Bomb Hunters: In Afghanistan With Britain's Elite Bomb Disposal Unit (11 page)

Rob Swan and his team had been sent to Afghanistan as BCRs. The team consisted of Corporal Kelly O’Connor, at that time the only female No. 2 in Helmand, Lance Corporal Sebastian Aprea, 24, the specialist electronics operator, and Ranger Charlie Clark, 27, a reservist serving with the London Regiment (TA) who in civilian life was a tree surgeon but in Helmand was the infantry escort and therefore responsible for covering Captain Swan’s back while he was defusing bombs.

In the weeks before Christmas one ATO had been killed and two had been injured, one severely. Three separate attacks had reduced the CIED Task Force’s bomb-disposal capability to 30 per cent, exposing the fragility of the JFEOD Group. Replacements were urgently needed.

Rob, Kelly and Seb had all trained together on the High Threat course a few months earlier and had expected to deploy to Helmand in March 2010. But, following a run of casualties, the order came through that the team should expect to move at short notice and the three eventually flew out on 16 December 2009. Shortly after they arrived, Charlie, the fourth member of the team, turned up.

‘Being deployed as a BCR wasn’t something that really played on my mind,’ added Rob as we chatted in a rare moment of inactivity while his team relaxed while on standby for the High Readiness Force. ‘In fact coming out early was a bit of a bonus – the sooner you come out the sooner you get home, and my wife is seventeen weeks pregnant so I really want to be home in time for the birth of the baby.’

‘Yeah,’ interjects Kelly, ‘we were just keen to get out here. Better than sitting on our arses back in the UK.’ The other three members of the team all nod in agreement.

Rob joined the Army in 2003 and after leaving Sandhurst a year later was commissioned into the Royal Logistic Corps. He says he had a vague understanding of the nature of bomb disposal but it wasn’t until he was deployed to Iraq in 2005, when he was attached to the Light Dragoons battlegroup, that he became interested in joining the profession. ‘I volunteered to be an escort for an ATO who’d been tasked with defusing a device which had been taken into a police station by an Iraqi police officer who had found it on a bridge. I watched the ATO at work and I found it really intriguing, so when I returned to the UK I did a bit more research and found out about the course. As far as the RLC is concerned, it was a bit more of the pointy end of the sword, so I volunteered for the course.’

Seb, the Royal Signals specialist electronics operator, is 24 and is chatty, personable and intelligent. He studied science subjects at A-level, gaining an A and two Bs. ‘I thought about going to university but the Army seemed to be a better deal,’ he tells me with a broad, youthful smile across his face. ‘You get paid to learn and the stuff I’m learning at the moment is pretty much degree level. By the time I have finished my training I will get a Master’s – it’s all degree-level physics. So it’s the same thing as being at university except I’m being paid for it and I’m doing something beneficial for others.’

Seb, who possesses a maturity beyond his years, says he was happy to face the risks that come with being a member of a bomb-disposal team because he believes such a dangerous and demanding job will ultimately assist him in his progress within the Army. He explains, ‘This is regarded as quite a prestigious posting for my trade and usually only the top 1 or 2 per cent of each course get selected. I did pretty well in training, I joined up in March 2007, so I’ve only been in three years. This is my first posting. I went to speak to my troop warrant officer and told him I was interested in going into EOD. I knew it would be good for my career. He made the phone calls and I asked to go to Catterick because it is quite close to where I live and I would be able to see my mum. My mum is threaders at the moment, though. Every time I phone she is in tears. She worries a lot. I try and tell her I’m OK but she still worries.’

One of the most testing days of Brimstone 31’s tour took place in early March 2010 in Sangin. Taliban activity in the area was at an all-time high. Almost every patrol from one of the numerous British-occupied bases in the area was subject to some form of attack and the casualty rate was going through the roof. For most of 2009 and half of 2010 the mission in Sangin was to simply contain the Taliban, and the plan to bring security and prosperity was a slow, difficult and often bloody process. Schools were opening and there was more activity in the bazaar which ran through the centre of the town. But security for Afghan civilians had been paid for with the blood of young British soldiers, and the sacrifices being demanded of them were becoming increasingly questionable. Between October 2009 and April 2010, the 3 Rifles battlegroup, which was composed of 1,500 troops from a number of different units, suffered the worst casualties of any British unit involved in the Afghan War to date. More than thirty soldiers were killed and over 200 were injured. Battles would occur almost every day, occasionally several times a day, and the population, whose hearts and minds the British were trying to win, were often caught in the middle. Sangin remains a complex environment where the Alikozai tribesman fears murder if he shops with an Ishakzai trader. It is a society riven with tribal infighting, drugs and corruption, as well as the insurgency, and caught in the middle were the British.

