‘In Afghan, you always want to be lucky – being lucky is better than being good. Plenty of guys good at their job have been killed out here but the lucky ones survive.’
Sapper Richie Pienaar, 33 Engineer Regiment (EOD)
It’s 8 a.m. in the vehicle park of FOB Shawqat and a team of bomb hunters are preparing for their latest mission. The sun is shining brightly in a cloudless sky and the temperature is already on the rise. It may well reach 30° today and it’s still only early March.
One by one the soldiers begin arriving and form a small, tight group next to one of the vehicles. They all look tired and drawn and their uniforms have seen better days. As each man arrives, he drops his kit in a central pile and lights up a cigarette.
The bomb-hunting unit is composed of an IED disposal team – Brimstone 32 – commanded by Staff Sergeant Wood. Woody’s squad has also acquired the nickname ‘Team Massive’ because none of its members is taller than 5 ft 8 in. The team’s No. 2 operator is Corporal Kevin ‘Boonie’ Boon, who is 22 but looks much younger, and the third member is Lance Corporal Joe Rossiter, the infantry escort, the soldier who watches Woody’s back while he defuses the bomb. Joe is effectively a bodyguard who must remain 100 per cent focused all the time Woody is working. He is also doubling up as the ECM operator.
The remainder of the bomb-hunting unit is formed by Brimstone 45 – a high-risk search team coming to the end of their six-month tour in Helmand. The team consists of Corporal Adam Butler, who is the acting team commander, Lance Corporal Michael Brunt, and Sappers Richard Pienaar, Gary Anders, Dan Taylor-Allen and Gareth Homewood.
The callsign for all bomb-hunting teams has the prefix ‘Brimstone’, followed by a number. For Brimstone 45 there is one more operation to complete, one more bomb to find and defuse, and then it’s home. It’s been a long six months and the soldiers have had a belly-full of Afghan. The trauma of war is etched on their tired, dusty faces. Every member of the seven-man search team – working with the six members of Brimstone 45 is Kev O’Dwyer, the RESA – has had a friend either killed or wounded on operation and no one wants to become a casualty at the end of the tour.
The soldiers, all in their twenties, come from small, anonymous towns and villages across the UK. To a man they nearly all joined up because the Army was the only decent job on offer. It was either the barrack room or the dole queue – the same deal for many soldiers now serving in Helmand. Those with GCSEs or A-levels, and higher IQs, are offered the opportunity to learn a trade in a corps, such as the Royal Engineers, Royal Logistic Corps or the Royal Signals, where promotion can be rapid and the pay better. The rest, either through choice or necessity, end up serving in the infantry, where, if he’s sent to Helmand, life for the private soldier is six months of boredom interspersed with spikes of extreme terror. These guys have been drawn from 33 Engineer Regiment (EOD), based in Wimbish in Essex. The unit is the specialist explosive ordnance disposal and advanced search regiment for the Royal Corps of Engineers. The soldiers are regarded as something of an elite within the Royal Corps of Engineers and they carry themselves with a certain swagger.
Every search team works in conjunction with a Royal Engineer Search Advisor, who helps plan the search and the clearance of the device. The relationship between the ATO and the RESA is crucial – their lives depend upon it. The RESA working with Woody is Staff Sergeant Kev O’Dwyer, who is barking out a series of orders in his heavy Cornish accent. He is bald and thickset and has heavily tattooed forearms. His helmet is battered and tatty and his chin-strap hangs loosely beneath his jaw. Kev has the look of a man who was made for war. His eyes are red and angry and I learn later that he is ‘not the sort of bloke you want to fuck with’. Kev moves among the soldiers as they prepare for action, cajoling and encouraging them, ensuring that all the correct checks have been conducted. He keeps a mental checklist of dos and don’ts. He’s done it a hundred times before but he can’t afford to stop now – not on the last mission, not when the team are so close to making it back home in one piece.
The bomb hunters work silently, sometimes in pairs, and everyone knows exactly what to do and what is expected – in this outfit there are no passengers. Weapons, radios, ECM, and especially their Vallon mine detectors are checked and rechecked. Every soldier also makes sure that his Combat Application Tourniquet (CAT), which will save his life if he loses a limb in a blast, is close at hand, together with his personal morphine injection. The same routine is undertaken before every mission. Check, check and check again is the soldiers’ mantra.
The latest mission is to clear an old Taliban firing point believed to have been booby-trapped with a pressure-plate IED. The soldiers’ lives will depend on their skill as searchers and their equipment, so problems need to be discovered within the safety of a base and not in the middle of an operation.
I notice that one of the soldiers, Sapper Gareth ‘Gaz’ Homewood, a Geordie, has scarring on his face. It looks fresh and I later discover that he was injured when his team commander was killed in a bomb blast. He appears naturally quiet but not timid and I wonder how badly the death of his commander affected him, indeed affected them all.
Banter breaks out and Lance Corporal Rossiter, a former lorry driver and territorial volunteer serving with the London Regiment, is getting a fair amount of stick for planning to join the Royal Military Police when he returns to the UK at the end of his tour in July. The RMPs are known widely in the Army as ‘Monkeys’ and some of the searchers are making monkey noises and asking Joe whether he has any bananas. Corporal Richard Lacey, the investigator from the Royal Military Police Weapons Intelligence Section – WIS, pronounced ‘Whiz’ in Army-speak – who is also coming out on the patrol, tells Joe not to worry. ‘Pay no attention. They’re just jealous.’ Joe just smiles to himself as he tests his ECM. The others in the team say he’s always smiling.
Mostly, however, the troops are subdued and pensive. No group of soldiers serving in Helmand is more aware of the risks that IEDs pose than the Royal Engineer Search Teams. For high-risk searchers, no mission is routine. They can never lower their guard, never have a bad day, never afford to make a mistake. Everyone has a story of a soldier whose luck ran out.
Against the growling engines of the six Mastiffs which will ferry us to the front line, Kev barks out a series of orders and makes sure that everyone knows what they are to do if we get ambushed on the way or strike an IED. They are the last words of advice, the last reminder before we head out into what the troops call bandit country. I’m filled with a sense of fear and excitement. Finally, after months of planning and waiting, I’m going on a bomb-hunting mission with some of the most highly trained soldiers in the world.
The convoy heads north along an arrow-straight dirt track which serves as one of the main roads in the area. The track cuts a brown swath through the otherwise lush, green countryside, where fields of poppies, wheat and melons – the cash crops of Helmand – are fed by the clear waters of the Nahr-e-Burgha canal. Children are playing on the paths outside their compounds and farmers are tilling their fields. This is a good sign, and the Army would describe this scene as ‘positive atmospherics’. Basically it’s the presence of the normal and the absence of the abnormal – in short, normal everyday life – and this means an attack is unlikely. It is when the soldiers sense the presence of the abnormal and the absence of the normal that they begin to worry. Communities are very closed in Helmand and in some cases consist of just one extended family. Strangers are immediately identified and anyone acting suspiciously will attract attention immediately. Warnings are passed rapidly by word of mouth and children are quickly ushered into compounds until the threat has passed. A soldier’s ability to develop a sixth sense that allows him to pick up on ‘atmospherics’ will help to keep him alive during the six-month tour.
