Bomb Hunters: In Afghanistan with Britain’s Elite Bomb Disposal Unit

Bomb Hunters: In Afghanistan with Britain’s Elite Bomb Disposal Unit Sean Rayment 'Afghanistan is just like Iraq – hot, dusty and full of people who want to kill you', SSgt Simon Fuller, Royal Engineer Search AdvisorBomb Hunters tells the story of the British army's elite bomb disposal experts, men who face death every day in the most dangerous region of the most lethal country on earth – Helmand Province, Afghanistan.Bomb Hunters are up against the Improvised Explosive Device – the IED – the deadly homemade bombs planted by the Taliban. Hard to detect and easy to trigger, an estimated 10 bombs for every one of the 10,000 British troops have been planted in the region. IEDs are now the main killer of British troops in Afghanistan and the ultimate psychological weapon.Bomb Hunters work in 50-degree heat as they take the 'long walk' into the kill zone, defusing as many as 15 bombs a day. In the past year the casualty rate has soared as the troops have become locked into a deadly game of cat and mouse – to locate and deactivate the deadly bombs before they maim and kill soldiers, police and civilians. Skill, cold courage and inevitably pure luck play a huge part in the survival of these men and as the British public have already seen – a single lapse of concentration can result in instant death.Ex-paratrooper, now defence journalist, Sean Rayment, takes the reader on a journey into the heat and dust of Helmand Province as he meets these courageous soldiers while they put their lives at risk to prevent other British troops falling victim to the IED. He interviews the Bomb Hunters as they perform their duties on the frontline and paints a breathtaking picture of what life is like for the men who play poker with their own lives every day, who live knowing the enemy watches their every move, waiting for a weakness to show itself, a pattern in technique to be exploited, or an error to be made that triggers the device itself.This is as vivid and dramatic as war reporting gets, mixing 'close to the bone' narrative and dead-pan black humour from the Bomb Hunters themselves, some of whom were subsequently killed in action. No punches will be pulled on what these men feel about the war, their place in it, the politicians and generals who send them there, and how they deal with the relentless pressure of the job itself in the heart of the world's most hostile combat environment. BOMB HUNTERS IN AFGHANISTAN WITH BRITAIN’S ELITE BOMB DISPOSAL UNIT SEAN RAYMENT Copyright Collins An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/) Text © Sean Rayment 2011 Sean Rayment asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work All photographs © Heathcliff O’Malley, see the individual images for exceptions. While every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright material reproduced herein, the publishers would like to apologise for any omissions and will be pleased to incorporate missing acknowledgements in any future editions. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication Source ISBN: 9780007374786 Ebook Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780007413256 Version: 2017-09-06 In memory of all of those who have taken the long walk and never returned. Dedicated to Josephine Rayment Contents Cover (#u91211134-e166-5e69-979e-52bd01e5461f) Title Page (#u2b46d0e4-4116-587f-8479-f8d14db8542f) Copyright Prologue Chapter 1: Living the Dream Chapter 2: Badger’s War Chapter 3: Bomb Makers Chapter 4: The Front Line Chapter 5: The Asymmetric War Chapter 6: The Lonely Walk Chapter 7: Murder at Blue 25 Chapter 8: New Arrivals Chapter 9: The Battle of Crossing Point One Chapter 10: Going Home Epilogue Images of the Bomb Hunters in Action Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo) Appendix Glossary Index Acknowledgements About the Author About the Publisher Prologue 0500 hours, 16 August 2009, Sangin. The point man swung his mine detector and listened for the high-pitched alarm before taking a step. The sun had yet to rise from beneath the horizon and the Green Zone, fed by the waters of the Helmand River, was still cool and damp and a friend to the soldiers. Silence. That was good – it was the sound he wanted to hear as he continued his slow, probing search along the dried river bed. Swing, step, listen. Swing, step, listen. Lance Corporal James ‘Fully’ Fullarton was commander of the point section – the loneliest job in Helmand. Stretched out behind him in a silent, human chain were 130 men of A Company, 2 Rifles, each literally trying to follow in Fully’s footsteps as he steered his way through the Taliban killing fields surrounding the British base. Fully was good at his job, probably the best point man in the company. He had lost count of the number of patrols he had undertaken since arriving in Helmand five months ago. He had seen and done it all in Helmand. Now he had just one more month to push and then it was back home to his fianc?e. Two months earlier, while on R&R, he had popped the question and Leanne, the love of his life, had said yes. The couple were planning to marry the following year. Strong as an ox and with a ready smile, 24-year-old Fully was undaunted by the knowledge that he alone was charged with picking a safe route through one of the most dangerous and mine-ridden areas of Helmand. He had grown used to the surge of fear that rose up from his stomach every time he left his base in Sangin for another operation into the Taliban badlands. He had learned to live with the terror of knowing that one step in the wrong place could mean instant death or mutilation. In Afghan, as the soldiers call it, it was good to be scared. Being scared meant you cared, about yourself and mates. Fear heightened the senses and challenged complacency. Fear kept you alive. Step, swing, listen. Step, swing, listen. Fully always insisted that the next man in the patrol keep at least 15 ft behind him – close enough to hear the whispered words of command, but hopefully far enough away to avoid being fragged if Fully stepped on a pressure-plate IED, the Taliban’s weapon of choice in the Sangin Valley. The pre-dawn mission on that late-summer morning was intended to clear a route south-west of Sangin town. Several of the soldiers had been physically sick while waiting for the order to move out from the secure surroundings of Forward Operating Base (FOB) Robinson, a fortified compound rumoured to have once belonged to an Afghan drug lord. Others traded banter but the majority were silent, hoping that today it would not be their wife, mother or father who got the knock on the door with the news that their husband or son had fallen victim to a Taliban bomb. It was a dangerous mission and everyone knew it. Fully’s section of eight men from 2nd Battalion Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, attached to the Rifles as vital reinforcements, were at the vanguard of the operation. The soldiers solemnly filed out of the base into the early-morning darkness. No one spoke; only the soft crump of boot steps walking through the talcum-like dust could be heard. After just a few hundred metres many of the soldiers, weighed down by ammunition, water, and radios, were breathing heavily, their desert-camouflage uniform clinging to sweat-soaked bodies. Fully knew the route well and had little trouble navigating his team across the cold waters of the waist-deep Helmand River and into the wadi that lay beyond. As the commander of the point section Fully also had to scout ahead, searching the shadows and the reed banks for any sign of the enemy. Step, swing, listen. Step, swing, listen. No one knows whether Fully heard the tiny click as the two plates forming the conducting elements of the low-metal pressure plate touched. But even if he did, there was no time to react. The circuit was made in an instant, electricity flowed, and the detonator buried inside 20 kg of home-made bomb exploded. The blast tossed Fully 40 ft through the air in a sudden, violent explosion, and when he landed his legs had gone. Staff Sergeant Kim Hughes, a bomb-disposal expert, took cover as the sound of the explosion rumbled along the valley. A thick brown plume of smoke and dust mushroomed into the lightening Helmand sky. ‘Fuck. IED,’ he involuntarily muttered under his breath. After four months in Helmand during which time he had neutralized eighty bombs, Staff Sergeant Hughes could tell the difference between the sound of home-made and conventional explosives detonating. A shiver ran down his spine. Brimstone 30 – the callsign, or radio codename, of the bomb-hunting team led by Staff Sergeant Hughes – had been attached to the company to provide support in case IEDs were discovered during the operation. The team was composed of the IED disposal team and a Royal Engineer Search Team, or REST. Without prompting, the searchers began preparing for action. Two minutes later they were called forward to begin clearing an emergency HLS, or helicopter landing site, and only then did they know that a casualty had been taken. Up ahead, at the scene of the explosion, a form of controlled panic had descended. Fully was lying motionless, having sustained terrible injuries. Fusiliers Louis Carter, 18, and Simon Annis, 22, two of Fully’s best mates, soldiers who had become closer than brothers, inched their way towards their stricken commander. Their faces filled with horror as they saw the extent of his injuries. Fully was alive, just. An urgent message was sent back to battalion headquarters. ‘Contact! IED strike. We have one double amputee, wait out.’ ‘Don’t worry, Fully, we’re gonna get you out, mate. Everything will be OK,’ said Fusilier Annis as the soldiers lifted Fully’s shattered body onto a stretcher. Tourniquets were applied to stem the flow of blood from his wounds. Morphine helped to dull the pain. The two soldiers lifted the stretcher and were moving as quickly as possibly towards the HLS when a medic saw that Fully had stopped breathing. ‘Come on Fully, mate, breathe,’ cried Fusilier Annis. They were the last words he spoke. With Fully revived, the stretcher bearers moved off again and almost immediately detonated another massive IED. Fusiliers Carter and Annis were killed instantly. Then the screaming started. ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ said Sergeant Pete Ward, as the distant sounds of panic grew louder. ‘God knows,’ replied Staff Sergeant Hughes, ‘but it’s bad.’ Sergeant Ward was a Royal Engineer Search Advisor, or RESA, and a key member of Brimstone 20. The two men looked at each other but no one spoke. It was a silent confirmation that the worst had just happened. The men readied themselves for action. Staff Sergeant Hughes checked his equipment. He made sure his snips – wire-cutters – were tucked securely into the front of his body armour, next to his paint-brush and hand-held mine detector. The rest of his essential equipment was contained in his man bag. Their preparations were interrupted by a red-faced fusilier who emerged out of the gloom with the unmistakable look of fear etched across his youthful face. ‘We need the search team up ahead,’ he stuttered. ‘We’ve got multiple casualties.’ Staff Sergeant Hughes swallowed hard, turned to his colleague, and said, ‘Pete, be careful. We don’t know what we’ve got up there.’ Forty-eight hours earlier Hughes had been enjoying the last few hours of his R&R back in his home town of Telford. He and his team of bomb hunters were due to form the High Readiness Force (HRF) back at Camp Bastion for at least a week as they reacclimatized to the Helmand summer. But then his close friend Staff Sergeant Olaf Schmid and his team had been stricken by a bout of diarrhoea and vomiting and were pulled out just before the operation, which meant Brimstone 20 were sent instead. Hughes gathered his team together for a final briefing. ‘Fuck knows what’s going on but it doesn’t look good. Everyone stay sharp.’ Turning to one of the searchers who had remained with his team, he said, ‘We don’t know if anything has been missed, so I want you to clear a route up to the incident. Stop about 30 metres short of where the injured are and we’ll make an assessment. Everybody move in single file and stay switched on.’ The reeds on either side of the bank grew taller and thicker farther along the river bed and channelled the screams of the injured back towards the bomb hunters. As they moved closer to the scene of carnage, they began to pass soldiers sitting on their haunches or crouching in fire positions. Some had been crying. Others stared blankly into the distance. The look of abject terror on their faces told its own story. The lead searcher stopped and Hughes moved up to his side. Neither man spoke. Searchers were slowly clearing safe lanes to the dead and injured. Beads of sweat ran down the staff sergeant’s face and he breathed heavily as he took in the enormity of the devastation. The dead and injured – some six soldiers – were spread over an area of 200 square metres. Uninjured soldiers were also trapped inside what was effectively a minefield. They too would also need to be freed. In the distance the sound of uncontrolled sobbing could be heard. Only the searchers were moving, their silent concentration broken by words of encouragement for the wounded. The body closest to where Hughes was standing had no legs and only one arm. On the other side of the bomb crater lay another soldier, clearly dead, his legs gone. The two soldiers had been blown about 20 metres in opposite directions and so Hughes knew from experience that it was a device composed of 20–30 kg of HME, home-made explosive. For the first time in his career as a bomb hunter Staff Sergeant Hughes was confronted with a mass-casualty IED incident. He willed himself not to be distracted by the screams of the female medic whose leg was snapped in two by the force of the second blast. Loitering menacingly at the back of his mind was the death of Captain Dan Shepherd, a bomb-disposal expert killed while on operations three weeks earlier. Now was the time to concentrate, to formulate a plan, to try to work out what the hell was going on. The size and positions of the two explosions told him that the bombs must have been wired up to a central power source. But where was it? The injured were the priority, the dead would be collected later: it was always the same routine. But the key now was to ensure there were no more casualties. One of the searchers had cleared a safe route, searching the ground almost inch by inch, to the injured female soldier when he discovered another device. ‘Got one, Kim.’ The device was about an arm’s reach away from where the injured medic was lying. Time was now crucial. Everyone knew the Taliban would be moving towards the sound of the explosion and hoping to ambush the casualty evacuation. There was no time to put in a protective cordon, use remote vehicles, or for Hughes to don his protective bomb suit. It was a Category A action, a practice only conducted in one of two circumstances: either a hostage scenario where explosives have been strapped to an innocent individual, or a mass-casualty event where not taking action is certain to result in further casualties. In both situations the emphasis is on saving other people’s lives even at the expense of the operator. Staff Sergeant Hughes knew what had to be done. Take the power source out of the equation, he thought to himself. He began a fingertip search up to where he believed the first bomb had been buried, locating first the pressure plate and then the 20 kg bomb itself. As he searched he told the young woman that she was going to be fine, urging her to remain calm. He found a wire and cut it, all the time hoping that the Taliban hadn’t upped the ante and created a collapsing circuit. If they had he knew he would be dead in seconds. But there was no bang. Even before completing the neutralization, a searcher located another device between Fully, who was still alive, and the Royal Military Police soldier, who was lying on the ground writhing in agony. As Hughes cleared a route to the device, a wire leading into the areas where the bombs had been placed had been discovered. There was every possibility that the recovery operation was now being targeted by a hidden insurgent. The searchers had to accept that any further devices could contain little if any metal and as such they could no longer rely on their mine detectors. By now the sun was starting to rise in the sky and the bomb hunters were warned by intelligence officers from the battle-group headquarters that the Taliban were moving into the area. Staff Sergeant Hughes pushed on to the next device. Once again it was a pressure-plate, or victim-operated IED (VOIED), linked to what was a central power source. It immediately struck Hughes that he was dealing with a complex device not seen in Helmand before. He was now in a whole new dangerous world with only his wits and skill to rely on. All the bombs were laid out in exactly the same way and were composed of a pressure-plate IED which sat directly on top of a 20 kg main charge of explosive. There was every possibility that if one bomb detonated they would all explode at the same time. Again Hughes conducted a Cat A neutralization, and again any error would have proven fatal. Less than two minutes after the second device had been neutralized a third was discovered near one of the dead soldiers. The device was located on the extraction route over which the casualties would have to pass. For the third time in less than twenty minutes Hughes carried out a Cat A task. As the sun began to illuminate the wadi, dark patches of disturbed soil could be seen all around. Hidden beneath each site was a bomb. In an area of 40 metres by 50 metres the bomb hunters found seven bombs. In addition they identified the locations of another six devices from ‘ground sign’, disturbed earth left after a bomber has planted a device, and left these in situ. Hughes was moving back along one of the cleared routes close to where a fallen soldier lay when a platoon sergeant asked him to remove the soldier’s dog tags. The soldier had sustained a triple amputation and his face was covered in severe lacerations. Hughes rolled the dead soldier onto his front and pulled out the two dog tags from beneath his body armour. He took one off, threw it to the platoon sergeant, and put the other back securely on the dead soldier so that he could be formally identified later. He rolled the body back into its original position and gave him a comforting pat on the back. Before the wounded could be evacuated, two more devices which had been discovered on the extraction route needed to be neutralized. Despite the carnage, Hughes managed to maintain his composure until a stretcher party arrived to collect the bodies. It was clear that one of the young soldiers on the team had been good friends with at least one of the dead. The fusilier began to sob uncontrollably when he saw his friend lying dead in the dust of the dried river. Suddenly the full enormity of what had happened began to dawn on everyone involved in the operation. Up until that point Staff Sergeant Hughes and his team had been wholly concentrating on locating and neutralizing Taliban bombs. His focus broken, he turned away, his eyes welling up with tears. No one spoke. The bomb hunters hung their heads as the young soldier was carried away. Everyone knew there were many more tears to come. Just forty-five minutes after Hughes arrived at the scene, more than a dozen devices had been located and seven had been cleared, five by a Cat A action. After the bombs were neutralized, the injured and dead were removed. Fully didn’t make it – his injuries were too severe. The three other wounded soldiers all recovered. The team didn’t know it at the time but they had just completed what was later described as the single most outstanding act of explosive ordnance disposal ever recorded in Afghanistan, for which Staff Sergeant Hughes was later awarded the George Cross. By the end of his six-month tour he had cleared 118 bombs. Chapter 1: Living the Dream ‘Bomb disposal – it’s the best job in the world.’ WO2 Gary O’Donnell GM and Bar. Killed in action September 2008. 0345 hours, 10 March 2010, Helmand, Afghanistan. The Hercules drops like a stone through the black Helmand sky, its four overworked engines groaning. Most of my fellow travellers are boyish-looking soldiers in crisp new uniforms – fresh meat for the Afghan war machine. Many of the soldiers are battle casualty replacements (BCRs), sent to Helmand at short notice to replace those killed or injured fighting the Taliban. It’s a sombre journey. We all cling to our seats as the aircraft descends at an impossible angle. Beneath the dim, green glow of the safety lighting, a silhouetted soldier begins to vomit. The acrid smell of a partially digested meal drifts through the cabin and I feel my gag reflex kicking in. My comfortable, peaceful civilian world is inexorably slipping away. I begin to sweat profusely beneath my helmet and combat body armour, or CBA, scant but necessary protection against a missile strike or ground fire from an anti-aircraft gun. The lumbering aircraft begins to pitch and roll in a desperate attempt to avoid missile lock-on. One of the crew is monitoring the ground outside with night-vision goggles, searching for the tell-tale flashes of anti-aircraft fire. A missile strike at this altitude would not be survivable. I wonder if the rest of the passengers, like me, are urging the pilot to fly faster. No senior military official will admit it publicly but the current thinking in the Ministry of Defence is that is just a matter of time before the Taliban acquires surface-to-air missiles and manages to shoot down a troop-laden Herc flying into Helmand. Such a catastrophic event, the loss of dozens of British troops in a single incident, could finally kill off the dwindling public support for the war in Afghanistan and signal the beginning of the end for the entire NATO mission. A young Army officer sitting on my right conjures up a nervous smile but his eyes tell another story. It’s his first tour in Helmand and he has never flown in a Herc before. I attempt to allay his fears by giving him the thumbs up. But, in truth, I’m probably just as worried as he is. I’m not a good flyer at the best of times and all sorts of ‘what if’ thoughts are running through my head. Six hours earlier, when we arrived in Kandahar Air Force Base, known within the military as KAF, the young officer reminded me of a timid boy attending his first day at school. Fresh-faced and awkward, among no friendly faces, he sat by himself for several hours with his head buried in a Dick Francis thriller, before boarding the flight to Helmand. I’m on board what they call the ‘KAF taxi’ – effectively a military shuttle flight into Helmand from the sprawling Kandahar Air Base. I’m one of more than 100 passengers flown into Afghanistan on an ageing RAF TriStar – it first came into service in the early 1980s and was already second-hand. Hopefully the aircraft’s engines are in better shape than the passenger cabin because that is well and truly knackered. If the TriStar was a civilian plane, I’m pretty sure it would be grounded. Parts of the interior are held together by 3-inch-wide silver masking tape and the toilet doors have a tendency to fly open while in use – ‘The in-flight entertainment,’ some wag commented – but, frankly, it’s good enough for ‘our boys’ flying off to war to fight and die for Queen and Country. The TriStar is straight out of the military manual of ‘making do’. It’s what happens when the armed forces have been underfunded for decades. It is, as one senior officer told me, a third party, fire and theft, rather than fully comprehensive, insurance package. Afghanistan has its own unique smell – it’s the dust in the atmosphere – and it’s on the plane thousands of feet above the desert; for me it’s the smell of fear, death and courage, and there is no other smell like it. The fear, and also the excitement, of being in a war zone are already beginning to build inside me and giving rise to a mix of emotions. I have yet to arrive and already part of me is wishing that I was back home, in a warm, safe house with my family. Instead I’m just minutes away from landing in one of the most dangerous places on earth. Fourteen hours ago I was sitting in the bleak departure lounge at RAF Brize Norton along with several hundred soldiers. All tired, all sad. For them the long goodbye had come and gone – they were just at the start of their six-month tour. Six months of fear, broken up by bursts of excitement and long stretches of unimaginable boredom. There is nothing romantic about front-line life in Helmand: it is hard, dangerous and dirty. Generals and politicians fighting the war from their desks in Whitehall might talk about the importance of nation building and national security, but for the soldiers at the bullet end of the war it’s all about survival. From the private soldier, who joined the Army because it was the only job available after eighteen years on a sink estate, to the Eton-educated Guards officer, winning is coming home alive and not in a Union Jack-draped coffin. Soldiers in Helmand fight for themselves and each other – grander notions are for others to hold. It was the same for me when I served as a young officer in 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment in Northern Ireland in the late 1980s. Every member of 3 Para knew why the British Army was on the streets of Ulster. We understood the politics, the tribal tensions and the history, but it mattered little to any of us. Soldiers do not fight for Queen and Country: they fight for each other. They do not fix bayonets with the government’s foreign policy objectives ringing in their ears: they do so because they are professionals trained to obey orders. It’s the same in Helmand today. Every soldier still wants to win a medal but he also wants to make it home in one piece. But with glory comes a terrible price. In Helmand, a front-line soldier stands a one-in-ten chance of being killed or injured; those are not good odds. Looking around the departure lounge at RAF Brize Norton, I wondered which of my fellow passengers would not survive the six-month tour, and I doubt I was the only one with that thought in their mind. The atmosphere was subdued, depressing even. Some soldiers entered the room with eyes reddened by tears, doubtless wondering whether they would ever see their loved ones again. Part of me, sitting here now descending into the Helmand desert, wonders the same. There was once a time when I thought that as a journalist I was safe in a war zone. It’s a foolish notion. Why should I be less at risk than anyone else? But I believed it nonetheless. I have worked in several war zones – the Balkans, Iraq, Northern Ireland – and I always thought death and injury were something that happened to others. Mainly soldiers or journalists who forgot to obey the rules or who simply pushed their luck too far. That was until one of my best friends, Rupert Hamer, was killed while on assignment in January 2010 after the US armoured vehicle in which he was travelling was destroyed by an IED. He was working as a reporter alongside photographer Phil Coburn, and the pair were both attached to the US Marines Expeditionary Force when he was killed. They were part way through a two-week assignment and were returning from a shura, or meeting of elders, when the tragedy struck. Phil and Rupert were sitting beside each other inside a 30-ton heavily armoured Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle when they hit a huge improvised explosive device. The main charge was composed of ammonium nitrate powder and aluminium filings, and when these are mixed together in the right quantities the result is lethal. The explosive was packed into several yellow palm-oil containers buried about 15 cm beneath the ground. The detonator was probably made from a Christmas tree light, or something similar, with the bulb removed. The bomb was one of the largest ever seen in Helmand. The MRAP more or less remained intact – the front and rear wheels and axles were blown off – but the shock wave which tore through the vehicle was devastating. Despite wearing helmets and body armour and being strapped into their seats, Rupert, Phil and four US Marines all suffered multiple injuries. Phil and Rupert were sitting side by side, but while Rupert died Phil survived, though the bones in his feet were smashed beyond repair and both feet were amputated. Four US Marines travelling in the vehicle were seriously injured and a fifth was killed. Death in Helmand is random – it has killed the best in the British Army, possibly even the best of the best. Every soldier from private to lieutenant colonel – all the ranks in a battlegroup – have been killed in action in the province since 2006. Not since Korea has the British Army been in such a bloody fight, and every indicator suggests it’s going to get worse. I last spoke to Rupert less than two weeks before he was killed. It was an unusually warm day in early January. He had called me from Kabul while waiting for a flight to Helmand. I was sitting on a chair in my garden, guffawing with laughter as he relayed in detail all the hilarious events that had befallen both him and Phil in the short time that they had been in Afghanistan. Rupert was in good form, joking about the Marines’ lack of organization and saying that by comparison they made him look organized. My last words were, ‘E-mail me when you can, and look after yourself.’ As he set off for Helmand, I went to Austria for a week’s skiing holiday with my family. Rupert was killed on the following Saturday, 10 January. The first thing my wife, Clodagh, said to me after I told her Rupert had been killed was, ‘It could have been you.’ At that moment I vowed never to return. Fuck it, I thought to myself. It’s not worth it. Not for a few stories for a newspaper. But even as the words formed I secretly I knew I would return. The problem for me is that I find war zones exciting places. There is a thrill to being under fire, even risking your life, always in the knowledge, of course, that, as an observer, rather than a protagonist, I was somehow invulnerable. Rupert’s death shattered that illusion, but as the shock of his loss gradually lessened I was soon beginning to convince myself of the need to return. Rupert always said to me, ‘If you are going to report the war, then you have to see the war,’ and he was right. Just before I left, my 6-year-old son asked me why I was going to Afghanistan. ‘To carry out research for my book and to report on what is happening in the country,’ I told him, hoping that he wouldn’t ask me if I was going to do anything dangerous. ‘Why can’t you just get the information off the internet?’ he responded, looking confused. ‘Because that’s what somebody else has seen and witnessed,’ I replied. ‘I need to see what is going on for myself so that I can write about it.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I think I understand.’ So here I am on a C-130, ten minutes away from landing in Helmand, the centre of a war zone where every day British troops are being killed and injured. So much for never returning. And the news from the front line is not good. In Sangin, a town in the north of Helmand, six soldiers have been killed in the first week of March. Four of the dead were shot by snipers. Taliban shooters are good, and the Army is understandably nervous. Enemy snipers are feared and hated by all armies and run the risk of summary execution if captured. Snipers will go for the easy kill or one designed to shatter morale: the young soldier, the commander, the medic. Morale in Sangin had understandably suffered. Soldiers were being picked off at the rate of one a day. Although the sniper is guaranteed to generate fear, in Helmand the IED, the unseen killer, remains the soldiers’ worst nightmare. A step in the wrong direction, a momentary lapse of concentration, can mean mutilation, the loss of one or more limbs, or death. Lose a leg in what is known as a traumatic amputation and you have just four and a half minutes for a medic to staunch the wound before you fatally ‘bleed out’. The time decreases with each additional limb lost, and that is why no quadruple amputee has yet survived. IEDs are now being manufactured on an industrial scale – it is no longer a cottage industry. Bomb factories in some parts of Helmand can produce an IED every fifteen minutes. Made from pieces of wood, old batteries and home-made explosive, they are basic and deadly. The Taliban have already produced IEDs with ‘low metal’ or ‘no metal’ content, which are difficult to detect. So, as well as using equipment to detect bombs, troops also need to rely on what they call the ‘Mk 1 eyeball’, hoping to spot ground sign. In Helmand the IED is now the Taliban’s weapon of choice and the main killer of British troops. The field hospital in Camp Bastion now expects to treat at least one IED trauma victim every day. Between September 2009 and April 2010 there were almost 2,000 IED incidents. The human cost of this war has never been higher. Since 2006 more than 350 soldiers have been killed and more than 4,000 injured. Of these, more than 150 have lost one or more limbs. And those are the statistics for just the British forces. Every country with troops in Helmand – the United States, Estonia and Denmark – has suffered similar losses. In one week alone in February 2010 there were 200 IED incidents – that is, bombs being detonated or discovered. Do the maths – that’s over 9,000 a year. Or more than one IED for every British soldier serving in Helmand. The job of battling against this threat falls to the Joint Force Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group, part of the Counter IED, or CIED, Task Force. At the tip of the spear are the Ammunition Technical Officers, or ATOs, the soldiers who defuse the Taliban IEDs – the bomb hunters. Also called IED operators, the ATOs work hand in glove with the RESTs. It is a fantastically dangerous task, not because the devices are sophisticated but because of the volume of bombs. The number of IED attacks started to go through the roof in 2008, a development which was entirely unpredicted. Back then there were just two bomb-disposal teams in Helmand because someone, somewhere in the Ministry of Defence did not regard Helmand as a ‘high-threat’ environment. That was the official version of events but in reality Iraq was still the priority and there were simply not enough bomb hunters to serve in both theatres. The following year IEDs were killing more soldiers than Taliban bullets. By the middle of 2010 the CIED Task Force began suffering casualties on a scale which had not been seen for thirty years. I’ve come back to Helmand to try to understand why anyone would want to become a bomb hunter. I want to get inside their heads, learn about their fears and concerns, the unimaginable stresses they face every day and what drives them on knowing that one mistake, one single slip, can mean death. For three weeks I will be an embedded journalist working alongside both the bomb-hunting teams of the CIED Task Force and the Grenadier Guards battlegroup. It is virtually impossible to report from Helmand without being embedded. The risks are so great that independent travel is a non-starter. Travelling independently through Helmand could only really be achieved by striking some sort of deal with the Taliban in order to pass safely through areas under their control. Even if that were achievable there would still be every chance of hitting an IED or finding yourself in the crossfire of a battle between the insurgents and British troops. Being an embedded reporter has its advantages, the most important being safety. To a certain extent journalists are exposed to the same risks as soldiers, but because you are not playing an active part in a battle you are not fighting through Taliban positions, so you have to be fairly unlucky to be killed or injured. But there are disadvantages. All of my copy will be scrutinized by censors who will check it for anything which could be construed as a breach of operational security. Before any journalist can embed with the British Army, he or she must sign the ‘Green Book’, a contractual obligation stating that the Ministry of Defence will scrutinize all copy, pictures and video before publication. Most journalists don’t have a problem with this, even if it does run counter to the idea of a free press, and I for one would not want to write anything which might put a soldier’s life at risk. The C-130 slams into Camp Bastion’s darkened runway, and the relief on board is tangible. The engines once again begin to scream as we slow to a halt. Beneath the green gloom of the safety lights, the troops begin to ready themselves for disembarkation. The Herc’s rear ramp opens, like a giant mouth, revealing a kaleidoscope of orange, yellow and white lights blinking through the desert dust. This is not a military camp, it’s a small city, dominated by the monotonous drone of departing aircraft, some carrying troops, others bearing the coffins of the fallen. One by one we silently disembark, keeping our personal thoughts private, each wondering what the future will bring. Beneath a star-lit sky we are led in single file from the airstrip to waiting buses, before being driven to one of the ‘processing centres’ where fresh troops undergo their final preparations for war. The week-long Reception, Staging and Onward Movement Integration (RSOI) programme is effectively designed to fine-tune the soldier so that he can hit the ground running. In effect it’s the last chance to get things right before coming face to face with the enemy. A two-tier war is being fought by the British Army in Helmand. The ‘teeth arm’ troops, those involved in the day-to-day fighting and killing, live in small patrol bases, where the conditions range from sparse to austere. Toilets are often holes in the ground, soldiers keep clean with a solar shower – a bag of water which has been left to bake in the sun – and meals are a mixture of fresh food and Army rations. Six months on the front line is a dangerous existence with few comforts. But those troops who remain in bases like Camp Bastion or Kandahar Air Base live, by comparison, in air-conditioned luxury, with hot showers and fresh food, and where off-duty hours can be spent in one of the many gyms or watching premiership football on satellite television. ‘Life in the rear,’ as the American troops in Vietnam observed, ‘has no fear.’ The majority of those soldiers based at Camp Bastion will never set foot beyond its gates, but while they might not take the same risks as the front-line soldiers their job is just as vital. They keep the war machine moving by ensuring that the right food, water and ammunition arrive at the right place at the right time. It’s a job which lacks the ‘glamour’ of battle but is just as important. The coach snakes its way through the camp, passing row upon row of huge tents which were once white but have now taken on the hue of the desert. I’ve been coming to Camp Bastion since 2006, and every time I return the place has grown. Someone once said that the best decision the British Army ever made in Helmand was to build the base in the middle of nowhere. Had it been near a town or an area of habitation, the chances are that it would have been mortared or rocketed every night. Our belongings are dumped in the desert dust by an Army lorry and chaos ensues as 100 individuals search for the bags in the pitch blackness. The soldiers are told to collect their kit and move into one of the briefing rooms – I say goodbye to the young Army officer, shake his hand and wish him luck, silently hoping that he makes it home safely in six months’ time. The weary soldiers file into a tent to begin a series of briefings through which many will sleep. I’m left with the lasting impression that Camp Bastion is one giant processing centre. Every night hundreds of tired, nervous and confused troops arrive to feed the war machine, and every day, or almost every day, the dead, the wounded and the lucky fly out. Twenty hours ago I left my home in Kent and kissed my wife and sleeping children goodbye and said a silent prayer as the first cuckoo of spring sang the dawn chorus. Now I am in another world, where the threat of death and violence is always present. Not for the first time I ask myself, what am I doing in Afghanistan? It’s 5 a.m. Helmand time, and finally I get some sleep. Rupert Hamer was not the first person I have known to be killed in Helmand. While embedded with the Grenadier Guards in November 2009 I met Sapper David Watson, who was a member of a REST. He struck me as a quiet but professional soldier who was completely committed to his job. He was killed in an explosion in the Sangin area on 31 December. I met Sergeant Michael Lockett in 2008 when he was awarded a Military Cross after serving in Helmand in 2007. He returned in 2009 but was killed in action on 21 September, just a few weeks before he was due to return to the UK. In July 2008 I was embedded with the Parachute Regiment for a short period at FOB Inkerman, just north of Sangin town. There had been a spike in Taliban attacks over the past two months and just two weeks before my visit a suicide bomb had killed three members of the regiment. On one early-morning patrol in which I took part, I met Lance Corporal Ken Rowe, a member of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, and his dog Sasha. Everyone immediately warmed to both man and dog. I think there was something about Sasha that reminded everyone of home, but less than a week later both were killed in an ambush. Then there was Warrant Officer Class 2 (WO2) Gary ‘Gaz’ O’Donnell. War is one of the few human endeavours that create real heroes, and one of those was Gaz. He was a high-threat IED operator – one of just a handful of soldiers gifted with the skill of being able to defuse home-made bombs in the most deadly place on earth. I first met Gaz in Helmand in July 2008. I was told that Gaz was worth chatting to because he had a ‘nice collection of war stories’. I wasn’t disappointed. My lasting memory is of him sitting astride a quad bike dressed in just his body armour, helmet, shorts and a set of cool civilian shades. It was on one of the training grounds in Camp Bastion, where troops coming fresh into theatre are taught the basics of ‘Operation Barma’ – the process of locating and confirming the presence of IEDs in Afghanistan. Gaz’s dress code broke all the rules, and the smile on his face said he was loving it. I liked him as soon as he shook my hand. He was a combination of unruffled calmness and mischief. His thick red hair was long and unkempt, as was his moustache. His obvious disregard for dress regulations was the flip side of his professional life, where his unwavering allegiance to a set of rules and self-discipline kept him alive. Gaz was already a veteran of Iraq, Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone and two tours in Helmand. He was a legend in the counter-IED, or CIED, world even before he arrived in Afghanistan. Blazoned across his broad shoulders was a tattoo: ‘Living the Dream’. It was his motto. He had already won the George Medal in Iraq and was destined for another top gallantry award for his work in Helmand. Gaz lived to defuse bombs – it was his calling. At 24 years old Gaz joined the Army relatively late in life. The delay was due in part to a failed experiment as a rock guitarist – another tattoo of a cannabis leaf, also on his back, was a memento of a more hedonistic life. From the day he joined up Gaz wanted to become an IED operator. But it was to be a long haul. After passing basic training he was posted to Germany to serve in 3 Base Ammunition Depot, learning the trade of the Ammunition Technician. But when the opportunity came to take the Improvised Explosive Device Disposal Course, he passed with flying colours. A feat he also managed to achieve on the IED High Threat course, to become one of just a handful of bomb-disposal experts to pass the course first time. Like every bomb-disposal operator, Gaz was keen to get involved in the thick of the action in Iraq, but he was forced to wait until 2006, by which time he was a staff sergeant, before he finally got his wish. The war had gone belly-up, primarily because of the complete absence of post-operation planning. After defeating the Iraqi Army and deposing Saddam, the US and British forces managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. A Shia insurgency in the south quickly followed a Sunni revolt in the north. Reconstruction of the shattered state ground to a halt and al-Qaeda, the Islamist force behind the 9/11 attacks, managed to gain a foothold in the country. By 2006, attacks against the multi-national forces in the south were a daily occurrence. With the help of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard the Shia insurgents managed to develop a range of highly sophisticated improvized explosive devices called Explosively Formed Projectiles, or shaped charges, which could penetrate armour and were detonated by infrared triggers. These IEDs took a terrible toll on the British troops, killing and maiming hundreds, especially those travelling in the now notorious Snatch vehicles. These were lightly armoured Land Rovers once used to patrol the streets in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Snatches were originally designed to protect troops from small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and shrapnel. When the insurgency exploded in 2004, the British Army found itself without a vehicle in which troops could conduct patrols in urban areas, and the Snatch was sent to fill the gap. But such was their vulnerability to attack that within months the troops had dubbed the vehicles ‘mobile coffins’. By 2006 reconstruction plans for Iraq had become a faded dream. Troops rarely ventured out of their bases without being attacked. The first sign that the Iraqi people in the south were not as welcoming as the government and the top brass might have hoped had come on 2 July 2003, when six members of the Royal Military Police were attacked and killed by a 300-strong mob in the town of Majar al Kabir. By the end of his tour Gaz was estimated to have saved the lives of hundreds of British soldiers and was subsequently awarded the George Medal. By 2008 he was in Helmand, one of only two bomb-disposal experts who could be spared to work alongside soldiers fighting in the most mined country on earth. In April of that year Gaz was deployed to the province as a member of the Joint Force Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Group team. A month later he had obtained almost celebrity status after defusing eight IEDs in six hours. The operation began on 9 May, when a Danish vehicle patrol approached a track junction in the Upper Gereshk Valley in central Helmand. It was a classic vulnerable point, or VP, an ideal location for the Taliban to plant one or more IEDs. At the top of the junction, on a ridge line overlooking the valley, was a position which had been used many times before by the Danish troops to monitor movement in the notorious Green Zone. A fertile plain bordering the Helmand River, the Green Zone was where the Taliban held sway. It was ‘Terry’s Turf,’ Gaz said, ‘Terry Taliban’ being a nickname for the insurgents. The patrol stopped short of the crossroads and two British soldiers from 51 Squadron Royal Engineers, who were accompanying the Danes, began to scan the area. The two British engineers knew that in all likelihood the Taliban had probably buried at least one IED and, using their standard-issue Vallon mine detectors, the pair began searching the area. Moving forward in slow, measured steps, the two young sappers began swinging the detectors from left to right. Within minutes one of the alarms screamed, signalling the presence of a suspect device. The Royal Engineer knelt down, pulled out a household paintbrush – a vital piece of equipment for every soldier in Helmand – from the front of his body armour, and gently began to brush away dust from the area where the detector had gone off. Within a few minutes the tell-tale shape of an IED pressure plate emerged. The device was marked and the two soldiers moved, one to each side of the track. Minutes later the alarm sounded again. Over the next two hours a total of eight booby-traps were found in a 75-metre radius. It was the largest multiple-IED site ever seen in Helmand. Back in Camp Bastion, while Gaz was tucking into a pot noodle, his favourite snack, and watching the TV, a ‘ten-liner’ requesting an IED operator suddenly popped up on a computer screen in the operations room of the Joint Force EOD Group. The ten-liner is so named because it reveals ten lines of information about an IED: date, grid reference (location), description, activity prior to find, rendezvous location and approach, incident commander, tactical situation, threat assessment, initial request, requested priority (immediate, pre-explosion, post explosion, urgent, minor, routine, no threat). Gaz and his search team were on HRF standby and at a drop of a hat they could deploy to anywhere in Helmand to defuse IEDs armed with only the information contained within the ten-liner. And on the morning of 9 May 2008 Gaz was called to the ops room, where Major Wayne Davidson, the officer commanding the EOD squadron, told him he had a task. ‘Sounds relatively straightforward,’ were the major’s parting words as Gaz went to brief his team. The ten-liner stated that there were one or more pressure-plate IEDs in a vulnerable point in the Gereshk Valley. Within ten minutes Gaz’s team, which consisted of his No. 2, or second in command, the electronic counter-measures (ECM) operator and the infantry escort, the last basically his bodyguard, were ready to move. A few moments later the REST and the RESA had assembled in the briefing tent. ‘This should be interesting,’ Gaz said, then explained the situation. ‘We’ve got multiple IEDs in an area which looks like an overwatch site into the Green Zone. Chances are it’s been used by ISAF before and a pattern has been set. We’ll learn more when we arrive. Questions?’ There were none – everyone knew the score. ‘Good – let’s go.’ Within forty minutes Gaz, his team and the search team were airborne, heading for the IED site in a Chinook helicopter. Even before leaving the safety of Camp Bastion, Gaz knew the ‘bomb suit’ – an all-encompassing piece of body armour designed to protect ATOs from the effects of an explosion – was not an option. The bomb suit weighs almost 50 kg and the temperature was already 45°C. He knew that he was unlikely to last more than twenty minutes inside it. Besides, a bomb suit is really designed to protect the operator when either walking to or away from the bomb. Gaz took his chances; it was a calculated risk but one which he believed favoured him. ‘By the time I got to work,’ he explained later, ‘the wider area had been cleared by the search team and the area was secured. An incident control point had been cleared and I was happy. I moved forward, took a moment to gather myself, and then began to work methodically through the area. I have been an ATO for a long time and worked in some pretty nasty environments, but I had never encountered nothing like that before. It was pretty tense.’ Gaz spent hours on his hands and knees, his face just inches away from the IEDS. Had any one of them exploded, he would have been killed instantly. It was the same routine for each bomb. Walk down the cleared lane, locate the device with the hand-held metal detector, and try to isolate the device from the power supply. Operators must always be aware of the potential for other threats in the area. There have been occasions where another device has been placed to target the operator, such as a so-called command IED, which could be something as simple as a hand grenade with a piece of wire or string tied to the ring pull at the end of which is an insurgent waiting for the right time to strike. This is the most risky period for any IED operator. Once they ‘go down the road’ or ‘take the long walk’ to the bomb, they are on their own and effectively isolated – and make a very inviting target. Everyone else in the team, including supporting troops, must be outside the blast radius. ‘It was 11 a.m. and it was getting pretty hot,’ Gaz explained. ‘I wanted to save as many of the devices as possible so that we could extract the maximum amount of forensic information.’ Just when he thought he was finished, he discovered another IED. But this time it was attached to a command wire, which can either be pulled to initiate the explosion or linked to a power source such as a battery and detonated electronically. Gaz was stunned. ‘At that stage I didn’t know whether I was being watched by the Taliban who were waiting for me to get close to the device. It was a very sobering feeling. You’re there staring at something, knowing that it could go bang at any moment and that would be it: “game over”.’ But Gaz pushed on and successfully disabled the command IED. ‘I don’t know if I was being watched and the Taliban just decided not to detonate it. But I think it was there to catch out an IED operator. Maybe I was just lucky that day, and that suits me just fine.’ By early evening Gaz had finally completed the mission. He was physically and mentally shattered, dehydrated, his face red and sore after hours in the intense desert sun. It was only when he returned to the incident control point (ICP) for the final time that the fatigue hit him like a left hook. ‘I eventually finished at 6 p.m. I was out there for seven hours but to be honest I didn’t really notice the heat because I was so focused on the task. It was only when I got back into the ICP and it was time to return to Bastion that I realized I was knackered. My arms and legs felt as though they were made from lead and I had a thumping headache.’ But it was a successful mission. Every IED operator wants to recover a device intact so that it can be forensically tested. At this stage, obtaining forensic information left on the device during its manufacture was still in its infancy, but within two years this skill would become key to defeating the bombers. A smile spread across Gaz’s face as he continued, ‘I managed to disrupt all eight IEDs and all of the forensic information was recovered. That is absolutely vital. We need to know who is making these bombs and we can get a lot of that from the equipment. It was exactly the same as with the IRA. So if I can recover a device and we can get some forensic, then gleaming [soldier slang for brilliant or great], and I sleep well.’ Two months earlier Gaz had been called to deal with a roadside bomb which was blocking a convoy route, leaving large numbers of troops stationary and vulnerable in hostile territory. Wherever possible the Taliban will try to place their fighters in positions close to where they have planted IEDs so that they can follow up a successful detonation with an ambush. Gaz, knowing the risks and the need for speed, worked solidly for twenty-four hours and discovered eleven devices. One of the bombs was attached to a command wire, which the Taliban attempted to initiate as he walked towards it. Gaz survived only because the device failed to detonate properly. Despite knowing that the Taliban were clearly watching him, he continued working until the entire area was made safe. ‘It was a tough job but in situations like that you just have to be methodical, keep a clear head, and trust your own judgement. I might be the person who goes in to disrupt the IEDs but it’s a real team effort. You have to have total confidence in your search team – and everyone shares the same risk.’ Sitting in the ops room in Camp Bastion, Gaz explained to me how the Taliban were beginning to change their tactics and how he believed the war in Afghanistan would change because the insurgents couldn’t win using conventional tactics. As I sat sipping a cup of tea in the cool of the air-conditioned room, Gaz disappeared for a few minutes before re-emerging with a large plastic bag. ‘This is an IED,’ he said, holding it up for me to see like an angler with a prized catch. ‘I defused this one and brought it back a few weeks ago,’ he told me with a beaming smile. Before me was a man in his element, but it was clear that Gaz really had no concept at how extraordinary he was. Even those around him, IED operators more senior and experienced, seemed to be in awe. ‘This is the pressure plate,’ he said as he pulled what looked like a shallow rectangular wooden box wrapped in plastic torn from a dirty bag. ‘This is basically a large switch. You have a power source connected to these two pieces of metal and to a detonator. Step on this and the whole thing goes bang – it’s that simple, but it works and it’s deadly.’ The pressure-plate IED’s design is frighteningly simple. Inside the wooden case, which is about 40 cm long, 8 cm wide and 5 cm high, are two rusty saw blades about 15 cm long. The idea is that when pressure is applied to the box, the blades touch, the electric circuit is completed, and the device explodes. I’m stunned. ‘Is that it?’ Gaz nods, smiling. ‘What’s the explosive composed of?’ I ask. ‘Anything Terry can get his hands on. Mortar rounds, artillery shells, land mines. This place has been at war for thirty-odd years, so there’s a lot of stuff lying around – and if they can’t find any explosive they’ll make their own.’ What’s it like being an IED operator? I ask Gaz. ‘Bomb disposal – it’s the best job in the world,’ he replies. ‘I wanted to do it from the moment I joined up. I love the challenge: when you go down the road it’s all down to you – your wits against theirs – and providing you stick to your training and don’t become complacent you should be OK. The Taliban are always developing their tactics, so we need to make sure we are really on the ball. I’m never nervous when I’m on a job, but I’m never complacent either.’ As we chat away in the ops room, leaning on a table which also doubles as a huge map board, Gaz tells me about an incident which even he admits was a little close for comfort. Members of 2 Para based in the area of the Kajaki Dam, in the north of Helmand, had discovered an IED on a track leading to their base. As normal, a ten-liner was sent out by the troops and Gaz’s team were dispatched to the scene. ‘It was a routine job – sort of thing I’d done many times before,’ he said, lifting his feet onto the end of the bench. ‘I went through all the normal drills, making sure everything was secure, and so I set about trying to render the device safe. I always work in the prone position – lying down. I find it more comfortable and you don’t present too much of an easy target to the Taliban. I was working away trying to isolate the power source. The device was different to others I had seen. In this case the trigger was an everyday clothes peg with two metal contacts fixed to the closing parts of the peg. The peg was being held open by a piece of rubber wrapped around the opposite end. I thought, I haven’t seen that before – that’s quite clever. While the contacts were held apart the device was safe but it was also connected to a power source, so it had to be isolated as well.’ As Gaz set about working on the device, he noticed out of the corner of his eye that the rubber started to move backwards along the peg. He had less than a second to react. Just before the rubber clip holding the arms of the peg apart snapped, he pushed his finger between the contacts, stopping them from snapping shut and detonating the bomb. With his other hand he pulled out a pair of pliers from the front of his body armour and cut the wiring to make the bomb safe. ‘I saw the ends of the peg moving,’ Gaz said. ‘I didn’t have time to think. I had to act straight away, so I jammed my fingers between the two contacts. I had to make an assessment that there wasn’t a secondary circuit. Then there was no other option but to cut the wires manually. Even for me that was a bit of a close shave.’ The device was wired to an 82 mm mortar and a 107 mm Chinese-made rocket: enough explosive to wipe out a dozen men. Had the peg closed Gaz would have been blown to pieces. Facing death was part of every IED operator’s daily routine, yet the stress associated with working in Helmand in 2008 left Gaz unfazed. Just before I left him in the ops room, I asked Gaz if he ever worried about being killed. ‘It never enters my mind,’ he replied. ‘You can’t do this job and worry about getting killed.’ On 10 September 2008, less than a week before he was due to fly home to his family, Gaz was killed while trying to defuse an IED on a routine mission in Musa Qala. He was awarded a posthumous Bar to his George Medal on 4 March 2009. Gaz was the first ATO to be killed in Afghanistan, and everyone who worked in bomb disposal knew from that moment on that his death wouldn’t be the last. *** I awake, drunk with fatigue, to an announcement over the PA system: ‘Op Minimise is now in force.’ Operation Minimise is launched every time a soldier is killed or seriously wounded. When it’s in force all connections to the outside world – e-mails and phone calls – are suspended until twenty-four hours after the next of kin have been informed. There was a time, when the mission in Helmand was still new, when the launching of Minimise would temporarily silence laughter in the canteens and prompt soldiers to speak in hushed tones. Not any more. Today in Helmand violent and sudden death is a reality of life, and such announcements appear to barely register with the troops. Stepping out of the large tent, I am greeted by a cloudless sky and the distant but distinctive ‘wokka-wokka’ engine tune played by an RAF Chinook landing on the flight line. Camp Bastion is now a fully-fledged multi-national base. It probably boasts a high ranking on the list of the world’s fastest-growing towns. In 2006, when the soldiers from the Royal Engineers began turning raw desert into a military base, it probably housed just 2,000 troops. Since then it has grown tenfold, although I doubt anyone really knows how many troops are actually based inside at any particular time. It now comprises Camp Bastion 1 and Camp Bastion 2, and the US Marines have grafted their own base, Camp Leatherneck, onto one side. Bastion is richly endowed with creature comforts. There is Pizza Hut, a Chinese and an Indian takeaway, NAAFI and foreign equivalents, and the American PX store, which sells everything the modern fighting soldier needs. Soldiers with time on their hands can go to the gym, play computer games, jog in complete safety around the camp perimeter, or watch a premiership football match courtesy of the British Forces Broadcasting Service. The Danish battlegroup, which also has a headquarters in Bastion, put on a rock concert. There is even talk that the US Marines are planning to build a swimming pool to increase the comfort of those serving during the summer in Helmand, where temperatures can reach up to 50°. Soldiers being soldiers, this has led to relations between male and female troops, and in 2009 at least ten British servicewomen fell pregnant and had to be sent home. Numerous canteens each disgorge hundreds of meals every day. British troops even have a choice for breakfast: the continental version for the health-conscious or the ‘full English’ for those who enjoy a heartier start to the day. The troops live cheek by jowl in air-conditioned tents, sleeping cocooned within individual mosquito nets on camp beds rather oddly described as ‘cots’. The base even has its own police force to ensure that soldiers are properly dressed for meals – open-toed sandals, for example, are forbidden in the dining halls – and those who break the camp speed limit of 15 mph face being issued a speeding ticket by the camp police. The base has also earned the distinction of becoming the UK’s sixth busiest airport – after Heathrow, Gatwick, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Luton – with more than 400 helicopter and aircraft flights every day. It is a far cry from April 2006, when a two-man control team from the RAF’s Tactical Air Traffic Control Unit activated the dirt-track landing strip. Some ninety minutes later the first of hundreds of thousands of flights arrived. Today combat operations, medical evacuations and logistic sustainment flights all operate from what has become a vital military hub. Discreetly positioned in one area of the base is the headquarters of the CIED Task Force. The operations room is in the same place as the last time I visited, two years ago, when I met Gaz O’Donnell. But there are now more than a dozen IED Disposal, or IEDD, Teams in Helmand, whereas when I interviewed Gaz there were just two. Despite the increase, the IED operators and the RESTs are kept busy all the time, working out beyond the perimeter of Camp Bastion. Most of the teams are deployed to various battlegroup locations in Helmand, while the High Readiness Force – which is composed of a four-man counter-IEDD team, seven-man high-risk REST, and a RESA – is on duty in Camp Bastion, ready at a moment’s notice to fly to anywhere in the province. The living quarters of the CIED Task Force consist of rows of tents. Above each tent is a board which identifies the team living there. One board reads: ‘IEDD Team 4 – warfare not welfare’ and identifies the ATO as ‘Badger’. Another reads: ‘Team Inferno – First to go, last to know.’ There is little for the soldiers to do in this part of the camp and it is clear that most of the tents are rarely inhabited. Any downtime is usually spent sleeping, preparing for the next operation, or relaxing in the ‘bar’, which, although there is no alcohol on sale, just fizzy drinks and chocolate, has become a gathering point for residents and a place to relax for those passing through. Another board reveals the location of one of the RESTs and reads: ‘Team Illume – Loves the jobs you hate!’ The sign also reveals that three members of the team are battle casualty replacements – soldiers flown in to replace those who have been killed or injured. It is clear that black humour is one of the life-support systems for anyone involved in IED work, but even though soldiers are flippant about the risks it is an unwritten rule that they never joke about their dead or injured colleagues. Within a few minutes of arriving at the Task Force Headquarters I meet up with Staff Sergeant Karl Ley – a man who, at 29, has become something of a legend in the IEDD world. Badger, as he prefers to be called – and I’ll explain why shortly – has come to the end of his six-month tour of duty and in that time he has defused 139 Taliban bombs. It’s a record. Chapter 2: Badger’s War ‘I thought, this is where I cop it; I’m going to be hit in the back and the lights are going to go out and that’s going to be it. No more life, no more wife, no more kids.’ Staff Sergeant Karl Ley, ATO, 11 Explosive Ordnance Disposal Regiment, Joint Force EOD Group The dust cloud mushroomed into the air, momentarily enveloping the armoured column snaking east across the flat desert plain. The logistics convoy, one of many that day traversing the arid expanses of Helmand, had paused at the head of a dried-out river bed which for centuries had served as a transit route into the town of Musa Qala, home to an isolated British base in the north of the province. Like the many bases which pepper Helmand, the one at Musa Qala was wholly dependent for its survival on Combat Logistics Patrols (CLP) – vast, 100-vehicle armoured convoys which delivered food, water, fuel, ammunition and mail to every isolated compound in the province. As there were too few helicopters, resupply by CLP was vital. The men and women of the Royal Logistic Corps who still today keep the convoys moving, often risking daily ambushes and IED strikes, really are the unsung heroes of the Afghan War. As the dust cloud began to settle, troops from the front two vehicles jumped from the back of their Mastiff armoured troop carriers and scanned the surrounding desert. Gunners provided cover with .50-calibre heavy machine guns and automatic grenade launchers were trained on potential enemy ambush sites. There were only a few routes into and out of the wadi and the Taliban knew them all. Each was a natural ambush site and had to be cleared of IEDs before convoys could proceed. Briefed on the task ahead, the first group of soldiers began preparing to clear routes while others moved into position to provide covering fire should the Taliban attack. The mid-morning sun had already begun to blast its intense heat onto the desert. Searching vulnerable points was a routine event for the soldiers but there was always a need to guard against complacency. For those tasked with route clearance there were no short cuts. At least once a week a soldier in Helmand was either killed or injured by an IED and many of the casualties were searchers – specifically selected and trained for the task of finding hidden bombs. In the shade of an armoured vehicle the soldiers checked their Vallons by swinging them over a metal object, the high-pitched whine of the alarm indicating they were in prefect working order. Searching for IEDs is now a well-established discipline. Working in pairs, the soldiers moved along the dried river bed, swinging the mine detectors in sequential arcs, always left to right. The carefully choreographed movements of the searchers – each focusing on the imaginary lane stretching out before him – should ensure that any device would be detected, but it was going to be a slow process. Depending on the amount of metal debris in the ground, which, along with other factors, could cause false readings, searching could prove a very long job but one that could never be rushed. After about forty-five minutes, when the soldiers had pushed about 100 metres into the wadi, an alarm sounded. The whine was loud and the meter reading indicated a significant metal device in the ground. The soldier knew instinctively that just half a metre in front of him was an IED. Speaking nervously into his personal role radio, he said, ‘I’ve got a strong signal – I’m going to confirm.’ Back at the head of the convoy, his section commander responded, ‘Go easy, no need to over-confirm. Just do what you need to.’ The soldier was now an isolated figure, made all the more distant by the watery effect of the heat haze. His colleagues had already withdrawn to a safe distance in order to minimize casualties if the bomb detonated. Bending down on one knee, he put the Vallon to his right and from the front of his CBA removed a paintbrush. Gently, and with a technique learned through hours of practice, the soldier began brushing and flicking away the fine desert sand. Almost every thought emptied from his head as he focused on clearing the dust away from the area where he suspected the device was buried. A fist-sized stone was sitting right on top of the spot where he believed the bomb was hidden. He stopped and stared. What to do? Licking the sweat from his top lip, he realized that whatever was causing the Vallon to shriek was buried in the parched desert directly beneath the stone. The initial inspection revealed little. If he was to investigate further, the stone would have to be removed. Gently wrapping his gloved hand around the object, the soldier began to lift. The unmistakable sound of metal grinding on metal emerged from the ground beneath his feet. He froze. Just 5 cm beneath the soil an IED was about to explode. The two metal contacts, which would complete the electrical circuit when connected and detonate the 20 kg of home-made explosive, had moved to a distance of less than 0.5 cm apart. When the contacts touched, the device would explode. Beads of sweat rolled down the soldier’s face. His eyes widened and his pupils began to dilate, a natural reaction to the adrenalin beginning to surge through his veins. Motherfucker! What the fuck do I do now? Don’t panic – absolutely do not panic. It wasn’t a PP IED that had been discovered, but a pressure-release, or PR, device, one of a new generation of IEDs recently devised by Taliban bomb makers, and the stones were the trigger. Pressure-release bombs operate in the opposite way to pressure-activated devices. Detonation occurs when pressure, such as a weight, is removed. The soldier released his grip on the stone and hoped for the best – in theory if the pressure was reapplied the electrical contacts should remain apart. He held his breath and carefully, his eyes tightly shut, began to withdraw his hand. The grinding stopped. He almost collapsed with relief. Grabbing his Vallon, he stood up, took two steps back, and let out a long breath before turning around and retracing his steps through the safe lane he had cleared earlier, back to the head of the convoy. ‘I think it’s a PR,’ he told his section commander, his eyes still filled with fear and relief. ‘I nearly set the bastard thing off. For fuck’s sake give us an ash.’ Back in the cool, air-conditioned ops room at the HQ of Joint Force Explosive Ordnance Disposal (JFEOD) Group, the first details of the ten-liner – in this case a request for an ATO – started to emerge on the computer screen via the secure J Chat e-mail system. Dispatching a team of bomb hunters to clear a route for a logistics convoy was standard procedure for the EOD headquarters. It was a routine job and no one in the ops room batted an eyelid. In September 2009 bombs were being discovered every day, sometimes every hour of every day, in Helmand. No one was going to get excited about a bomb in a wadi. Had a similar scenario played out in Ulster some fifteen years earlier, the clearance operation would have been a major event, the Defence Secretary would have been informed and the story would have led the news. Staff Sergeant Karl ‘Badger’ Ley and his IEDD team, callsign Brimstone 32, were fresh into theatre. That was obvious to every one of the several thousand soldiers garrisoned behind Camp Bastion’s concrete and barbed-wire walls. For a start their complexions were too pasty, their uniforms were crisp and starched, but most of all they didn’t look knackered. Badger’s team had just completed their RSOI training and were now officially classed as ready to deploy, as the HRF, to anywhere in Helmand. In theory teams new into theatre should have a few days, maybe a week, to acclimatize and sort their kit out before starting on their first operation. But the reality was different. Badger, like every ATO who had gone to Afghanistan before him, was beginning to realize that what he had learned on his High Threat course bore little resemblance to the reality of daily life on operations. Within twenty-four hours of completing RSOI, Badger’s team received their first shout. Earlier that morning he and the other soldiers in Team 4 – No. 2 operator Corporal Stewart Jones, Lance Corporal Clayton Burnett, who was the ECM operator, and Lance Corporal Joe Brown, by trade a driver but acting as the infantry escort – had spent most of the morning packing and repacking their operational equipment, trying to get the weight down and fit everything they needed into two Bergens. All the operational kit went in one of the rucksacks while personal items, such as clothing, rations, water, sleeping bag and mat, and what soldiers call ‘comfort items’ went in the other. Around 10 a.m., just as Badger was thinking of heading over to the welfare tent for a coffee, the operations room’s runner poked his head through Team 4’s tent and said, ‘Badger, you’ve got a shout on. You need to get to the ops room for a briefing.’ Within the hour Team 4 and their equipment, along with a seven-man team of specialist Royal Engineer searchers, were on a Chinook heading for a desert HLS close to where the convoy was being held up. The chopper landed amid a dust storm of its own making and within seconds the soldiers were off. Badger’s tour had just begun. Although Badger and his team had been in Helmand for only a few days, the rest of the search team were coming to the end of their tour. The partnering of teams fresh into theatre with those that have a few months’ experience under their belt ensures a continuity of expertise. Both the bomb-disposal teams and the Royal Engineer searchers form part of the CIED Task Force, which also includes weapons intelligence specialists, members of the Royal Military Police and Royal Engineer bomb-disposal officers. The Task Force’s main, although not only, task is to dispose of or defuse regular munitions, such as artillery shells, rockets, mines and hand grenades. As well as finding and dismantling the IEDs, it creates a database of suspects based on forensic evidence obtained from devices ‘captured’ intact. Every time an ATO manages to ‘capture’ a device complete information is obtained which can be fed into the database, and this may one day identify the bomb makers and bomb emplacers, as well as reveal from where the components of the device have been sourced. Badger was just beginning his first operational tour to Afghanistan, but he had deployed to Iraq as a No. 2, worked in Belize and Northern Ireland, and defused many IEDs back in the UK as a member of Nottingham Troop and Catterick Troop, both of which are part of 11 Explosive Ordnance Disposal Regiment, the unit responsible for dealing with IEDs in the UK. As soon as he was out of the helicopter Badger automatically began to assess the situation around him. Rather than just focusing on the bomb, he was also assessing the tactical situation, the terrain, and the disposition of friendly and potential enemy forces. The convoy commander explained the situation to Badger, who immediately suspected the device was a pressure-release IED; that, he thought, would explain the sound of grinding metal. Badger was aware that the Taliban knew that British soldiers and members of the Afghan National Army (ANA) or Afghan National Police (ANP) would sometimes move rocks or stones when trying to confirm a device. Someone, somewhere had set a pattern and the Taliban were trying to exploit it. Badger knew he would have to be on his guard. Like all ATOs operating in Helmand, he was acutely aware that for the Taliban there was no greater prize than killing a member of a bomb-disposal team. The ANP had already developed a reputation for having a robust approach when dealing with IEDs. Rather than call for assistance from the British or US, many Afghans would attempt to deal with the devices themselves and several of their number had been killed or seriously wounded by the devices. It seemed that many police commanders viewed calling in an operator to deal with an IED as a slight on their honour, and that seeking help was tantamount to an admission of cowardice. So instead the ANP would try to deal with the device – sometimes they were successful, and, tragically, sometimes they weren’t. The convoy had pulled back to a position around 150 metres from the device, but Badger and the RESA wanted to set up their ICP as close to the area as possible while still remaining in the safe zone. They commandeered one of the Mastiffs and moved to within 80 metres of the bomb so that they could get good ‘eyes on’ the area. The first stage of the operation was to select and clear the ICP, which the engineers did quickly and without incident, and when it was declared secure they moved off to conduct an ‘isolation’ of the bomb to make sure there were no others in the area. Scanning the area with a special wire-detecting device, the engineers moved cautiously in a wide arc around where the device was believed to have been buried. The engineers were hoping to detect command wires attached to IEDs positioned close to the main charge. Trust is key in this particular operation. The ATO must be absolutely sure that the area is clear of all devices. His life is in the engineers’ hands and he must be free of any external concerns if he is to be able to focus on defusing the device. Around half an hour later the engineers returned. ‘Everything’s clear. Over to you, Badger,’ said the team commander. Adrenalin trickled into Badger’s veins and his heart beat a little faster as he made his final preparations before moving towards the device. He checked his personal equipment one last time, touching each piece of equipment as he went through a mental checklist. He tightened the strap on his helmet and adjusted his knee pads. It was the same routine every time – check, check, and check again. That was the mantra of the IED operator. There were no short cuts – not in Helmand. By now it was stiflingly hot and neither Badger nor any of his team was properly acclimatized to the heat. Even in September the temperature in the Helmand desert could soar above 40°, and while the raw, unforgiving heat of the summer might have passed, the midday sun was still avoided by anyone with any sense. ‘I thought it was meant to get fucking cooler in the autumn, Stu,’ Badger said to his No. 2. ‘This heat is crippling, so I’m going to take it really slowly. The last thing I want is to pile in halfway through the job. Make sure everyone back here is properly hydrated. The last thing we’ll need on our first job is a heat casualty.’ Badger picked up his Vallon, switched it on, and gave it the mandatory test by swinging it over a rifle lying on the ground by his feet. The alarm sounded and he smiled. Everything was set. ‘Right, see you in a bit,’ Badger told the rest of the team, who were now settled in the ICP. They watched silently as he moved off into the distance, swinging the Vallon in front of him and waiting for the alarm to sound. The approach was slow and measured, everything being done in accordance with the rulebook. After reaching the device Badger cleared an area around it so that he could work comfortably, also ensuring that he had enough room for his feet. His plan of attack was simple. The device was probably a pressure-plate device, so Badger went to work using his fingertips and a trowel, working carefully but as quickly as possible. Within fifteen minutes he had located a wire and then the power source – eight 1.5-volt batteries taped together and wrapped in plastic. A small smile of satisfaction moved across his face as he prepared to isolate the bomb from the power source. Badger checked and rechecked that the firing mechanism was properly armed and that the electric cable connected to the rear end of the device was intact. Happy, he moved back to the ICP, where he handed the other end of the cable to Stu. ‘It’s all set up,’ he said to Stu and the RESA as he wiped the sweat from his face. ‘I’ve found a wire – the device seems fairly straightforward but I’ll know more once the power source has been isolated. I tell you what, this heat is something else – I’m absolutely fucking baking.’ As Badger sat down and drank lukewarm water from a plastic bottle, Stu connected the wire into the green box known as a firing circuit. ‘There’s going to be a bang in about fifteen seconds. Stand by, stand by,’ Stu shouted before pressing a black button on the green box, which he held in his hands. Less than a second later a bang, not unlike the sound of a shotgun, echoed around the valley. So far so good, Badger thought. He had stuck to the book and so far everything had gone like clockwork. ‘We’ll give it a few minutes and then I’ll go back down,’ he told the team. This is known as the ‘soak’ period. In Northern Ireland, operators would wait several hours before attempting to defuse a bomb. That luxury was not available in Helmand, where the Taliban were always watching. As Badger waited in the sweltering heat, it now became crystal clear to him why ATOs did not wear bomb suits in Helmand. Like the rest of the team, he was struggling to keep cool wearing just body armour. In the summer even this acted like a thermal jacket, making it feel like the temperature was about 10° hotter. With a bomb suit weighing around 40 kg and the thermometer in the mid-40s for nine months of the year, it was simply a non-starter for almost all ATOs. The fact that it was blue was also not lost on the team, all of whom knew there was nothing a Taliban sharpshooter would like to bag more than an ATO. Badger returned down the cleared lane and checked to see if the wires had been cut. Yes, the IED weapon had done its job perfectly. He taped the ends of the wires to ensure that a circuit could not accidentally be created, removed the battery pack, and then began to extract the device itself. Extracting a pressure plate is achieved with a hook and a line. Basically a hook is attached to the plate, the ATO retreats to the ICP with the other end of the line, then he and usually his No. 2 pull on the line until the plate is pulled free. If the device detonates for any reason, no one is hurt. It’s a simple but safe and effective method. When Badger returned for a third time to the device, he was astonished by what he found. The pressure plate contained a central metal contact which could be detonated by pressure being either applied or released. This was the first time such a bomb had been seen in Helmand, and the device had been specifically designed to target ATOs and soldiers attempting to confirm its nature. Beneath the pressure plate were several rocket warheads which would have killed anyone in a 20-metre radius of the device, and the chances are that there would have been very little, if anything, left of Badger. He took photographs of the site, the plate and the explosive, which was later detonated by the side of the track. It had been a long, very hot day. The device had taken around two hours to disarm but it had been worth it. To obtain a brand-new device intact was a real coup. The weapons intelligence specialists who pored over bomb-making material hoping to obtain forensic data would be delighted. But, most importantly for Badger, the day had gone without a hitch, the team had coped well in the heat and under pressure, and there had been no accidents. I met Badger as he was coming to the end of the tour. It had been a gruelling six months for the CIED Task Force. Six members had been killed and more than twenty injured, and several of these had sustained life-changing injuries. Not since the bloody days of the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s had the world of Army bomb disposal lost so many men in such a short period of time. The losses had taken their toll on everyone serving within the Task Force, for bomb disposal is a close-knit world where the loss of even a single colleague is a bitter blow. Although ATOs are some of the most highly trained and professional soldiers in the British Army, no one in the field of bomb disposal had foreseen the huge surge in the use of IEDs by the Taliban. In 2008–9 these changed the face of the war in Helmand. Huge tracts of the country had been turned into minefields and the workload of bomb hunters went through the roof. It wasn’t unusual for ATOs to defuse ten or twenty IEDs in a day, while under fire and working in temperatures in the 40s. The situation was unsustainable, and casualties inevitable. A six-month tour in Afghanistan is both physically and emotionally exhausting for every front-line soldier. For Badger it was no different. In the six months from September 2009 to March 2010 two of his closest friends were killed and several more were injured. He came under fire on numerous occasions and had several close calls with IEDs, but he went home without as much as a scratch even though he had defused 139 IEDs. Badger, with his compact, wiry frame, short brown hair, keen eyes which sparkle with mischief, and a mellow Sheffield accent, had acquired his nickname as a young soldier eleven years earlier following a drunken incident in a nightclub involving a bottle of Tippex, his pubic hair and a group of divorced women. It has remained with him ever since. The South Yorkshireman joined the Army on 14 November 1999 as a private in the Royal Logistic Corps. His academic prowess at school – he obtained A-levels in geography, history, sociology and general studies, having earlier gained nine GCSEs – could have taken him to university and then on to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst to train as an Army officer. He had been offered places at university, including King’s College London, to pursue war and peace studies, but the idea of spending three years ‘locked in lecture halls’ and then facing a large debt at the end of his degree didn’t appeal. ‘I just had this vague notion of wanting to join the Army,’ Badger told me. ‘Some of my friends had already joined, so I went to an Army careers office and they must have been short of ammunition technicians that week because they sold it quite well to me.’ Ten years later Badger was posted to Helmand as part of Operation Herrick 11. His bomb-disposal team was one of dozens of units attached to 11 Light Brigade. Somewhat surprisingly, given the scores of soldiers killed by IEDs, Badger describes the task of defusing home-made bombs as his ‘comfort zone’. ‘The infantry think my job is scary, they are terrified of IEDs because they are this unseen threat in the ground which just keeps killing and wounding them, but they are my comfort zone. It is all about what you are used to. ‘The infantry expect to get into firefights with the Taliban and many of them actually want to. That’s what they joined the Army to do – go to Afghanistan and kill the Taliban. And when the shooting kicks off you can actually see that some of these guys are really in their element, it’s what they were made for. But not me. Firefights terrify me. Give me an IED to defuse any day. It’s all about your comfort zone. I hate coming under fire, it terrifies me. I will try and dig a hole with my spoon to get into some sort of cover.’ In September 2009 Badger was dispatched to Patrol Base Woqab, near Musa Qala, to attend to a device which had recently been discovered by the local infantry battalion. The bomb was a PP IED and in itself didn’t present much of a challenge to the bomb hunters. Outside of Sangin, the Musa Qala Taliban were regarded as the ‘hardcore’ element in Helmand – always ready to take on ISAF, the International Security Assistance Force, and experiment with new devices in the hope of catching out an ATO. It wasn’t lost on Badger that this was the same area where Gaz O’Donnell had been killed on 10 September the previous year. It was an ordinary shout. The search team deployed, cleared the area, checked for command wires, but none were found. Badger cleared a safe lane down to the device and began defusing the pressure plate, which went without a hitch. The plate had been cleared and the time had come for Badger to destroy the home-made explosive in situ. ‘We don’t recover the main charge. It’s just too risky, so what we do is destroy it using conventional military high explosive. I set up the explosive, the last thing I did was to connect the detonator, then moved back to the ICP, where Stu fire-connected it to the firing circuit and detonated the main charge.’ As soon as the explosion rumbled across the valley, the local Taliban sprang into action, assuming that one of their devices had been triggered and that ISAF or the Afghan National Security Force (ANSF) – which draws on the ANA, the ANP and other police units – would have casualties, in which case they would be vulnerable and therefore ripe for ambush. What they found when they arrived at the scene was a lone, unarmed British soldier walking slowly in open ground – the perfect target. Around fifteen minutes after the explosion Badger had made his way back to the site. ‘I went back down the road to check that everything had worked and then the Taliban opened up good and proper. It was a case of “fuck me”. The Taliban opened up with everything. The bullets were cracking above my head. There was single shots, automatic fire, RPGs coming in. I could hear the bullets zipping past me. It was absolutely terrifying. I was thinking, “How they can they be so close without hitting you?” And you’re saying, “Those cunts, those cunts.” I thought, this is where I cop it; I’m going to be hit in the back and the lights are going to go out and that’s going to be it. No more life, no more wife, no more kids. And so I’ve gone from being in my comfort zone – defusing an IED – to being absolutely shitting myself in less than a second, and all the time I’m sprinting like a crazy man trying to get back.’ Badger was on his own in open countryside, 80 metres from his team and safety. There was no cover to hide in, and if he moved out of the metre-wide safe lane he risked triggering an IED. The only option was to turn and run. ‘I ran like the wind itself – Usain Bolt had nothing on me. When you’re neutralizing an IED and the Taliban start shooting, the best thing you can do is to drop to your belt buckle and let the infantry win the firefight. In the past that’s what I’d done. As long as the rounds are landing too close, you’re pretty safe. I always ask the infantry commander what he wants me to do if we get involved in a contact and nine times out of ten he’ll say, “Sit tight, hide and we’ll win the firefight.” They don’t exactly expect us to do a great deal of fighting.’ Badger came bounding back into the ICP and, although he was terrified, the rest of the team were in fits of laughter. ‘I was shaking like a shitting dog,’ he told me, a broad grin on his face. ‘I’d come about as close as you would want to come to being shot, and all your mates are laughing at you. It was because of the look on my face as I came running in. I was knackered and out of breath and you think, that was too fucking close.’ Although his team frequently came under fire, Badger maintains that he never got used to being attacked. A month later, in October, he was teamed up with Warrant Officer Class 2 Dave Markland, a 36-year-old who had served in the Army for almost twenty years. Dave entered the world of ordnance disposal at a relatively late age. Much of his early career had been spent as a Plant Operator Mechanic – they’re known as ‘Planties’ – and passed his RESA course in the spring of 2009. Badger and Dave became firm friends – their different characters seemed to complement each other – and developed a working relationship that was the envy of many within the task force. Dave was physically large – 6 ft 4 in. tall and weighing in at around 16 stone – ‘but his personality made him even seem bigger’, according to Badger. He was one of those individuals whose greatest enemy was boredom – and the long, dull days of inactivity in Camp Bastion. In late November 2009 Badger and Dave were dispatched to FOB Keenan, near the town of Gereshk in central Helmand, to take part in Operation Gumbesa. Gereshk sits astride Highway One, otherwise known as the ‘Afghan ring road’. It forms part of the old Silk Route and still has key strategic significance for both the Taliban and ISAF forces. It has been at the heart of many battles, with the military initiative constantly switching between the British troops and the Taliban. The presence of ISAF troops has brought some stability to the area. The town has a hospital with both male and female doctors and has around twenty schools, which are attended by around 20 per cent of the population. Taliban bomb teams were targeting FOB Keenan, and dozens of devices had been laid in the area with the aim of restricting the movement of the Danish battlegroup based locally. The FOB is sited directly behind a hamlet and the inhabitants of this were in just as much danger from the IEDs as the ISAF forces. Part of the CIED mission is to clear IEDs out of civilian areas. The local population is only too well aware of the damage the devices can cause, since hundreds of civilians are killed and maimed every year. An IED is totally indiscriminate, and although the Taliban will arm some devices only at certain times of the day to avoid civilian casualties, most are not monitored and will kill and injure anyone – man, woman or child – who detonates it. The first day of Operation Gumbesa began at around 0700 hours when Badger, the IED Team 4, WO2 Markland and the Royal Engineer searchers, together with their infantry force protection, patrolled out of the base. The cruel heat of the summer had subsided but the temperature could still reach the mid-30s in November, although by that stage Badger was fully acclimatized. The operation went as planned on the first day. Badger, Dave and the search team managed to find, defuse and recover seven devices in about ten hours. They were delighted with their efforts. That night interpreters in FOB Keenan could hear the Taliban angrily discussing the team’s success over their Icom radios. The Taliban’s two main methods of communication are mobile phones and Icom radios. The second broadcast on known frequencies and can easily be intercepted with an Icom receiver. The intelligence obtained, known as Icom chatter, sometimes proves useful and can forewarn troops of attack, but it needs to be used carefully. Because the Taliban know that their radio communications are monitored by the British, much of their chatter is designed to confuse. ‘The Taliban were furious,’ Badger recalled with a broad grin. ‘They had spent ages planting loads of IEDs and we came along and started to remove them all. It had been a long, arduous day, really gruelling, and everyone was exhausted by the time we returned to base. You come back in, drop your kit, have something to eat, attend the evening briefing, prepare for the following day, and then try and hit the sack. You’re always knackered – either through the sheer length of the task or through fear of being attacked. No one ever has any trouble sleeping. One of the skills you quickly learn is to get sleep when and where you can. ‘Large-scale clearances are always the same. You really have to guard against switching off. Sometimes you can wait for hours and nothing happens. It can be so boring, and then you have to switch into work mode in an instant. But the effort was worth it when we were told how pissed off the Taliban were.’ The following morning the whole process began again and the IEDD team deployed to the same area. Dave made his assessment of the locality and began directing the search team, while Badger relaxed nearby in a spot that he assumed was safe. While the two were shooting the breeze, unbeknown to them the Taliban were on the move. ‘All of a sudden the Taliban opened up on us – it was close, really close,’ said Badger. ‘Because we had been chatting we had not been paying much attention and we were suddenly caught on our own. We both hid behind some banking and I was trying to get as low as possible – the rounds were fizzing just above our heads. It was like, “Shit, where did that come from?” But Dave was a big bear of a man, huge – and I looked over at Dave and, although I was terrified, I suddenly started laughing – I mean really pissing myself, and I started taking the piss out of him. He was always going on about how much bigger he was than me. The bullets were whistling and cracking above our heads and it was not a good time to be big when you are trying to hide behind something so small.’ Badger and Dave had no other option but to sit tight until the enemy position could be suppressed by soldiers from the Royal Anglian Regiment who were providing security for the bomb hunters. Once the enemy fire had stopped the two of them sprinted back to where the infantry were based and the search began again. By the end of the second day Badger had defused a further fourteen devices, followed by another seven on the third day – twenty-eight devices in three days. Badger is due to return home in the next few days and he has the look and behaviour of a man who has just won the lottery. He’s relaxed and carefree and looking forward to meeting his family. I ask him whether, given the buzz of the job, he wishes he was staying. Will he miss the unique bond of brotherhood, which is forged in war zones among soldiers who have faced death on a daily basis and seen their closest friends fall and die in battle? ‘Will I miss Afghan? Not for a fucking second. I’ll miss my mates, but that’s about it. No one wants to stay here for a moment longer than necessary. I just want to get home and hug the wife and kids – and to be honest I wouldn’t be bothered if I never came back here again. I’ve lost mates, really good mates, and that’s been hard, but compared to some people I’ve had it easy.’ I’m chatting to Badger in a vast green Army tent crammed full of cots ready for fresh troops coming into theatre. The whole of Camp Bastion is in a state of flux because the several thousand men of 11 Light Brigade are leaving and the men of 4 Mechanized Brigade are beginning to arrive. It is a routine handover, known as a roulement or relief in place (RIP), which takes place every six months. It’s easy to spot the difference between the two sets of troops. Those who are coming to the end of their tour appear more rugged and suntanned, their uniforms are worn, and their eyes tell a different story from those of the new guys. The RIP is a fantastically busy period, and Camp Bastion swells to almost twice the number of British troops, many of whom are going through RSOI training. After a journey through the night they are pitched into a series of lectures in tents where the temperature hits 32°. Some of the men have not slept for twenty-four hours, and they struggle to stay awake. The troops are warned of the various dos and don’ts in Helmand – such as do drink plenty of water and do wash your hands every time you go to the toilet and don’t approach Afghan women, ever, or pick up anything which may be remotely interesting from the ground while on patrol because it might be attached to a bomb. Those troops going to the front line are pitched into a series of day and night live-firing exercises on ranges beyond the camp wire. Overall it is an exhausting and sometimes frightening experience, but especially so when they get onto CIED training. Much of this will have been covered in numerous exercises before their deployment, but here in Helmand the training is somehow more frightening. Everyone knows that the next time they carry out the same drills will be for real. The instructors – members of the CIED Task Force – have a captive audience. No one wants to miss out on a piece of information, a tip with the benefit of someone’s experience. Mistakes on exercises back in the UK are acceptable but in Helmand they may cost an arm, a leg or a life. The soldiers are taught how to search, confirm and recognize buried IEDs using Vallons. Over the next six months the soldier will learn how to recognize the detector’s various alarm tones. Again and again the instructors remind them to look for the ‘absence of the normal and the presence of the abnormal’. As we sit talking inside the 30-ft-long tent, which even in the dry heat of Helmand still smells damp, Badger tells me of the worst period of the tour. In the space of three weeks one of his best friends had been killed, another had been wounded and sent back to the UK, and a third had suffered a double amputation after stepping on a pressure-plate IED. The three men were all ATOs and were all doing exactly the same job as Badger when they were killed. The first of Badger’s friends to fall was Staff Sergeant Olaf Sean George Schmid. Oz, as he was known, was one of the true characters of the bomb-disposal world – he was known to everyone and loved by most. He was a huge personality, cocky and scruffy, but he was also an excellent bomb hunter. He had spent several years serving with 3 Commando Brigade and proudly wore his Para wings and famous Green Beret and revelled in his status as an Army Commando. Oz was irrepressible. His favourite saying when morale would take a bit of a dip was ‘Let’s man-up and get on with it.’ Every morning without fail those who walked past his bed in his tent in whatever part of Helmand he was working would be greeted with one of two phrases: ‘Suck us off’ or ‘Two sugars with mine.’ He once attended a memorial service in Sangin for a fellow soldier killed in the area a few days earlier but fainted through exhaustion. When he came round, a padre was standing over him, asking if he was OK. Oz opened his eyes and responded with, ‘Get off my fucking hair.’ It was as a chef that Oz originally joined the Army in 1996, but while serving with an infantry unit in Northern Ireland he saw a bomb-disposal team at work and felt he had suddenly found his calling. Oz arrived in Helmand in July 2009 on Operation Herrick 10 and immediately took part in Operation Panchai Palang, or Panther’s Claw, a multi-national operation designed to push the Taliban out of central Helmand before Afghanistan’s ill-fated presidential elections. Oz, known as ‘Bossman’ by his team, was one of Badger’s closest friends. The two had known each other for around eight years and were on the same High Threat course before being deployed to Helmand. ‘Oz filled the room, absolutely filled the room,’ Badger said, a broad smile lighting up his face. ‘He was a fantastic bloke, a great laugh. He was the loudest man I knew, he was brilliant. Before you go on any course in the Army, you get a set of joining instructions and at the back of that is a course list. I would always flip to the back and look at the list and if Oz’s name was on it you knew it was going to be a good one. It would be two weeks of hard work but two weeks of hard drinking. Oz worked hard and played hard, that was his way.’ In August 2009 Oz was attached to the 2nd Battalion Rifles battlegroup, based in Sangin, which was quickly developing a reputation as a graveyard for British troops. Since June 2006, when members of 3 Para moved into the valley, barely a week has passed without the Taliban launching some sort of attack. Sangin held special significance for the Taliban. It was one of the main opium centres in Helmand and thus had the potential to provide the Taliban with the hard cash they needed to sustain the insurgency. The Taliban knew they couldn’t defeat ISAF troops in a stand-up fight but what they could do was make commanders question whether holding on to Sangin was worth the growing casualty rates. Every battlegroup which deployed to the Sangin Valley knew they would not return to the UK without sustaining losses. By the end of their tour in April 2010, 3 Rifles battlegroup, based in the Sangin district centre, had suffered more fatalities than any other unit that had served in Helmand since 2006. The Taliban operating in the valley had developed a fearsome reputation for being ruthless and inventive, especially in their use of IED ambushes. Some soldiers have likened them to the IRA in South Armagh in Ulster during the Troubles in the 1980s and 1990s. The South Armagh Brigade was the only IRA unit which was never infiltrated by British intelligence. It was close-knit, tough and fearless, with commanders who were always seeking new ways to attack British bases and kill soldiers with specially designed bombs and mortars. For the ATOs Sangin was probably the least popular and most challenging of all the battlegroup locations in Helmand. Such were the dangers of serving there that IED teams were changed every six weeks and no new ATOs or search teams were ever sent to the area for their first tour. The narrow alleyways, the rat-runs and the lush fields of the Green Zone, criss-crossed with irrigation ditches, streams and canals, were exploited to the full by the insurgents. Patrolling British troops were channelled into classic ambush sites almost from the moment they left the front gate of the base. Once inside the Green Zone practically all movement was restricted to foot, and the field of view, especially in the summer with the crops tall, could be as little as a few metres. Fighting was at close quarters and often brutal – bayonets were always fixed and often used. IEDs are produced in Sangin in prodigious numbers and are used to channel and restrict the movement of British troops. The Taliban bomb makers in the area were regarded as the best and most innovative in all Helmand. New devices were often tested in Sangin before being exported to other parts of the province. The Taliban would watch every move the soldiers made, noting their favoured routes, crossing points and rendezvous points. They understood British tactics, knew how troops would respond in a firefight, knew how long it would take to call in an air strike and the Army’s casualty evacuation procedures. There were only so many places where a helicopter could land and evacuate an injured soldier, and the Taliban knew them all. Routine