‘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, trying, often without success, to explain why the sacrifice of a son, husband or brother was not in vain.
As the bomb hunters’ commander, Gould is directly responsible for the men and women who search for and dispose of IEDs. Right now his is one of the toughest jobs in Helmand, an area the size of Wales where around 8,000 British troops are deployed. For reasons of operational security I have been asked not to disclose how many Royal Engineer High Risk search teams and CIED teams are based in Helmand – but as far as Gould is concerned it is not enough.
I’ve met officers like Tim before – men who carry the burden of sending young soldiers to their death 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 those under his command are still raw. Major Gould 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.
Tim Gould’s ATOs speak of him in glowing terms. They say that he worked harder than any member of the Task Force, including those on operations, but that he also took the deaths of his soldiers badly. ‘Major Gould is a great boss,’ says one of the ATOs in the JFEOD Group. ‘At first he does seem slightly reserved but underneath he is a genuinely warm and nice bloke. When you came in off an operation he would sit and chat for ages about what you had been up to, not because it was his job but so that an operator could unload his troubles. I always knew that I could be as robust as possible with commanders on the ground because he would always give me his full backing. We all knew he was tired because of the hours he worked. It was every day from 0730 to 2200 – more than the operators on the ground. We all knew that he took the deaths of the lads very badly. He was an ATO, so he knew the dangers, he knew that when he sent a bloke out on a job he might not come back.’
Major Gould’s modesty prevents him from telling me how he won his Queen’s Gallantry Medal but one of his colleagues says that he won it during the opening days of the Iraq War, while trying to save Staff Sergeant Chris Muir, who had been mortally wounded while attempting to dispose of a cluster bomb composed of more than eighty lethal bomblets. While they were taking the device to a safe area, one of the small bombs had exploded, leaving the staff sergeant with devastating injuries. Gould cleared a safe route to his injured colleague, only to discover more bomblets hidden beneath his body. Despite the dangers, and the fact that the Staff Sergeant was beyond help, Gould methodically defused one bomblet after another until his comrade could be rescued. Staff Sergeant Muir later died of his injuries.
‘IEDs are basic but deadly,’ Major Gould 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 generals and politicians 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,’ the major 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 an axle 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.’
Intelligence has emerged suggesting that Iran has been training Taliban snipers and bomb makers, a worrying development with similarities to the situation facing the allies in Iraq. Iranian intervention in Iraq was responsible for killing and injuring hundreds of British troops.
During 2006 and 2007, IEDD teams deployed to Afghanistan for four months. Back then there were only two British bomb-disposal teams in Helmand. Iraq was still the main focus for IED disposal. But that changed in 2008, when Helmand was redefined as a high-threat environment and the tour of duty was extended to six months. In the space of two years the number of Taliban attacks had surged by more than 300 per cent. Soldiers were being killed and injured almost daily and the IEDs were also being used to target ATOs. When news that the tour was to be longer was announced, none of the ATOs being sent to Helmand complained; they simply did as they were told.
By January 2010 serious concerns were beginning to be voiced over the pressure facing ATOs and other members of the bomb-hunting teams. Everyone working in EOD was aware that all three of the ATOs who had so far died in Helmand had been almost two-thirds of the way through their tours. It was the same story for an ATO who was seriously injured. The exception was Captain Dan Read, who deployed to Helmand on Operation Herrick 11 and was injured in October 2009 and was sent back to the UK as part of his recovery. He returned to Helmand in early January 2010 and was subsequently killed in action in Musa Qala on 11 January. The counter-IED world had not seen so many deaths in such a short space of time since the early years of the Troubles, in the 1970s. The question being asked was, ‘Were they exhausted or had they become ambivalent to risk?’
‘In the days when Northern Ireland was a big problem, an ATO would be lucky if the number of devices he defused on a tour reached double figures,’ Major Gould explained. ‘Now guys are doing fifty to 100 devices. Badger, who you’ve met, disposed of 139 in six months. 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.
‘We had not lost an operator since 1989, but now we are back to the attrition rate of the early 1970s. It is a demanding and gruelling job and I think we will see, in the years to come, cases of post-traumatic stress disorder beginning to emerge. The stress is unquantifiable. It is one of my major worries. We don’t know what sort of toll this war is having on bomb-disposal teams. We won’t know that for a long while.
‘The Counter IED Task Force was established to deal with the IED threat in Helmand. In 2006 there were just two ATOs and two search teams; that number has increased but we still need more. At the moment we are very pressed and we can’t deliver enough effect.’
By ‘effect’ Major Gould meant the ability to defuse bombs at the right time in all the areas necessary, both to allow British troops to move about safely and to give the local people some freedom of movement.
‘We desperately need more ATOs and search teams,’ he went on. ‘These are the people who allow soldiers to interface with the locals, which is all part of counter-insurgency. CIED is about a lot more than just getting rid of bombs – it is about opening up the country to allow ISAF and the Afghan security forces to secure the local population.
‘My teams could clear thousands of IEDs every month and it wouldn’t have any effect at all – the key is to make sure you clear the right ones. We still do not have enough IED operators here, and that’s a source of frustration. In theory each company should have a team, but we simply don’t have the numbers. It takes up to seven years to recruit and train an Ammunition Technician – that’s as long as it takes to train a doctor.’
The woeful shortage of ATOs was caused in large part by a catastrophic decision to halt recruitment into the Royal Logistic Corps at both officer and soldier levels. The net effect was that bomb-hunting units were left with a 40 per cent reduction in manpower at a time when British troops were on operations and facing a significant IED threat in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bomb-disposal experts are a scarce resource; there are only a finite number in the Army. As well as taking part in operations in Helmand, bomb-disposal teams are also based on the British mainland and in Northern Ireland, ready to deal with an IED 24/7. A select group of bomb hunters, known as Team Alpha, also work with the SAS. One of their roles is to defuse IEDs attached to hostages and suicide bombers. They specialize in ‘Category A’, or manual, neutralizations, which are undertaken only when no other option is available, for example when a bomb is strapped to a hostage or to prevent a mass-casualty event. ATOs who choose to work with Team Alpha must be prepared and ready to tackle any device and do whatever is necessary to save life – even if it requires self-sacrifice.
