‘Afghanistan is just like Iraq – hot, dusty, and full of people who want to kill you.’
Staff Sergeant Simon Fuller, Royal Engineer Search Advisor
I’m strapped to the seat of a Warrior armoured personnel carrier opposite Staff Sergeant Simon Fuller, Brimstone 42’s RESA, who has just joined up with Woody’s team. Simon, a tall, heavily built veteran of two tours in Iraq, is bullish. ‘It’s good to get out on the ground so soon,’ he says. ‘This is what we wanted.’ But his slight stammer makes me wonder whether the opposite is true.
The inside of the vehicle is ridiculously cramped and swelteringly hot. Most of the loose equipment, such as ammunition boxes, water and radio batteries, has been tied to the vehicle’s floor or sides in an attempt to reduce injuries in the event of an IED strike. The force of the blast can be so great that heavy items like batteries can fly around the cramped interior at lethal speeds. It is for the same reason that we are all strapped in as well.
Simon is from 36 Engineer Regiment, based in Maidstone in Kent. The regiment has been involved in Helmand since the inception of the Afghanistan campaign and the Royal Engineers have paid a heavy price. Members of the corps have been blinded, paralysed, and suffered brain damage and multiple amputation. The Royal Engineers are at the forefront of every battle, every campaign, clearing routes through which others can pass. On D-Day in Normandy in 1944, some of the first troops to hit the beaches were members of the corps who were charged with breaching the numerous German minefields while under murderous machine-gun fire. Today in Helmand it is often the men of the Royal Engineer Search Teams who clear routes so that British troops can advance and engage with the enemy.
The bomb hunters depart the base in a convoy of three Warriors. Woody and Simon are sitting side by side in the lead vehicle and I am squeezed between Corporal Arianne Merry from the Weapons Intelligence Section, and the interpreter, Mohammed. Everyone is wearing body armour and helmets. It’s a tight fit even though the vehicle is meant to carry at least seven passengers in addition to a gunner commander and driver. The Warrior was designed for warfare in the 1980s when the enemy was the Soviet Union and the battleground might have been north Germany. It might not have been designed for war in Afghanistan, but it’s a good compromise. To date no one travelling inside a Warrior has been killed by an IED, although tragically several drivers, who are probably the most vulnerable to the effects of a bomb blast, have been killed and seriously injured. As well as offering good protection, the Warrior is armed with a 30-mm Rarden cannon, which fires a variety of munitions, including high explosive, and a 7.62-mm coaxial chain gun.
Within minutes of leaving the base everyone is dripping with sweat. The Warrior’s twenty-year-old air-conditioning is broken and is blowing out hot rather than cold air and the temperature quickly soars to well over 50°. Inside the vehicle it feels like a fan oven is on full blast.
I ask Simon for his first impressions of the country. ‘Afghanistan is just like Iraq – hot, dusty, and full of people who want to kill you,’ he shouts above the roar of the engine. There is general laughter, and the tension which accompanied our departure from the base eases slightly. Arianne complains about the heat and fans herself with a magazine. She first served in the Royal Navy for four years, then left and was a member of the Territorial Army for five year before becoming a regular soldier. Arianne’s job as the weapons intelligence specialist is to photograph the IED in situ and recover and analyse as much of the bomb as possible.
Thirty minutes later we arrive at our destination – a long, straight stretch of road about 8 km north of FOB Shawqat. The outside temperature is close to 30° but it feels beautifully cool in comparison with being shut inside the Warrior. Sweat is pouring down Simon’s face and as he wipes it away with the cuff of his sleeve he looks at me with a slightly embarrassed smile and says, ‘Still haven’t acclimatized.’
The enemy are believed to be around 1,000 metres due north of where the IED is located, just beyond an area known as ‘Yellow 9’. The bomb hunters will be in the Taliban’s range for as long as Woody and the searchers are working. The road has been secured by around thirty soldiers from the Right Flank company of the Scots Guards, who are lying and sitting on either side of the road, ready to repel an attack.
It’s going to be a long, sweltering day for the guardsmen as there is absolutely no shade and no chance of keeping cool. Providing security during an IED clearance is one of the jobs most loathed by soldiers, and now I can understand why.
Behind the first vehicle in the convoy, Corporal Andy Hurran, the search team commander, is shaking out his team for their first mission. Equipment is being checked and rechecked before the isolation search begins. The bomb is just 100 metres directly to the north. The vehicles have stopped next to one of the many hamlets which are dotted about the Green Zone. In almost any other country such tranquillity might be described as heavenly.
The soldiers are objects of fascination for children and old men, who stop and stare. Women and teenage girls are never seen, and the younger men are working in the fields or fighting alongside the Taliban. On the left side of the road, down by a clear, free-flowing stream, children are playing and laughing, waving at soldiers, and begging for sweets and pens.
Arianne describes the scene as ‘good atmospherics’. ‘Children are playing, there are farmers in the fields, there’s a bit of traffic – it’s everyday routine,’ she says. ‘The local people will be the first to notice that the Taliban are moving into the area, and then the locals will disappear. It will happen very quickly. One minute they’re doing their daily business and the next minutes they have gone, and that’s when the Taliban will hit us.’
