Safe in camp thanks to a friendly hello
Updated on 02 February 2008
"Suddenly the air is filled with dust...the screaming of rotor blades and the mad helicopter dash" - Alex Thomson blogs from Afghanistan.
Helicopters, I dunno. You wait around for hour after hour and there's nothing, then suddenly the air is filled with dust, brightly coloured landing flares, the screaming of rotor blades and the mad helicopter dash.
It's the classic military hurry up and wait then panic experience. Once the Chinook, sea-king or lynx touches down, it seems there's an unspoken competition to sling everyone and everything off at top speed then reverse the process.
Now the idea is that different people and kit should get slung back on the departing helo (as they call them for some reason) and mostly that is the case.
Though it's true, we have had the experience of actually filming one of our bags disappearing out of the Chinook (right) only to be carried back on in the next departing wave of soldiers a minute later (wrong).
No worries - have got that bag back.
Once aboard they throw these machines up into the sky then lurch away, often not more than 50 feet or so off the ground, roaring out over mud-walled compounds (Afghans' homes really are castles) and out over the cultivated river flood plain of Helmand and off into the desert.
You may go where you were told you were going. Or you may not. Only yesterday Stuart, our cameraman, rushed boldly out the back of the Chinook with only the loadmaster to shout "You sure you want to get off here?" at him.
He stopped, saw that nobody else was moving, thought better of it and got back on board.
Half an hour later or so we did, actually, land back in Camp Bastion, a vast prison-camp of a place from which the only real way in or out is by helicopter. However it does have decent showers and almost obscene amounts of food thrice daily. So it's a good place to hole up and clean up whilst we await - why yes - our next helo.