Before deploying to Helmand, ATOs must successfully complete a gruelling eight-week High Threat course, which just 20 per cent pass at the first time of taking. While on the course ATOs learn how to dispose of all types of IEDs they can expect to meet in theatre and also undergo rigorous psychological testing to assess their suitability to operate in an environment where they will often be the target. There have been several qualified ATOs who have failed to make the grade on the course because they lacked the mental fortitude to deal with the unrelenting demands of a high-threat environment.
As well as the bomb hunters and RESTs, the CIED Task Force works alongside a number of units, including the Joint Force Engineer Group, to clear IEDs. The Python is a rocket-propelled mine-clearance system which is mounted on a Royal Engineer Trojan armoured vehicle and has been used in Helmand to blast a route through IED belts along which troops or convoys of armoured vehicles can safely pass. An alternative route-clearance system is the Talisman programme, which consists of a fleet of vehicles designed to clear routes for combat logistic patrols. Each Talisman suite is composed of a Mastiff 2 protected vehicle in which the IEDD team travel; a Buffalo mine-protected vehicle with a rummaging arm, which can be used to locate IEDs; a JCB high-mobility engineer excavator, used to fill in ditches or potholes; a T-Hawk micro air vehicle, which is a man-portable drone that flies ahead of the convoys and observes suspicious vehicles; and a Talon, a tracked remote-controlled vehicle which is used to disrupt or disarm IEDs. The Python and Talisman are perfect for clearing routes through banks of IEDs for combat logistic patrols or for major advances into enemy territory. But they have little use for the majority of bomb-disposal work in Helmand, which takes place on public roads and in small villages and hamlets, where most British casualties occur.
The use of robots has also met with limited success in Helmand, because almost every piece of equipment used by bomb-hunting teams needs to be man-portable and the only robot light enough to be carried without a vehicle is the Dragon Slayer. Officially the MoD claims that the Dragon Slayer is a fantastic piece of equipment which will prove to be a huge aid to bomb-disposal teams and is the ‘best remote-controlled bomb disposal robot on the market’. But I have yet to come across an ATO who was impressed by the Dragon Slayer. Most complained that the device, which weighs 10 kg, often broke down or was too weak to pick up large quantities of explosives. On paper the idea of disposing of IEDs with robots is obviously the ideal solution, but the reality is different. A similar argument is used for the bomb suit, which is meant to protect bomb hunters from the effect of a blast. While it might be suitable in the relatively controlled environment of Northern Ireland, and to a certain extent Iraq, it is completely impractical in Afghanistan. ATOs need to be highly mobile. They need to be able to climb walls, crawl into culverts, and run for their lives when the Taliban attack – all of which are almost impossible while wearing a 50 kg bomb suit.
The terrain and the distances IEDD teams need to travel also make the use of robots difficult. Most operators I met used robots at every appropriate opportunity, but those opportunities were few and far between and many teams never actually used robots on operations. In fact Badger never used a robot for any of the 139 bombs he defused during his six-month tour.
‘In an ideal world,’ Major Gould told me, ‘it would be better to deal with IEDs from 100 metres, by using robots and remote weapon systems, but the nature of the operation here means that cannot always be achieved. We have robots but they are of limited use if you have to climb over a 6ft wall to get into a compound where a bomb has been placed. Dealing with IEDs in Helmand without wearing a bomb suit, not being able to use your robots, is like going on a golf course with a seven iron and a putter – you can do it but it’s not very satisfactory. These days we would rather have a full set of golf clubs.’
IEDs kill in various ways, depending on the type of charge, and in Afghanistan those are composed of artillery shells or mortar bombs filled with either military-grade explosive or home-made explosive. These devices have a high metal content and are relatively easy to discover by soldiers trained to use Vallons. When one is detonated the effect is similar to that of an artillery shell exploding and it often causes lethal fragmentation injuries. The effectiveness of the explosion and the range of the shrapnel are severely limited because the device is buried beneath the ground. To compensate for the limitations imposed by the need to conceal the bomb, the Taliban often use multiple mortar bombs or artillery shells.
The other type of device which is now increasingly seen in Helmand is one where the main charge is usually home-made explosive concealed in a plastic container. The only metal content in these devices will be that used within the pressure plate, if one exists. For this reason they are much more difficult to detect, although not impossible. The containers typically contain 5, 10 or 20 kg of HME, but can be stacked in multiples to produce a bigger explosion. Any device with a charge of between 5 and 10 kg will take off a leg; 10 kg will take off both legs and most of a soldier’s behind. Anything larger will cause instant death. Soldiers who trigger these devices are killed or injured purely by the effect of the blast or by the pressure wave caused by the explosion, which is powerful enough to tear off one or more limbs. In some cases, especially if the bomb weighs more than 20 kg, the blast can blow a soldier to pieces. In Helmand there have been occasions whem only small body parts of soldiers have been found because they have been so close to the point of detonation. Many soldiers have also suffered severe blast wounds because they were close to a device when it exploded. In one example a soldier lost an arm and suffered severe blast injuries to the rest of his body after a colleague stepped on a pressure-plate IED. The soldier who triggered the device survived but lost both legs in the blast.
Soldiers now accept that there is a high probability that they will be wounded by an IED, especially if they are based in areas such as Musa Qala and Sangin. They know that they might lose an arm or leg but also accept that, while such an injury may be life-changing, it need not diminish their quality of life. But the greatest fear which eats away at soldiers is the horrible prospect of losing their genitals in a blast. Human genitals are made from soft tissue and are easily damaged or blown off in an IED blast, especially when the explosion has already resulted in a traumatic amputation. Many soldiers privately told me that they would rather be dead than return to the UK without their testicles.