The search team have gathered around Andy, who stands well over 6 ft tall and has a cool, calm demeanour. It is clear that the team will rely heavily on his leadership over the next few hours. The tension among the team is palpable.
The area behind the Warrior is chosen as the ICP but no one seems quite sure what to do until Woody says that the ICP should be cleared of devices. It is as though nervousness has dulled the senses and the months spent in training have been forgotten, albeit temporarily. Simon and Andy swing into action, cajoling and urging their men to ‘switch on’.
The soldiers move slowly and hesitantly until Simon begins to bark a series of orders. ‘Bradley, you clear down to the river, and then come back into the vehicle from the front. Adam [Lance Corporal Adam McLean, another member of the REST], you do the same from the other side. ‘The search is slow but uneventful and once the ICP is clear Andy calls the team in for a final briefing.
‘Right, lads, listen in,’ says Andy. ‘The device, as we know, is about 150 metres up the road. What we know is that there was a callsign barma-ing a route from Yellow 21 to Yellow 25, when they were approached by a local who said there were at least three IEDs on the road. They did a clearance and got a loud tone just up the road from here. The first thing we are going to do is an isolation. Bradley’ – Andy looks directly at Sapper Bradley Knight – ‘you happy with everything? Vallon working correctly, kit sorted, happy to go?’ Bradley nods but his apprehension is clear for everyone to see. No one comments, probably because they all share the same fears. ‘Right, good. We’re moving off in two minutes. You all know the order of march. It’s our first job, so everyone take it easy, take your time, stay switched on.’
The team are just about to move off when Bradley, who at the age of 20 is already married with two children, announces that his mine detector is not working. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ says Lance Corporal Israel Shankar, one of the many Fijians in the British Army. He has intense, piercing eyes and the build of a rugby forward. ‘Have you got it turned on?’ ‘Course I have,’ Bradley responds angrily. ‘OK, I’m good to go now,’ he says, but his movements are stuttering and he seems uncertain. Shankar, who is second in the order of march, wades in again. ‘Bradley, fucking wise up, man! You’re the fucking lead searcher, now get a fucking grip and switch on.’
Just before he departs on the isolation Woody turns to me and says, ‘This is going to take a long time. But that’s not a problem. It’s the same for everybody on their first job. Everything will be done slowly and methodically. There’s no rush, we’ve got a good bit of fire support here, so I really want the guys to get their confidence.’
Just as Woody finishes speaking, the alarm on Bradley’s Vallon sounds. He swings the detector repeatedly over a patch of ground about 10 ft down the embankment, just at the water’s edge, very close to where Woody and I are standing. ‘I’ve got a double tone,’ shouts Bradley, his voice breaking with fear. A double tone usually indicates a pressure-plate IED. Everyone stops and no one speaks. I’m holding my breath. If it is a device and it were to function now, most of us would be killed or injured. Bradley sweeps the Vallon over the same patch of ground again and everyone can hear its high-pitched whine. He is unsure what to do next. ‘Either check it out or mark and avoid,’ shouts Woody, who is clearly the only one not panicked by the prospect of being blown sky high. ‘Have a look around you,’ he adds calmly. ‘It’s unlikely to be a device down there, so close to the house opposite, so I would mark and avoid.’ Bradley moves off into the distance, stumbling every few paces on the steep embankment. He is followed by six team mates.
‘Watch your spacing – don’t bunch,’ shouts Andy, sliding down the embankment. Spacing is vital. Soldiers don’t want to be so close to the man in front or behind that if he detonates a bomb the explosion will kill or injure others. But if the troops are too far apart, especially in close country, the patrol will lose its cohesion and run the risk that soldiers will become detached in the event of an attack.
The killing zone of an IED is dependent on the amount of explosive, the nature of the ground, the depth at which it is buried, and the fragmentation. The men of Brimstone 42 are subconsciously making these evaluations while at the same time searching for hidden IEDs.
With Woody on the patrol, Boonie, the team’s No. 2, begins to prepare the equipment needed to neutralize the bomb. After three months of working together, sleeping inches away from each other, and defusing around thirty bombs, Boonie knows exactly what equipment Woody will need to tackle this latest device. He opens what is known as Woody’s ‘man bag’ and begins to select various instruments. He checks the hook and line which will be used to pull the bomb from the ground from a safe distance and checks all the remote equipment being used to neutralize the device.
An hour later Woody and the team return, the isolation search completed. There are no other devices in the area and no command wires. In theory the bomb 150 metres up the road is now hermetically sealed within a security bubble.
The isolation has allowed Woody to get ‘eyes on’ the patch of ground where the device, which he believes to be a pressure-plate IED, has been concealed. But from what he has seen on the ground he now thinks the bomb could be one of a number connected in a chain designed to take out an entire British patrol. ‘I think there could be at least three bombs along there,’ he tellls Simon, pointing back over his right shoulder with his thumb. ‘What I want to do is remove the first entirely, then defuse the second and the third.’
Simon nods his agreement. ‘Seems like the right plan. Anything you want me to do?’ ‘No,’ replies Woody. ‘Not much you can do really.’ He then turns to his No. 2 and says, ‘Three bombs, Boonie. I’ll sort the first, blow it, and then see what happens. Should take about half an hour. Where’s the lead searcher? I want his Vallon.’
