The pilot of the Black Hawk told me I could recline the seat if I wasn’t comfortable. ‘Oh, great!’ I said, and started fiddling with the rock-hard thing I was strapped into, looking for a recliner handle. ‘Not really,’ he laughed, and his square jaw barely moved. When I say square jaw, I mean he had the squarest jaw of any man I had ever seen. He looked like a cartoon character. I had not realised men could really look like that. I felt a fool. Of course the seat didn’t recline.
I was strapped into a Black Hawk because I was on a press trip with Gordon Brown to Iraq and we were being flown into the Green Zone. All the reporters on the trip had been meant to be flown by the British Army in Lynx helicopters but at the last minute we were told they had run low on Lynxes and some of us would be taken by the Americans in Black Hawks.
It was the most exciting flying experience of my life, and I’m a nervous flier, so I find any flight exciting.
The guy in the pilot’s seat was very much enjoying having a female journalist on board and after a few more jokes about the in-flight service and so on, he took off at a sharp angle and instantly veered the chopper up and backwards into what felt like a loop-the-loop.
I screamed and screamed and the more I screamed the more he laughed and the harder he flew, and I just stared at his big square jaw, staking my life on it. He had on a black helmet that covered a lot of his face and dark aviator shades so all I could see was this jaw – unfeasibly square and unflinching.
There were two young gunners tied by ropes sitting with their legs dangling inside each of the side doors, which remained open in the searing heat as they trained their guns out, looking down at the sights as we flew over Baghdad. A commotion broke out over their radio system at one point and the boys took aim and red lights flashed on their guns.
I don’t know whether they shot at something or not. I was so terrified I didn’t care.
Having flown in a Black Hawk, the thing that came to me when I heard about the tragedy over the Potomac was the memory of how quickly and accurately that Black Hawk I was strapped in to swerved and manoeuvred.
I think back on that memorable flight over Iraq and I still marvel at the ability of the pilot. He was, it seemed to me, the best of the best of the best. Everything you want America to be. Well, everything I want it to be.
I don’t know why that should be controversial, and I know a lot of people are not happy with what Donald Trump said following the crash, but having travelled in a Black Hawk, and it being one of my most treasured experiences, all I can say is that the pilot was someone who made me feel like there are men on this Earth who can save us from anything.
I’m glad such men exist, and if that makes me a bigot then we live in strange times. As I was watching the sad news, my B&B guest came back to the house. He was, as it happened, a US marine in his early thirties who was travelling around Europe, visiting Ireland for a few weeks. He was from Virginia, and he was another all-American hero type. A lean guy, dressed impeccably neatly, with a blond buzz cut.
What was most amazing about him was how softly spoken he was and how polite. When I asked if he would like breakfast he said ‘Yes, ma’am’, and when I asked him what he would like, he said ‘Eggs, I guess…’ and when I asked what I should put with them, he said ‘Toast, I guess…’.
He walked into the kitchen after his day hiking the Beara Peninsula, enraptured by coming across a seal sleeping on a coastal path. I let him describe that, and then I explained why I had the TV news blaring. I told him about the air crash over Washington, and he shrugged. He hadn’t heard, no. He wasn’t as interested as I was hoping he would be. I asked him what he thought.
He sighed and said there were a lot of training crashes and accidents in the military these past few years, and he told me a few anecdotes from his own experience, including an exercise that involved his unit being flown over the sea hanging from helicopters: ‘…and one of us got dragged right under the water,’ he said, in his slow southern drawl.
‘Hey Parpy!’ he said, becoming animated as he bent down to pet Poppy the spaniel as she came bounding towards him. Then the all-American hero starting telling me again about the sleeping seal.
‘He was jus’ lyin’ there, with his aaz closed, and then he yawned! I guess I never knew a seal could yawn. But they do!’
It was all he wanted to talk about all night, the beauty of nature and the yawning seal.
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