patrolling through some of the built-up areas close to the base was impossible. Rather than walk along a track or road, troops moved from compound to compound by scaling 15-ft-high walls in a bid to beat the bombers. The soldiers knew this activity as ‘Grand Nationaling’. Pharmacy Road in Sangin town was the most deadly street in the whole of Afghanistan. Since the British first moved into the area, hundreds, possibly thousands, of devices have been planted on it, killing dozens of soldiers. Any operation which required troop movement on this road had to be carefully planned and searched. By April 2010 160 soldiers of the 281 soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2006 have died in Sangin town and the surrounding area. I have been on patrol in the area on several occasions, taken part in operations, and have come under fire on several occasions and I can still recall the sense of relief I felt every time a patrol ended. The main British base in the Sangin area of operatons, FOB Jackson, sat on the periphery of the district centre and was bisected by the Helmand canal, which offered the troops based there temporary respite from the summer heat and boosted morale. Dotted throughout Sangin are smaller patrol bases, such as PB Tangiers, an ANA base close to the district centre, and PB Wishtan, at the eastern end of the notorious Pharmacy Road. The casualty rate in PB Wishtan was so high in the summer of 2009 that troops, with their customary black humour, renamed it PB Wheelchair. The soldiers who have to patrol in Sangin day after day, sometimes twice or three times a day, often after having witnessed a fellow soldier having one or more limbs blown off, need truly remarkable courage. And it’s worth remembering that many of them are just 18 or 19 and on their first operational tour. Despite the risks, Oz Schmid was in his element and relished the challenge. This easy-going, fast-talking Cornishman had an infectious smile and a fantastic sense of humour. He had named his squad ‘Team Rainbow’ after the gay pride emblem, because he claimed they were the only ‘all-gay IEDD team in Helmand’. The team members were nicknamed Zippy, Bungle and George, and their mascot, a duck, was known as Corporal Quackers. It was all part of the coping mechanism adopted by Oz and his team. Like every ATO in Helmand, Oz knew that death lurked around every corner. Every bomb had to be treated as a unique event. Taking short cuts or making assumptions could end in a trip home in a body bag. As if to emphasize the dangers Helmand held for ATOs, Captain Daniel Shepherd, 28, was killed defusing a roadside bomb in Nad-e’Ali a month after Oz arrived in Helmand. He was the second ATO to die in Afghanistan. Like Gaz O’Donnell, who had died eleven months earlier, Captain Shepherd hadn’t made a mistake; he was just unlucky. As one soldier later told me, ‘That kind of shit can just happen in Afghan.’ In an interview he gave before he was killed that appeared in the Sunday Times on 8 November 2009 Oz referred to Dan Shepherd’s death and how it had shaped his view of the role of ATOs in Helmand: ‘There are times when I’m actually thinking about Dan and I’ll go down the lonely walk, as they say, get to the target and think, what am I doing here? But it’s a flash through my head, if you like.’ Oz was typical of most ATOs I have met: they never think about their own safety and are far more concerned with the lives of their fellow soldiers. ‘Nine times out of ten, in fact 99.99 per cent of the time, I’m down there and I’m doing it as quick as I can, because obviously the longer the guys are down on the ground the more they present themselves as a target. ‘And then obviously once we’re out on the ground, other things, atmospherics around us, you know I’m getting dicked as well – they’re trying to look and see what I’m doing, so it’s a lot of focus into what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. My brain’s always thinking about the device: how I’m going to render it safe. It’s not necessarily wandering off to: am I going to get home? Every device is different in its own little way … you have got to find exactly what it is and come up with the best way of dealing with that, so your mind is constantly focused on that. I don’t really think about the enemy. There have been a couple of piss-take jobs, though, where they are trying to have a bit of a joke. I found a dollar on top of a pressure plate in Nad-e’Ali the other week.’ On 9 August 2009 Oz took part in an operation to clear Pharmacy Road, which runs east from Sangin town centre out to PB Wishtan. By this time the area directly around the PB had become one of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan, with one in three of the soldiers based at Wishtan being killed or wounded that summer. Several of those had been killed or injured close to the base and the dozens of IEDs which had been laid in the area meant that patrolling was almost impossible. PB Wishtan was cut off from resupply by land. Bomb-damaged vehicles had been turned into a basic but effective roadblock and Pharmacy Road was riddled with IEDs. Three previous attempts to clear the road, which is lined by 15-ft-high mud walls, had all failed. The operation began at 5.30 a.m., just before the sun appeared over the horizon. Specialist Royal Engineer searchers, flanked by soldiers from the Rifles, pushed out from FOB Jackson and began the search. The troops made steady progress until they came to a military digger which had been blown up by the Taliban during a previous operation. All around the vehicle the ground was littered with IEDs. At around 0800 hrs and with the temperature already in the mid-40s, Oz set to work. Within 100 metres he found and cleared the first IED of the day. Oz had planned to use a remote-controlled vehicle to clear another device but as it moved into the danger area the robot struck an IED and was destroyed. Knowing that the Taliban were probably in the area and monitoring the progress of the operation, Oz moved forward again and cleared a route to within 5 metres of the vehicles. ‘We started searching forwards along the road again,’ he explained. ‘We found another bomb half a metre away from the lane that I’d used to search up to the vehicle. We sent two little robots out and they got blown up, so I went on my feet.’ His team then moved into a compound adjacent to the stricken vehicles and began preparing to take them off the road. Another device was quickly discovered, which Oz also cleared. The engineers in the compound blew a hole through the outside wall and winches were used to drag the vehicles off the road. Clearing bombs from the route to the vehicles had taken an hour, during all of which time Oz had been completely reliant on his own eyesight and his understanding of enemy tactics. As the light began to fade he once again led a high-risk clearance of the stretch of road from which the vehicles had been taken away and removed a further two devices. The whole operation had lasted eleven hours. It had been fraught with danger, and luck had also played a large part in ensuring that there were no British casualties. Oz and his team were drained, physically, emotionally and mentally; they had discovered a total of thirty devices and defused eleven, but the road was open and C Company, 2 Rifles, were resupplied. Although it was clearly a team effort, the mission would have failed if it had not been for Oz’s heroic and selfless acts. Despite the danger, Oz, like every other ATO working in Helmand, never wore his protective body suit. ‘It’s too hot to wear a suit out here and it’s tactically not feasible,’ he said. He saw the suit as an easy way for the Taliban to identify him. ‘Every time we’re out on the ground we’re obviously denying them their kill against us, so in effect we’ve become a high-value target for them, as they are for us. Certainly a few times, certainly in Sangin, we’ve been targeted and over the old Icom they say, “The bomb team is here, let’s hit them.” They call us the bomb team, according to the interpreter – probably “wankers” in the local language.’ Over the next few months Oz’s team were called out to dozens more IED incidents, some where soldiers had been killed and wounded and others where by luck the device had failed to explode. ‘I have been to a couple of devices that have been very unstable. The bomb makers’ construction of the devices isn’t brilliant. A loose wire in the wind could create a short, so when I have my fingers in there I have to pay attention.’ On 8 October 2010 Oz was dispatched to the district centre to deal with a device which the ANA had discovered while on patrol. The IED consisted of an artillery shell placed close to seven large cans of diesel. If the bomb had detonated it would have devastated the area. On arrival the ANA soldiers led Oz directly into the IED’s killing area. The Afghan soldiers had not warned the public for fear that the device might be detonated by the Taliban once they knew it had been found. Oz realized that he was not only at personal risk but so were around forty civilians who were in the immediate danger area, and time was not on his side. Oz moved up close to the device and quickly assessed that the shell was part of a live radio-controlled IED. It was also clear that the bomb was almost certainly being overwatched by the Taliban. Oz felt that he had no choice but to conduct a manual neutralization. To do this he employed a render-safe procedure which is only ever used in the gravest of circumstances and is conducted at the highest personal risk to the operator. Oz insisted that his team move back out of the safety area before neutralizing the bomb. Once again the heroism he displayed went beyond the call of duty. After the incident Oz said, ‘My heart’s not racing at all when I go in.’ But then he corrected himself: ‘No, that’s not true, there are some points when it does. There’s a lot of apprehension, a lot of adrenalin going through you at the time, especially when the device is something a little bit different, when you know that it is targeting you, but it’s important to appear calm. The guys look at you, they draw strength from you. For an infantry commander on the ground, it’s a hell of a weight off his shoulders when you come in.’ Defusing was not Oz’s only task, however. He also had to gather the vital forensic evidence which enables military teams to trace the militants who smuggle, make and plant IEDs. Forensic evidence was what Oz called ‘the big picture in the IED loop’, and it’s their expertise in gathering this that sets British high-threat IED operators apart from any others. ‘As British teams, we’ll get everything out of the device because our skills and drills are the best in the world, believe it or not. Because of our background and what we’ve learned over the years in places like Northern Ireland, it allows us to adopt some techniques in order to gain vital information from devices. It’s all about getting the forensics, matching it, and going that way round it as opposed to just making it safe. We want to capture them, to get criminal convictions.’ After Oz’ s work in the Pharmacy Road operation – as well as defusing a large IED in the centre of a bazaar which, had it exploded, would have killed many civilians – rumours began to circulate in the Task Force that he was in line for a gallantry medal. ‘I am just looking at getting home with my legs,’ was his response. Working in Sangin was beginning to take its toll on Oz and his team. Barely a day seemed to pass which didn’t require Oz to put his life on the line. Back in Camp Bastion his boss, Major Tim Gould QGM, the officer commanding the JFEOD Group, was concerned about Oz’s mental and physical health. ATOs need to be managed very carefully. In 2009 they were a scarce resource and they remain so today. Oz insisted that he was tired but fine and wanted to stay in Sangin. On the evening of 30 October Oz called home and spoke to his wife, Christina. She later recalled that he sounded uncharacteristically strained after being left exhausted by yet another four-day operation in the Sangin area. With tears leaving tracks down his dust-covered cheeks, he said, ‘I’m hanging out, hun. Can you come and get me, babe?’ Of course she couldn’t, but she reassured him that he had just two days to push before he was due to return home for his two weeks’ R&R. On 31 October, Halloween, the day before he was due to fly home, Oz and his team were called out on another task, one which required him to defuse three devices. As the day drew to a close the team were about to return to the base when one of the searchers discovered a command wire running down the alleyway they had been working in. Oz’s team had unwittingly walked into a trap. They had no idea at which end of the alley the device was located and so had no safe route forward or back. Oz immediately seized the initiative and traced the command wire to a complex IED. The device was linked to three buried charges designed to take out an entire patrol. His team withdrew and cleared an ICP while Oz moved forward. That was the last time he was seen alive. Oz was killed instantly while dealing with the first device. In five months in Afghanistan he had defused sixty-four IEDs; the sixty-fifth killed him. His wife was told later that evening that Oz was dead. Later Christina recalled, ‘I wasn’t surprised. I got this gut feeling after he called me for the last time. He never speaks like that. He was exhausted. He said he had been out there too long and could I come get him. I told him I couldn’t.’ At about 9.30 p.m. on 31 October 2009 Christina watched as two men wearing green berets approached her house. ‘I thought, oh my God, what are they doing here?’ Laird, her 5-year-old son, thought it was Oz, his stepfather, returning home. ‘I can remember saying he’s definitely not here. It’s not Daddy, I told my son. I asked them why they were there. I said, “Just tell me he can talk. I don’t care about his legs and arms. Can he talk?” They looked at me and said, “Let us in.” I didn’t cry. No one else was hurt. I remember thinking what a relief that was.’ In the moments after Oz’s death the news began to filter back to the CIED Task Force headquarters in Camp Bastion. The J Chat said that a Brimstone callsign – indicating an IED team – had suffered a fatal casualty. Then the screen displayed ‘SC’ – the first two letters of Oz’s surname – followed by the last four digits of his Army number, which together made up his Zap number, a personal coded number given to operational troops. Oz was the third ATO to be killed in action in Helmand in thirteen months. It was an attrition rate that had not been experienced by the world of bomb disposal for almost 40 years. Later that evening, at FOB Price, near Gereshk, Badger made his routine evening call to the ops room just to let them know everything was OK. ‘I called in and Major Gould, my boss, answered and said, “Badger, I’ve got some bad news. Oz is dead.” It was like being hit in the stomach with a cricket bat. I was devastated.’ Badger found himself a quiet corner and began to cry. ‘I knew I had to tell the boys. They all knew Oz, so it was important they were told as soon as possible. So you have to man-up, wipe your eyes, wash your face, and break the news. There were a lot of tears – it was a very difficult evening for everyone in our community.’ Four days after Oz was killed I arrived in Helmand for a three-week embed with the Grenadier Guards. I had never met Oz, but I knew that as an ATO he was an extraordinarily brave soldier. While I was waiting to transit forward from Camp Bastion, a special service was held for Oz before his body was repatriated to the UK. Hundreds of soldiers attended and many of those who served with him were in tears. I have attended several of these services, and they are all moving, sometimes traumatic events. But Oz’s was different: it was transparently clear that the Army had lost someone very special. Lieutenant Colonel Rob Thomson, the commanding officer of the 2 Rifles battlegroup, described Oz, in the hours after his death, as ‘simply the bravest and most courageous man I have ever met. Superlatives do not do the man justice. Better than the best. Better than the best of the best.’ Two weeks after Oz’s death, Captain Dan Read, a fellow ATO, was wounded by shrapnel when a soldier standing close by detonated a victim-operated IED. Captain Read was a very popular officer who had joined the Army as a private but later passed the officer selection course and attended the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. Although his injuries were not serious, as most of the shrapnel hit his arms, he was sent back to the UK to recover. Soon the casualties were coming in so thick and fast that the battle casualty replacements couldn’t keep pace with the rate at which soldiers were being wounded. A senior officer later told me, ‘We were unprepared for such large numbers of casualties. We didn’t have the resources in place and we couldn’t cope with the volume of casualties. We were in trouble.’ Morale within the CIED Task Force had taken a bashing. ‘It was a very bad period, a dreadful few weeks,’ said Badger. But for him it was not just the loss of mates that was worrying. ‘Oz was at the top of his game,’ he said ruefully. ‘They were doing the same job as me and part of you does think, if it can happen to them, then it can happen to me. ‘After Oz was killed I had to phone my wife and tell her that there had been an incident and one of the lads had died. I said to her, “Don’t worry, I’m OK.” I’ve told her plenty of times that if they hear bad news on the TV or radio, then it means I’m OK because she would be told first. But all the wives are worried, worried all the time. I think it’s harder for them. Every time there’s a knock on the door their heart stops.’ The period between August 2009 and March 2010 was one of the bloodiest in the British Army’s history of bomb disposal. It wasn’t just the British ATOs who had taken casualties either. Both US and Canadian ATOs have also been killed in southern Afghanistan. An SAS sergeant told me that he was in awe of the bomb-disposal units. He went on to describe an incident in which a US bomb-disposal officer was killed while taking part in a mission. ‘We were going into a compound and we had a US ATO with us. He got to the compound and he said, “I’ll go in first and clear it. You guys wait here.” He went in with his mine detector on his own, and about a minute later there was this huge bang. We followed up and he had been blown in half by the bomb. His bottom half had been completely separated. You’re like, “What the fuck?” Thankfully he had been killed instantly. We all owe our lives to him – if we had gone in the bomb would have taken out an entire SAS team. ‘These guys are incredible – people think our job is risky but it’s nothing compared to what these guys do. We always have plenty of intelligence, more often than not we know exactly what will be waiting for us. But these guys have to go in on their own. It’s incredible. The incident happened just before Christmas in December 2009. And his wife and two children buried him the day before Christmas Eve. Whatever way you cut it, that’s just shit.’ A few days after Oz Schmid was killed, Dave Markland and Badger, lying on their beds in the FOB, made a pact. They promised each other that if either of them was killed – blown to pieces by an IED – nothing would be left behind. For the one event which terrifies ATOs and everyone in the world of bomb disposal is the prospect of their body parts being left on the battlefield after an attack. The size of the bombs being used by the Taliban in Helmand can literally blow a human to pieces. Everyone involved in bomb hunting accepts such a fate as a fact of life, and many take comfort from the fact that, if their number is up, they will know very little of it. While chatting about nothing in particular, Badger turned to Dave and said, ‘Oz, Dan Shepherd and Gaz O’Donnell were all at the top of their game, Dave, you know that. They were as good or better than me. So let’s make a pact. If I get blown up, I get blown out of the safe lane and we are under fire and taking casualties, promise me that you won’t leave me behind. You’ve got to promise me that.’ Badger was now sitting up and staring at Dave, who nodded and replied, ‘The same goes for me, Badger, mate. Now, enough morose talk. Let’s go and get a brew and check on the lads.’ Badger and Dave had hoped to work together for the rest of their six-month tour. The two soldiers had developed a very special working relationship during the ten weeks they had spent together. But that plan was interrupted by their R&R after Christmas. Badger took his leave first and when he returned Dave departed. The planning for Operation Moshtarak, a military drive intended to clear the Taliban from central Helmand, was already underway and bomb hunters were urgently required for the so-called ‘shaping operations’ which took place a few weeks before the main event – the large-scale thrust into the heart of Taliban territory. Both men were due to take part in a shaping operation together but Dave’s return from R&R was delayed and Badger deployed with another search team. Dave arrived a few days later, but with little to do he quickly became bored and frustrated and was soon asking to be sent out on an operation. An officer recalled how Dave was ‘bouncing off the walls’. ‘He kept going up to Major Gould saying, “Boss, you’ve got to put me out on the ground – I’m doing my nut here.” Eventually a task came up and he was told he was going out – he was delighted. I remember him going up to Gould and shaking his hand before he went out. Major Gould looked him in the eye and wished him good luck – these things are important in our world.’ The two bomb hunters were deployed to Battlegroup Centre South, in the Nad-e’Ali area of central Helmand, Badger to the north and Dave to the south. Both search teams were involved in a series of straightforward routine search and clearance operations. On 8 February Dave’s search team was dispatched to clear a route where a suspected device had been uncovered. It was a routine operation, the ICP was cleared by the searchers and the mission was going according to plan. But a mistake had been made. A pressure-plate IED which had been missed was detonated by Dave as he moved across to one side of the ICP. The blast was huge and devastating, killing Dave instantly. Badger was a few kilometres away, conducting a similar route-clearance operation, when he learned the dreadful news. Badger recalled, ‘I kind of found out by accident that Dave had been killed; no one officially told us. We heard a “nine-liner” saying that someone had been injured from a Brimstone team. We enquired and the Royal Anglian’s operations room told us that there had been an incident with a Brimstone callsign. At that point your heart starts racing and you are just praying that whoever has been injured is going to make it. We looked on the J Chat and I knew straight away that it was Dave.’ Seeing Dave’s Zap number, they realized straight away whose it was. ‘Dave was working with six Gurkhas,’ Badger continued, ‘so I immediately knew that he was the casualty. The J Chat said he was KIA. My heart sunk and I felt sick. I immediately got in touch with the ops room to try and find out what had happened and I was hoping against hope that a mistake had been made. It shouldn’t happen but it’s not unheard of for people to get Zap numbers wrong. But they confirmed that Dave was dead. ‘I never got the full details, just that he had been taken out by an IED and that it was quick – that’s all you can hope for really. It’s a small comfort and you just have to crack on. I was on my own when it was actually confirmed for definite that he was dead. I gave myself five minutes, had a little cry, and then you just have to man-up and go and tell the boys. I called the team together – we had all worked with Dave too and we were all very close. Everyone was gutted but we all had to remember that there was a job to do and we would be back out on the ground in the morning. As hard as it sounds, we couldn’t let ourselves be distracted by Dave’s death because we all knew that we could be the next to be killed. ‘Obviously you think about it when you are on your own or lying in bed at night but you have to trust your drills and assure yourself that providing you do your drills correctly you should be OK. But Dave did nothing wrong.’ With tragic irony Dave’s name was added to the memorial which he designed and built and which still stands in the quiet corner of the compound where the JFEOD Group is based. When the mission is over and the troops come home, the memorial will come with them. After a few weeks’ leave Badger will return to his unit where he will be given a pager and will command one of the many teams which provide IED coverage over the whole of the UK. Even back in the UK Badger will be called out two or three times a week to deal with devices ranging from a Second World War grenade found in a granny’s cabbage patch to a suspicious package left on a train. ‘It has been a gruelling six months,’ he says. ‘I’ve spent a lot of time sleeping on floors and I’m not getting any younger. You are working most days and it’s the sheer number of tasks you are asked to do which slowly grinds you down, and at the back of your mind you know you can’t make a mistake. It’s going to take time to settle into home life again – for the last six months I’ve been making life-and-death decisions, now it’s a case of shopping in Tesco’s and deciding which cereal I want – funny how life changes.’ I say goodbye to Badger and wish him a good leave and a safe journey home. His tour is over but mine is just beginning. In a few days’ time I will once again be on the front line. I’ve only been in Camp Bastion for less than a week but already I feel it’s too long. I want to get out into bandit country again but this time will be different. This time I will be with the bomb hunters searching for IEDs. The promises I made to my wife and myself after Rupert’s death are already beginning to evaporate. Rather than finding reasons not to go into the danger zones, I’m doing the opposite. Chapter 3: Bomb Makers ‘A year ago, the idea that an ATO might dispose of 100 bombs on a tour in Helmand was unthinkable, but soon it will be the average. The pressures on these guys are huge, the room for error zero.’ Major Tim Gould, Officer Commanding Joint Force EOD Group I’m sitting on a makeshift wooden bench within the quiet enclave of Camp Bastion which is home to the Joint Force EOD Group. The sun is shining brightly in a cloudless sky and the temperature is a comfortable, almost perfect 26°. I’m drinking tea with Major Tim Gould, who leads the JFEOD Group. He is a highly qualified and deeply respected ATO who won the Queen’s Gallantry Medal in Iraq after recovering the body of a fellow bomb-disposal officer killed while transporting Iraqi bombs. He is lean and tanned but not as dark as the foot soldiers who spend their days defusing bombs across Helmand. Tim’s days of bomb disposal are effectively behind him. These days he is the ‘controller’, the man charged with sending troops into what the soldiers somewhat dramatically call the ‘heart of darkness’ – those areas of Helmand that are now essentially IED minefields. Major Gould is tired, both physically and mentally. He doesn’t tell me this but I can see it in his eyes and the way he talks, in the lengthy pauses during our conversation and the way he stares into the distance. It’s not the back-to-back eighteen-hour days for the past six months which have left him exhausted, but the deaths of six of his men and the horrific, often life-changing injuries suffered by many of those under his command. He is tired of Helmand and, like many commanders, tired of writing letters home to the families of the dead, and explaining why the sacrifice of a son, husband or brother was not in vain. I’ve met soldiers like Badger before – men who carry the burden of having lost friends in the cause of duty. It is a burden they will carry for ever, always wondering whether they could have done more to save the life of a comrade or prevent another from being injured. It is another tragic, hidden cost of war. The wounds left by the deaths of his fellow bomb hunters are still raw. Badger served during one of the bloodiest periods in EOD history. Before the war in Afghanistan, twenty-four British ATOs had been killed in action, twenty-three in Northern Ireland and one in Iraq. Since 2008 five ATOs have been killed in Helmand, and many more have been injured. The attrition rates in Helmand now mirror those of the early years of the Troubles. ‘IEDs are basic but deadly,’ Badger states matter-of-factly. ‘Take for example the pressure-plate IED. What is this thing which has killed hundreds of British troops? Let’s break it down.’ He speaks quickly and fluently. I can tell it’s a conversation he has had many time before, probably with senior officers wondering why the Taliban are able to make IEDs in such vast numbers and with apparent ease. ‘A bomb is a switch with a power source connected to a detonator which is placed inside a main charge of explosive,’ Badger continues. ‘An IED consists of anything which will keep two metal contacts apart – we have seen strips of wood and clothes pegs – which are used to form a switch. The contacts can then be moved together by applying pressure or releasing pressure. So the most simple devices we have found consist of two pieces of wood, maybe 1 in. wide and about 1 ft long, with a hacksaw blade nailed to each piece. The pieces of wood are kept apart by a piece of sponge or another piece of wood, anything which will allow the two axle blades to come together when pressure is applied – the same theory works if the device is pressure-release. Wires are then connected to the two blades and to the detonator, which can often be the most complicated part to make. It’s not commercial, something improvised. The detonator is then placed inside some home-made explosive, often a mixture of ammonium nitrate – which is a common fertilizer widely available in Helmand – aluminium filings and sugar, and this is known as ANAL and this is the main charge. The explosive needs to be put in a container, something which will keep it dry, and commonly in Helmand the Taliban are using palm-oil containers. At this stage the explosive is very stable. You could throw it against a wall and nothing would happen. You could burn it and it would burn furiously but it wouldn’t explode – for that you need a detonator. The detonator is then inserted into the container, usually by cutting a hole in the side, and then resealed. The device now needs to have a power source – so what’s available? Batteries. Eight 1.5-volt batteries are often enough.’ Major Gould speaks with a hint of anger or at least irritation in his voice as he continues, ‘So you now have a simple circuit, which an 11-year-old boy could easily knock together, consisting of a power source connected to a switch – the pressure plate – which is connected to a detonator. And that is your bomb. Flick the switch by bringing the two metal contacts together, which allows an electric current from the batteries to flow to the detonator, causing a small explosion inside the main charge, which explodes with enormous force. The power can be increased by adding more ANAL, conventional explosives or conventional munitions such as artillery shells, mortar bombs, hand grenades or rocket warheads.’ The major has described the construction of an IED with a ‘high metal’ content. These were the first generation of devices and are relatively easy to find with a Vallon. But the Taliban are an adaptable and inventive foe. War and fighting are part of their culture and heritage. Their fathers and grandfathers fought the Soviets and then each other in a civil war, and now they are fighting NATO. Just like the IRA, who, let’s face it, were also insurgents, the Taliban will always try to build on success rather than failure. So it was only a matter of time before they began to build IEDs with ‘low metal’ content. Instead of using saw blades or other strips of metal as the switch, the Taliban have begun to use the carbon rods from inside batteries. And they work really well. In addition to victim-detonated devices, such as pressure-plate and pressure-release IEDs, there are also those which can be triggered by remote control. Some devices can also be turned on and off remotely. In some parts of Helmand, for example in Musa Qala, pressure-plate bombs are armed remotely just before a British patrol arrives in the locality. If the patrol takes another route, the device can be switched off and the track is then free for local people to use. By adopting this tactic the Taliban can reduce their collateral damage, for they need to keep the local population on their side in the areas they control. The threat from these devices, which is potentially considerable, is lessened by the use of electronic counter-measures, or ECM. These were developed during the 1980s and 1990s, during the bloody days of the Troubles, and their use still remains an extremely sensitive subject. The next group of devices are the command IEDs, which function ‘on command’ rather than being victim-operated like a pressure-plate device. Again the main charge is often, though not exclusively, home-made explosive. Command IEDs break down into two categories. The first is the ‘command pull’, where the device is triggered by an insurgent pulling on, for example, a piece of string or wire. This can be as simple as dislodging any non-conductive material that is keeping two electric terminals apart. When the terminals touch, the bomb functions. The other category is the ‘command wire’ device, which is detonated by an insurgent connecting the bomb to a power supply, such as a car battery, when a potential target is in range. In Helmand, command wires up to 200 metres long have been found. With the power source, which often contains a high proportion of metal, so far away from the explosive, these are very difficult to discover with a metal detector. IEDs can also be detonated by a trip wire. One example of this kind of device is the Russian-made POMZ, which is effectively an anti-personnel fragmentation grenade mounted on a wooden stick. When a soldier approaches the device, an insurgent gives the wire a gentle tug to pull the pin out of the grenade, causing it to detonate in less than a second. These devices can also be detonated by the victim walking into a trip wire. ‘IED production has gone beyond being a cottage industry,’ Major Gould continued. ‘They are now being knocked out on an industrial scale at the rate of one every fifteen to twenty minutes. This is something which is very difficult to target because, when you see the nature of the devices, they are so simple but very effective. I wouldn’t say the bombs are bodged – but they’re not far from it. But that doesn’t matter. They are still very effective and they do the job. They don’t have to be state-of-the-art – quality control is minimal – but the beauty of these things is that they work. You can leave a pressure-plate IED buried in the ground for a month, maybe more, and it can still kill. ‘During the Northern Ireland period the IRA were incredibly sophisticated – the IRA wouldn’t put a device on the street unless they were 100 per cent sure that it would function. In Helmand there is absolutely no quality control. The bombs are knocked together with any old rubbish, which can make the device very unstable. You could sneeze and it would function, you could be working on it and the ground around you could collapse and it could function, or it could function just because you are moving the earth close to it. The IRA built devices with “ready-to-arm” switches but we haven’t seen anything like that here. The bombs might not be much to look at but they are very effective and they are killing and injuring lots of troops and civilians.’ Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/sean-rayment/bomb-hunters-in-afghanistan-with-britain-s-elite-bomb-disposa/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.