, Dramatic pictures and video footage can now be seen of the daring rescue attempt of Lance Corporal Mathew Ford, carried out by Royal Marines on Apache helicopters in Afghanistan on Monday 15 January 2007.
It was with great sadness that the Marines discovered Lance Corporal Mathew Ford, from 45 Commando Royal Marines, had been killed in action.
His UK Task Force had attacked a major Taliban stronghold, Jugroom Fort, south of Garmsir in southern Helmand Province and met ferocious Taliban fire from all sides.
Having fought for a period, the Marines regrouped. Discovering Lance Corporal Ford was missing, four marines flew back strapped to Apaches, to find their fallen comrade, in a unique rescue mission attempt.
Marine Gary Robinson, one of the four, explained:
“All that was going through my head was basically what to do when we got on the ground and just make sure I knew exactly where I was going so I could reach Lance Corporal Ford as soon as possible and get out myself.
“As far as I'm concerned any of my colleagues would have done the same thing if the roles were reversed. I don't think it was heroic or dangerous in any way. ”
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The four volunteers receive a brief from the 9 Regiment Army Air Corps pilot [Picture: Sgt Garry Stanton RAF]
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It was one of the Apache pilots, known as Tom, from the Army Air Corps, who made the suggestion that four personnel could be strapped onto the Apaches and that they could be in and out in five minutes.
They flew in at low level and at 50mph (80kph) to protect the passengers. After landing in the Taliban fort Tom said:
“I thought that we'd probably got about two to three minutes at most with the element of surprise before they would realise what was happening, and it was after we'd been on the ground for about three minutes that we were engaged.”
Tom then came under fire from a building to his right. He radioed to a supporting Apache above who fired at the Taliban as the Marines now started running back to the helicopter. They had been on the ground for five minutes.
WO1 Colin Hearn, a Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM) with the Royal Marines, also volunteered for the rescue:
“It had never been done before on that particular aircraft,” he said. “I just wanted to get on. We knew what we were going to do. We had a rough plan of how it was going to run.
“I'm just grateful that we found Lance Corporal Ford and got him back on the helo and back with us. I'm a Royal Marine, I'm RSM of the unit, he's a Royal Marine the same as me – there was no way we were ever going to leave him, or anyone else on that battlefield. ”
The other two volunteers were Marine Chris Fraser-Perry and Captain Dave Rigg, Royal Engineer, with 28 Engineer Regiment, who was acting as Battlegroup engineer. Captain Rigg, who is Commando trained, said:
“In these circumstances everyone is drawn together