Bradley appears with his mine detector, looking slightly bemused. ‘Right,’ Woody says, taking it from Bradley. ‘I christen this Vallon Valerie and from now on this is the one I’ll use every time I go down the road.’
The searchers look puzzled. ‘What are you talking about, Woody?’ asks Simon.
‘Valerie Vallon was my lucky charm with the last search team,’ says Woody. ‘I always used the lead searcher’s Vallon and I’ve never had a problem. But they’ve taken Valerie with them, so I’m christening this one Valerie too.’
Woody sips some water from a plastic bottle, removes a few key pieces of equipment from his man bag, and tucks his ceramic knife into the front of his body armour. He is calm but focused and I can’t help wondering whether he says a silent prayer and has one final thought of his wife and twin girls before taking the lonely walk to the bomb.
All eyes are fixed on Woody as he walks down the safe lane, man bag in one hand, Vallon in the other. The men of Brimstone 42 are pensive and silent. This is the first time any of the newly arrived team have seen an ATO defuse a bomb in Afghanistan. Within a few minutes Woody is a distant, lonely figure shimmering in the heat haze. His vulnerability is clear and frightening – he is the definition of the sitting target. Apart from the infantry escort, Lance Corporal Joe Rossiter, who is also doubling as the ECM operator, Woody is on his own, armed only with a 9-mm pistol – effective range about 30 metres. He clears a safe, working area around the bomb before crouching down into what, from a distance, looks like the foetal position. He is trying to make himself as small a target as possible while still being able to work.
The earth is baked rock-hard by the sun and it takes at least thirty minutes of digging, chipping and scraping before Woody finds a wire. He picks at it with his ceramic knife for a few minutes and then flicks the dust away with his paintbrush. It is painfully slow work and Woody’s body temperature must be going through the roof. It’s difficult to imagine how he can maintain his concentration, but a mistake now could be fatal. I’m watching him through the weapon sight on one of the soldiers’ rifles. Every few minutes he stops and wipes the sweat away from his eyes, then continues working. After twenty minutes he stops and rests the front of his helmet on the ground for a few moments’ respite before resuming the excavation.
A few minutes later Woody manages to locate what he believes is a wire connecting the power supply to the detonator. He carefully positions the IED weapon he will use to ‘attack’ the bomb and walks back to the safety of the first Warrior with a wire trailing behind him. Boonie moves forward, connects the wire to the firing pack, and shouts, ‘Controlled explosion in one minute.’ There is a distant crack and then nothing – the sound everyone wanted to hear. A few minutes later Woody is back in his familiar crouching position, digging away, trying to isolate the pressure plate. It is a long and laborious process, made all the more difficult by the knowledge that somewhere in a distant field or tree line the Taliban are waiting and watching. In theory, time should not be a factor in any IED-disposal operation, but it is in Helmand. The longer an ATO spends on the ground in the open the more time the Taliban will have to plan and mount an attack. Balancing speed and safety is a constant challenge for bomb hunters.
As the sweat begin to trickle into his eyes, Woody eventually locates the device and carefully but firmly pushes the hook underneath the pressure plate. This is one of the most dangerous phases of the operation. In all probability the bomb is a straightforward pressure-plate device, but Woody is aware that it could be booby-trapped with a secondary pressure-release switch. A single sudden move could be enough to cause a detonation. With the hook safely in place, Woody stands, tucks his tools into the front of his body armour, and begins walking back down the cleared lane, unreeling a coil of rope behind him. Boonie is waiting at the front of the Warrior, ready to help in the extraction of the device. The pair have carried out the same procedure more than thirty times and now they move into position, Woody in front, Boonie behind, grabbing the thin rope between them without the need for a single word. After three powerful tugs the pressure plate is pulled clear. The two men silently stare into the distance, waiting for an explosion which never comes.
Woody returns once again down the safe lane to retrieve the pressure plate and to position a fist-sized lump of military-grade plastic explosive next to the yellow palm-oil container containing the main charge.
‘It was a 20 kg device, or thereabouts,’ he says. His eyes are red with sweat and dust. ‘It was designed to take out a vehicle – it would easily take the track off a Warrior and if you were in a Mastiff you would know about it. If someone had stepped on it, they would have been killed. We are basically big bags of water, so you can imagine what would happen if you stepped on 20 kg of explosive.’ He holds up the pressure plate by a wire in the same way that a fisherman might show off a prize catch. The pressure plate is about a foot long and an inch thick, with two white plastic wires at one end. ‘That’s what will do the damage – it’s a ball-bearing pressure plate – works in the same way as a conventional pressure plate but the circuit is made by a ball bearing and a wire – simple but deadly.’
Although Woody managed to find the bomb and the pressure plate, he hasn’t been able to locate the power pack and he appears slightly deflated. Every ATO likes to recover as much of a bomb as possible – it’s all part of their individual battle against the Taliban bomb makers. There is always the chance that a piece of forensic intelligence may be obtained from a power source or a pressure plate, so no bomb hunter feels entirely satisfied unless he manages to locate the whole device.
