2am departure from RAF Brize Norton (Mon 27 Feb)
By James Blunt (Formerly Capt J H Blount LG)
I am, as I write, nervously seated in an RAF Tristar circling over Dubai. The plane came into service in 1972 - over 40 years ago. It has gone out of service now, with me aboard it, at 33,000 feet.
Our journey had started 13 hours earlier, at 2am from RAF Brize Norton. Unusually for the hour, the Movements Officer was still on duty to oversee our departure, I was informed. We had arrived at the Oxfordshire base by taxi, were escorted across the foggy, orange-lit runway passed the ageing aircraft in which I find myself now, and led into a small waiting room with some coffee, sandwiches and a silent Brigadier reading his Kindle in the corner.
The more important cargo was in the large hall next door - a hundred or so soldiers, who we were accompanying as they deployed to Afghanistan. Looking at them, a memory from a past life flooded over me. I have been here, some 13 years earlier, en route to Kosovo.
Tonight, we flew via Hanover to pick up more soldiers, via Cyprus to refuel and on to our final destination - Camp Bastion in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. As we took off on the final leg from RAF Akrotiri, my keyboard player sitting beside me said cheerfully, "Well it looks like you will get there this time! Third time lucky, huh?"
Third time. I have travelled with soldiers en route to Afghanistan three times. I have spent seven full days in the hands of those whose job it is to get men and equipment into battle. I have done so of course unpaid and at the request of the Armed Forces. And every single time, myself and the soldiers I have been travelling with have failed to get there.
The first time, we'd flown from London to Dubai, and sat on a runway for three days while they tried unsuccessfully to fix our broken aircraft or find another. The soldiers I was with said they were very used to it. In a way, they didn't mind - it was three less days being shot at, but for the soldiers who were at the other end being picked up to come home with wives and girlfriends anxiously waiting for them, and until recently, those lost days cut from their official R&R (Rest & Relaxation) allowance, it must have been wildly irritating. And for those soldiers going into battle that day without their buddies who are delayed in Dubai, it must be life-threatening, to the extent that the Special Forces soldiers I was with went online to buy civilian flights into Kandahar with their own money.
My second attempt was at Christmas over a year ago. Snow was putting added pressure on the task of transporting manpower. Check-in had moved, along with the soldiers, from Brize Norton to East Midlands airport, but boarding was initially delayed due to difficulties with loading the packed meals (I struggled to fully understand this, and can't believe it was true. Surely just give the guys their packed meals as they climb the steps? But that was the reason given for the initial delay). When we were eventually bussed across the apron, I saw an old charter plane in the distance and laughed internally at whichever poor buggers were going to end up on it. We did. For seven hours. Of course it didn't work, so a replacement part was sent for and flown in, and we stayed on board because there weren't enough buses to take us to the terminal, so the crew had to stay on board with us, so that when the part had arrived and been fitted and the plane was fixed - the crew had done too many hours and the flight was cancelled. I was told it took the soldiers three days to get into theatre that time. They were paid during this time, by you and I, the taxpayer, and I'm sure they're grateful. But I'm also sure it's not how you and I wanted our tax money spent.
And now here I am, with more soldiers, failing to get to a war we have been fighting like this for 10 years. And although the military says they are under-funded, and more funds have been sent, I have to wonder if the funds are being spent in the right place? Sure, the soldiers are much better equipped, I can see that. But they can be as well dressed as you like sitting waiting on an airfield in the middle of nowhere, but it's not going to scare the Taliban that much. And you can ask me to come and raise (or perhaps lower, in my case) morale as much as you like, but if you can't get them home to see their families on time, you've done that for me.
And so, as I write to you more than six miles above the desert in the Middle East, we learn from the ever-calm Loadmaster that this iconic old aircraft we are in, the same era as the Triumph TR6, that we bought second-hand to get us to the Falklands War in 1982 from British Airways, has got an air leak. It has become very cold and we've put combat jackets and overcoats on, and eventually flown the four hours back to Cyprus to land. The soldiers were led away to a hanger for their overnight stay - this happens often enough that the hanger is pre-prepared as temporary accommodation.
The next day we are led out to a different Tristar which takes off, but soon develops a problem with the undercarriage. It won't close properly and after several attempts, we fly out to sea to dump our fuel before returning to Cyprus. If I'm honest, I'm scared. I don't need to be here. I have a very happy life on a safer kind of tour. Maybe this is why I left the army to inflict you all with my music? Blame the RAF. Right now, I blame Catherine Jenkins (she's on the plane too). For a second day in a row, we're circling in a knackered old plane hoping to get down alive.
And as we land, and say we've had enough, and get a Monarch flight home the next day, leaving a bunch of Great British soldiers sitting on the runway beside two broken planes that should have been decommissioned well over 10 years ago, and as two hundred soldiers sit in Camp Bastion whiling away the hours hoping their wives frustrations aren't boiling over into anger, and as the few thousand remaining soldiers in theatre advance to make contact with an enemy you and I will never meet, in a country I will never go to, at a cost in life and limb to a brave few and vast sums of money to the nation at a time when we hope our institutions are spending money as wisely as possible, I ask what's going wrong? Why can't we deliver people to the front line as required? Have we bought too many fast jets and not enough transport aircraft? Is it down to mis-management of resources, or painfully enacted bureaucracy at senior level? I don't know. I know I can see huge inefficiencies in deploying man-power and huge amounts of money being wasted. The fuel we dumped over the Mediterranean was worth fifty-five thousand pounds at the pumps alone.
I know that every soldier, airman, Non-Commissioned Officer and Officer that I met was professional, hard-working and keen. Every single one was charming and a pleasure to meet. Every single one made me proud to have met them. But every single one was also resigned. Resigned to the fact that someone, somewhere has constructed a vastly expensive system that simply doesn't deliver.
Either that, or they REALLY don't want me to sing to them in Afghanistan.
Broken down in RAF Akrotiri after developing an air leak over Dubai. (Mon 27th Feb)
24 Hours later, we have a new (well, different) 40 year old Tristar.
After takeoff, we had a problem with the undercarriage and had to dump fuel before we could land
Two broken 40 year old Tristars
http://www.jamesblunt.com/news,third-time-lucky-in-afghanistan_119.htm?pg=1&f=all