Lewis - Apache Dawn

Nothing is impossible

The motto of the Second World War Glider Pilots Regiment, the forerunner of the Army Air Corps

They have earned their spurs in the heat, dust and fire of combat, in the face of challenging and complex operations and often in the face of great danger

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, on the Apache operations in Afghanistan, 2007

Never in the field of human conflict has so much been fired at so many by so few

Apache pilot Steve James, commenting on Operation Chakush

Woe to he who is seen

Motto of 664 Squadron, Army Air Corps

This is the story of one flight of two Apache attack helicopters in action in Afghanistan during their baptism of fire in the summer of 2007. It tells of the actions of the four men who flew those Apaches during a tour that lasted one hundred days. I am grateful to two pilots in particular, Baz and Steve, for sharing their stories from that tour. I am also grateful to their younger front-seaters, Tim and Alex, who were happy for their stories to be told alongside those of their more experienced co-pilots. This book is their story, and it is told as far as is possible in their own words.

What each of the Apache pilots would stress is that theirs is an archetypal tale, one that illustrates the wider heroism and valour, and the shared challenges that all Army Air Corps Apache pilots experienced during their first months of combat operations in Afghanistan. The year 2007 was the Golden Jubilee of the Army Air Corps, in which the Corps celebrated a long and distinguished combat history stretching back to the D-Day landings and before. The record of the Apache regiments in 2007 did much to further that tradition, and this book could arguably have been written about any of the Apache aircrew who served, their stories equally replete with drama and daring.

The actions depicted in the Prologue of this book, during the Jugroom Fort rescue mission, were carried out by the men of 656 Squadron, Army Air Corps. The four men of the flight featured in the main body of this book are from 662 Squadron, Army Air Corps. I have included the Jugroom story because it is a high profile tale of the heroics demonstrated by the Apache attack helicopter pilots during their first months in combat, and because the men of the Apache Attack Regiments as a whole wanted that story to be told. It is a tale of extraordinary daring beyond the call of duty, but it is by no means unique as I hope the entirety of this book demonstrates.

Wherever possible, the British Apache attack helicopter regiments maintain a policy akin to that of UK Special Forces and do not make public the names of their aircrews. This is to minimise the danger of reprisals against Apache pilots or their families in the UK or elsewhere. Accordingly, I have used pseudonyms for the Apache pilots portrayed, unless their names have already appeared in the press or the pilots themselves asked me to do otherwise. The faces of the Apache pilots in the photos used in this book have been redacted for the same reasons.

All other aspects of this story remain unchanged. Accounts of the actions that took place are based upon interviews with the soldiers and airmen. Conversations between soldiers have been recreated from the memories of those involved and from diaries written by those soldiers at the time of their deployment. I have endeavoured to report accurately and truthfully the events portrayed. However, inquests have not yet been held into some of the deaths reported in these pages. Any insult or injury to any of the parties described or quoted herein, or to their families, is unintentional. I will be happy to correct any inaccuracies in later editions.

The Ministry of Defence requested that a number of points of operational security sensitivity were not published in this book. Some units of British and Allied soldiers have not been identified, again at the request of the MOD. In addition, any contributions or statements of a political nature herein are those of the author and the author alone and they do not represent or reflect those of the Secretary of State for Defence.

The 1st Battalion Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters was renamed 2nd Battalion The Mercian Regiment (Worcesters and Foresters) in August 2007, as 662 Squadrons deployment was drawing to a close. Ugly was the call-sign for all four Apache attack helicopter flights of 662 Squadron during their summer 2007 Afghan deployment. The official name of the flight featured in this book was Five Flight.

Wildman

15 January 2007, Helmand Province, Afghanistan

They called themselves the wildmen. The lead Apache of the flight was call-sign Wildman Five Zero , its wing aircraft Wildman Five One . Their credo was simple: to do whatever it took to get the job done. Their job was to fly their ugly, killer aircraft in support of British ground troops, and to kill the enemy wherever they found them. And, like true wildmen, they would do whatever it took to get the job done.

That mornings attack had started with a briefing by torchlight in the dead hours of darkness, out in the empty wastes of the Afghan desert. The tough yet softly spoken soldiers of the Royal Marines, Zulu Company, 45 Commando, had gathered around their maps, their head-torches casting a soft halo of light as they conferred in whispers.

The assault on the enemy stronghold of the Jugroom Fort had been long in the planning, and for weeks the Brigades Recce Force had kept eyes on the enemy position, gathering vital intelligence in preparation for the attack. H-hour was 0600 hours, barely thirty minutes away. Then they would hit them hard.

The aptly named Operation Glacier was the last thing that the enemy would be expecting. It was the bitter cold of an Afghan winter, the January skies threatening snow. There were unwritten rules as to how the fighting went here, or at least there had been. The spring and summer were the shooting season, the winter months too cold and miserable for any soldier to be out and about spoiling for a fight.

But the men of 45 Commando were about to bust those rules wide open. They were attacking during the closed season, so as to prevent the enemy from rearming and regrouping during the winter months. And they were doing so against a target that the enemy had presumed was an impregnable stronghold, and so off limits to such a threat.

Jugroom Fort a high-walled fortress ringed by watchtowers is situated in Garmsir, to the extreme south of Helmand Province. This was the enemys true heartland, and they thought their forces invincible here. The Commandos aim was to take the enemy by complete and utter surprise, the shock of the assault giving them a much-needed advantage.

In Garmsir, enemy territory consists of some twenty square kilometres land that at one time would have been densely populated. Now it is a series of bombed-out, cratered buildings connected by a maze of tunnels, ditches and caves. The enemy have near-total freedom of movement within this area, being able to move fighters into firing positions without being spotted.

British forces are so familiar with the area that every ruined building, footpath, ditch and tree has a nickname or an objective name. Three Walls, Snowdon, Taunton, Euro Disney the names had evolved through a mixture of simple observation of a shape or a feature, and the ever-present British squaddies humour.