POSTS

In early 1980, following the Lancaster House Agreement, a general election was held in Zimbabwe/Rhodesia. The purpose was to decide who was going to govern the country after the end of white rule. The election was to be monitored by British and UN observers to ensure it was free and fair.

A small fleet of five helicopters was contracted from South Africa to fly the observers around the country and visit scores of polling stations situated in towns and remote villages. The fleet was composed of four single engine 4-6 passenger machines and one Bell 212 twin engine aircraft, which was mine. The 212 has 15 seats, including the pilot’s. It also has a cargo compartment situated behind the cabin at the front of the tail boom. This can hold up to 400 lbs/180 kgs and is only accessible when on the ground. It’s the place where stuff which takes up too much space in the cabin would be carried.

As a relatively complex machine with two engines, I carried an engineer with me when there were no observers on board. He and another looked after the fleet during the trip – I’ll call him Fred.
Terrorist groups were still active, even though the bush war was over and we had to fly low and avoid their camps, because they were suspicious of aerial activity and liable to shoot at us. I could relate several stories about that trip, but this one will suffice.

We spent almost three weeks in the country before we packed the aircraft in Salisbury (Harare now) and left on the 3rd of March. Prior to the flight, I carried out my usual pre-flight inspection, including looking in the cargo compartment, because if there was too much weight in there it would affect the aircraft’s balance. All I saw was the stuff Fred had loaded. He was experienced and I trusted him – you have to trust your engineer. The trip back was uneventful, and I thought no more about it.

Some years later, while still in South Africa, I went to an outdoor trade exhibition and was wandering around the stalls and looking at the camping and vehicle equipment on display. Fred suddenly appeared in front of me. He was red-eyed, swaying slightly, talking slowly and grinning his head off. He greeted me like a long lost friend even though we had no close ties. If he hadn’t been so drunk I doubt if he would have told me what he did.

Almost falling over himself with laughter, Fred told me that he had loaded a number of AK47 assault rifles in the cargo compartment and hidden them behind his tool kit and boxes of spare parts. I like to think I’m not easily shocked, but I was then. As the aircraft captain, I had been fully responsible for what was carried. If the South African customs had looked and found the weapons when we arrived back in the country, I would have been the one under arrest and slung in jail, not Fred.

There are some who will read this little tale and know who I’m talking about. If you tell the world his true name, that’s your decision, but I won’t, even though it is tempting.

Here’s an unusual little anecdote.

For 3 years I was an instructor at a helicopter training school for Iranian military pilots. It was situated at the small airfield of Ghaleh Morghi to the south of Tehran. This was in the days of the Shah, long before the current regime. The students’ basic training was done on Bell 47 G2s (think MASH TV programme), which were underpowered at that altitude (3,500ft). They then progressed to the Bell 206 Jetranger, and after that some took on the Bell UH1H Huey, the iconic Vietnam war chopper.

Most of the students were from the Gendarmerie, some were from the army and a few were from the navy. I don’t think their selection process was particularly robust. It was most likely based on who you know rather than ability.

One of my students was a short, thin young man of about twenty. He always flew in his naval uniform, rather than a flying suit or fatigues. I’m convinced about the selection process, because this chap was absolutely useless as a pilot – but his father was an admiral. As an example, I allowed him to fly down to the training area one day without any intervention from me, just to see what would happen. He let the helicopter wander off to the left without correcting it, and we completed a full wide turn back onto our original heading without him being aware of what he had done (or not done).

Flying solo for the first time is a nerve wracking experience for many students. They’re controlling a machine they haven’t fully mastered in a hostile environment – and it’s a long way down. But there can be no progress until this hurdle is out of the way, and they’re all keen to become hot-shot pilots.

I would have been irresponsible to send my eager little navy chap solo. He might have made it back and landed safely, but he wasn’t capable of handling an emergency, and if something had gone wrong … I wanted him taken off the course, but daddy was an admiral and that wasn’t going to happen without serious intervention from one of the Iranian company directors (generals and members of the royal family). All the other students had gone solo, and the pressure on my sailor was intense.

