As we were flying across Saudi, we started to appreciate the lie of the ground. It looked like a brown billiard table. I’d been in the Middle East lots of times, but I’d never seen anything like this.

“We’re on Zanussi,” Chris said into his headset, using the Regiment term for somebody who’s so spaced out and weird you can’t get in touch with him; he’s on another planet.

And Zanussi was what this looked like-another world. Our map studies told us the ground was like this all the way up. We were going to have problems, but it was too late to do anything about it. We were committed.

Now and again there’d be a bit of chat on the headphones as the pilots talked to AWACS. I loved watching the two lo adie warlords getting ready for the Big One, checking their guns and hoping, no doubt, that they would get shot at soon.

All the time, there was the deafening zsh, zsh, zsh of the rotor blades. Not much was said between ourselves because of the noise. Everybody was just pleased that they weren’t rushing around any more, that we were just lying around on the kit drinking water or pissing into one of the bottles we’d just emptied. I was wondering if my life might have been different if I’d stayed at school and got my CSEs. I might have been sitting up in the cockpit now, chatting away, looking forward to a pie and a pint later on.

The front lo adie door was half open, like a stable door. Wind rushed through it, cool and refreshing. The straps hanging off the insides of the Chinook flapped and slapped in the gale.

We got to the same refueling point as before. Again, the pilot kept the rotors turning. An engine failure at this stage would mean canceling the operation. We stayed on the aircraft, but the back lo adie was straight off into the darkness. The Yanks, God bless ‘em, have so much kit they just throw it at you. He returned with Hershey bars, doughnuts, and cans of Coke. For some unaccountable reason, the Yanks had also given him handfuls of Biros and combs.

We waited and waited. Bob and I jumped down and went for a dump on the side of the tarmac about 100 feet away. When we got back the lo adie motioned for me to put on my headsets.

“We have the go,” the pilot said, with just the faintest detectable hint of excitement in his voice.

We started to lose altitude.

“We’re over the border,” the pilot said matter-of factly I passed the message on. The blokes started putting their webbing on.

Now the aircrew really started earning their money. The banter stopped. They were working with night viewing goggles, screaming along at 80 knots just 70 feet off the ground. The rotor blades had a large diameter and we knew from the map that we were flying in amongst a lot of power lines and obstructions. One lo adie looked out the front at the forward blades, and the other did the same at the rear. The copilot continuously monitored the instruments; the pilot flew by visual and instructions received from the rest of the crew.

The exchange between pilot, copilot, and loadies was nonstop as they flew low between features. The tone of the voices was reassuring. Everything was well rehearsed and well practiced. It was all so matter-of fact they could have been in a simulator.

Copilot: “100 feet… 80 feet… 80 feet.” Pilot: “Roger that, 80 feet.” Copilot: “Power lines one mile.” Pilot: “Roger, power lines one mile. Pulling up.” Copilot: “120… 150… 180… 200. That’s half a mile. 500 feet now.” Pilot: “500 feet. I have the lines visual… over we go-“

Loadie: “Clear.” Pilot: “Okay, going lower.” Copilot: “150… 120…

80 feet. 90 knots.” Pilot: “Roger, staying at 80 feet, 90 knots.” Copilot: “Reentrant left, one mile.” Pilot: “Roger that, I have a building to my right.” Loadie: “Roger that, building right.” Copilot:

“80 feet. 90 knots. Power lines five miles.” Pilot: “Roger that, five miles. Breaking right.” The loadies were looking at the ground below as well. Apart from watching for obstructions, they checked for any “incoming.”

Copilot: “80 feet. Metal road coming up, two miles.” Pilot: “Roger that. Metal road, two miles.” Copilot: “One mile to go. That’s 100 knots, 80 feet.” At anything below 80 feet the blades would hit the ground as the aircraft turned. Meanwhile, the load masters were looking for obstructions and trying to ensure the blades had enough room to rotate as we hugged any feature that would give the heli some protection.

Pilot: “Break my right now. That’s nice.” Copilot: “Right, that’s 70 foot, 100 knots. 70 foot, 90 knots.”

We had to cross a major obstruction that ran east west across this part of the country.

Copilot: “Okay, that’s the dual carriage way 5 miles.”

Pilot: “Let’s go up. 200 foot.” Copilot: “Okay, got it visual.”

Us passengers were just sitting there eating Hershey bars when all of a sudden the front lo adie manned his guns. We grabbed our rifles and jumped up as well. We didn’t have a clue what was going on. There wouldn’t be much we could do because if you put the barrel of your gun out into the slipstream, it’s like putting your hand out of a car traveling at 100 mph. We could have done jack shit really, but we felt we had to help him.

There wasn’t actually a drama. It was just that we were getting near the road and the lo adie was hoping that somebody was going to fire at us so he could have a pop back.

It was the main carriage way between Baghdad and Jordan. We crossed it at 500 feet. There were a lot of lights from convoys, but we were unlit and they certainly couldn’t hear us. It was our first sight of the enemy.

Sighting the road gave us a location fix because we knew exactly where it was on the map. I was just trying to work out how much longer we’d be in the air when I heard a Klaxon.

Dinger and I both had headsets on, and we looked at one another as we listened to the crew.

“Break left! Break right!”

All hell was let loose. The helicopter did severe swings to the left and right.

The loadies jumped around, torches on, pressing buttons all over the place as chaff was fired off.

The pilots knew where most of the Rolands were, but they obviously hadn’t known about this one. The ground-to-air missile had “illuminated” us and set off the inboard warnings. To complicate matters, we were going fairly slowly when it locked on.

I saw the expression on Dinger’s face in the glow of the cyalume sticks. We’d been lulled into a false sense of security listening to all the confident banter. Now I had the feeling you get when you’re driving a car and you glance down for a moment and look back up and find that the situation ahead has suddenly changed and you have to jump on the brakes. I didn’t know if the missile had actually fired, or locked on, or what.

“Fuck this!” he said. “If it’s going to happen, I don’t fucking want to hear it!”

Simultaneously, we threw our headsets on the floor. I got down and crunched up into a ball, ready to accept the landing.

The pilot threw the aircraft all over the sky. The engines groaned and strained as it did its gymnastics.

The Chinook leveled out and flew straight ahead. The look on the loadies’ faces told us that we’d got away with it.

I put the headphones back on and said, “What the fuck was that?”

“Probably a Roland, who knows? Not the best of things. It’s all right for you lot: we’ve got to come back this way.”

I wanted to get off this aircraft and be back in control of my own destiny. It’s nice getting chauffeured to a place, but not like this. And it wasn’t over yet. If the Iraqis on the ground reported a lock-on, their aircraft might come looking for us. Nobody knew if the Iraqis were getting aircraft into the sky, or if they had night flying capability, but you have to assume the worst scenario. I was sweating like a rapist.

Half an hour later, the pilot gave us a two-minute warning that we would be landing. I held up two fingers to the blokes, the same warning as for a parachute drop. The rear lo adie started to undo the straps that held down the kit. The red glow from the penlight torch that he held in his mouth made him look like the devil at work.