Within fifteen minutes of leaving FOB Shawqat the convoy arrives at Blue 17. This patrol base is on extended loan from an Afghan farmer, who will be paid handsomely for allowing the British to use his home, possibly up to $400 a month, a sum which is likely to triple or quadruple his annual income. The base is roughly triangular, consisting of three 15-ft-high mud walls, reinforced with military Hesco blocks. Inside are three buildings in which the fifteen Guardsmen and twenty members of the ANA sleep and eat. It is a basic but comfortable existence and the soldiers have done their best to turn it into a home. National flags – the English Cross of St George, the Welsh Dragon and the Scottish Saltire – adorn the walls in the sleeping quarters, fighting for space with topless models and footballing icons, but mainly topless models. In another room the axiom ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ is in practice and the soldiers have somehow rigged up a widescreen TV to a power source so that they can view the latest DVDs sent from home.
On the roof of one of the buildings a reinforced sangar provides a 360-degree view of the fields and smallholdings which surround the isolated PB. The terrain is pancake-flat and the sangar dominates the surrounding countryside. But it is also an obvious target and when I last visited Blue 17, in November 2009, the Taliban had tried but failed to destroy the sangar in a brave but ill-conceived rocket and machine-gun attack. The rocket-propelled grenade missed and detonated in a nearby field and the Taliban gunmen were outflanked by a section of British troops, who were dispatched from the PB within two minutes of the attack being launched. Today, however, Blue 17 is a relatively safer place. Rather than being within shooting distance, as it was in November, the forward line of enemy troops is around 2 km to the west.
Woody heads straight for the operations room to receive a briefing on the location of the bomb. The initial briefing is one of the most vital stages of any bomb-disposal mission. Woody, like all ATOs, is coming to the situation with just the information contained within the ten-liner, and often it is inaccurate.
He is met by Lance Sergeant Paul Hunt, a section commander in the Grenadier Guards, who greets him warmly and offers him a brew. In the ops room Lance Sergeant Hunt points to a large-scale aerial photograph of the area surrounding the base. ‘The device is in Compound 23,’ he says, indicating the compound position in the photograph. ‘It’s just behind the door. We need to clear it because the compound owner wants to move back in. The guy came to us the other day and said that he wants to return home. So I passed the message up the chain [of command] and said that the device needs to be sorted.’
Woody is concentrating on the map, seemingly oblivious to the briefing from the lance sergeant, yet he is absorbing every word. His gaze still fixed on the photograph, he asks, ‘Is there any history to this?’ in an attempt to find out why an IED should be placed inside an empty compound. One of the most important parts of the ATO’s job is to elicit facts from troops on the ground. Every single piece of intelligence the bomb hunters can extract from soldiers who have seen the IED will help Woody and the RESA formulate their plan and potentially save a life. Only when Woody begins to understand why a bomb has been placed in a given position can he begin to plan his clearance operation.
Woody continues the questioning, ‘Are there any other entrances? Is there any other way I can get in? How high are the walls?’ He is trying to build a mental picture of the task ahead based on all the intelligence he can glean. Every snippet of information is vital.
‘We’ve got “eyes on” from here actually,’ reveals Lance Sergeant Hunt. ‘Come up into the sangar and make your own assessment. You’ll be able to see the ground much better than I can explain it.’ Access to the sangar is via a rickety makeshift ladder which would break every health and safety regulation in the book back in the UK. We all climb up into the sangar. The lance sergeant points out the lie of the land and the road leading down to the compound.
Kev and Woody discuss their plan of attack. The two are locked in a barely audible conversation, eyes fixed on each other. Kev speaks first, pointing and moving his arms in a sweeping movement. The role of the RESA is to help the ATO plan and organize the search. It is vital that each has a complete understanding of how the other operates. This particular mission is relatively straightforward – it is something that Kev and Woody have done countless times before – but both know there is no room for complacency. Within a few minutes Kev has formulated his plan. ‘I think we can get in from across that field,’ he says to me, pointing at a gap between two trees around 50 metres from the PB. ‘We’ll move out of the patrol base across that field. Put an ICP in there,’ he adds, pointing at a position in a green wheat field around 80 metres in front of the compound where the bomb has been hidden, ‘and Woody can get in by climbing over the wall.’
Woody turns to Lance Sergeant Hunt. ‘Have you got any ladders?’ The lance sergeant shakes his head and says, ‘They’ve all gone back to the FOB, but that wall is climbable. Just so that you know, when we found the IED we came up north into the open area and we pushed along over the northern side of that compound and the ANA went, “Whoa, whoa, stop, stop, IED, IED,” and they pointed it out to us. I haven’t seen it. The bloke who has seen it has gone back home. But what you have got is the charge and one prominent wire sticking out.’
Images of the Bomb Hunters in Action
Staff Sergeant Karl ‘Badger’ Ley at the end of his six month tour in which he defused 139 bombs. He later won the George Medal.
Corporal Kelly O’Connor, No.2 operator with Brimstone 31, carrying a Dragon Runner.
Corporal Kevin Boon, No.2 operator in Brimstone 32, prepares to carry out a controlled explosion.
Armoured Ridgeback used by Lieutenant Colonel Roly Walker, commanding officer of the Grenadier Guards, which was blown up by an IED in February 2010. No one inside was injured.
A bomb hunter attached to the Grenadier Guards battle group confirming the location of an IED.
A soldier marks a cleared safe lane with yellow spray paint during operation Moshtarak.
Soldiers from A Company, 4 Rifles in Sangin march in single file along a route being cleared by a Vallon operator.
Company Sergeant Major Pat Hyde (standing) of A Company, 4 Rifles with his team. They were blown up at least twelve times in five months in Sangin.
Staff Sergeant Gareth Wood prepares his equipment before defusing an IED, with Lance Corporal Joe Rossiter acting as his bodyguard in the foreground, before returning all smiles after the IED is neutralized in a controlled explosion.
Lead searcher Sapper Bradley Knight from Brimstone 42 sets off on isolation clearance.
Members of Brimstone 42 in Forward Operating Base Shawqat after successfully completing their first bomb hunting mission.
Sapper Richie Pienaar, lead searcher of Brimstone 45, relaxes after clearing a safe rout to an IED.
Staff Sergeant Gareth Wood and Royal Engineer Search Advisor Kev O’Dwyer discuss the best route to the location of an IED.
An improvised detonator used by the Taliban in Helmand.
Pressure plates, vital components of IEDs, discovered by British troops in a raid on a bomb factory during Operation Moshtarak.
Taliban IED composed of explosive in yellow container, pressure plate and battery pack. This would be powerful enough to kill a soldier or disable a vehicle.
Lieutenant Craig Shephard, the commander of 5 Platoon, No.2 Company, 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, who was awarded the Military Cross.
The soldiers from 5 Platoon, No.2 Company, 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, who fought at the Battle of Crossing Point One.
Members of Brimstone 42 take cover behind a Warrior armoured vehicle during a controlled explosion.
Staff Sergeant Gareth Wood with his Military Cross, November 2010.
Captain Dan Read, killed in action in Musa Qaleh on 11 January 2010.
Staff Sergeant Olaf Schmid, who was posthumously awarded the George Cross.
Staff Sergeant Kim Hughes and Christina Schmid, the widow of Staff Sergeant Olaf Schmid, with their George Cross citations, March 2010.