One day we were meandering around the training area going over basic flying exercises and emergencies for the umpteenth time, when he fished in his jacket pocket, ignoring the helicopter’s increasingly dangerous descent, and pulled out a half bottle of whisky (alcohol was legal in Iran in those days). He pushed the bottle across the seat, looked at me with puppy eyes and said, ‘Please, can I go solo, please?’ I told him to go back to the airfield (but had to tell him what direction to take in spite of the aiming point of the 13,000ft mountain in the background).

On another occasion, he tried to bribe me in a totally different fashion, which should not be repeated here. It was at this point that I insisted he was not pilot material and finally managed to get him off the course.

If all the instructors wrote down their stories about that training school and we put them in a book, we would have a highly amusing, if unbelievable, volume.

As you know, if you’ve read the last few emails from me, my latest novel, Thirty-Four, has been published at the opening price of US$0.99/£0.77. That price will be increased to a more realistic level soon, so if you would like to read it, now is the time to order.

Links to get it at the opening price: Amazon – getbook.at/Thirty-Four
Other retailers: https://books2read.com/u/4DRMeg

Here’s to overcoming the pandemic!

We established a base at Hondeklipbaai (Dog Rock Bay) on the west coast of South Africa a bit over 400 kilometres North of Cape Town. Using a Bell 212 13 passenger helicopter fully equipped for offshore work, we were to support the Sedco 708 rig situated about 160 kms out in the Atlantic. A hangar was built and we moved in before the contract commenced. Offshore helicopters and their engines have to be washed every day to get rid of the salt they pick up which causes corrosion. The trouble was, we discovered late in the day, that the local water was brak or salty. We needed clean water or we risked adding to the corrosion. The remedy was to erect a stand adjoining the hangar and as high as its roof. Putting a fresh water tank on top of that would provide some pressure. Constructing the stand was easy, and we used the helicopter to lift the tank onto it.

The lift was accomplished by having an engineer on the stand to receive the tank and using one of our pilots to marshal me (the pilot) using hand signals from the ground. The marshaller was an extremely competent lady pilot, but there was no point in having more crew in the helicopter than necessary during a high risk operation. This lady is very small, probably 5ft 4ins or 1.62m. She was dressed in uniform, navy trousers and a white shirt. I had lifted the tank a short distance from the hangar and was moving it over to be above the stand. The lady marshaller was directing me with her hand/arm signals like a traffic policeman.

Then the school came out, and every pupil was dressed in navy slacks and a white shirt!

They thought this was a great game and were super excited by the helicopter. They surrounded our gallant girl, and I lost her in the crowd of kids when they all began imitating her and giving totally irrelevant signals. I, with the tank dangling underneath, hadn’t a clue what direction to go for a while. Somehow we managed it.

But there’s more: in that atmosphere, with the wind blowing off the desert, the air was incredibly dry which resulted in the helicopter generating a serious amount of static electricity. Our engineer, Peter, was on top of the stand securing the tank and had to disengage it from the helicopter’s steel cable. I didn’t want to drop the cable from the helicopter’s hook itself because it might have damaged the tank. Peter had to scrabble around on the top of the stand with barely room for his feet while this live steel cable was chasing him and belting him repeatedly with static. Eventually, I draped the cable over the hangar to earth it, and Peter escaped by sliding down the outside of the stand, almost in free fall.
Fun and games.

The last couple of books I’ve read are worth mentioning. They include The Kingdom by Jo Nesbo, which I talked about in my April letter – it’s excellent. One of my editors claimed that comparable authors to myself are Jo Nesbo and Harlan Coben. I hadn’t read any of Coben’s work before, so I bought his very first novel, Play Dead. A great story, but it’s not well written. The women are all supermodels and the men, with a couple of exceptions, are top sportsmen. Everyone is over-the-top wonderful, the romance is syrupy sweet and there’s a happy-ever-after ending.
Seriously disappointed that I had been compared to this, I thought to be fair I’d have to try a later book of Harlan’s, and bought Six Years. Wow, what a difference. This is an excellent story and is a great example of how someone can grow into their craft over the twenty-three years between these books. Reading Six Years makes one realise why this man is one of the most successful authors out there.
I hope my editor was comparing me with the experienced Harlan and not the inexperienced one. I think so because the other comparison, Jo Nesbo, is no slouch either.

