Christmas Tree

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Christmas Tree

‘Gemini two seven, you are cleared inbound, maintain corridor on course zero five six, monitor guard and beware friendly forces to the north of your designated Delta Zulu.’

From around 40,000 cold feet above Afghanistan came a double click to indicate that the crew had heard and acknowledged the instructions from the AWACs flying a circuit over the Indian Ocean. The ageing B52 Stratofortress ought to have been retired decades ago but somehow stayed relevant and droned on through the night, its eight fuel slurping engines leaving an icy wake as she contrailed her way to her target.

On the flight deck the skipper, a full Colonel no less grunted to his co-pilot, indicating that he was going to hand control over to the junior officer and get some rest. ‘You have control.’ He announced.
‘I have control.’ Acknowledged Captain Abigail Wiznowska.

Five hundred miles due east of the speeding bomber, Dave Bennett looked up at the stars.
‘Bloody nippy tonight sir.’ It was part question and part conversation.
‘Too right and they reckon it’s going to snow too.’ The answer came from Lieutenant Michael Andrews of her Majesties Royal Marine Commando’s.
‘You think we’ll get a white Christmas then sir?’
‘Not in this god forsaken dump Dave. But at least we aren’t getting the present that’s been arranged for chummy out there tonight.’ The conversation was carried out in a whisper, the rest of the troop, spaced out along a tree-lined ridge, would not be able to hear them.
‘Do you trust ‘em to hit it sir?’ Dave Bennett nodded forwards.
‘Nope. I think we can safely say that the average American bomber is fortunate to hit the right country let alone within ten miles of the GPS markers we’ve laid.’ answered the officer with all the authority that his 24 years and a bit of gold braid allowed. There was a short silence, hanging like a fog in the trees.
‘Ours is not to reason why then.’
‘That’s right Dave, we do as we are told and get shot at by lots of different people, some of them even on our own side.’

Like all ground troops Mike Andrews Royal Marines feared and hated air strikes in equal measure. They could do all in their power to prevent things from going wrong but what were euphemistically termed ‘blue on blue’ happened all the time. The grunts on the ground had less polite terms for such incidents. Based in the cold mountain regions for the past two months the troop had trekked their way to find and locate what was thought to be a training camp for the Taliban fighters. Hidden away in a high mountain pasture there was no way that a land based assault could ever hope to work without imposing impossibly high casualties on the attackers. The best, and probably the only method of eradicating this menace was an air strike. NATO command had eschewed local support in favour of a high level precision strike by the Americans. Well technically that was what it was called.

Christmas Eve. December the 24th and the spirit of goodwill in the mountains was sadly lacking. Apart from the camaraderie inherent within any military unit, there was very little loving of thy neighbour going on.

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