Scram! Read Free Page B

men inside this helicopter were split between the two surviving helicopters. Georgeson’s Wessex crashed ten minutes later as he crossed the glacier’s ridgeline in whiteout conditions.
    In the back of the Wessex 3, Stanley’s observer Lieutenant Chris Parry sat crouched over the radar screen. His job was to keep the formation clear of the cliffs to the side of the glacier. What he couldn’t see was the ice ridge in front of him; the forward sweep of the radar was blocked by the helicopter’s main gearbox just in front of the radar dome. As Stanley crossed the ridge, Georgeson was following a few rotor lengths behind in Yankee Alpha. Another ferocious snowstorm hit the formation just at the wrong moment, barely ten seconds after launch. As the Wessex 3 dropped rapidly down over the ridgeline, automatically maintaining a low altitude over the steeply descending glacier, Georgeson lost sight of the aircraft in front. ‘I’m getting whiteout,’ he announced calmly to his crewman Lomas, who reopened the cabin door that he had only just shut. Trying to maintain level flight in order to regain visual contact with the aircraft in front, Georgeson was completely unaware that he was in a dip in the ice and on the wrong side of the ridgeline. Just as with Tidd minutes earlier, he saw the radalt unwinding rapidly and pulled in power. There was a fateful inevitability as the Wessex touched down on the snow.
    They almost got away with it. However, the forty-knot wind slewed them around so that they were drifting slowly sideways. The starboard wheel caught in a small ice crevasse and the aircraft toppled over onto its side.
    In the lead aircraft, Cooper had been peering behind him through the left cockpit window giving his crew a running commentary on the position of the second Wessex. ‘OK, OK. Fine. He’s still with us. Fifty yards. Steady. Oh God. He’s gone in.’ The huge spray of snow and the complete disappearance of the Wessex suggested a huge crash into the cliffs. ‘It looks like they have really totalled themselves.’
    With no radio contact, an overloaded helicopter and appalling weather conditions, there was nothing for it but to return to HMS
Antrim
, the County-class destroyer from which they had launched two hours earlier. The journey back was subdued. They cleared the mountains and crossed the coast. Parry radioed disconsolately ahead to the ship: ‘Four Zero Six departing coast now. ETA fifteen minutes. Regret we have lost our two chicks.’
    There was a long pause.
    â€˜Roger.’
    After the horrific conditions high up on Fortuna Glacier, the normally taxing task of landing on a bucking ship in a mere gale now seemed curiously routine. The scrum of soldiers and crew tumbled out of the back of the Wessex 3 onto the flight deck. Tidd approached the hangar surprised to see Stanley’s senior maintainer, Chief Fritz Heritier, and his team laying out a load of drips and stretchers. ‘Guys, you don’t need that, our only injury is a gashed cheek.’ It was painfully obvious that Tidd, who had been disconnected from the intercom in the crush of the returning aircraft, didn’t know about the second crash.
    When he heard, it was like a kick to the stomach. Ian Georgeson, Tug Wilson and Jan Lomas were good friends as well as colleagues. Tidd went up to the bridge to talk to
Antrim
’s captain, Brian Young, task group commander. A former aviator himself, he knew what it was like to lose friends.
    Up on the glacier, Yankee Alpha had toppled over on its right side with a sickening thud. After spraying its rotor blades to the four corners, it had juddered a few yards onwards down the glacier. The cabin of the aircraft was a tangle of bodies, backpacks and ammunition. Lomas lay at the bottom of the pile, pinned down by Wilson, in turn pinned down by one of the SAS soldiers. Looking sideways, Lomas could see Georgeson’s feet kicking to his right.