Another excellent book I’ve recently finished is Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, (Atonement, Never Let me Go). Ishiguro sometimes delves into an alternative future where humanity could go if we’re not careful. Never Let Me Go presents a scenario where some children are bred for their organs to be harvested. Klara and the Sun is written in the first person by an AF, an Artificial Friend, or solar powered robot using Artificial Intelligence to function and deduce what her human ‘friend’ needs. The book is brilliantly written, a touch sad and, to me, a warning for humans to limit the uses of AI. It’s also an interesting study on the behaviour of humans who value this AF for all her qualities, yet can’t form that ultimate emotional attachment that is so fulfilling.

The great news is that Thirty-Four, my next novel, is almost ready for publication and should be in stores in a couple of weeks. Here’s the book description:

You see the fear in her eyes, the pleading. Would you abandon her to a life of abuse to save more innocent children?

Ostensibly, Andrew Duncan is a fortunate, intelligent young man, but no one realises he’s actually much, much older. Big Pharma knows, though, and they will stop at nothing to learn his secret, because it will lead to massive profits.

While Andrew evades the tentacles of the giant corporation, he’s framed for the savage murder of a reporter. But who really did it – the pharmaceutical company or the child trafficking gang the journalist was probing? To prove his innocence, Andrew assumes the reporter’s investigation. But when he spots two of the victims, he’s forced into making a critical decision.

Andrew must find the assassin and expose the depraved gang. But the police are looking for him, Big Pharma is after him and a pair of little girls depend on him.

Even worse, the assassin is closing in.

This anecdote covers an incident that occurred some years after I’d left the army and Hong Kong. I was flying for a South African company in South West Africa (now Namibia). The SWA authorities were extending communications throughout the country and erecting rebroadcast stations on mountain tops. This particular one was Paresis mountain which is about 32kms west of Otjiwarongo.

Our task was to lift bags of cement and ballast, barrels of water and all the material the workers would need to build a concrete base and erect a communications mast on the mountain top. All this material was carried slung under the helicopter using the cargo hook.

The procedure was for the load weight to be carefully calculated before being stacked in a net. The corners of the net were then drawn together and attached to a long sling with a loop or steel ring on the end. The pilot would position the helicopter over the load and a man on the ground clipped the ring into the helicopter’s hook. The pilot could release the load at any time by electrically opening the hook. He would do this when delivering the load, of course, but could also do it in an emergency.

I and another pilot and an engineer were to start the operation. After ensuring all was going well, I was to return to Johannesburg and leave the other pilot to finish the job. We set up a camp at the foot of the mountain with the construction workers and a civil engineer. All the material for the mast was stacked nearby, and the helicopter stood out in the open ready to fly.

The region was classed as a malaria risk area, so we had to take medication every day. Like a good little boy I took my anti-malaria pill with breakfast on the first morning.

I took a load up the mountain and dropped it where the workers indicated was most convenient for them. This was as close to where they were going to use the material, depending on what that was. The only place to actually land the machine was a little distant. This was where the empty nets and slings were put into the helicopter, to be taken back to the loading area down below.

With the first load dropped, I flew back down the mountain to the camp (about a minute’s flight) and picked up another net. Back on the summit I was moving to the position the workers wanted when my vision became fuzzy. You need to understand this was a very precarious situation. There was nowhere to actually land. There were men almost underneath me, because there was not enough space for them to keep away from the helicopter, and the ground was strewn with large rocks, steel girders, a cement mixer and other construction material. An engine failure in that position would certainly have resulted in an accident, the machine wrecked and quite likely several deaths – including mine.