‘I can’t for the life of me find the power pack,’ says Woody, frustration written all over his face. ‘It may not actually be there, of course, but the ground is so hard it’s difficult to tell. But I absolutely hate it when I can’t find something. I feel as though the Taliban have got something over on me. I see it as all part of winning individual battles and if we all win our individual battles, then we will be OK and make it back. The bottom line is that the device may not have had a power pack attached. The bomb may have been placed there some time ago and the insurgents could have been planning to attach the power supply some time in the future. Who knows?’
Boonie prepares to blow the main charge. Twenty kilos of home-made explosive is a big bomb, and although we are all about 100 metres from the device everyone gets into cover either inside the vehicles or standing in their lee. ‘Standby, firing,’ shouts Boonie, and seconds later there is an earth-shaking boom. Lumps of earth rain down upon us and the front of the convoy is engulfed in a plume of choking brown dust.
Woody goes forward with Arianne to check that all of the HME has gone. There’s nothing left apart from a huge hole on the side of the road. The WIS photographs the site of the devices and the surrounding countryside. She wants to build up a picture of why the Taliban bomb team chose this particular spot. She and other intelligence staff in the CIED Task Force will then try to answer a number of questions. Are there Taliban sympathizers in the area? Can the bomb location be easily monitored? Is the route being used too frequently by NATO forces? All the intelligence gleaned will be fed into a database which one day, when enough information has been gathered, may lead to the identity of the bomber. With the bomb cleared, there is a tangible decrease in tension among the members of Brimstone 42. In their eyes they are no longer rookies. After six months’ intensive training they have just completed their first mission and everyone is relieved that it went smoothly.
‘That’s the first one under the belt,’ says Simon. ‘The lads won’t be as nervous as this now – they’ve broken the fear aspect. This is something we can build on. We were probably a lot slower than what Woody is used to, but we will improve and the lads will get quicker. From here on out we’ve got to maintain this level of professionalism, remain switched on for the next six months, remember all of what we learned in our training, and make sure that we all return home in six months’ time.’
The job of the bomb hunters for this particular mission is now complete, but before the Brimstone team can return to the safety of FOB Shawqat they are sent on another mission. The ANP have found several IEDs close to Patrol Base Pimon and, rather than marking and leaving themin situ for an IED team to clear, they have risked injury or death by pulling them out of the ground and bringing them into the base. Woody has been tasked with disposing of them.
PB Pimon is the home of the Right Flank company of 1st Battalion Scots Guards. The base sits high on the left shoulder of the Grenadier Guards’ area of operations, on a line which demarcates the desert from the Green Zone. It’s also an area which has been heavily laced with IEDs and is regarded as one of the most dangerous areas of the Nad-e’Ali district. There are only certain routes in and out and the Taliban have planted IEDs on all of them at one time or another.
With everyone now back in the Warriors, we move off towards Pimon. It’s less than 5 km away but we are being forced to take a more circuitous route because of the threat on some of the roads and tracks which have not been secured by either the ANA or the ANP.
As soon as the large armoured door on the back of our Warrior closes, the temperature again begins to soar. Within minutes everyone is sweating buckets. The vehicle commander offers a cursory apology. ‘Sorry about the air-con,’ he says in his thick Glaswegian tones. ‘We’ve tried asking for spare parts but there aren’t any. There’s such a shortage of working vehicles and they aren’t going to take this one off the road just because the air-con’s fucked.’
‘How do you cope when you’re on a long trip?’ asks Simon.
‘You just have to,’ replies the commander. ‘If it gets really bad we pour water over ourselves, but that’s about it. We can’t exactly stop, get out and have a breather. We had a lad who passed out with heat stroke the other day, and we nearly had to call the MERT out. Luckily we were returning to the FOB, so we went straight to the medical centre and he was carried out and put on a drip. So this will have to be fixed by the summer otherwise someone is going to end up dead.’
After we’ve been bouncing around in the back of the Warrior for a few minutes, the conversation dies away to nothing. It is simply too hot to talk. Eyes begin to close and tired faces are intermittently illuminated by shafts of sunlight piercing the dark, dusty interior. Beneath my body armour and helmet I can feel my body temperature soaring. Then, just when I think I can’t possibly take any more, we arrive at Pimon and the sense of relief is extraordinary. The electrically powered armoured door can’t open quickly enough and a blast of cool, fresh desert air quickly fills the Warrior.
‘That heat was fucking unreal,’ says Woody. ‘Absolutely insane. An hour inside one of those and you would be next to useless.’
The five of us stumble out of the rear of the Warrior, pulling our sweat-soaked body armour from our limp bodies. We all look exhausted and dishevelled and frankly not fit to do anything. I wonder how soldiers would cope if ambushed by the Taliban and forced to dismount from the vehicles after travelling inside for an hour or two. My trousers are soaked through with sweat and Simon’s face is a frightening puce colour. Woody looks as though he has stepped out from a shower, and even Mo, the terp, who comes from Kabul and is used to the harsh Helmand summers, is complaining about the heat.