‘The first thing everybody checks after they have been blown up is their wedding tackle, that’s providing they are conscious,’ a soldier confided while we were chatting about the numerous threats they faced in Helmand. ‘Virtually the first thing a soldiers asks is, “Have I still got my bollocks?” It happens on the battlefield or in hospital. Nobody want to go home without their nuts – it’s a big topic of conversation among the soldiers. You will get guys asking, “What would you rather lose, your legs or your nuts?” There are some guys who’d prefer to lose both legs, both arms and be blind but still have their nuts. Others say if you don’t have any nuts you no longer have the urge for sex because you don’t have the right hormones in your blood, so if you do lose your nuts you won’t miss sex anyway. It’s all part of the reality of life in this fucked-up place.’
Many other weapons will have a disproportionately greater effect when used in multiples. Here the Taliban subscribe to Aristotle’s dictum that ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’, and this is precisely the case with IEDs. IEDs are used by the Taliban as a single bomb but it is when they are used in multiples that they have the greatest effect. The Taliban have learned to be meticulous in the planning of ambushes. After fours years of fighting the British, they are now able to predict, often with unerring accuracy, how troops will respond when ambushed. Insurgents are good students, always watching and learning. When a NATO soldier is seriously injured, the Taliban know that the standard operating procedure is to call for a helicopter evacuation. For the aircraft to land safely, space and flat ground are needed. So what better place to plant several more IEDs than an obvious helicopter landing site?
The Taliban know that soldiers will rush to the aid of a colleague who may be, say, a triple amputee and bleeding to death. Soldiers being soldiers, they may well disregard the threat to them and not clear a safe route to a casualty in order to provide life-saving first aid. Such blind loyalty among the British troops has often been exploited by the Taliban, with the consequence that those who have rushed to help a stricken comrade have ended up as casualties themselves.
As one soldier put it, ‘It’s easy to lose your head and forget your drills when your best mate has had both legs blown off and is screaming in agony. We have had to drum it into soldiers to make sure they always clear a safe lane when going to an injured colleague. Where there is one device there are often more.’
Over lunch in one of the many tented canteens dotted about Camp Bastion, I ponder over what Major Gould has told me. Only now am I really starting to understand the sheer enormity of the task facing the bomb hunters. On paper the odds look stacked against any of them surviving a six-month tour, but bomb hunters are a breed apart – not that they will tell you that. The most effective weapons they have in their armoury are training, skill and courage, but also luck, and of that they will need bucketloads.
British troops are monitored by the enemy’s ‘scrutiny screen’ of various degrees of sophistication practically every time they leave a base. In some areas, such as Sangin, the monitoring, or ‘dicking’ as the soldiers call it, is very sophisticated. Dicking is often conducted by young men, sometimes boys just 10 years old, armed only with a mobile phone, who report directly back to the local Taliban commander, and all for a few dollars a day. Soldiers are dicked when they cross obstacles, search VPs, chat to locals, when they enter compounds and when they leave compounds. With such a vast network of willing assistants the Taliban could monitor the movement of British troops all day every day.
‘Everything we do is watched by the Taliban in Sangin,’ Captain Rob Swan, the commander of Brimstone 31, one of the ATOs working with the Task Force, explained to me while we were relaxing in the Joint Force EOD Group’s ‘bar’ – a large tent with a television and armchairs but no alcohol.
‘The Taliban are well aware that if one of their devices is found, then it is highly likely that an ATO is going to be almost certainly called in to defuse it, especially if the device is in an area used by ISAF. So we get called in and basically the Taliban will sit and watch from a distance. He will watch every move, every procedure, every action I make.’ Captain Swan smiles and shrugs. ‘And there’s nothing we can do about it. We can’t stop them, we all know they are doing it. It’s infuriating watching them sitting with their backs against a compound wall 40–50 metres away, just watching what the operator is doing. They will watch what actions I carry out on that device and they will try to think of ways to catch me out. They will look at areas I may or may not have searched. And you know they are thinking: he didn’t search there – maybe I should place an IED in that area. So I have to be very careful all the time, constantly changing my drills and making sure I don’t set patterns – it’s basically a game of chess with serious consequences for the loser. I always have to stay one step ahead. It’s cat and mouse.’
Rob Swan and his team had been sent to Afghanistan as BCRs. The team consisted of Corporal Kelly O’Connor, at that time the only female No. 2 in Helmand, Lance Corporal Sebastian Aprea, 24, the specialist electronics operator, and Ranger Charlie Clark, 27, a reservist serving with the London Regiment (TA) who in civilian life was a tree surgeon but in Helmand was the infantry escort and therefore responsible for covering Captain Swan’s back while he was defusing bombs.
In the weeks before Christmas one ATO had been killed and two had been injured, one severely. Three separate attacks had reduced the CIED Task Force’s bomb-disposal capability to 30 per cent, exposing the fragility of the JFEOD Group. Replacements were urgently needed.
Rob, Kelly and Seb had all trained together on the High Threat course a few months earlier and had expected to deploy to Helmand in March 2010. But, following a run of casualties, the order came through that the team should expect to move at short notice and the three eventually flew out on 16 December 2009. Shortly after they arrived, Charlie, the fourth member of the team, turned up.
‘Being deployed as a BCR wasn’t something that really played on my mind,’ added Rob as we chatted in a rare moment of inactivity while his team relaxed while on standby for the High Readiness Force. ‘In fact coming out early was a bit of a bonus – the sooner you come out the sooner you get home, and my wife is seventeen weeks pregnant so I really want to be home in time for the birth of the baby.’
‘Yeah,’ interjects Kelly, ‘we were just keen to get out here. Better than sitting on our arses back in the UK.’ The other three members of the team all nod in agreement.
