefs reminded us daily how determined the Taliban were to take out one of our helicopters. And it was the Apaches they hated the most.

‘Praise be to Allah, I want you to bring down a Mosquito,’ the Taliban commanders could be overheard in radio intercepts regaling their rank and file. That was their word for us: ‘Mosquitoes’. They called the Chinooks ‘Cows’.

But up until that day, we’d all kidded ourselves that being the good guys would save us. We were on a reconstruction and security mission, not an invasion. If we were shot down, we presumed that we would just somehow get away with it. A bit of a slapping, maybe, like the Tornado boys got from Saddam in the first Gulf War; a few months in a dingy jail, then a traditional prisoner exchange at Checkpoint Charlie.

Now we knew the truth. Reality had bitten. Our enemy in southern Afghanistan couldn’t give a stuff what mandate we’d come under. If they got their hands on us, a quick death would be the very best we could hope for.

I gripped the cyclic resolutely as, then and there, I also decided there was no way those evil bastards were going to get me alive. If I was shot down, I’d keep on running until my heart gave out. If I couldn’t run, I’d fight until my second to last bullet was gone. Then I’d use the last one on myself.

We talked for hours back in the crew tents that night as word spread about what had happened. Every pilot came to the same conclusion. I’d be surprised if all the paratroopers out in the district bases hadn’t followed suit.

We only found out exactly what had happened to the two SBS guys some days later. Patten had been hit in the chest, the bullet exiting from the side of his neck. A rescue attempt for him was out of the question; the sky was raining lead. Now the SBS team was split in two, most in front of Patten and a few – including Bartlett – behind him.

Bartlett was with another SBS lad who’d taken a bullet in the arm. Bartlett stayed with him and found a hiding place in an irrigation ditch. With Taliban all around them, he then went forward alone, crawling through thick undergrowth to recce a route to safety through the enemy’s positions. It was the last anyone saw of him.

Bartlett was a very brave guy and he didn’t deserve to die like that. Neither of them did.

That wasn’t the worst part. The two men’s colleagues back in Force 84’s secure Ops Room at Kandahar Airfield were forced to sit and watch the whole ghastly show play out as it happened. Patten and Bartlett’s last moments were piped through in real time on a live TV feed from a Predator circling above them. That’s why they had been able to tell us exactly where to look.

1. DÉJÀ VU

7 November 2006

14.35

‘Two minutes, fellah…’

I’d been dozing. The Chinook’s loadie woke me with a gentle kick. He had to shout the standard warning to be heard over the deafening din of the helicopter’s giant rotor blades.