The troops of A Company, 4 Rifles were warned in early 2009 that they would be needed to support the 3 Rifles battlegroup for the winter tour of October 2009 to March 2010. News that the company would be based at FOB Inkerman was met with some relief. Every soldier in the British Army was aware of Sangin’s reputation as a graveyard.

FOB Inkerman is the outermost of the many patrol bases which satellite the town of Sangin, and it sits in the edge of Route 611, around 8 km north of the town. Since it was first occupied by the Grenadier Guards in June 2007, barely a day has passed in which troops based there have not been involved in fighting. Inkerman was established with the primary function of interdicting the movement of insurgents into the town, a tactic which had met with some success. The Taliban had responded by seeding the route between Sangin and Inkerman with IEDs, making travel almost impossible for locals, the British, and anyone else.

Because resupplying the FOB via Route 611 was becoming increasingly difficult, in October 2009 A Company attempted to establish a new resupply route through the desert over a distance of about 8 km. The bomb-hunting team charged with clearing the route was led by Staff Sergeant Olaf Schmid, but it proved to be a tortuous and difficult undertaking. Within hours of leaving Inkerman they discovered a run of six IEDs. Progress almost ground to a halt as banks after banks of IEDs were encountered. The mission took eight days to complete and it was immediately clear that resupplying Inkerman via the desert was unsustainable.

Within weeks of arriving, A Company suffered one of its darkest periods when two 20-year-olds, Rifleman Philip Allen and Rifleman Samuel Bassett, were killed on 7 and 8 November respectively. Both soldiers were killed by IEDs during routine patrols in the Inkerman area. Rifleman Bassett was killed while clearing a route to resupply one of the small patrol bases in the area. He was at the front of the patrol, clearing the way with a Vallon, when he stepped on a device. The blast resulted in a double amputation, but although Bassett survived the initial blast and remained conscious throughout the casualty evacuation he later died in hospital, such was the severity of his wounds.

An American Task Force Thor route-clearance team also attempted to clear Route 611 by detonating scores of IEDs as their heavily armoured vehicles drove along the road between Sangin and Inkerman. While Task Force Thor’s vehicles managed to eradicate pressure-plate IEDs, they had no effect at all on command-wire IEDs, a fact which was discovered when a massive 150 lb bomb detonated beneath a Mastiff carrying six British troops. Everyone in the vehicle survived, but the commander, a young lieutenant, lost a foot in the blast.

Even after the route had been cleared, the Taliban soon returned and began burying even more IEDs, by locating blind spots which could not be monitored by the British and by using children to bury devices.

Brigadier James Cowan, the commander of 11 Light Brigade, and Lieutenant Colonel Nick Kitson, the commander of the 3 Rifles battlegroup, in conjunction with Major Richard Streatfield, the officer commanding A Company, decided that the only alternative was to try to secure Route 611 by occupying a series of compounds adjacent to the road. The operation was launched shortly before Christmas 2009, and by early January a total of nine compounds and patrol bases had been created.

Initially the Taliban did little. They simply watched and waited, as they had done in the past. Intelligence later emerged that they thought the British were going to create a series of bases securing the route all the way to Kajaki, some 25 km farther north. But when occupation of the compounds stopped, the insurgents attacked.

Like the IRA, the Taliban would always repeat those tactics which met with success, while immediately abandoning any practice which met with failure. Insurgent commanders would learn, adapt and improvise. The Taliban began to attack the British with improvised claymore mines, which the troops dubbed ‘party poppers’, and when these failed to make an impact 107mm Chinese rockets were fired at vehicles from a range of about 100 metres. Dummy IEDs were also used to lure bomb-hunting teams into ambush sites. In addition the Taliban began to devise ways of dropping pressure-plate IEDs into old bomb craters and quickly covering them with a thin coating of earth, and this was often done in broad daylight just metres from the PBs.