I could not focus properly. I was high above the drop point and descending vertically to put the load on the ground, but I was losing perspective – things were distorted. The ground was moving when it should not have been. I had to fight to maintain a picture of the situation. Somehow I succeeded in dumping the load close to where it should have been, so the men on the ground were clear of a possible crash.

The next step should have been for me to land further away where I could pick up the first net (now empty) and sling. But my condition was deteriorating so fast I could not afford to do that landing, and shot off down to the camp. On the way down my head began to ache, the landing zone ahead of me was wobbling, and I seriously thought I was going to lose control.

If, in the days when it wasn’t considered so stupid, you have ever been so drunk that the white lines on the highway divided into two and you couldn’t tell which lane you should be driving in, you will understand what I felt like in the final stage of that flight.

Somehow I managed to land without crashing. The other pilot came over and took my seat. I literally fell out of the helicopter. I had no balance, I could not control my legs. I sat there on the ground with the noise of the helicopter like a blacksmith’s hammer beating my head into his anvil. Our engineer and someone else took a grip of me and half carried me to bed, where I lay for the rest of the day with an astronomical headache, cold shivers and a fever.

I don’t know enough about it, but I had malaria once before, in Kenya. Whether that had something to do with my reaction to the medication, I can’t say, but I have not taken another anti-malaria pill since then.

I did another job in Equatorial Guinea for the mining company, Rio Tinto. Their geologists (who would be out in the field for weeks) told me that they did not take malaria prophylactics because of the damage they can cause when taken over a long period. Instead they carried malaria test kits, and at the slightest sign of illness they were evacuated. I have followed that advice ever since and so far it’s worked.

At last I’ve had my book, Thirty-Four, back from the copy editor and made the necessary corrections. Now it goes to a proofreader to double check for errors. Maybe I’ll be able to publish in a month. Meanwhile, here’s a look at the cover:

The 10th Gurkha Rifles Air Platoon was based at Sek Kong airfield (it is now known as Shek Kong) in the New Territories, along with several other army units. Between us and the mainland city of Kowloon, lies the mountain of Tai Mo Shan. Hong Kong island is another couple of minutes flying time across the harbour. The road from Sek Kong to Kowloon was a winding climb up past the mountain and a long twisty descent. Incidentally, this would cause the brakes on my old American Studebaker to melt halfway down the hill. Strategic stops had to be made to allow the brakes to cool. Note to self: American cars are completely impractical for Hong Kong’s traffic and its narrow, twisty roads, don’t get another one. The safest and quickest way to the city was obviously by air.
As the duty pilot, I was called to take a Gurkha wife from Sek Kong to hospital on Hong Kong island. She was heavily pregnant and accompanied by another woman, whom I took to be a midwife. Both of them were traditionally dressed in saris. The pregnant lady fixed her gaze up to the sky, clearly embarrassed when I showed the two how the four straps of their complicated safety harnesses fastened. I didn’t want to do it for her, as that would mean touching her and causing further embarrassment. Instead I managed to get the midwife to do the necessary. During this long preparation, I was oblivious to the need for speed. No one had told me that the matter was extremely urgent, and I think now that some of the anxiety the two women showed was due to the time it took to strap them in.
I’m sure the women had never travelled by helicopter before. They were certainly nervous. When we took off, I sensed they wanted to scream, but stoic as the Gurkhas are, their expressions never changed. They didn’t even squeak. Our route took us up past Tai Mo Shan with its winding road on our left, then downhill all the way to cross the harbour for the Harcourt Road helipad on the island.
An ambulance was waiting for us, together with some men who knew how to conduct helicopter operations. They got the ladies out safely while the machine was still running. The midwife was nimble, the pregnant one not so. Helping arms encouraged her as she struggled to shift across the seat to the door. I put her awkward movements down to her advanced condition, but she staggered as she stepped to the ground. Some heated discussion took place, which I couldn’t hear, but it appeared that the woman insisted she would make her own way to the ambulance. As she walked away with an unnatural gait and supported by the midwife, a lump in her sari between her legs was plain to see. And the seat where she had been sitting was a mess.
I still have difficulty believing what I saw. Whether it was because I was a man, a Caucasian man, or something else, I don’t know, but she never gave any sign of labour, neither in facial expression nor sound. A European woman would have made a huge fuss, but the Gurkha lady was so proud and so stoic. I used to think I’d gained a passenger on that flight, but I don’t think it was possible while she sat in the seat, it must have happened from the moment she left the machine. But rather than draw any attention to herself, she managed to maintain her dignity at least until they got her into the ambulance.
Did she put her child’s life at risk for the sake of her pride? Were cultural influences so strong that they overcame her maternal instincts? I’m not qualified to answer, but over fifty years on, I still wonder.
Apparently, neither she nor the baby suffered any ill effects from the experience.
Publication news is that Thirty-Four, my latest novel, has been given a final revision by myself and is now with a copy editor. The cover design has been finalised, and I was hoping to show you an image, but I don’t have one in a publishable format yet. Next time.
And finally, if any of you enjoy Jo Nesbo’s books, you might be interested in The Kingdom. This book is nothing like his earlier works involving Harry Hole, the degenerate detective with many personal problems,  who takes on some horrific cases. The Kingdom is excellent and I thoroughly recommend it. It’s complex, mysterious to the end and filled with anti-heroes. Give it a go.