Woody asks, ‘What does the charge look like? What size is it?’ Hunt makes a shape with his hands and says, ‘It looks about this big – the size of a shoe box.’
‘We can get the ANA to stop the traffic while you’re working on the bomb. You should also be aware that we’ve been hit on a few occasions from that tree line over there,’ says Lance Sergeant Hunt, pointing to a clump of trees around 400 metres to the north. ‘What we can do is push some of our guys into that wood line because that’s the only area not covered from the sangar, that’s the only vulnerable spot around here.’
‘OK,’ says Kev, staring at the wood line in the distance, ‘I think we’re going to need that covered. If they [the Taliban] move into the wood line we are going to be sitting with our arses exposed.’
After the briefing I ask Woody how he feels, sensing that something is niggling him. He tells me, ‘I’ve given up trying to get the information I need off a ten-liner because everybody ends up missing some stuff off. That’s fairly normal. I always feel much happier when I can get out and have a look. It’s relatively straightforward but there may be a bit of an issue when I get in the compound. That is always a threat. If you have an IED on a road, that’s straightforward. But with this I’m going in on a route that they [the soldiers] haven’t been in yet, so I’m the first one going in, so I’ll have to clear my own way through that compound, which, depending on the ground, could be tricky. There may be more than one in there, something the Taliban might use which I wouldn’t necessarily expect, so I have to outthink them. It’s just like chess – you always play two or three moves ahead and never let yourself get boxed in.’
Back on the ground, Kev gives one of the searchers a minor bollocking. ‘Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been calling you on the radio. Didn’t you hear me tell you to come up here and see what’s going on? Right, get a fucking grip, stop pissing around, and get the lads together.’
I can feel the tension rising in my stomach at the prospect of leaving the safety of Blue 17 and heading into the field where the Taliban have booby-trapped the isolated compound.
The final briefings are conducted and the soldiers prepare to leave. They lift their CBA from the floor and get ready for action. Radios and Vallons are checked once again. Before we move out, the soldiers wait for the traffic to be stopped by the Afghan troops. I can feel the tension rising. Everyone just wants to get out and get stuck in and I can empathize with that feeling. Get in, clear the device, and get out – no dramas.
Woody thinks it will take around twenty minutes to isolate the compound and to check for the presence of command wires. The ground is pretty flat and the terrain is uncomplicated. ‘But it depends on what we find in the compound,’ he adds. ‘You never really know what you’re going to find until you are face to face with the device, so you need a clear plan, but you also have to remain flexible.’
In the two months that he has been in Helmand, Woody has already defused around thirty bombs, but he is experienced enough to know that no device, no day, is ever the same in Helmand. ‘Start thinking like that,’ he tells me, ‘and you’ll be going home in a body bag.’
Woody is 28, with close-cropped hair which is beginning to recede at the temples. He is about 5 ft 8 in. tall and does not have an ounce of fat on his small, wiry frame. He is blessed with a naturally happy face and a slight gap between his front teeth which adds a hint of mischievousness to his otherwise wholly sensible personality. Woody spent almost eight years learning how to be a bomb hunter, longer than a vet or a doctor’s training, and if he is to survive his six months in Afghan he will need both skill and luck.
Kev spells out the order of march, but the search team are already aware of what is expected of them. A soldier manning the entrance to Blue 17 pulls back a rudimentary gate and we patrol out in single file across the road and a bridge into the wheat field. The soldiers who remain in the compound look on silently with unsmiling faces.
I immediately feel hopelessly exposed but the rest of the soldiers appear calm, which offers some reassurance. The Taliban have been pushed back out of the area, but the reality is that an attack could come at any time. We will be in the same location for at least two hours, and that makes us vulnerable.
The wheat harvest is still many weeks away and the lush field affords a beguiling sense of calm. I am reminded of the fields and natural beauty that surround my home back in England. Compound 23, where the bomb is located, is 300 metres away. Up ahead I can see Sapper Richie Pienaar rhythmically swinging his Vallon in a 180-degree arc from left to right, leading the way.
The green, young wheat sways like a wave as a gentle spring breeze brings a few seconds of respite from the midday sun. I hear birds singing and the distant voices of children playing. It doesn’t feel like a war zone.
Everyone in the patrol diligently follows exactly the same route. It is vital that we all stay in the safe lane, so I try to walk in the footsteps of the soldier in front of me, but after about 70 metres it becomes impossible.
My heart is now thumping in my chest and the adrenalin is coursing through my veins. I can feel the sweat running down my face and soaking my shirt beneath my body armour. I’ve never felt so vulnerable in all my life and I’m convinced that we are all about to be flattened by a huge explosion. I’m doing exactly what I promised my wife and family I wouldn’t after Rupert was killed.
Richie alone is responsible not only for his safety but also that of every member of the patrol. It is an enormous weight to carry for such a junior soldier but he does not seem to be the least bit burdened by the task. If he misses a bomb the chances are that either he or another member of the team could be injured or killed. We move through the wheat field so fast that it feels like a sprint. Inside my head I’m shouting, ‘Slow down! Slow down!’ I can’t see how they can possibly detect a buried bomb going at this pace – it seems almost suicidal.
The search team halts in the area which Kev had previously designated as the incident control point. My legs are shaking from a rush of adrenalin, then I’m suddenly overcome with an enormous sense of relief. I have been on patrol many times before – as a professional soldier with the Parachute Regiment in Northern Ireland and as a journalist in Iraq and Bosnia. I have been under fire and I have learned how to cope with fear, but nothing compares to what I have experienced in the past few minutes. For the first time since I arrived in Helmand I am beginning to understand just how powerful a psychological weapon the IED has now become, and how vital the bomb-disposal teams are to the success of the whole mission in Afghanistan. The IED is a weapon of terror. It is the ultimate weapon in asymmetric warfare and its use on the scale now deployed by the Taliban was completely unpredicted by British commanders and NATO alike.
There is a few minutes’ pause before the isolation search of the compound. Those remaining in the ICP drop their packs and take up fire positions, and those who smoke quickly light up. It dawns on me that I’m not the only one who is sensing the danger of the task.
Once again Richie leads the way as the isolation search starts. Woody follows him closely and begins eyeing his target. The soldiers are looking for wires or pieces of string leading into the compound as well as buried pressure-plate IEDs. The Taliban know that an IED operator is at his most vulnerable when he is working on a device and when possible they will always try to kill him. Classically, the insurgents will bury a bomb near to another device which can be detonated either by pulling a command wire or detonating the device by means of a power source, such as a battery. Command wires running up to hundreds of metres have been found in Helmand and several soldiers have been blown up while conducting the isolation. Some of the command wires found in Helmand have been almost too thin to detect. To assist them in this most dangerous of tasks, specialist searchers are equipped with a special detecting device.
I look around, still feeling slightly anxious that the field could contain one or more IEDs. Kev seems to sense my nervousness. ‘This is one of our easier jobs,’ he tells me. ‘Ten-liners tend to be easier because you know where the device is. We’ve been told that the Taliban once occupied this compound and used it as a firing point but when they got pushed back they left a device there, hoping to take out either us or the ANA. I think they were probably targeting the ANA because hopefully no British soldier would ever enter a compound once used by the Taliban through the front door. They normally leave them in doorways and this what they have done here, so it should be relatively straightforward. Saying that, most guys tend to get killed or injured on the routine jobs.’
