Marines master Chinook leaps

British Marines in Afghanistan have pioneered a dramatic new technique for landing high in the mountains to take on al Qaeda guerillas.

RAF Chinook helicopters, lacking anywhere to land on the jagged peaks of south-east Afghanistan, have resorted to hovering next to a mountain ridge, then dropping their ramps allowing the troops to run off.

The technique was pioneered last week when two companies of Marines were dropped in mountains near the province of Khost, south of Kabul.

Arriving for their first Afghan operation on a long narrow ridge with a sheer drop on each side, the twinrotor Chinooks carefully backed up to within a few feet of the ridgeline.

"The ramp went down and we just went for it," said 21-year-old private Keith Dawson from Zulu Company, one of the four companies of 45 Commando. "It was a six-foot ramp and a 200-foot drop on either side."

While the pilots of the huge Chinooks struggled to keep their machines steady against mountain gales, the soldiers lumbered down the ramps with backpacks of up to 190lb.

"There are few places up there where you can land a helicopter, so they were literally hovering over the edge of the hillside and we were getting off the ramp," said Zulu company commander Major Richard Stephens. "The only part of the helicopter touching the ground was the ramp - the rest of the helicopter was hovering. The heart was certainly pumping a bit."

Next came the challenge of the ridge itself - a long winding path of ice and rock no wider than a goat track with sheer drops on both sides.

Private Liam Ramshaw said: "When you get to the end of the ramp you've got to turn sharp left to get on the ridge. You don't look down."

The Marines pioneered the technique after intelligence reports indicated al Qaeda had mined or prepared ambushes for the few available landing sites in the area. No al Qaeda units were found in the operation, but the Marines say it was an important dry-run.

After several weeks of preparations, the British force, built around the 800 men of 45 Commando, Royal Marines, are ready for action with the last combat troops arriving at Bagram over the weekend. Their battlefield will be a 200-mile stretch of mountains running along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan from Jalalabad, in the northeast, to Kandahar in the south west. In these mountains are the remnants of the Taliban and their Al Qaida allies.