Another month has gone by and it’s time for anecdote number two from my early flying days.
Last month I told you how, in Hong Kong in 1967, we helped build Snake, the triple layered barbed wire fence laid out along the ridge line overlooking the border with China. It was all done in a rush to protect the colony from the thousands of refugees fleeing Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution. But there was another reason to hurry – a typhoon was forecast, and the job had to be completed before that arrived.
We flew the coils of wire and other supplies up from the base to the ridge line where the Gurkhas were working. But these chaps had to eat, so it wasn’t only wire but also food and water to keep them going through the day. Such was the pace of work, that the pilots remained in the aircraft with the rotors turning while loading took place. When you’re in this situation, you are technically flying the machine, so cannot leave the controls.
I was sitting there watching the lads at the base loading me up with the Gurkhas’ baht, or meal, some of which was prepared and some for cooking on site. There were all shapes and sizes of containers, including “hay boxes”, insulated chests to keep the food hot.
Finding no suitable stowage for a large plastic bag of curry powder, one loader found a secure place below my feet. I knew it was safe, we often put our own stuff down there out of the way.
We were flying without doors for increased visibility and for the cooling air flow. I mentioned a typhoon. It wasn’t there at that stage, but the wind was getting up, and the flying was bumpy with the helicopter being pushed about by air currents around the hills.
Something sharp must have been below my feet with the bag of curry powder, because either it split or the bag had not been closed properly. The wind was buffeting the helicopter and, without the doors, was blowing into and around the cabin. It doesn’t take much imagination to picture what happens when a gust of wind meets finely ground spices. It went everywhere. Up my nose, in my mouth. It stuck to the sweat on my face and stung my eyelids. I pulled my helmet visor down, but it was too late, and all it did was trap the dust against my face. My lungs were on fire, my eyes were burning and streaming, and I was coughing (taking in deep breaths of curry with every gasp). Somehow I managed to complete that sortie, but I had to stop and wash before doing any more. Honestly, I don’t know why police use tear gas – curry powder is twice as effective.
It’s funny now, but trying to fly a helicopter to a hill top in a strong wind while blinded by cumin and chillies and doubled over in coughing fits, wasn’t so amusing. I believe the vacuum cleaner clogged when they cleaned the cockpit. My love of curry has not been dented though, in fact it’s been enhanced by the experience.
Beer never tasted better than after that flight.
Next month, I’ll reveal how my passenger numbers went up in mid flight.
Publication news is that Thirty-Four, my latest novel, is currently being revised after some suggestions by an editor. My designer has produced a couple of striking cover images, which we’ve discussed and he’s presently working on some modifications to those. I think the cover is going to be great and I hope to show a sample next month and get some feedback from you.
Until then, keep well. And in the future too.