Kev sits down, rests his rifle between his legs, and begins chewing on a piece of green wheat. He loosens his chin-strap, while another member of the search team establishes radio communication with the main base. ‘Is this area secure?’ I ask Kev, armed with the knowledge that just a few weeks ago a member of the battlegroup was blown up and suffered a double amputation while crossing a similar field.
‘I’m very confident that there are no devices near us now,’ Kev says calmly. ‘The middle of a field is one of the least likely places they will put anything.’ I’m tempted to tell him about Lance Sergeant Cumberland, but I’m reminded of Kev’s fearsome reputation and decide to keep my thoughts to myself. Kev has been with the search team for only three months, having been sent out to Helmand to replace another RESA who had to return to the UK, but it is clear who is boss.
One of the soldiers has been chatting to one of his mates about compensation. The team were blown up a few weeks ago and the soldier is complaining about ringing in his ears. He asks Kev whether he will be entitled to any compensation when he returns home. ‘Dunno, mate,’ says Kev. ‘The compo rules have changed. It depends how bad the injury is and whether you are going to recover. You’ll have to wait until you get back to the UK, then go and see a doc.’ Kev is clearly the ‘daddy’ of the team. The soldiers are his responsibility both in the field and during downtime on base. He is expected to have an answer to every problem, no matter how small.
‘Have you had a tough tour?’ I ask. ‘It’s had its moments,’ Kev replies. ‘These lads have had a tougher run than me. We got blown up in a Warrior ten days ago. We were going up to Patrol Base Pimon [a small British outpost on the edge of the desert]. It was just a routine job, nothing exciting. We were the fourth vehicle in a convoy and you would think you were pretty safe. We were moving along a track, one that we had used before, and bang! we hit an IED. The Taliban must have been watching for a while, reckoned it was becoming a well-used track, so they put an IED in the ground and we drove over it. It blew the track off the Warrior and dented the rear of the vehicle. The blast lifted the whole vehicle off the ground. We all got stiff necks but we got off quite lightly. If it had been something like a Viking I think that would have been it. The blast would have taken us all out. The device was only about 15–20 kg of HME but that’s enough. If it can do that to a vehicle, imagine what it can do to a body.’
Boonie, the IED team’s No. 2, who is sorting out the equipment he believes Woody will need later in the task, chips in. ‘You would get the same effect from about 1.5 kg of military explosive. So 20 kg of their stuff will have the same effect. You don’t need much to immobilize a vehicle. Twenty kilos of HME, which they can knock up pretty quickly, will give you an M-Kill on an armoured vehicle and then you have got another job on your hands to recover the vehicle and that will make you vulnerable to ambush. These guys know what they’re about. I think some people forget that they have been doing this for a long time. They’re not scared of us, they will take us on whenever they can. The Taliban will always find a way to counter our drills. They have low-metal and no-metal content bombs – they are always evolving. Sometimes they have the advantage, and sometimes we do.’
Boonie is fair-haired and his skin is yet to be burnished by the Helmand sun. He looks more like a fresh-faced sixth-former than a front-line soldier, an observation he is used to, so he takes no offence when I mention it. When I ask him how he ended up in Afghanistan, he replies, ‘I always wanted to join the Army and I did quite well in my GCSEs and so when I went to the recruiting office I was told about being an Ammo Tech – it sounded great. You get quick promotion, and you get to do some really interesting stuff, so I went for it. I’ve been in four years and I’m already a corporal and I will become an IED operator providing I pass all the courses. This is my first major deployment. We’ve done two months but it feels like two weeks, we get bounced around so much, which is good but exhausting. We are working pretty much every day, going out on jobs. We’ve had some hairy moments, but I feel pretty safe much of the time. We come in from one job and go straight back out. That’s OK at the moment but I should imagine we’ll be pretty tired by the end of the tour. Our workload is a bit higher at the moment because our ECM operator, Corporal McCluggage, known as “Baggage”, is sick at the moment.’
Our conversation is ended by the arrival of Woody, who has completed the isolation search. He looks happy and relaxed. He breezes over to where I’m sitting and, slightly out of breath, says, ‘The search team and myself have conducted a search of the area,’ he explains in between gulps of water from a plastic bottle. He then bends over and pours some over the back of his head. ‘That’s better,’ he says, then stands upright and continues, ‘I’ve also cleared a safe area for me to work in. From what I can see there are no wires running into the compound. I’m pretty confident we would have picked up any if there were. What we’ve also decided to do is move the ICP just over there.’ He points at an area of the field some 10 metres from where we are standing. ‘The guys will clear a safe lane to it and then clear the ICP. Moving the ICP will make it easier for me to work – there’s no point in being uncomfortable when you’re working. Also the guys are pretty well protected here because if anything does go wrong when I’m working the blast will be confined within the compound. Which is good news for them but not so good for me.
‘I’ve no idea what type of bomb is in there at the minute – all I know is that there is a large charge. I’ll now go and make my manual approach. My guess is that it’s likely to be a pressure-plate IED. I could be wrong but I don’t think so. After we move the ICP, that will be me going down the road.’ By this Woody means going in to defuse the bomb. It is the moment of greatest danger but also of greatest challenge. Woody will be on his own, every decision will be his alone to make. It will be his wits against the bomb maker’s and all he will have to rely on is his own skill and good luck. It is what the ATOs live for. Woody explains the impracticalities of wearing a bomb suit. ‘To get into that compound I’ve got to climb over an 8 ft wall, so you can see that there is no way I could wear a bomb suit on this job. It’s already getting hot just wearing body armour, so you can imagine what it would be like wearing that thing. It weighs about 50 kg in total. So you can imagine what it would be like carrying an extra 50 kg out here. I would be too hot, I wouldn’t be able to climb over walls, and if I got shot at I wouldn’t be able to get away quickly enough. It’s just impractical, and anyway, if the bomb goes off and I’m kneeling over it, a bomb suit isn’t going to help me.’
Woody prepares for the most dangerous and difficult phase of the mission. He alone will have to enter the compound, unprotected except for body armour and helmet – little defence against 20 kg of explosive. At this stage the only information he has is that there is a device in the doorway. He must assume that there could be one or more bombs buried inside the compound, rigged in a way to kill the ATO. His tools for this job include his ceramic knife, a paintbrush and a special electrically fired gun which is used to remotely cut wires. For extra personal protection he will also take his rifle, even though it will be an additional encumbrance when climbing the wall.
‘I had a quick look over the wall and it’s a real mess in there,’ he says. ‘It’s pretty overgrown, so I’m going to have to hack through some brambles and then conduct my own search inside.’ He then turns to the searchers, who are chatting among themselves, and says, ‘Can I have Valerie, please?’
‘Valerie? Who’s Valerie?’ I ask.
‘Valerie Vallon – it’s my lucky charm,’ says Woody. ‘I always take the lead searcher’s Vallon when I do my own clearance. So I christened it Valerie Vallon. It’s worked so far. I’ve only been blown up twice and I escaped without a scratch both times.’