‘Let’s go and find some cold water,’ says Woody, ‘and then sort out these bombs.’ PB Pimon is a massive camp, at least equal in size to FOB Shawqat, and is home to around 150 members of the Scots Guards and a detachment of Gurkhas. From the fortified sangars it is possible to view both the fertile Green Zone and the stark, brown desert, between which the camp lies. Of all the bases I have visited during numerous trip to Afghanistan since 2002, Pimon is the bleakest. Most bases are Afghan compounds which have been extended and fortified by the engineers, but Pimon seems to have been built on a vast expanse of flat land in the middle of nowhere. It is not a welcoming place and I can tell already that I will be pleased to leave. As we walk across the sun-bleached gravel I notice a lone soldier furiously working out on a punchbag. It is an almost surreal image. He is dripping with sweat and as we pass by he stops, smiles and says in a thick Scottish accent, ‘Believe me, it helps,’ then continues punching.
Woody tells Simon to get his men to clear an area outside the camp where the devices are to be blown up. He warns him that even though we are now within the confines of the camp everyone must treat the area beyond the wire as though they were inside enemy territory. ‘A few weeks ago a guy was killed walking to the ranges just outside Camp Bastion. The insurgents had been watching us beyond the wire there and probably thought, that’s an opportunity target. Maybe the troops had become a bit slack and weren’t clearing the areas properly, and the Taliban probably assumed our guard would be down because the ranges are so close to Camp Bastion – a massive base with thousands of soldiers, and let’s face it, who would think that the Taliban would have the balls to plant a device there? But after every range practice you get locals coming up to the ranges to collect the empty bullet cases and melt them down and sell the stuff.
‘Someone managed to get a device in and bury it without being seen, and from their point of view they got a result. The next morning a group of new guys go up to the range as part of their training package and someone steps on the bomb. They should have cleared all the way there and cleared their range area. Maybe they did and missed it, and maybe they didn’t. The guy who died had only been in Afghan a week – that’s not a good way to go. So make sure they don’t get too relaxed – the threat is everywhere. If it can happen in Bastion, it can happen here.’
Simon acknowledges Woody’s concern and heads off to brief the search team.
The soldier to whom Woody is referring was Lance Corporal James Hill of 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards, who was killed on 8 October 2009, just a week after he arrived in Helmand.
After meeting the base commander, Major Iain Lindsay-German of the Scots Guards, I accompany Woody to the Unexploded Ordnance, or UXO, pit just outside the main defensive Hesco wall of the base. Our small unit of four is led to a small, designated area where two yellow palm-oil containers are sitting in the dust.
‘Who brought them in?’ Woody asks one of the guardsmen.
‘The ANP, a couple of days ago. They said they found them on a track, pulled them out of the ground and brought them in. They pulled the detonators out with their hands. Can you believe it?’ says the soldier, shaking his head.
Now Woody is bent over one of the palm-oil containers, looking but not touching. He has found the hole housing the detonator and he is peering inside. ‘I don’t know why the ANP feel the need to dig these out of the ground and bring them in. They won’t listen and it’s not as though they haven’t taken casualties. They’ve had guys killed and injured, they know the risks, and they still keep doing it. We keep telling them, “Just mark them and tell us and we’ll sort them out.” Do they listen? Do they fuck.’
Woody explains that although the ANP are not yet issued with mine detectors they are very good at spotting ground sign or manage to persuade the local population to tell them where bombs have been hidden.
‘That one’s safe,’ he says, pointing to the larger of the two containers before carrying out the same forensic examination of the second bomb. Two minutes later Woody declares that both bombs are safe. He explains that the ANP disconnected the pressure plates, the detonators and the power sources when they were discovered a few days ago, but his examination was to ensure there ‘weren’t any surprises for us’.
He continues, ‘The other reason why we want the ANP to mark and avoid and then tell us is because by the time they’ve pulled them out of the ground they’ve handled the det, the pressure plate, the power source, so there is virtually no chance that we can get any forensics. Part of the problem is that the ANP are always trying to demonstrate that they are fearless and strong. We used to get the same problem with the Afghan Army but they are a much more professional outfit now and they’ve got the message. Strength and courage are really important in the Afghan culture and they think that we might question their courage if they find a bomb and leave it. Instead they pull it out of the ground, risking life and limb, and bring it in as if to say, “Look how brave I am.”’
Unfortunately for the ANP, the Taliban have noticed their propensity for perceived bravery and have started to modify basic pressure-plate devices by attaching a pressure-release switch. This is nothing sophisticated and can be as basic as the type of switch which turns on the interior light of a car. The unsuspecting ANP officer who finds the bomb will cut the power supply from the pressure plate in the belief that the bomb has been rendered safe, only for it to explode when he releases the pressure by pulling the bomb out of the ground.
Woody lifts up the larger of the two containers and says, ‘That one weighs about 20 kg. That would have been enough to take out a vehicle.’ Pointing to the other, he adds, ‘That’s got about 10 kg of HME. That would definitely kill or injure. At the very least it’s going to take your legs off and it would probably destroy a smaller vehicle. So we’ve got two bombs, one larger than the other, and we know that they were placed along the same stretch of track, so that makes you wonder what the Taliban were trying to achieve. I think they were probably trying to take out a vehicle and then get another casualty with the small device in a follow-up clearance.’