Rob joined the Army in 2003 and after leaving Sandhurst a year later was commissioned into the Royal Logistic Corps. He says he had a vague understanding of the nature of bomb disposal but it wasn’t until he was deployed to Iraq in 2005, when he was attached to the Light Dragoons battlegroup, that he became interested in joining the profession. ‘I volunteered to be an escort for an ATO who’d been tasked with defusing a device which had been taken into a police station by an Iraqi police officer who had found it on a bridge. I watched the ATO at work and I found it really intriguing, so when I returned to the UK I did a bit more research and found out about the course. As far as the RLC is concerned, it was a bit more of the pointy end of the sword, so I volunteered for the course.’
Seb, the Royal Signals specialist electronics operator, is 24 and is chatty, personable and intelligent. He studied science subjects at A-level, gaining an A and two Bs. ‘I thought about going to university but the Army seemed to be a better deal,’ he tells me with a broad, youthful smile across his face. ‘You get paid to learn and the stuff I’m learning at the moment is pretty much degree level. By the time I have finished my training I will get a Master’s – it’s all degree-level physics. So it’s the same thing as being at university except I’m being paid for it and I’m doing something beneficial for others.’
Seb, who possesses a maturity beyond his years, says he was happy to face the risks that come with being a member of a bomb-disposal team because he believes such a dangerous and demanding job will ultimately assist him in his progress within the Army. He explains, ‘This is regarded as quite a prestigious posting for my trade and usually only the top 1 or 2 per cent of each course get selected. I did pretty well in training, I joined up in March 2007, so I’ve only been in three years. This is my first posting. I went to speak to my troop warrant officer and told him I was interested in going into EOD. I knew it would be good for my career. He made the phone calls and I asked to go to Catterick because it is quite close to where I live and I would be able to see my mum. My mum is threaders at the moment, though. Every time I phone she is in tears. She worries a lot. I try and tell her I’m OK but she still worries.’
One of the most testing days of Brimstone 31’s tour took place in early March 2010 in Sangin. Taliban activity in the area was at an all-time high. Almost every patrol from one of the numerous British-occupied bases in the area was subject to some form of attack and the casualty rate was going through the roof. For most of 2009 and half of 2010 the mission in Sangin was to simply contain the Taliban, and the plan to bring security and prosperity was a slow, difficult and often bloody process. Schools were opening and there was more activity in the bazaar which ran through the centre of the town. But security for Afghan civilians had been paid for with the blood of young British soldiers, and the sacrifices being demanded of them were becoming increasingly questionable. Between October 2009 and April 2010, the 3 Rifles battlegroup, which was composed of 1,500 troops from a number of different units, suffered the worst casualties of any British unit involved in the Afghan War to date. More than thirty soldiers were killed and over 200 were injured. Battles would occur almost every day, occasionally several times a day, and the population, whose hearts and minds the British were trying to win, were often caught in the middle. Sangin remains a complex environment where the Alikozai tribesman fears murder if he shops with an Ishakzai trader. It is a society riven with tribal infighting, drugs and corruption, as well as the insurgency, and caught in the middle were the British.
The troops of A Company, 4 Rifles were warned in early 2009 that they would be needed to support the 3 Rifles battlegroup for the winter tour of October 2009 to March 2010. News that the company would be based at FOB Inkerman was met with some relief. Every soldier in the British Army was aware of Sangin’s reputation as a graveyard.
FOB Inkerman is the outermost of the many patrol bases which satellite the town of Sangin, and it sits in the edge of Route 611, around 8 km north of the town. Since it was first occupied by the Grenadier Guards in June 2007, barely a day has passed in which troops based there have not been involved in fighting. Inkerman was established with the primary function of interdicting the movement of insurgents into the town, a tactic which had met with some success. The Taliban had responded by seeding the route between Sangin and Inkerman with IEDs, making travel almost impossible for locals, the British, and anyone else.
Because resupplying the FOB via Route 611 was becoming increasingly difficult, in October 2009 A Company attempted to establish a new resupply route through the desert over a distance of about 8 km. The bomb-hunting team charged with clearing the route was led by Staff Sergeant Olaf Schmid, but it proved to be a tortuous and difficult undertaking. Within hours of leaving Inkerman they discovered a run of six IEDs. Progress almost ground to a halt as banks after banks of IEDs were encountered. The mission took eight days to complete and it was immediately clear that resupplying Inkerman via the desert was unsustainable.
Within weeks of arriving, A Company suffered one of its darkest periods when two 20-year-olds, Rifleman Philip Allen and Rifleman Samuel Bassett, were killed on 7 and 8 November respectively. Both soldiers were killed by IEDs during routine patrols in the Inkerman area. Rifleman Bassett was killed while clearing a route to resupply one of the small patrol bases in the area. He was at the front of the patrol, clearing the way with a Vallon, when he stepped on a device. The blast resulted in a double amputation, but although Bassett survived the initial blast and remained conscious throughout the casualty evacuation he later died in hospital, such was the severity of his wounds.
An American Task Force Thor route-clearance team also attempted to clear Route 611 by detonating scores of IEDs as their heavily armoured vehicles drove along the road between Sangin and Inkerman. While Task Force Thor’s vehicles managed to eradicate pressure-plate IEDs, they had no effect at all on command-wire IEDs, a fact which was discovered when a massive 150 lb bomb detonated beneath a Mastiff carrying six British troops. Everyone in the vehicle survived, but the commander, a young lieutenant, lost a foot in the blast.
Even after the route had been cleared, the Taliban soon returned and began burying even more IEDs, by locating blind spots which could not be monitored by the British and by using children to bury devices.
Brigadier James Cowan, the commander of 11 Light Brigade, and Lieutenant Colonel Nick Kitson, the commander of the 3 Rifles battlegroup, in conjunction with Major Richard Streatfield, the officer commanding A Company, decided that the only alternative was to try to secure Route 611 by occupying a series of compounds adjacent to the road. The operation was launched shortly before Christmas 2009, and by early January a total of nine compounds and patrol bases had been created.