Richie drops down besides me and blows out hard. Beads of sweat are leaving dark tracks on his dusty face. He pulls out a set of Army-issue wraparound sunglasses, places them on his face, and leans back. ‘That was hard work, man,’ he says as he wipes the sweat from his face. At 28 he’s older than the other soldiers and more self-assured, but he has the demeanour of a man who has just about had enough of the war. Richie, who is from Zimbabwe, joined the Army in 2003, when he enlisted in the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. ‘I enjoyed being in the infantry but I thought the engineers might offer more of a challenge.’ His story is interrupted by one of the other searchers sitting opposite, who shouts, ‘Thought joining up would stand him a better chance of getting a British passport.’ The team all howl with laughter, but Richie waves away the comments. ‘You’re all just jealous, just jealous.’ More raucous laughter from the others follows.
‘Right, that’s me going down the road,’ Woody announces to the ICP, and then turns to me and explains what he is about to do next. ‘What I’m going to try and do is find the power source and then isolate the various components. Should be straightforward enough. Joe, you ready?’ he shouts to his infantry escort. The laughter which filled the ICP only a few moments ago has now evaporated. All eyes are on Woody as he prepares to approach the bomb.
‘Kev, you happy?’ he asks.
The burly sergeant gives a reassuring nod. ‘If you are,’ he responds.
Woody switches on the Vallon, and says to the whole team, ‘See you in a bit.’ He is now a picture of concentration, like an Olympic diver at the edge of the 30 metres board, silently going through his finely honed routine. He is about to enter the death zone, and the drama of the situation is intensified by the silence that has descended upon the rest of the team. His jaw is fixed and he stares silently, almost lost in thought, running through his routine, before stepping off, with Joe following closely behind.
No one speaks for a few minutes, as if out of respect for what is being undertaken, then Richie casually continues with his story. ‘I was back in Zim in August and I’m going back when I leave the Army at the end of November. I’ve started my own business – it’s a sort of welding company. I just hope that the country is still functioning when I return. Things have improved since we got the US dollar – before that I thought it was over. But now there is at least food on the shelves and you can buy petrol, but the political system is fucked.’
Woody has now disappeared into the compound and Joe is kneeling down with an ECM box by his side while he watches the surrounding countryside. But Richie has spotted something. ‘Hey,’ he shouts over towards Joe after noticing that he has placed his Vallon on the ground to his side. ‘Bad drills, buddy, bad drills. You’ve cleared the ground to your front but not your side. If you carry on doing that you’re going to get caught out. One day there will be a device there and you’ll be in for a fucking big surprise, man. You can’t afford to fuck up in this place, eh?’
I ask Richie whether he has enjoyed serving in Afghanistan. ‘Enjoy isn’t the word I’d use to describe it. Nobody enjoys Afghan, man, not unless you’ve got a screw loose. What’s to enjoy? The place is riddled with fucking IEDs and the Taliban are trying to fucking kill you every single day. You work your bollocks off every day not knowing whether you are going to make it back, so enjoy, no, but it’s been an experience.
‘But I’m with a good bunch of guys and we’ve had our moments. We’ve had some good times, mostly the banter back in camp when we’ve got some downtime, but otherwise it’s pretty shit. It’s just about getting through it – you know things can go wrong at almost any time so you just hope you’re going to make it back.
‘The worst bit was when Loz was killed – that was our lowest point, that hit us really hard, harder than I think any of us were expecting. He was our team commander, a fantastic bloke – exactly the sort of commander you’d want in Afghan. So when he died, and the way he died, was a real blow.’
Corporal Loren Marlton-Thomas, known as Loz, was the commander of Brimstone 45 until Sunday, 15 November 2009, when he was killed in action. Loz was 28 and married when he was killed in what was to become one of the most tragic and horrific incidents to befall the bomb hunters. Loz was one of the most popular search team commanders in the task force and was instantly recognizable by his large, round face and ready smile. He had been Army barmy all his life, according to his wife Nicola, and had once considered joining the Paras but believed his skill set was best suited to the engineers. He was killed while on a routine mission near Gereshk, just two weeks after Staff Sergeant Schmid was killed and during one of the worst periods for the CIED Task Force.
Richie’s eyes are cold and almost emotionless as he describes the death of his close friend. It’s clear to me that his emotional reserves have been exhausted by the death and injury of too many of his comrades, by the horror of waking up to the news that someone you were speaking to a day earlier has been blown to pieces. I have seen that look before, in the eyes of other men who have watched friends die. It is unmistakable. It is the cold, distant look of someone who has witnesed violent death.
Richie continues, ‘We were on a ten-liner. It was a fairly normal job, just routine. The infantry wanted us to search an area so that they could get greater freedom of movement. That’s routine work for us, nothing unusual. It was normal drills. We found a device and we pushed back to search an ICP. The ICP, which was a few yards from a canal, was searched and cleared. Everything was going fine, man – you know, nothing unusual. Then Ken, the ATO, stepped on a device, and bang. No one is really quite sure what happened. Was the bomb inside or outside the ICP – who knows?’
Initially members of Brimstone 45 thought they were under RPG attack. Those standing close to the seat of the blast were knocked off their feet, while others were left momentarily stunned and deafened by the noise from the explosion. At first there was silence. The sound of the explosion was just a distant rumble, and then the screaming started. It is still unclear whether a device was missed during the search of the ICP or if Ken Bellringer accidentally stepped outside of the cleared area.
WO2 Ken Bellringer was lying motionless on the embankment, paralysed through fear and injury. The first to spot him was Richie, who was horrified by what he saw. Ken had almost been cut in two – his legs from the hip downwards had disappeared and in their place were two charred stumps. His eyes were open but he was unresponsive and possibly dead. Ken’s lower abdomen had been ripped open and his bowel was exposed. He had also suffered severe damage to his hands.
Richie knew that where there was one bomb there could be more, and it was vital that he clear a path to Ken so that the medics could try to save his life.
‘There was this huge bang and then utter confusion,’ he says. ‘At first you are just stunned and then it dawns on you that someone has obviously stepped on a bomb. Several people were hurt but Ken was clearly the worst and then Loz was missing and at that stage all sorts of things are going through your head.
‘It was a pretty fucking horrible day, pretty fucking horrible. Ken was in a coma for a month or so. I was there when it happened. It was the worst thing I had ever seen. It was a fairly routine task, something had been found, we did the isolation as normal, and then yeah, it was a simple task and it went wrong. That is the sort of shit that can happen out here – that’s Afghan. Ken was lying down on the embankment, he wasn’t moving. His legs had gone and you’re thinking, oh shit! I can’t remember whether he was conscious or not, but he was in a bad way and all the time you’re thinking, this can’t be real. One minute everything was cool – the next you’re in hell.
‘The medics ran in and treated Ken before the dust had settled. They put tourniquets around his legs, stopped as much of the bleeding as possible, and basically kept him alive. We then extracted the casualties back to the our previous ICP, which was 30 metres away, then the MERT [medical emergency response team] came in to take the casualties away. Then more reinforcements came in to look for Loz.’
It took almost twenty-four hours to find Loz’s body. The injuries he suffered were even greater than those Ken, who survived, suffered and he was probably dead before he hit the water.
Richie continues, ‘In our team Gaz was injured, our platoon commander was injured, the IEDD team No. 2 had a damaged eye and smashed teeth, and the ECM operator was battle-shocked. I had to tell my parents because it was on the news that a soldier from 33 Engineer Regiment had gone missing. I didn’t want them to think it might be me.’