Warriors have been used elsewhere in Helmand since 2007, but they have been in this part of the province for only a matter of weeks. The Taliban are masters of observation. Whenever any new unit, piece of equipment or type of vehicle arrives in an area the local commander will almost always start a small-scale intelligence-gathering operation before attempting to carry out an attack. The Taliban will simply watch, wait, record, and then react.
Although there is some migration of Taliban tactics across Helmand, some units of insurgents can become quite insular and dislocated from the main Taliban central command. If the Taliban were a pan-Afghan cohesive force conducting mutually supporting operations across Helmand and the rest of the country, they would pose a much greater threat to NATO. But since 2006, when British troops first entered Helmand, their tactics, although often deadly, have never really moved beyond ‘shoot and scoot’.
Sitting down by the two bombs, Woody begins to explain how the Taliban are becoming increasingly sophisticated in some of their attacks. ‘One of the current concerns is that the Taliban will try and take out a Warrior – that would be a bit of a coup for them. The Warriors have only been in this part of Helmand for a few weeks and we know the Taliban are looking and watching. They have all the time in the world, so it is easy for them to put a device in with a certain amount of explosive, say 10 kg, and wait and see what effect that will have on a Warrior. The type of vehicle you have will reflect the size of the main charge the Taliban use. Taliban tactics aren’t haphazard; they may have been a bit like that a couple of years ago, but not any more. They are still basically hit-and-run but with a lot of thought behind them. They will put a 10 kg device in the road and see what happens. The next day or week another one will go in with 15 kg and then another with 20 kg, until they get the desired effect, and they will build their tactics around what happens. They’re in no rush, they have no timeframe, they are always going to be here. The clock is ticking for us, not them.’
Woody is ready to dispose of the two bombs but the search team have failed to materialize. I can sense his frustration but he keeps his thoughts private. Rather than wait for the searchers to turn up, Woody decides to reconnoitre an area 200 metres to the front of the base, in what is effectively no man’s land. I watch him disappear into the distance, clearing the ground in front of his feet with the Vallon. One of the Scots Guardsmen with our team senses my concern for Woody and assures me that he is pretty safe. ‘He will be covered by the sangar and the boys up there have got a .50-cal HMG and a 7.62-mm GPMG and a sniper.’
Ten minutes later Woody returns to the perimeter wall. ‘Right, I’ve found a site – it’s about 200 metres north from here. Boonie, I’ll need a couple of sticks of PE and we’ll blow the two bombs together. Any sign of the search team?’
‘Haven’t seen them,’ replies Boonie.
In the world of IED disposal it is vital that rules and procedures are followed to the letter and that when an order is given it is acted on. Every member of the IEDD and search teams must have an absolute understanding of their role and that of every member of the team. Woody likes to run a relaxed ship but that method of leadership will only work if everyone toes the line. ‘OK,’ he says to no one in particular, ‘there are going to have to be words.’
Twenty minutes later Woody returns and tells Boonie that the bombs are primed and ready to be blown. He has placed a couple of sticks of military-grade plastic explosive between the two containers and attached a detonator to a length of det cord which is connected to the PE. Woody hands Boonie a length of wire the end of which is connected to the detonator 200 metres in the distance. Our small party moves back inside the camp and takes cover behind an 8 ft Hesco wall.
‘Get ready for a loud bang,’ says Woody, now smiling again. Boonie shouts, ‘Controlled explosion in figures two,’ then repeats the warning. Two minutes later he presses a black button on his green firing box and, almost instantaneously, a massive explosion fills the air around us. I can feel the force of the blast in the pit of my stomach and within a few seconds pieces of the desert which have been sucked into a large mushroom cloud begin to shower down on us. The massive explosion was caused by just 30 kg of home-made explosive and it seems almost impossible that anything, apart from the largest and most heavily armoured tank, would escape either total destruction or severe damage. The effect on a human body would be devastating. ‘If you stepped on something that big you would be vaporized,’ says Woody. ‘You would be literally blown to pieces, but the pieces would be very small. There wouldn’t really be anything left to send home.’
It almost defies belief that the Taliban can make something so devastating with items that can be found on practically every farm in Helmand. Although ammonium-nitrate fertilizers were banned by President Hamid Karzai in February 2010, it is estimated that there are hundreds of thousands of tons of the material in circulation in Afghanistan. More is smuggled across the border from Pakistan and Iran every day and it is estimated that it will take years before supplies in circulation are exhausted. It strikes me that banning ammonium-nitrate-based fertilizers is nothing more than a cosmetic act. In Northern Ireland they were banned from the early 1980s and the Troubles still rumbled on for another decade, with fertilizers still forming part of the main ingredient of the IRA’s home-made bombs.
With the bombs cleared it’s time to return to Shawqat. Everyone is looking forward to a rest and a shower, but then a message comes over the radio during the journey back that another IED has been found on the same route which Woody cleared a few hours earlier. ‘It’s going to be a long day,’ is his only response as he closes his eyes and falls into a deep but short-lived sleep.
Within half an hour our convoy has returned to the area where today’s operation began several hours earlier. I’m reminded of the film Groundhog Day. Standing in the doorway is the silhouetted figure of a 6 ft 2 in. Scots Guards sergeant. He greets Woody with a firm handshake and ready smile. ‘Back already,’ he says. ‘Missed it too much,’ replies Woody, who manages to conjure up a smile even though he is exhausted.
