On my return to our base in Kandahar, Afghanistan, I met up with my friend who shared the contract with me at the airport when he came to fetch me. He was leaving for South Africa the next day, but first he had to bring me up to date on what was new and what had happened in the two months I was away on leave. The information was that the Taliban had intensified their attacks on the base and the aircraft flying the same routes we do.

Later that day he took me to our helicopter at the airport. We entered the cargo hold, and from underneath a pile of blankets he pulled out a metal container that was fitted with a lock. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked the container and told me to look inside. In the container was an AKM Russian assault rifle. The modernised variant of the AK-47 rifle. There were also four 30-round magazines and about five hundred 7.62x39mm rounds.

This brought a smile to my face, and I felt relieved. As civilian contractors, we were not allowed to carry weapons. Although we were in a war zone and being shot at, it was an offence under military law for any civilian to be armed on the base. We could be arrested and kicked off the base if we were found in possession of this weapon, but we took a chance, and the rifle stayed in the helicopter.

We thought that in the event of the helicopter going down for some or the other reason and we were still alive after the crash, it would be a really sad day to be unarmed in the Taliban-infested desert or mountains. We both had military experience.

We each had our own “runaway bag,” as we called it, and always kept it very close to us wherever we went. This bag contained a few things in case we had to run for our lives or in the event of an emergency. In the bag I had my passport, some currency, a few energy bars, some medical equipment, a compass, a GPS, a knife, a spare cell phone, a laser pointer and binoculars, just to mention some contents. With the latest edition locked up in the helicopter, the ‘runaway bag’ was complete.

Where the weapon came from was a mystery, but then again, I have met nobody as resourceful as my South African friend and colleague. He could get anything anywhere in the world, and this I had witnessed on several occasions. I knew he had some contacts with the US and Australian Special Forces that operated from our base and from the Tarin Kowt base, but I never asked and he never told.

The evening before he left, he told me about the interesting job he and the Mi26 crew did. He proudly showed me some pictures on the laptop of the Mi26 slinging a Chinook helicopter. Those photos were exceptional. The Mi26 carrying the Chinook on a sling below it made me feel as proud as any true South African father watching his son scoring his first try in a rugby match.

He told me he had a request from the Americans to uplift and bring back one of their Chinooks that had been shot down. There was not much damage to the helicopter, as the pilot made a crash landing. With the permission of the Dutch military, the operation went ahead, and the Mi26 collected and airlifted the Chinook back to Kandahar.

Three weeks later, it happened again. This time it was an American CH-47 Chinook that had to be fetched after it was shot at and went down. The crew had managed to land the Chinook, but this time the helicopter had serious damage. Initially, the American military tried to evacuate the damaged Chinook with the help of a similar helicopter, but all the attempts failed. The Chinook weighed 17 tons.

The Mi26T is designed to transport bulky cargo weighing up to 20 tons. It is the only aircraft to lift such cargo as the Chinook. And we did it. After the rotor blades of the Chinook were removed, it was lifted onto the external load sling and transported back to our base in Kandahar. Although I felt sorry for the Americans, I was excited to be part of a successful air mission on the evacuation of the helicopter from the emergency landing site. I now also had my own pictures of the Mi26T bringing a damaged Chinook into the base. For the curious, there is a video on YouTube named “Russian Helicopter Pics up a Chinook”.

There was new respect on the base for the Mi26T. In the past, we got sideways glares from the US and British soldiers as the ‘you are my foe’ feeling between the West and the Russian Federation was much alive and well. I have seen it firsthand whilst I worked with the Russians in Afghanistan.

After bringing back the damaged Chinook, I was approached by several US and British flight crews requesting a tour of the Mi26T and the cockpit. With the captain’s permission, I obliged, and for a few days, I felt like a tour guide showing off the Mi26T and spewing out the specs of the helicopter. To rub it in, I had T-shirts printed at the base for myself, the crew and our clients, the Dutch military, with an emblem on the chest showing a Mi26T helicopter carrying a Chinook below it on a sling load.