The searchers are a superstitious bunch, possibly because of the death of their commander. Every one of them, apart from Kev, carries a lucky charm. Richie has a coin lodged beneath the padding of his helmet, which was minted in the year of his birth. ‘Loz found it and gave it to me. He told me to keep it close and it would keep me safe – and up until now it has.’
Sapper Gaz Homewood, another of the searchers, wears rosary beads around his neck, which I initially thought was a carefully crafted tattoo, Sapper Dan Taylor-Allen carries a lucky stone and Corporal Adam Butler has a St Christopher medal, a lucky threepence which is something of a family heirloom, and a crucifix. Joe also carries a crucifix, while Lance Corporal Michael Brunt has a St Christopher medal in his helmet. The soldiers are utterly convinced that the crosses, medals and charms have worked, because they have survived.
‘They all have their ops kit as well,’ Kev adds, laughing and convinced that they are talking nonsense. ‘They always make sure they wear the same kit every time they go on an operation.’
I’m immediately reminded of The Dirty Dozen. I hadn’t noticed it but Kev is absolutely correct. The search teams’ uniforms are torn and threadbare, in some cases restitched by clumsy hands
‘I always have two uniforms. One I will wear in camp and the other on ops. I’ve had these trousers the whole tour and they’re now falling apart. Look,’ says Richie, pointing at several strips of black masking tape holding one of his trouser legs together. ‘Once you believe that something is giving you some good luck you don’t want to change it. It’s like me being lead searcher: so far so good, so why change it? If it works, don’t fuck around with it. Not in Afghan, not until you need to.’
As the searchers chat among themselves, Woody is hacking his way through the brambles, clearing a path to the doorway where the IED has reportedly been buried. He is being forced to search by trying to spot IED ground sign. He is looking for anything out of the ordinary, like disturbed earth or patches of dead grass.
Back in the ICP the conversation enters the surreal and the subject turns to football. John Terry, the Chelsea and former England captain, and Ashley Cole, the Chelsea left back, are in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Richie is appalled at the way Cole treated his wife Cheryl. ‘Ashley Cole had the hottest chick in the country and he blew it. What a dick. Can you believe that? Cheryl Cole is a goddess.’
Gaz offers up an explanation. ‘Yeah, but the reason why he was playing away was because her mother-in-law was living in the house at the time. Who wants to shag the missus when the mother-in-law is sleeping in the next bedroom?’
‘They are all the same fucking overpaid knobs,’ complains Richie. ‘I get paid £64 a day to find IEDs and they get paid 100 grand a week to play football. Why is that fair? People think football is pressurized but if you want some real pressure come out here and be the lead searcher in the team.’
After twenty minutes of searching Woody discovers the IED in the doorway. It’s a straightforward pressure-plate anti-personnel IED designed to kill or blow the legs off the victim – soldier, policeman, civilian, boy, girl.
Woody, working with the dexterity and intensity of a vascular surgeon, eventually picks out a wire connecting the bomb to the power supply. It’s the breakthrough he has been hoping for. He loads the IED weapon and carefully positions it so that when it is fired by Boonie back in the ICP, the bomb should, in theory, be neutralized. There are no time limits. As bomb hunters say, short cuts are the quickest route to an early grave.
Woody returns to the ICP and explains to Kev and Boonie the layout of the device. The explosive is contained within a yellow-plastic 5-litre palm-oil container, the detonator has been improvised, and the pressure plate is relatively standard, although it contains very little metal.
Taking off his helmet, Woody wipes the sweat from his brow. He is red from the heat and his eyes are bloodshot. He explains, ‘The device is definitely big enough to kill a soldier, that is what it was designed to do. It was a classic booby-trap, if you like, just placed in front of the door. The insurgents were hoping that someone would just walk into the compound, possibly as part of a route search, and would step on the device. It was probably aimed at either the ANP or ANA – I think they know by now that British soldiers don’t walk through the doors of derelict compounds, especially those that were former Taliban firing points.’
‘Controlled explosion in figures five,’ announces Boonie. Five seconds later he remotely fires the IED weapon. A loud pop echoes around us. The wires are cut and the bomb should now be safe. But as there is always the risk of a secondary device Woody must take great care.
He leaves the device to ‘soak’ for a few minutes. The amount of time an ATO allows the device after he has remotely cut the wires is up to him. Some wait ten minutes, others might wait thirty minutes or even an hour. A lot depends on the operational situation.
Woody leans back and is almost lost among the green stalks of young wheat. He clasps his hands behind his head and closes his eyes, and I think he is about to take a quick nap, but then adds, ‘The Taliban know that we carry out certain actions when we are working on a bomb. They know we return to the device after a certain amount of time, so you need to vary the time you return. It’s all about not setting patterns, otherwise one day you are going to get caught out. They have already tried to booby-trap devices, to target the operators. They might put another switch into the main charge so that if you try and lift the main charge out by hand then the device could explode. So we always try and remove the main charge by remotely removing it, which means pulling it out with a bit of rope and a hook so that if it does go bang you’re OK.’
After several minutes Woody prepares to extract the bomb from the ground using a hook and line. It’s an unsophisticated piece of kit but it works perfectly well. It allows the bomb to be pulled from the ground from a distance. ATOs have learned to their cost over the past thirty years that most of the actions they make while defusing bombs should be done from as far away as possible. By using the hook and line, Woody can pull the bomb out of the ground from more than 50 metres away if necessary. If there is a second bomb it will detonate now. But the ground is rock hard and it takes the combined strength of Woody and Boonie to pull it out. Everyone waits for an explosion which doesn’t come.
Woody returns to the compound with Corporal Richard Lacey, the weapons intelligence specialist, who photographs all of the components so that they can be studied in detail later. The pressure plate and the detonator are retrieved and placed in plastic bags for further forensic examination, but the explosive will be blown up inside the compound.
Corporal Adam Butler, the acting team commander, who took over when Loz was killed, has soft, kind eyes and the demeanour of a man who encourages others through gentle persuasion rather than aggressive shouting. He has a rich country accent and despite his age – he, like the others, is only in his twenties – is now on his second tour in Helmand. I ask him what life is like for a high-risk search team. ‘You get used to the dangers but you never get complacent,’ he tells me. ‘We know what the Taliban are trying to do and we just have to stay one step ahead. Team work is our route to making it out of Helmand alive. If someone makes a mistake, then he or all of us could be killed or injured. We can’t afford to have a bad day or switch off, so the pressure can be phenomenal, but I think we’ve all grown used to that. We all share the same risk, but Richie, as the lead searcher, does more searching, so I suppose you could argue that he is more at risk. He was the lead searcher when Loz was alive and so I decided to keep him as the lead when I took over. It’s not good to change things around too much.
‘But sometimes I might switch it around if we are doing lots of searches in one day – just to give Richie a rest. The other day when we did a route search there were quite a lot of isolations. We ended up doing about eight isolations over about seven or eight hours. Richie was in and out of the ditches all day long and so we changed things around a bit just to give him a break. You’ve got to rest them, otherwise they can go stale.’
