Afghanistan: Have You Got Your Big Boy Pants On? It’s All Kicking Off!

Land, Sea & Air - Stories from the Armed Forces

Tom Corrigan wanted to be an Apache pilot... “I thought, ‘Yeah Apache, that looks pretty awesome, up for a bit of that’. It’s something I’d wanted to do since I was a pretty young lad, I just thought, ‘that looks pretty epic.’”

Tom’s first tour was in 2009, “You were just chomping at the bit to get out there really…We all thought it was going to be fairly quiet…we’re here as a peace-keeping force…It was not like that, it was full on…intense...We were up 10 minutes and…‘Troops in contact requesting Apache’. So my front seater was like ‘Right, have you got your big boy pants on? It’s all kicking off.’ It’s literally my first airborne in Afghanistan and it’s firing on targets straight away…I certainly wasn’t prepared for how quickly it was going to go from, you’ve literally arrived in theatre to off you go it’s all happening now. There’s no build-up, it's…0 to 60 like bang.”

Tom returned in 2011 as a front seat Gunner Commander. We hear about the technicalities of flying, finding targets, tactics and engaging. Also about the impact on Tom, “It was a rollercoaster…We had certain days where we had big mass casualties, multiple British Servicemen, either with horrendous injuries or being killed and it was really hard because you felt you’re doing everything you can…You have to do what you think is making a difference at the time and I hope what we did out there did have positive impacts on some people. It’s quite mixed emotions.”

Forward to today, he plays guitar in a rock band, “It started off as a bit of fun and it’s all got quite serious now… Music is such an amazing creative force…this really positive aspect in my life…even some negative emotions that you’ve had it’s been, ‘Well let’s do something with this, let’s write it…and put it into a song…That real freedom to be an exaggerated version of yourself…When I’m on stage it’s not me, it’s a stage version of me. It’s really liberating…jumping around and pretending to be a rockstar. I can’t recommend it enough!”

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