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34.

Nige eventually released me, set me free like a wounded bird restored to health, and with hiscertification the Army pronounced me ready to fly Apaches.

But nope—it was a trick. I wasn’t going to fly Apaches. I was going to sit in a windowlessclassroom and read about Apaches.

I thought: Could anything be crueler? Promise me a helicopter, hand me a stack of homework?

The course lasted three months, during which I nearly went insane. Every night I’d slump backto my cell- like room in the officers’ mess and vent to a mate on the phone, or else to mybodyguard. I considered leaving the course altogether. I’d never even wanted to fly Apaches, Isaid to everyone, petulantly. I wanted to fly the Lynx. It was simpler to learn, and I’d get back tothe war faster. But my commanding officer, Colonel David Meyer, quashed that idea. Not achance, Harry.

Why, Colonel?

Because you’ve had operational ground experience in reconnaissance, you were a very fineFAC, and you’re a bloody good pilot. You’re going to fly Apaches.

But—

I can tell from the way you fly, the way you read the ground, this is what you were meant to do.

Meant to do? The course was torture!

And yet I was on time every day. I showed up with my three-ring binders full of info about theApache engines, and listened to the lectures, and fought like crazy to keep up. I tried to draw oneverything I’d learned from my flight instructors, from Booley to Nige, and treated the classroomas an aircraft going down. My job was to regain control.

And then one day…it was over. They said I’d be permitted at long last to strap myself into anhonest-to-God Apache.

For…ground taxiing.

Are you joking?

Four lessons, they said.

Four lessons…on taxiing?

As it turned out, four lessons was barely enough to absorb all there was to know about groundtaxiing that massive bird. I felt, while taxiing, as if the aircraft was on stilts, set on a bed of jelly.

There were moments when I truly wondered if I’d ever be able to do it, if this whole journeymight be at an end here, before it had even begun.

I blamed part of my struggle on the seating arrangement. In the Firefly, in the Squirrel, theinstructor was always right next to me. He could reach over, fix my mistakes straightaway, or elsemodel the correct way. Booley would put his hand on the controls, or Nige would do the pedals,and I’d do the same. I realized that much of what I’d learned in life had come through this sort ofmodeling. More than most people I needed a guide, a guru—a partner.

But in the Apache the instructor was either way up front or way in the back—unseen.

I was all alone.