The lead searcher is something of a talisman for the team, because their lives depend on him. Soldiers are very superstitious and it is very important that his mates believe Richie is a naturally lucky person. His role is to lead the way – he has to be 100 per cent focused 100 per cent of the time, and he admits, ‘It can be pretty tiring sometimes. The risks? You take a risk every time you cross the road, eh? I don’t really think about it. I suppose I just get on with the job and hopefully everyone makes it back. I don’t really worry too much about it. You’ve got to be good at the job, you’ve got to learn quickly because the Taliban aren’t going to give you a second chance, and I think you need that little bit of extra luck sometimes. You can be the best searcher in the world but one piece of bad luck and you could be killed. It’s got nothing to do with bad drills, just bad luck. In Afghan you always want to be lucky – being lucky is better than being good. Plenty of guys good at their job have been killed out here but the lucky ones survive.
‘I’ve had two close shaves in vehicles where we have been blown up, and Inkerman was pretty intense because there are so many threats. It’s very unpredictable and the Taliban will take you on all the time. The last time I was up there there was more pressure because they had been targeting isolations. So you’ve got to be really on the ball. In some areas the risk is less but in Inkerman and Sangin you can get channelled into alleyways, so the threat is greater.’
‘Sangin is an absolute hell-hole,’ Adam adds in agreement. ‘It’s basically one big fucking minefield. The Taliban will take you on wherever and whenever they can. When you get told you’re going to Sangin – it’s like, “Shit!” All anyone wants is just to get out of there alive. No one gives a fuck about hearts and minds, you just want to get out in one piece.’
Adam is married with a young son whom he misses terribly. As we chat in the ICP he talks longingly of his family back home, especially little Alfie. When he shows me a picture of his son I notice small tears beginning to form. ‘I can’t wait to see my little lad, he’s a lovely boy,’ he says, almost lost in thought. ‘I think about him all the time. He means the world to me. Sometimes I miss him so much it’s almost unbearable. That’s the thing about kids – you really miss them, but thinking about them just makes you sad. He’s only three and I’ve already deployed on two six-month operations since he was born. I’ve already missed a third of his life – and nothing will bring that back. For me that’s the hardest bit. Part of you thinks, I don’t want to do this any more, I want to watch him grow up and be with him. I want to play football with him and read books at night. That’s not much to ask, is it? I just want to be a normal dad. The thing which really scares me, more than any IED, is how my family would cope if anything happened to me.’
Adam first served in Afghanistan in 2007 on Operation Herrick 6. He says that the war was different, what he calls a ‘stand-up fight’. Now, he says, and his views are echoed by many soldiers, ‘It’s a dirty, nasty little war.’ He continues, ‘IEDs are everywhere and that has increased our workload massively. On Herrick 7 we only had two search teams, now we have a lot more, but we are still out every day. Personally, I haven’t seen any real improvements in this place since I was here last. I know Nad-e’Ali is safe now, but look at the manpower that was needed to secure this place. What did they say? Something like the biggest heliborne assault for fifty years, over 4,000 British troops. There are now checkpoints everywhere and you’ve got guys staging on 24/7, the blokes are really hanging out – there is no way you can do that in every AO. And if they are going make this place safe then you have to do that everywhere – that’s a massive undertaking.’
When I ask Adam whether he thinks Afghanistan is worth the sacrifice, he replies, ‘That’s a very difficult question to answer.’ Waving his arms around, he asks, ‘Is this worth Loz’s life? I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s worth the life of a single British soldier. The politicians talk about sacrifice and duty but they are not the ones out here doing the fighting. Sacrifice is a lot easier to talk about when you’re not the one making it. But we are professional soldiers and we have got a job to do, so we get on and do it. We do it for each other – that’s it. The bottom line is, if we all do our jobs to the best of our abilities, then we’ve got a good chance of getting out alive. That’s the same for everyone.’
Kev interjects and explains the true feelings of soldiers in Afghanistan. ‘To be honest, I think many of the lads try not to think about the whys and wherefores too much – we just crack on and get through it day by day. Every day you stay alive you’re a day closer to getting home.’
The death of Loz returns to the conversation and the ICP falls silent. Adam was on a four-day Mastiff commander’s course when his boss was killed and it is clear that his absence on the day has led to some feelings of guilt. ‘Part of me wishes I was there because, you never know, it may have been different, maybe Ken wouldn’t have stepped on the bomb and Loz wouldn’t have been killed, but I know you can’t go through life thinking of all the what ifs. I knew Loz really well, he was such a great bloke, and we all miss him a lot. It was a really difficult time. The whole team took part in his repatriation ceremony back to the UK. We all carried his coffin onto the plane, which helped us come to terms with what happened and it allowed us all to say goodbye – but it was pretty heartbreaking. You can imagine how it must feel – we all came out together and then just before we go on R&R our commander is killed. It was shattering. Guys are getting killed all the time but you never think it’s going to be one of your mates, and when it does happen it’s the worst feeling in the world. We still talk about him quite a lot and then there will be things which remind us about him. I think that’s quite important. We’ll have a laugh and say, “Remember when Loz did this and that?”’
Adam is staring into the distance and he begins to sound sad and regretful. ‘We had quite a shit R&R, to be honest,’ he says, with his head now resting on his knees. ‘You think it’s going to be this great release, but at the back of your mind you know that you are coming back out to this place. It made life at home pretty difficult. I kept arguing with my missus over little things. I think I was still pretty stressed. You expect everything to be great when you go back but you soon realize that life hasn’t stood still. Your family has a life too and it’s pretty hard for them when you’re away too. We think we have it hard, but it’s a bloody nightmare for the wives and families. It’s six months of gut-wrenching worry and you turn up in the middle of it and say, “Hi, I’m home,” and they’re glad you’re home but you’re also messing up the routine, upsetting the kids, and they know you’re going to bugger off again in a couple of weeks.
‘I think it was because of what happened to Loz and knowing that you are coming back out here, so you can’t relax. R&R is vital, you need to get home, you need a break. I would rather we did a longer tour but less frequently, like nine months but every three years – I think if that was on the table the blokes would go for it. We’ll be back here in two years. None of us want to come out here again. Everybody in our team knows someone who has been killed or injured. One of our mates, Dave “The Leg” Watson, was killed on New Year’s Eve. He was knocking down the wall of a compound as part of an operation. It was nothing really dangerous, just a straightforward operation, and he stepped on an IED. The blast blew off three limbs – he was a triple amputee and he died on the operating table. He was a brilliant bloke, the fittest man I knew.
‘And there was Captain Dan Read. He was a great bloke for an officer. He came up through the ranks and he had a good understanding of the lads, although the officers in our trade are all pretty good. Anyway, his team were taking part in a route clearance in Gereshk district centre – again a routine task, nothing you would call dangerous. An IED was found and they set up an ICP and searched it, just like we’ve done today, but somehow an IED was missed – there was a pressure-plate device in the ICP and the WIS corporal, James Oakland, stepped on it and was killed instantly. Dan Read was injured in the blast – he took some frag in the chest and arm – and so were a couple of other guys. The worst thing was that Jim had actually been sent out as a battle casualty replacement and had been in Afghan for about three months when he was killed.’