Initially the Taliban did little. They simply watched and waited, as they had done in the past. Intelligence later emerged that they thought the British were going to create a series of bases securing the route all the way to Kajaki, some 25 km farther north. But when occupation of the compounds stopped, the insurgents attacked.
Like the IRA, the Taliban would always repeat those tactics which met with success, while immediately abandoning any practice which met with failure. Insurgent commanders would learn, adapt and improvise. The Taliban began to attack the British with improvised claymore mines, which the troops dubbed ‘party poppers’, and when these failed to make an impact 107mm Chinese rockets were fired at vehicles from a range of about 100 metres. Dummy IEDs were also used to lure bomb-hunting teams into ambush sites. In addition the Taliban began to devise ways of dropping pressure-plate IEDs into old bomb craters and quickly covering them with a thin coating of earth, and this was often done in broad daylight just metres from the PBs.
‘The Taliban were very inventive,’ said Pat Hyde, at that time the company sergeant major of A Company. ‘They were the equivalent of the South Armagh Brigade of the IRA. They would give anything a try and even resorted to using some of the old IRA tactics. They began to plant massive bombs in culverts. We had to occupy a compound to guard the culverts to prevent the Taliban from planting IEDs inside. That base, “Hotel-18”, was being attacked twenty-five times a day. Two soldiers were killed guarding that culvert and a further twelve were injured, including a triple and a double amputee.’
Taliban attacks were also becoming more adventurous and increasingly complex, with multiple phases. The insurgents’ confidence seemed to be growing daily, which perhaps indicated that they were receiving outside help. One such Taliban ambush took place in early March 2010, during a routine resupply mission, when a combat logistic patrol slowly weaved its way along a cleared path along Route 611 from Sangin, north towards FOB Inkerman.
As the convoy passed close to PB Ezeray, the Taliban were waiting. Dickers farther down the route had given them plenty of warning that an easy target was approaching. As the convoy approached, the insurgents manoeuvred a 107 mm rocket along an alley and waited for the target to show itself. When the target, a vehicle known as a Drops (Demountable Rack Offload and Pickup System), emerged, the Taliban couldn’t miss.
These vehicles lift and carry ISO containers (steel shipping containers) to bases around Helmand and form the backbone of the supply chain, but they are slow and cumbersome and make easy targets. Almost immediately the Drops burst into flames, forcing the two Gurkha soldiers to flee for their lives. The convoy pushed on to Inkerman, leaving the stricken vehicle to burn for the next thirty-six hours.
WO2 Hyde, 34, had joined the Army as a ‘junior leader’ and had been a soldier for seventeen years. He had served in Iraq, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, and previously in Kabul. He originally joined the Gloucester Regiment, which was later amalgamated into the Royal Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Wiltshire Regiment, before being merged again, this time with the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment, the Royal Green Jackets and the Light Infantry, to form the Rifles. Hyde was a seasoned operator, who thought he had seen it all until his company arrived in Helmand. He and his six-man team, callsign Hades 49, which also included two women, Corporal Hayley Wright, a Mastiff commander, and Lance Corporal Jody Hill, the team medic, were dispatched to recover the damaged Drops and bring it back to Inkerman. Despite being the most senior rank in the team, Hyde always positioned himself as top cover, manning the .50-cal. The position provided him with the best view of the area but also made him the one most vulnerable to attack. The shortage of troops within the company also meant that he only ever deployed on route missions with three troops per vehicle.
‘We had just come in off a ten-day op when we were told to go and recover the Drops,’ he recalled. ‘We were stinking. There was no time to wash, shave or change our clothes. We knew no one had been near the vehicle because it had been blinking hot and we had various sentries and sangar positions observing that area, so we felt pretty happy about it.’
As the vehicle was dragged clear, lots of strips of metal began to fall from the burnt-out hulk. Within minutes around 150 people, mostly children, descended on the area, grabbing at anything which could be carried away.
‘We recovered the Drops back to Inkerman – no dramas, everything went to plan. Once we got it back we then had to go out again on a routine resupply run. But this time we started to pick up some Icom chatter: “The tanks [as the the Taliban call Mastiffs] are coming. Get ready.” As we were driving along we were expecting a 107 mm rocket to come winging out of the alleyway at us. They had done that before and we thought that was what the Icom chatter was about. But instead of a rocket we got a double-stacked anti-tank mine.’
The mines were planted by the Taliban when the area was flooded with locals picking up pieces of scrap metal during the recovery of the Drops. In just twenty minutes, in broad daylight in an area which was under constant observation, the Taliban had managed to lay a complex multi-IED ambush. The insurgents had seen that the ground was being dug up as the vehicle was dragged away and immediately decided to exploit the situation. Instead of having to dig the bombs into the ground, they could place them in some of the welts carved out of the ground and loosely cover them with soil.
‘There was this huge bang,’ recalled WO2 Hyde. ‘I was on top cover and the blast really took it out of me. The shock wave went right through the vehicle and I was left feeling like I wanted to vomit. The difference between high explosive and home-made explosive is unbelievable. The noise was deafening and inside the vehicle all the lights had gone. The blast had also taken off the front of the vehicle, the wheels had gone, and we were going nowhere. Fortunately we were in a Mastiff. If we had been in a Snatch or anything else we would have been dead.
‘I knew I was all right and I quickly checked to make sure everyone else was OK. And then it’s time to take a chill pill, calm down, everyone stays inside the vehicle, no one moves, everyone makes sure they are OK. On this job there were three vehicles in the convoy – another two behind us. At this stage I’m thinking that we can’t afford to let this vehicle fall into Taliban hands and get wrecked even further because we were running out of Mastiffs – they were our lifeline. By now we had around nine patrol bases along the road and we had to supply water to them all because there were no wells. So all the water, ammunition, rations, everything had to come from Inkerman.’
