Hellfire. Ed Macy

been briefing him on the flight, he seemed to have reverted to his old ways. As I’d scribbled away on the whiteboard in the briefing room, recounting what I’d be doing on the sortie, Darth Vader had just stared at me-the laser stare that everybody had been so alarmed by when we’d first arrived. Gone was the genial bloke who’d opened up the Apache for me and taken my picture. In his place was a big, taciturn bear that looked like he was eyeing me up for breakfast.

      ‘Any questions, sir?’ I’d asked when I’d finished the briefing.

      ‘No.’

      ‘I’ll see you at the aircraft then, sir.’

      ‘You will, Corporal Macy, you will.’

      After walking around the aircraft, I clambered into the cockpit and tried to focus on my pre-flight checks. When I’d got all my maps ready, I set about programming my navigation aid. When I’d done that, I went over everything all over again.

      Glancing back at the hangar, I spotted Palmer, larger than life, helmet on, visor down, striding across the grass towards me.

      His gait, his whole demeanour seemed to be saying: don’t screw with me; don’t even talk to me.

       My name’s Chopper Palmer and I’ve got a reputation to protect.

      A reputation he’d flexed only yesterday morning when he failed one of our course before they’d even taken off.

      You arsehole, I said to myself, you requested this guy-and now he’s going to fail you.

      He walked round the aircraft, opened up the flimsy little door and began to position himself in the commander’s left-hand seat. He was so big that he bounced me out of mine, but he didn’t seem to notice. He squashed me against the perspex as he leaned over to put on his straps and he didn’t notice that either. How was I supposed to fly this thing?

      As I continued with my checks two things dawned on me.

      The first was why he’d been nicknamed Darth Vader. He sat completely immobile, head forward, visor down, and had the scariest breathing I’d ever heard: a long, slow, deep, throaty breath in, a pause too long for a mere mortal to survive, and then a rush of air out.

      The second was why he chopped more students than the rest. I was nervous, worried and my hands were visibly shaking. If we were having a fight I’d be in my element, but sitting here in this cramped cockpit knowing that he held the power to end my long quest was becoming unbearable. I was about to fail because I was struggling to hold it together. He was a chopper because students just dissolved in front of him.

      I fired up the Gazelle’s single engine-no problems there-but my first real test came when I needed to check behind me to ensure no one would be decapitated when I engaged the blades. Palmer was so big I couldn’t see past him.

      I spoke into my intercom. ‘Can you check left please, sir?’

      ‘No.’ Palmer continued to look directly in front of him, his visor hiding any expression he may have had.

      Parts of me were starting to die. What the fuck was this? ‘Unless I check left, sir, I can’t start the blades. I might chop someone’s head off.’

      He squashed me again as he grudgingly looked left. ‘Clear.’

      My sense of foreboding deepened. I thought of everything I’d been through-grading, a whole year spent learning how to fly-and it had come to this: cramped in a tiny cockpit with a gargantuan instructor who seemed hell-bent on failing me.

      Somehow, as we made our way over the Hampshire countryside, I forced myself to concentrate. I simply had to do my best; I had to hold it together. For most of the rest of the flight I was somehow able to zen out Chopper Palmer’s brooding presence, despite the fact that I remained squashed into my side of the cockpit by the man’s enormous bulk.

      Bit by bit we completed the test, until, right at the end, we came to the clincher: Practice Forced Landings. I carried out several PFLs that I thought were pretty good. Then, as we were approaching the airfield with the test minutes from completion, he suddenly said, ‘I have control’, chopped the engine and we plummeted earthwards.

      As emergency landings and autorotations went, it was the best I’d ever seen; so expertly done, in fact, that he bled away the last reserves of energy in the Gazelle’s freewheeling blades in a beautiful flared landing that ended in the helicopter’s skids literally kissing the grass.

      As we slid to a standstill I was so awestruck by this textbook display that I failed to take on board what he said next. It was only when my mind replayed the instruction that I realised he’d asked me to take off again and given me a grid reference.

      I’d missed it.

      He’d suckered me, the old bastard. I’d thought the test was over.

      I was summoning up the courage to ask him for the grid reference again when he turned to me. ‘Farrar-Hockley’s fallen off a ladder in his greenhouse. He’s got a pitch-fork up his arse. We’ve got to get him to hospital, pronto. I take it you know who I mean by Farrar-Hockley, Corporal Macy…’

      ‘Farrar the Para,’ I answered as I checked the grid I thought he’d said.

      General Farrar-Hockley was a bigwig who’d retired a decade earlier and looking at the grid Chopper bloody Palmer had just given me was apparently living in Harewood Forest, a few minutes’ flight-time away.

      What I didn’t know was whether this medical emergency was for real.

      I pointed the nose in the direction of the general’s house.

      On the way, I checked the map and noticed that the general lived in an area that the instructors used for confined areas-a place that was extremely difficult, if not nearly impossible, for a helicopter to land in-though it wasn’t on the cheat-maps.

      I flew cautiously around the outside of a clearing that constituted the confined area. Every time I looked down, it looked smaller and smaller. I drew this to the big man’s attention.

      ‘So get me in there before we run out of fuel,’ he demanded. ‘Farrar’s in a bad way.’

      I stared at the tiny gap in the trees, hoping for inspiration. It was touch-and-go. I didn’t know what to do.

      ‘Are you going in or what?’ Half-drowned by the crackling comms and the scream of the Gazelle, Palmer’s voice still managed to sound like a megaphone.

      Make-your-mind-up time, Macy. Palmer wasn’t interested in debates or discussions. He wanted decisiveness and action.

      What was the right answer? What was I supposed to do?

      I took a deep breath. ‘No sir. I’m not going to make it.’

      There was a pause, then: ‘Nor could I. Take me home.’

      I breathed a sigh of relief. But Palmer hadn’t finished with me yet. As we approached the airfield, he reached forward and chopped the engine on me.

      Suckered again…

      I applied my autorotation skills, dumping the collective lever I had in my left hand to store the energy in the blades so I could use it to cushion the landing. We dropped like a stone and the tone of the blades rose an octave as they freewheeled faster and faster.

      At about fifty feet I pulled up the nose to slow the speed and as we dropped through twenty-five feet I gave the collective a sharp pull to arrest the rate of descent. The speed was now about thirty knots and we’d dropped to five feet as I levelled her off by pushing forward on the cyclic between my legs and pulling up slowly on the collective, using up the stored energy. I could hear the blades slowing and at the point we would have fallen out of the sky we touched down. We were running fast and bouncing around a bit but I’d got her on the ground before finally skidding to an untidy halt; scraping a slight zigzag in the grass in the process. Engine-off landings were not my strongest point.

      With sticky palms, I sat there waiting for Palmer to