The sergeant immediately emabrks on a faultless but speedy briefing on how the suspected device was discovered. ‘We were doing a route clearance from Yellow 21, which is about 500 metres to our rear. It was a routine task and we were clearing using our normal drills. It was quite a lengthy task. We had a four-man barma team and two hedgerow men to cover the outside and two covering the inside of the road. The Vallon men interlocked their arcs to make sure the whole route was being covered. As we advanced up this road, Guardsman Warren Forrest got a high reading on his Vallon. He went straight into his confirmation drills. He walked back, drew a line in the sand, and then started his confirmation from there. It was a very brave thing for a young guardsman to do. He then started digging to try and confirm that there was a device. But the ground was very hard. We couldn’t get a confirmation. That’s about it.’
The soldier, a guardsman – the most junior rank in the Brigade of Guards – appears from behind the Warrior seconds after the sergeant calls for him. He looks too young to be in the Army.
‘Hello, mate, I’m Woody, the ATO. Your sergeant says that you think you found something up the road,’ says Woody. ‘Can you tell me exactly what happened and what you saw? But tell me your name first.’
‘I’m Warren. We were pushing along the track,’ the soldier replies in a strong Glaswegian accent. ‘I had got about 100 metres from here and I got a tone on the Vallon. I checked the Vallon and then shouted, stop. Marked the site and told the sergeant what I had found. It was a very similar tone to one I got before, a few days ago, when I found another PP IED.’
Guardsman Forrest then takes Woody to the bomb’s location, around 100 metres forward of our position. When Woody returns a few minutes later he is not convinced that the soldier has found an IED.
‘If I was a betting man I would bet that it’s just a piece of metal in the ground,’ says Woody, rubbing his chin. ‘The ground feels rock solid, so the easiest and safest thing to do is break up the ground with some PE and then go and have a look. I’ve got a couple of pounds of PE I could use, but that might be a bit much. The idea is to blow up the ground rather than make the device function. If there is something there and it goes off when I blow up the ground, I’ll be able to tell from the explosion. There is a big difference between a piece of PE and a 10 kg device. I’m going to try and carry out a further confirmation myself, but if I can’t then I will use some PE. There is no ground sign, so if there is anything there it was buried a long time ago. I’m going to try and locate it with the hand-held detector and place the PE by the side of it.’
With the poppy harvest just a few weeks away, the Taliban have been placing IEDs in poppy fields in the hope that they will deter the ANP from destroying the crop. It is a tactic which is only partially successful. Woody explains that the Taliban will also hide bombs in trees which are effectively improvised claymores designed to decapitate soldiers, or bury them in the walls either side of alleyways. ‘They will put an IED anywhere to try and catch you out – not just in the ground – so you have to think three-dimensionally.’
Just before Woody ‘goes down the road’ for the second time, several soldiers standing on one of the Warriors begin shouting aggressively. A civilian motorcyclist with a pillion passenger is rapidly approaching. One of the soldiers immediately shouts, ‘Boss, miniflare’ to his platoon commander in the vehicle to our rear. The platoon commander fires a red flare and the interpreters begin shouting at the motorcyclist to stop. It is a moment of heightened tension. If the civilian fails to stop, warning shots will be fired, if time allows, otherwise the soldiers will resort to lethal force. Suicide bombers have used motorcycles to target and kill several British soldiers in the past few months and no one is prepared to take the risk. I look round and can immediately see about a dozen grim-faced soldiers, fingers on triggers, ready to let rip at the motorcyclist and his burkha-wearing passenger if they fail to stop. Fortunately the civilian has taken heed and slowly comes to a halt with a look of bemusement on his face. I wonder if he realizes how close he has just come to being shot dead.
As we wait for Woody to return, swallows are swooping above our heads and two soldiers discuss the merits of having a dog with young children. ‘I might get one for the wee nipper when I get back. He’ll love it. He’ll think Christmas has come early,’ says one. ‘A lot of work, though,’ says the other. ‘Yeah, I know, but worth it just to see the look on the young lad’s face when you walk in with a wee puppy in your arms and say, “Here’s your doggy, son.”’
Their reflections on life back in the UK are interrupted by Woody, who tells the crouching soldiers that an explosion is imminent. ‘Take cover,’ shouts Boonie. ‘Controlled explosion is about to take place. Everyone happy?’ he asks, before shouting, ‘Standby, firing!’ A loud bang follows, but it’s PE and not Taliban explosive which has detonated.
Woody returns to the site of the detonation and carefully searches through the broken hard mud – there is no device. The Vallon’s alarm was reacting to some discarded pieces of metal, as he suspected.
When he comes back he looks fatigued and has a wry grin on his face. ‘There was nothing there, just a few bits of metal in the ground. I don’t blame the soldiers, they are just following the procedures, and it’s right that they do, but every time I have been called out on a double tone there has been nothing there. It’s slightly frustrating but I can understand why I have been called in. The soldiers can’t get into the ground to confirm the presence of a device because it is too hard and they can’t mark and avoid because they are here to clear this route. It’s just one of those things. But if you don’t have overwatch on a route, then two days after you clear the devices the Taliban will put them back in the ground. We should only clear routes that are going to be overwatched, otherwise the soldiers should use alternative routes. I’m not being precious but we are a pretty rare asset out here and a little bit more thought should go into how we are used. We are not here to clear every single device – just the ones that are either a risk to us or preventing movement of our forces. The Taliban want to get you bogged down clearing everything and sometimes I think we are falling into that trap.’