Hyde contacted the ops room and informed them that he had been in an IED contact. He knew that the chances of a follow-up attack were high and asked if there was ISTAR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance) in the shape of a unmanned air vehicle such as a Predator, fast jet or attack helicopter.
‘I wanted any ISTAR to have a look on the ground around us to see if the Taliban were forming up for an attack, or whether there was someone waiting on the end of a command wire. I decided to get out and begin clearing the area and at the same time I was trying to formulate a plan as to how we were going to get back. At this stage I was also concerned about a secondary device. The Taliban in Sangin aren’t just going to plant one device, they are always thinking three or four moves ahead. I was clearing the area and I discovered a command wire running about 4 metres in front of me to a shape in the ground. It was another anti-tank mine ready to hit the team who were going to be sent in to recover us.’
Hyde had no idea how many other devices were in the immediate area, but it was clear that he and his team cound not extract themselves from their position without help from a bomb-hunting team. The time now was around 5 p.m. and the sun was beginning to set. Rob Swan and Brimstone 31 were a few kilometres away in FOB Jackson, waiting for a flight back to Camp Bastion, when they were told they would be needed for another mission. With darkness falling, Captain Swan and Lieutenant Colonel Nick Kitson, the commanding officer of 3 Rifles battlegroup, decided to wait until morning to extract the sergeant major and his team.
‘The only real option was to stay in the vehicle. There was sensitive equipment inside, we couldn’t really extract ourselves safely, so we settled down and waited. There were six of us inside the vehicle and we had support from sangars overlooking the position. It was cosy but smelly – we had been out for ten days and we all stank.’
That evening Captain Swan attended the orders group, where the plan for the recovery of the vehicle and the clearance of other IEDs was spelt out. The plan was as simple as any could be in Sangin. The troops would be moved out of their base just before first light and make for the ambush location. One of the main obstacles was a wide irrigation ditch, which is where the Rifles, the IED team and the Royal Engineer searchers all expected to be ambushed. The ditch was an obvious choke point. That was where the British soldiers would be most vulnerable, and everyone knew it.
The Taliban didn’t disappoint. The recovery operation had made good progress up until the irrigation ditch. Both sides had been secured and half the patrol had crossed the ditch when the Taliban opened up. An RPG whizzed overhead. ‘It wasn’t a very good shot but we all jumped into the river and we were up to our waists in water,’ Rob Swan recalled.
‘I was more worried about my fags than anything else,’ said Kelly. ‘They were in my pocket and they were the only packet I had left.’
The soldiers took up fire positions on the bank to suppress the enemy, and a ferocious battle ensued. Troops in the two sangars overlooking the road began to engage the Taliban, WO2 Hyde was pumping .50-cal rounds into the enemy positions, and the ground troops were engaging the insurgents with every weapon at their disposal. The battle raged for about an hour before the Taliban withdrew, allowing Swan to move forward and begin clearing the devices.
He added, ‘It’s rare, particularly in Sangin, to go out on a job and not be hit at some stage during the task. When it happens you don’t think, oh shit, I’m under fire, you just get on with it. It doesn’t feel real, just like another training scenario. Once the enemy were suppressed we moved forward into another ditch and set up an ICP and pushed the cordon up to the Taliban’s fire positions.’
Once the ICP had been cleared and established, the search team moved forward in the hope of clearing a safe lane to the vehicle, but within 30 metres of the ICP another pressure-plate IED was discovered.
‘It was the same device which had been used to blow up the Mastiff – a double-stacked anti-tank mine attached to a pressure plate,’ said Rob. ‘So I cleared that – it was quite a big device and would have easily taken out another vehicle. The Taliban had been quite clever. About 60 metres back they had exactly the same set-up – a pressure-plate IED with an anti-tank mine – that was designed to target the recovery or just an opportunity target. But in between the two there was a command-wire IED as well. That device had been designed to take out the recovery team – to kill soldiers. It was a pretty complex set-up.’
In the weeks that followed, the Taliban changed tactics again and began to plant IEDs in culverts running beneath roads. Pat Hyde had predicted that they would begin to exploit this opportunity, and he was proved right. Members of the Rifles were daily forced to risk life and limb clearing the tunnels, and on almost every occasion the Taliban were lying in wait.
One of the other great frustrations among the troops in FOB Inkerman was the lack of a permanent IEDD team. A team was based in FOB Jackson, where every day they would clear devices that were a threat to locals or the soldiers. But in Inkerman they had their own problems to contend with. WO2 Hyde explained, ‘There were days when I would have to drive down to FOB Jackson to pick up an ATO – but to do it I almost certainly had to drive close to or even over IEDs. We would have IEDs to clear and no one to clear them. I think, of all the problems we faced in Helmand, IEDs were the worst – a problem made worse by the shortage of ATOs.
‘By the end of the tour I, and probably most soldiers, could tell the difference between home-made explosive and military-grade explosive. I knew that a 5 kg bomb would take a leg off, 10 kg would take off both legs, and anything bigger and you were dead.’
By the time Operation Herrick 11 came to an end in April 2010, Pat Hyde had earned the dubious distinction of being the most blown-up soldier in the British Army. He survived eleven IED strikes on a vehicle, two 107 mm rocket attacks and two bomb attacks while on foot patrol. The only injury he sustained was when some red-hot rocket shrapnel dropped down the back of his body armour and burnt his back. A Company, 4 Rifles held the stretch of road between Sangin and Inkerman until April 2010, when they handed it over to 40 Commando, Royal Marines. During their six-month tour the company of 131 soldiers and the various attachments from the engineers, the artillery and 3 Rifles sustained fifty-three battle casualties and ten soldiers killed in action. The company had been involved in more than 500 small-arms attacks and 200 IED incidents. Sangin was later handed over to US Marine Corps control in September. All of the bases built by A Company, 4 Rifles were subsequently closed.