Captain Read, 31, passed his High Threat course in August 2009 and immediately began his pre-deployment training for Operation Herrick 10, before arriving in Helmand the following month. He was injured just nine days before one of his friends, Staff Sergeant Olaf Schmid, was killed in Sangin. Captain Read told his family and wife Lorraine that he felt guilty about leaving his IED team, known as Team Illume, while he recovered, and so with the blessing of his wife and mother he returned to Helmand in December 2009 in a bid to ‘get back on the horse’. On 11 January, after having dealt with more than thirty bombs, he was on a routine task in Musa Qala and was attempting to defuse a bomb when it detonates and he was killed instantly.
Woody returns to the compound for the next phase of the operation – blowing up the home-made explosive. ATOs never recover explosive, because it could be unstable and it has limited forensic value, so it is always destroyed in situ. As Woody makes his way back to the compound with a packet of plastic-explosive detonation cord and a detonator, Adam tells me about the feared no-metal bombs which the Taliban have created.
Brimstone 42 was one of the first units to discover the no-metal IED, or wooden bomb. Lacking any metal content, these devices are extremely difficult to detect, which is why all soldiers must be able to recognize ground sign. The team were dispatched to Kajaki to conduct a search of an area after a suspected Taliban bomb team was observed acting suspiciously.
Adam goes on, ‘If the IEDs are all-metal you have got every chance of finding them, but these lads are making IEDs with low or no metal. When we first arrived we were told about the low metal content with carbon rods and we were all shitting ourselves, then we got sent up to Kajaki and found the wooden one. One of the lads, Sapper Dan Taylor-Allen, found one while he was sitting in the ICP. The device was attached to a 20 kg main charge in a 20-litre palm-oil container. If it had detonated it would have killed everyone in about a 15-metre radius.’
Dan, one of the biggest but also one of the quieter soldiers in the team, explains that the team were conducting a search using specialist equipment, which is supposed to be able to find devices with no metal content. The soldiers had finished searching the ICP and were relaxing when Dan noticed something about 2 in. from the heel of his boot.
‘I was sort of kicking the stone away with my foot when I saw a shape,’ he explains. ‘I brushed the stones away and I saw a yellow container and then the pressure plate – the wooden box was right by my heel. We were literally sitting on the bomb. It was a 20 kg main charge – that would have taken out a Mastiff. If it had gone off there wouldn’t have been anything left of me or anyone near me. But I wasn’t really that fazed. I just thought, good job I didn’t step on it.
‘Afterwards you sit around and say, what if? But it didn’t go bang, so what’s the point in worrying about it? That was a couple of months ago and we haven’t seen any more of those since, but we know some have been found in Musa Qala – they’re just another bomb.’
I learned about the ‘no metal’ bombs back in Camp Bastion but their existence has been kept secret from the British public, although the reason for such secrecy was lost on Adam. ‘We know the Taliban have got them and they know we know. So what’s the big deal?’
Undetectable land mines are nothing new, even if they do terrify the infantry. The German Army developed a non-metal anti-personnel mine in the Second World War and during the Cold War most NATO and Warsaw Pact countries produced anti-personnel mines with few or no metal components. All the Taliban have done is make an improvised version – the wooden IED.
The device is a wooden box consisting of a small cavity and a plug or plunger which can be compressed by the weight, of, say, a human being or a vehicle. Inside the box is a small piece of explosive and a piece of det cord which is linked to a main charge. When pressure is applied the explosive inside the box detonates and almost simultaneously the main charge detonates.
Kev, who has been monitoring the mission, rejoins the conversation. ‘As far as we are concerned, it’s just another device and if you stick to the rules and listen during your training you can detect them. The easy way to stop getting blown up is to stay off the tracks. We keep telling soldiers, “Stay off the tracks, that’s where the Taliban plant bombs.” We do the training with soldiers and we try and drum it into them. Some listen, some don’t.’
I ask Kev whether there is any intelligence to suggest that the Taliban are planning to increase the sophistication of their IEDs. ‘I don’t think they need to,’ he says dismissively. ‘They can achieve what they want to achieve with what they are using now. They don’t need to increase their sophistication. From their point of view they are killing soldiers and they are restricting our freedom of movement with a very simple device. It’s too easy for them at the moment. Too easy to make and bury IEDs. By keeping it simple they are effective. I don’t think the British public really get it. They probably think that the Taliban have made these incredibly sophisticated bombs which we can’t detect. The fact is we find 80 per cent of them, or so we think. But there are thousands of bombs out there somewhere and we won’t get them all, and that is what the Taliban are counting on.’
Woody returns to the ICP and hands the wires which will complete the explosive circuit to Boonie, who connects them to the firing pack and issues the warning: ‘Controlled explosion in figures five.’
Every one one of us in the ICP is ordered to crouch down and prepare for a large bang. That’s an understatement. The blast is huge and I can feel the thump of the shock wave in the pit of my stomach. There is no bright-orange flash, just a mass of earth rising 30 ft into the air. It’s impossible to believe that there would be anything left of a victim unfortunate enough to detonate the bomb.
As Woody returns to the compound for a final time to ensure that all of the home-made explosive has been detonated, a warning comes over one of the radios alerting us to suspicious movement in the wood line around 800 metres to our north and close to an area where there are thought to be some small pockets of Taliban. Woody returns happy that his job is done. ‘That’s another one under the belt,’ he says to himself.
‘Job done,’ announces Kev to everyone before turning to me and saying, ‘We have been working together for two months and we’ve done maybe fifty jobs, possibly more. Some of the jobs just go on and on. We’ve done route clearance which can last all day, sometimes several days. Fortunately this one was routine.’
‘Yeah, it was routine,’ agrees Woody. ‘But it’s the routine jobs that some people have been killed on. You can get very comfortable in what you are doing. You do the same thing every day and at some stage you will switch off and make a mistake, so it’s the routine jobs which will catch you out.’
The whole IEDD team is now back in the ICP and Kev announces that we will be moving out in two minutes. While Boonie is packing away the ATO’s equipment and the searchers are hauling on their packs, the distant rattle of machine-gun fire pierces the still afternoon air. ‘A fifty,’ says Adam. He means a .50-calibre heavy machine gun, and so it should be outgoing rather than incoming fire. But Richie says, ‘Or a Dushka.’ The DShk is a 12.7-mm Russian-made heavy machine gun which has been used by the Taliban.
‘Right, let’s get a move on,’ shouts Kev. ‘Same order of march. Richie, you lead. Let’s go.’ Once again we are in single file, marching at speed across the wheat field, but this time taking a different route back to Blue 17. As we patrol back the firing continues. Whoever is shooting it is at least 2 km from us and therefore not regarded as a threat.
The team moves back into the patrol base and Woody tells Lance Sergeant Hunt that the mission has been successful. The searchers are now visibly more relaxed, talking and laughing among themselves, smoking cigarettes and gulping down fresh, ice-cold water. Clearing one IED has taken upwards of five hours and involved more than thirty soldiers. No one knows how many IEDs litter the tracks, fields and hamlets which make up Helmand, but the best estimates put the number in the thousands.
It has been a long, hot day for the men of Brimstone 45. In the next forty-eight hours, providing there is a helicopter available, they will fly out of Nad-e’Ali and return to Camp Bastion. It will then be four days on HRF and then back home, via twenty-four hours’ ‘decompression’ in Cyprus, to their families, wives and girlfriends. They have almost made it.