By early January 2011 our tour was almost at its end; 654 had done their bit again and were heading home to disappear on leave. I had one rather pressing problem in 656 – I didn’t have enough pilots for the summer trip to the Mediterranean, and with only three months until we were due to embark I needed to solve the issue quickly.
In the year leading up to this point almost all my aircrew had been reallocated to other squadrons and most of those I had left were teaching CTR. I only had four pilots permanently available for maritime work, and this included me. I needed ten.
Little Shippers and Mark Hall were left holding the maritime work together. The squadron Second in Command, Reuben Sands, had done the Afghanistan tour ahead of mine at short notice, even postponing his wedding to step up to the plate. He was on a spot of leave regaining the family time lost over the summer and autumn. Reuben loved flying and was dedicated to it. This powerful rower, often in need of a haircut, knew his stuff. Every time I flew with him he demonstrated he was above the high bar and I had something to learn. A man of principles, of physical presence and of the North-East, Reuben was ready for whatever came next. If he had time in the winter a vintage motorcycle would be renovated in the living room, but mostly it was about flying. He was utterly dependable in the air, a truly multi-dimensional mind able simultaneously to compute, analyse and fight. He would return from leave and embark with us, but in the meantime it was Mark and Little Shippers who led the planning for our summer cruise. Back in Suffolk, they pressed ahead with maritime simulator sorties, ideas of how to shoot fast-moving boats and how to choreograph the technicalities of ship to shore and back to the ship missions. With us four already on the list, Big Shippers agreed to make it five. I needed five more.
Still in Afghanistan, I asked around for volunteers who needed to be unafraid of the dunker and willing to be tested at sea. And, slowly, they emerged. I also had assurances from home that a couple of aircrew would be found from those not on the Afghanistan tour cycle for 2011. In the meantime, I needed to find three pilots from 654. I was asking soldiers who had just spent five months, including Christmas and New Year, in Helmand to give up their summer and spend it in a ship instead. The response was not quick!
I pointed out that 654 would get a good four weeks leave on their return to the UK and then faced a post-tour summer of air testing and admin back in Suffolk as they fell to the bottom of the pile in the Afghanistan cycle. Surely a trip to the Med would be much more interesting? To make my search harder, I specifically needed an Operations Officer. These are not easy to find. It had to be an experienced officer willing to take on all the additional planning a squadron needs to embark as well as to maintain their own flying skills and learn the new ones of flying at sea. There were only two possible candidates and neither needed another summer away from home.
I gave an honest appraisal of the role, the culture shock, the complexity of the Apache at sea and I described the embarkation in outline:
We’ll stop in Gibraltar and run up a rock, we’ll stop in Malta and have a run ashore. In between there will be some demanding flying that you’ll never do again with this aircraft. It’s a one-off chance to do something different. Just make sure you’re current in the dunker and remember that going to sea is a come-as-you-are party – what you bring is all you have.
The enquiries slowly started to come in. With only two weeks to go until we flew home, I filled the three empty lines on my list. Nick Stevens stepped up as the Ops Officer. He had done three tours of Afghanistan and was probably ready for the Ops role a year ago. This looked like unusual work, and it appealed to his tendency to see opportunities. With Nick in as Ops I was looking around for some young aircrew to complete the team. I mentioned I was looking for two new pilots, a front-seater and a rear-seater – ‘No previous maritime experience necessary, we’ll bring you on.’ I needed two ‘upstarts’ to balance the team. I found them in the VHR tent, the two new boys in 654, Jay Lewis and Charlie Tollbrooke. These men had joined to fly the Apache, and after the long march of Sandhurst, the Army Pilot’s Course and then the endurance event that is the Apache Conversion, a total of three years training, they were coming to the end of their first Afghan tour.
In his last year of university Charlie had pondered Sandhurst or the City. He did the milk round, spoke to the bankers and the project managers and thought selling money to make money looked rather attractive. He was just days away from the suit and commute when he decided all of that could wait. He’d like to be a gunpilot for a while so he joined the Army. It was a sound choice. He worked his way through the courses diligently, passing each check-ride hurdle without swagger or self-absorption – a man who knows his mind and also knows he will work for what he wishes. Nor is he proud, an essential attribute of the modern officer. He’ll wear a hat knitted by the Women’s Institute while resting in the dry cold December night VHR tent – those hats are warm and comfortable; and then he’ll leap into the role of singularly focused combat operator when the shout comes in for an immediate launch. The first time I flew with him was in Afghanistan, and he called every action exactly right. Charlie Tollbrooke had a future in the Apache.
The younger of the two upstarts, Jay, said no to university and had gone into nursing after leaving school, before opting to go to Sandhurst. His change of careers could not have been more dramatic, but he was suited to both. The modest, good-looking boy from somewhere south had an athletic ability that could have taken him far in the boxing ring but also an essential humanity that carried him well in our line of work. He, too, cleared all the hurdles well and arrived on the front line with a report book that said he was ready in all respects. What both Jay and Charlie had was courage and a spirit of adventure not hampered by ‘how we used to do it’. They wanted to get as much out of Service life as they could, and they were willing to give up all their time to get it. To the new breed of Apache pilots six weeks at sea instead of a summer holiday meant more progress, and it was much better than six weeks conducting post-maintenance air testing and the odd parade.
Just two more were needed to make ten. I looked to the home base to provide.
John Blackwell, from 664 Squadron, said, ‘Okay, why not?’ He had flown the decks before and was already desensitized to the trepidation of over-water activity. But he was only coming along because he was due to leave the Army and therefore not on the Afghanistan plot. John was one of our true blue soldier-turned-pilot men. On his last tour in Helmand he had had to deal with an engine fire in the middle of a fire-fight with the Taliban. He dealt with the engine fire, shut it down and cracked on with one good engine remaining. Not bad from a lad who joined up aged just seventeen. From the recruiting office he went to Winchester and emerged as an Airtrooper. He had no intention of soldiering by manning the radio, refuelling and driving. He wanted to soldier from the air, in a helicopter. As a lance corporal, he started as a door gunner in Iraq in 2003 and went from there into the cockpit. Perseverance got him on the Army Pilots’ Course. Determination gained him a pass. The eighteen months of Apache training were the most testing of his career, and two tours of Afghanistan later he wanted to reinvest his energy and experience in our new aircrew. He wanted to be an instructor, and was certainly good enough for the role, but the need was for line pilots back in Afghanistan. John was told he had to complete another turn of that wheel and do another tour over there before being considered for instructor training. In the end, he decided it was time to leave and move home to the North-West. Our 2011 training exercise embarkation was to be the final outing for him.