Rob Swan’s stay in Sangin was short-lived and eventful, but in terms of sheer fear did not compare with the action he’d seen a few weeks earlier during Operation Moshtarak – NATO’s big push into central Helmand.
The build-up to the operation had been getting plenty of attention in the media, with commanders hoping that the net effect would be that the Taliban, realizing they would be killed if they attempted to stand and fight, would depart. Before the operation, practically everyone taking part was hoping that the Taliban would have fled.
Brimstone 31 were attached to Right Flank, one of the Scots Guards companies involved in the operation, whose mission was to conduct a heliborne assault in the area of Sayedabad, around 5 km south of FOB Shawqat, a British base located close to Nad-e’Ali district centre. Troops from other battalions would be conducting similar operations near by. In the days leading up to the mission Rob Swan went to seemingly endless meetings and planning conferences. Nothing was being left to chance. Everything which could be rehearsed before the op was being rehearsed.
In the early hours of D-Day, 13 February 2010, Brimstone 31 and the other elements of Right Flank flew into three pre-reconnoitred compounds under the cover of darkness. The plan was for the three platoons to each secure and hold one compound, establish a foothold on the ground, and begin clearing the area of IEDs.
Rob and the RESA were attached to Right Flank’s tactical headquarters, while the rest of the IEDD team were dispersed among the other platoons. The first phase of the operation went without a hitch and all three platoons managed to secure their objectives within minutes of landing. In those few hours before dawn the sense of relief was tangible – but it was short-lived. As the sun rose over the Green Zone, the Taliban attacked en masse.
‘Within about twenty minutes of sunrise every compound came under accurate fire,’ Rob recalled. ‘We cut murder holes in the walls to try and observe the enemy’s movements but the fire was so accurate that it was actually coming through the murder holes. It was unbelievable. That level of accuracy is something you just don’t expect – we were pinned down and unable to move. It was top-class sniping fire. A gun team was sent out to put down some suppressing fire but they were hit straight away and one of the guys was hit in the leg. He had to be casevaced [casualty-evacuated] out and we basically had to sit it out for that day.
‘It was absolutely horrendous. We were all pinned up against one wall. We had a guy in the compound get shot through one of the murder holes, and how he didn’t get hit is beyond me. It went straight through his trouser leg and came out his backside. He was convinced he had been shot in the nuts and we had to convince him that everything was exactly where it should be. We’ve been under fire before where you know you are pretty safe and the bullets are thudding into the walls and you’re not worried, sometimes almost laughing – I actually have laughed while I’ve been under fire – but there was nothing remotely funny about this situation at all. I was very stressed. I thought I actually might cop it in there. It was about as bad as you could imagine it to be. If I had moved just a few inches to my left or right I would have risked being killed.’
At this point Seb added, ‘You don’t feel very safe sat in a compound when the enemy knows exactly where you are. It was 360 degrees, the bullets were whizzing past, coming in and hitting the walls above us and to the side. There was only a very small area which was safe, and we were in it.’
Even Kelly, who was renowned for her laid-back, unflappable nature, recalled, ‘I was just hoping we weren’t going to get hit, it was that bad. You couldn’t move. It was a shit fucking day. The Taliban had us exactly where they wanted us and there was bugger all we could do.’
Then Rob spoke again. ‘I don’t like small-arms fire. When I’m dealing with a device I feel like I’m in control, I know what I am doing. I was sat rigid in a compound – there were about forty of us against one wall for about thirteen hours. We didn’t need to be told not to move because you could see that if you did you would get hit. If you needed a piss, you did it where you were sitting.’
It is often noted in the British Army that ‘a plan rarely survives first contact’, and therefore one of the principles of warfare is ‘flexibility’. Right Flank were stuck fast and surrounded, with all three locations under fire. Urgent action was needed, and the company commander decided that the safest bet was to move the whole company into one location and robustly defend it. The soldiers knew that the Taliban attacks would fizzle out after dusk, because with little or no night-vision equipment they were in no position to take on British troops in the dark. As night fell, the insurgents melted away and the troops reorganized themselves.
‘We had loads of stores with us,’ said Rob. ‘We bought a generator in, a quad bike for casevac and loads of fuel but we couldn’t take it with us. So we had to help the engineers “dem” the generator and the quad and we blew it all up. We took what kit we could carry and began the move into another compound. It took about seven hours to move across and get into the same compound. When we met up I made sure everyone was all right really.’
Seb added, ‘You look back and you think that was pretty close, but the infantry are pretty good and they always look after you well.’
The fighting rolled on for a further five days. Some of the battles were lengthy, while on other occasions the fighting was small-scale and sporadic. But the obvious threat from small-arms attack effectively grounded Brimstone 31. Such was the scarcity of bomb hunters in Helmand that no commander would risk putting them out on the ground to clear IEDs when the Taliban were obviously in the area.
The owner of the compound which the troops had occupied, paying him a daily rate for its use, remained within one of the buildings and the troops hoped that he might provide some useful information on the local Taliban, such as their strengths and the type of weapons they possessed. But the man was insistent that he knew nothing about the Taliban, meeting any questions put to him via an interpreter with either a shake of his head or a shrug.
On the fifth day of the operation the officer commanding Right Flank, Major Iain Lindsay-German, told Captain Swan they had received intelligence suggesting that there was a Taliban bomb factory in the local bazaar, just 30 metres from the compound. The area was searched with ISTAR, in the form of both fast jets and attack helicopters which scoured the countryside for signs of the Taliban.
Once the all-clear was given, the troops moved out of the compound and began to secure the bazaar, which earlier in the week had been a hive of activity but miraculously had emptied overnight. The Scots Guards also pushed smaller units out to a distance of some 200 metres from the compound to secure fire positions in case the Taliban attacked.