As we walk back to the Warrior for our journey back to FOB Shawqat, the sense of achievement among the soldiers is obvious. Smiles, which have been absent for a large part of the day, suddenly emerge on relaxed faces. Brimstone 42 were confronted by the first of the many challenges that will dominate every day of their lives for the next six months and they have had the best of all possible starts.
‘The lads did well. It was quite slow at the beginning, which is what you would expect and want really, because the last thing you would want is for the team to rush the job, but on the whole I’m pleased. I think we’ll make a good team,’ says Woody as we walk back to our Warrior. By the time we arrive back at FOB Shawqat, most of the soldiers are too tired to talk. Weapons are unloaded in the firing bay and the search and IEDD teams silently disperse in the hope of a good night’s sleep in preparation for another mission tomorrow.
It’s 8 a.m. the following morning. Woody had been hoping for a slack day to sort out some personal administration and catch up on some report-writing, but it’s not to be. Over the past few weeks members of the ANP have been arriving at the gates of the compound belonging to the Nad-e’Ali district governor, Habiullah Khan, with a wide variety of unstable and highly dangerous unexploded munitions, such as RPGs, mortar bombs and artillery shells. These explosives which have failed to function are called ‘blinds’ by the British troops. Some of the munitions have been used recently against the British by the Taliban, while others are believed to be remnants of the Soviet invasion. Woody has been tasked to ‘dispose’ of them. It is a routine job both he and Boonie could do without.
Woody, Boonie, the Intelligence Officer of the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment, which will be relieving the Grenadier Guards in the next few weeks, and a member of the Weapons Intelligence Section rendezvous at the ANP headquarters with Wali Mohammed, the regional head of the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan equivalent of MI5. Wali Mohammed is a shrewd character with sharp eyes and a ready smile. It is said that he has connections with everyone who matters, including the Taliban, and little happens in Helmand without his knowledge. For this former Mujahideen commander, the AK-47 and the RPG used to be the weapons of choice, but these days his battles are fought using a pair of mobile phones. I have met him many times and he’s is always polite and warm. But what you see with Wali is certainly not what you get. Governor Habiullah Khan might be the official head of the Nad-e’Ali district, but I have always been left with the feeling that Wali is the real power behind the throne.
Wali tells Woody that all of the bombs and main charges were found by the ANP in the area of Shin Kalay, a small hamlet with a strong Taliban presence a few kilometres from FOB Shawqat. We are led outside to a haul of artillery shells, rockets, mortar rounds and IED main charges. All of the munitions have been fired and are in a relatively unstable state. One of the ANP officers moves over to the pile, picks up an RPG warhead, studies it, then drops it casually on the ground, much to everyone’s alarm. Back in the UK, unexploded ordnance would never be treated with such disdain. Out of the corner of my eye I can see the intelligence officer backing away with a look of sheer terror on his face. Woody immediately tells the interpreter to warn the ANP officer to treat the blinds with a little more respect.
I ask Boonie whether the blinds are safe. ‘They should be, but you shouldn’t be chucking them around like that,’ he tells me. Woody smiles at me and adds, ‘Unnerving, isn’t it?’ The hairs on the back of my neck begin to rise.
Speaking through the interpreter, Woody patiently tells Wali Mohammed about the danger of soldiers bringing in blinds and the need to treat them safely. ‘These are very dangerous items and could explode if not treated correctly. Your men should be told that these need to be handled with care. They don’t always have to bring them in. They could leave them where they are and we would go and destroy them. That is the safest way.’ Wali smiles and explains that he understands but his men have grown up in a country littered with mines and rockets and they hold no fear for them.
The blinds will be taken back to the British base and kept there securely before being taken into the desert and destroyed with a load of other unexploded ordnance, while the palm-oil containers, the main charges of the IEDs recovered by the ANP, will be destroyed in an adjacent field.
We walk to a corner of a field where there is a 10-ft-deep irrigation ditch running the length of the field, about 600 metres from the camp perimeter. The two large palm-oil containers each hold around 10 kg of HME. Woody prepares the plastic explosive which will be used to detonate the HME and begins moulding it into a ball. Rather than using an electric detonator, he is using a strip of fuse wire.
‘When we light this,’ Woody tells the interpreter, pointing at the fuse wire, ‘we have two minutes to get away.’ The terp repeats the message and there is nervous laughter among the ANP. Seconds later Woody lights the fuse and we all start walking across the field at a brisk pace, occasionally looking back over our shoulder. Woody stops walking and begins to give a countdown – thirty seconds, twenty seconds, ten seconds – and, right on queue, detonation, the ground in the distance rising up like a scene from the First World War.
‘That would ruin your day if it went off underneath you,’ he says. Non-survivable on foot, it would blow a Jackal in two and would do serious damage to a Mastiff, so it’s pretty nasty stuff.