‘The Taliban were very inventive,’ said Pat Hyde, at that time the company sergeant major of A Company. ‘They were the equivalent of the South Armagh Brigade of the IRA. They would give anything a try and even resorted to using some of the old IRA tactics. They began to plant massive bombs in culverts. We had to occupy a compound to guard the culverts to prevent the Taliban from planting IEDs inside. That base, “Hotel-18”, was being attacked twenty-five times a day. Two soldiers were killed guarding that culvert and a further twelve were injured, including a triple and a double amputee.’

Taliban attacks were also becoming more adventurous and increasingly complex, with multiple phases. The insurgents’ confidence seemed to be growing daily, which perhaps indicated that they were receiving outside help. One such Taliban ambush took place in early March 2010, during a routine resupply mission, when a combat logistic patrol slowly weaved its way along a cleared path along Route 611 from Sangin, north towards FOB Inkerman.

As the convoy passed close to PB Ezeray, the Taliban were waiting. Dickers farther down the route had given them plenty of warning that an easy target was approaching. As the convoy approached, the insurgents manoeuvred a 107 mm rocket along an alley and waited for the target to show itself. When the target, a vehicle known as a Drops (Demountable Rack Offload and Pickup System), emerged, the Taliban couldn’t miss.

These vehicles lift and carry ISO containers (steel shipping containers) to bases around Helmand and form the backbone of the supply chain, but they are slow and cumbersome and make easy targets. Almost immediately the Drops burst into flames, forcing the two Gurkha soldiers to flee for their lives. The convoy pushed on to Inkerman, leaving the stricken vehicle to burn for the next thirty-six hours.

WO2 Hyde, 34, had joined the Army as a ‘junior leader’ and had been a soldier for seventeen years. He had served in Iraq, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, and previously in Kabul. He originally joined the Gloucester Regiment, which was later amalgamated into the Royal Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Wiltshire Regiment, before being merged again, this time with the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment, the Royal Green Jackets and the Light Infantry, to form the Rifles. Hyde was a seasoned operator, who thought he had seen it all until his company arrived in Helmand. He and his six-man team, callsign Hades 49, which also included two women, Corporal Hayley Wright, a Mastiff commander, and Lance Corporal Jody Hill, the team medic, were dispatched to recover the damaged Drops and bring it back to Inkerman. Despite being the most senior rank in the team, Hyde always positioned himself as top cover, manning the .50-cal. The position provided him with the best view of the area but also made him the one most vulnerable to attack. The shortage of troops within the company also meant that he only ever deployed on route missions with three troops per vehicle.

‘We had just come in off a ten-day op when we were told to go and recover the Drops,’ he recalled. ‘We were stinking. There was no time to wash, shave or change our clothes. We knew no one had been near the vehicle because it had been blinking hot and we had various sentries and sangar positions observing that area, so we felt pretty happy about it.’

As the vehicle was dragged clear, lots of strips of metal began to fall from the burnt-out hulk. Within minutes around 150 people, mostly children, descended on the area, grabbing at anything which could be carried away.

‘We recovered the Drops back to Inkerman – no dramas, everything went to plan. Once we got it back we then had to go out again on a routine resupply run. But this time we started to pick up some Icom chatter: “The tanks [as the the Taliban call Mastiffs] are coming. Get ready.” As we were driving along we were expecting a 107 mm rocket to come winging out of the alleyway at us. They had done that before and we thought that was what the Icom chatter was about. But instead of a rocket we got a double-stacked anti-tank mine.’

The mines were planted by the Taliban when the area was flooded with locals picking up pieces of scrap metal during the recovery of the Drops. In just twenty minutes, in broad daylight in an area which was under constant observation, the Taliban had managed to lay a complex multi-IED ambush. The insurgents had seen that the ground was being dug up as the vehicle was dragged away and immediately decided to exploit the situation. Instead of having to dig the bombs into the ground, they could place them in some of the welts carved out of the ground and loosely cover them with soil.