Rob explained, ‘We went out and searched the bazaar: there were about forty shops in total. Some still had bread in them, and groceries. It was a long, arduous process. You can imagine what it was like, moving from one shop to the next, always having to be careful that the place hadn’t been booby-trapped. We had received intelligence suggesting that there might be a bomb factory in the bazaar. You hear that a lot, but there was no real sign of anything suspicious. Then just as we were thinking, the intelligence is shite, we found a shop which had thirty-eight pressure-plate IEDs – and you’re like, “Fucking hell, good job.” The shop also had lots of other bomb-making components. There were batteries and wires. Lots of metal saws for the pressure plates, rolls of wire, pieces of wood had been cut up. There were lots of power packs. All the paraphernalia you would expect to be associated with a bomb factory.
‘I went in there and cleared all of them, looking out for booby-traps at the same time. I made them safe and put them to one side, one after the other. Just as I finished that, the guys were searching a shop on the other side of the bazaar and found about another 20 kg of HME, so there were two separate areas in the bazaar, one with a switching system and pressure plates and the other where they made the high explosives. We were 3 km behind an IED belt at Kalshal Kalay, where they have had lots of finds of IEDs. The feeling was that the bomb-making factory we discovered was where they were making the devices, putting them together and then carrying them forward to where the Grenadier Guards were operating and were putting them in the ground and trying to kill the soldiers, so it was quite good that, although we were there for a week and were under a lot of fire, we took thirty-eight devices out of that area, and destroyed 250 kg of HME and 100 kg of conventional explosive in the form of artillery shells and mines.
‘The Taliban are knocking out IEDs on an industrial scale. We can’t keep up. There must be dozens of factories out there churning hundreds of devices out every day. Most people back home think these things must be sophisticated because they’re killing and injuring lots of soldiers. But they’re not. They’re really basic – there is no quality control, no standard. They are just thrown together, but they are effective and deadly.
‘I’ve seen bomb factories where there are shelves of pressure plates, shelves of detonators, shelves of main charges. It was a case of come and grab what you need and take it away and bury it and go away and do the same again. The Taliban look at areas they want to deny to us – they could be areas of tactical significance or a small community which they want to keep under their control. And so they lay IEDs in belts knowing that we will avoid them or work hard to clear them.
‘The compound we occupied was 20–30 metres from the bazaar and the guy who owned the place where we were based lived 30 metres from a bomb factory. We asked him if there were Taliban in the area and he said no. The OC held a shura for all the elders and they were like, “Yeah, there’s nothing in there. Go in and search it, you won’t find anything.” I think most of them were just frightened. They knew that they could ultimately be killed if the Taliban discovered they had helped us. And that’s the same everywhere you go. I think the majority of the local nationals want to help but they are all too scared to be honest. They’re playing the long game – they know we will leave one day but the Taliban aren’t going anywhere.’
Talking with other officers on previous trips, I have seen the same frustration as Rob is expressing over the actions of the locals. One of the greatest challenges commanders in Helmand face is trying to convince the Afghans that they are better off with ISAF than the Taliban. The insurgents counter this by claiming that ISAF will leave in a few years but the Taliban will remain in Afghanistan for ever. Faced with that situation, who would you back? The Taliban often say that their greatest weapon is time. ‘You have the watches, but we have the time,’ they claim.
As we chat the subject drifts onto the countries from whom the Taliban are receiving support and assistance. Rob smiles as he says, ‘The Taliban’s bomb-making knowledge hasn’t been developed in Afghanistan. It’s far too good for that. The current thinking is that it has come from Pakistan, and possibly Iran. The belief is that the majority of the advances in IED technology are coming from Pakistan. There are lots of intelligent people in Pakistan, who are thinking outside the box, and the Pakistani secret service have helped the Taliban, we know that. There are a lot of bomb-makers in Quetta [in Pakistan] and other Taliban strongholds developing new devices all the time. But they have to come up with a simple blueprint for a bomb which can be made out of easily obtainable material and which is not over-complex. If the material wasn’t a problem, then we would have real problems here. The Pakistani Taliban could easily produce devices similar to those we faced in Iraq, and that would cause us enormous difficulties.’
News reaches me via my media escort that our helicopter flights into FOB Shawqat in Nad-e’Ali in central Helmand are confirmed for tomorrow around midday. The excitement of leaving Camp Bastion and moving closer to the action grips me once again. I am acclimatizing to the war zone. Promises I made to myself and my family about not going on patrol or doing anything dangerous are beginning to evaporate. England, my family and my office in Victoria almost feel like a lifetime away. That’s good in a way, I tell myself with little conviction. Better not to think about my family than to miss them. I suppose that’s how the soldiers cope too.
I am told that our group, which includes the Sunday Telegraph photographer Heathcliff O’Malley and Captain John Donaldson, known as JD, the Grenadier Guards’ media officer, will be flying into the FOB in a Sea King. I’m not filled with confidence. These aircraft are ancient, having been in service with the Royal Navy for more than thirty years. They were sent out to Helmand in a belated attempt to boost the number of helicopters available to British troops for operations following numerous claims and allegations that troops were dying unnecessarily because they were being forced to travel by road instead. There is a certain truth in this. Even before the surge in use of IEDs by the Taliban, Afghanistan was one of the most land-mined countries on earth and anyone going overland was risking death or injury. It became clear to me as early as October 2006, when I first visited Helmand, that there were too few helicopters there. Back then one senior commander told me privately that the lack of helicopters in Helmand was one of the greatest obstacles they faced in the war against the Taliban.
I return to the tent and begin to pack and repack my kit, trying to work out what I will need for the next phase of my embed, when I move beyond Camp Bastion and into the action. It’s much warmer both at night and during the day than I had predicted, so the winter fleece can be dumped. During my last visit in November I travelled too lightly and my warm clothing consisted of a down-filled waistcoat and a lightweight fleece. Needless to say, I was absolutely freezing at night – primarily because I was sleeping in a steel ISO container which was effectively a large fridge.