The Grit Factor

Introduction

Plotting a Course for Grit

As I walk onto the flight line, the night sky is moonless, the darkness deep and menacing. I am walking with my backseater, the pilot who flies behind me in the tandem glass cockpit of our Apache, the world’s most sophisticated attack helicopter. Each of our battalion’s twenty-four Apaches crouches in its own fortified space, bounded by walls four feet tall and two feet thick, constructed of large stones held in place by chicken wire. These barriers will contain an explosion if a grenade is lobbed over the perimeter, limiting the damage. Two rows of fencing topped with barbed concertina wire define the perimeter of the flight line. This late at night, the Apaches are visible only as hulking shapes of latent ...