Bomb Hunters: In Afghanistan With Britain's Elite Bomb Disposal Unit (16 page)

‘This is the best job I’ve had in the Army,’ the corporal tells me. ‘I’m on my own working with these guys. We share the same tent, and eat the same rations. I try to teach them a bit of English and they try to teach me a bit of Pashto, which is spoken by Pashtuns in the south of Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, but I always have an interpreter with me. They are really up for it. Every commander wants a Tiger Team in his AO [area of operations] because they have a unique skill set. They can spot things that we wouldn’t see or would take us months to learn. I’ve been out with them when they have seen someone on a motorbike and just said, stop him. When we’ve checked the guy out we’ve found bomb-making equipment on him. They saw that he didn’t quite fit in and they noticed the reaction of the locals to him and that’s what they picked up on. The villages are very insular, everyone knows everyone. Sometimes you just have one long extended family and the locals will immediately notice someone new. It’s the sort of thing we might be able to do if we spent two years here, but we don’t. They [Tiger Teams] are one of the real success stories of what we are doing out here.’

As we chat, the soldiers return from viewing the bridge which had been destroyed by the Taliban a few days earlier. One of the officers explains that the Taliban were trying to extort money from one of the local farmers, who refused to pay. ‘They blew up the bridge which we built a couple of months ago. The bridge helped him get across his land and the improvements we made to the banks helped with irrigation. What the farmers really want here is better irrigation so they can grow crops and make money. But the Taliban want their cut. This farmer refused to pay up, so they blew up the bridge. We can fix it but it’s likely to happen again unless we get rid of the Taliban or at least police the area properly.’

By the time we return to the PB I feel exhausted. We probably walked no more than 3–4 km but the heat and the constant threat of attack were an extra burden.

Within the hour the convoy is on the road again for an overnight stop at PB Tapa Parang, in the district of Basharan, in the north-west of the district. By the time we arrive it’s dark but I can still make out some of the features and hear the sound of the river at the bottom of the hill on which the base is located. Once again I’m struck by the stunning natural beauty of the landscape and I remain convinced that if Afghanistan sorted out its act it could make a fortune from tourism.

A group of soldiers, part of the commanding officer’s tactical headquarters, who are providing the security for the trip, are cooking Army rations over a small fire in the corner of the compound. I walk over with a foil sachet of pasta in tomato sauce and ask if I can share their hot water.

One of the group is an SAS sergeant – the special forces liaison officer attached to the battlegroup whom I met earlier on the patrol. ‘Of course, mate, fill your boots. Want one of these?’ he says and offers me an Army biscuit. The soldiers are chuntering about leave and R&R. They seem to be split over whether a two-week break in a six-month tour is worth it. I dunk my silver sachet in the boiling water and the conversation reignites.

‘By the time you get home and get your head sorted, it’s time to come back. And what have you done? Spent two weeks on the piss with your mates trying to forget about this fucking place and answering questions from tossers who want to know what it’s like to fucking kill someone. I’d rather do six months straight and get a bigger bonus at the end.’ The soldier who says this looks as if he is barely in his twenties but this is his second time in Afghanistan. The bonus he mentions is the tax-free operational bonus all troops serving in Afghanistan receive, irrespective of rank, at the end of their tour.

The soldier continues, ‘R&R just fucks you up even more. Can any of you honestly say that you felt better afterwards? By the time it’s over you’re in a shit state because all you’ve done is cane it for the last two weeks.’

The SAS sergeant laughs as he says, ‘You’re obviously not married, mate. Wait till you’re married and have kids. That’s when you’ll find that R&R is important.’ Then he turns to me. ‘You’ll get two differing opinions. Married blokes want R&R, especially if they have kids. In the US Army they get two weeks a year and the divorce rate is going through the roof. In SF [special forces] the divorce rate is already pretty high. Young blokes, guys who are single, are willing to stag on for the full six months, but they want a bigger bonus at the end. Some blokes would do nine months if the tours came around less often – once every three years – but nine months is a big lick out.’

I ask the group whether a six-month tour is too long. ‘Two weeks is too fucking long in this shithole, mate,’ says one of the soldiers, and the group grumbles in agreement. ‘Afghan is a fucked-up dump and nothing we do is going to change anything.’ I ask, ‘Don’t you think things have improved since you were last here?’ ‘Yeah, I suppose it’s quietened down a bit – it couldn’t have been much worse.’

Another of the group disagrees. ‘Come on, it’s a lot quieter now than it was before Moshtarak. Then we were being hit about ten times a day.’

‘Most of your commanders say this is what young soldiers join up for,’ I say. ‘Yeah, but you can have too much of a good thing,’ someone says. ‘Everyone wants to get involved in a firefight when you first come out but when it’s happening every day you start to wonder how long your luck will last. And then there are the fucking IEDs – they’re everywhere, man. It’s like you can’t fucking move without hitting one.’

As we chat, one of the men begins to complain about the so-called REMFS – rear-echelon motherfuckers – back in Camp Bastion. These are guys who never leave the camp apart from going on R&R and returning home. Their role is to support the troops in the field but some front-line soldiers find it difficult to stomach the knowledge that those who remain on the base are entitled to the same medal and the same tax-free bonus as the soldiers who have to go out and fight the Taliban every day.

Then we start to talk about kit, which by and large the soldiers think is pretty good. ‘When I first went to Iraq,’ says a sergeant, ‘the body armour was pants. All you had was this small plate protecting your heart and the blokes used to say, “The Iraqis will have to be a good shot to hit that.” But this stuff is shit hot. We’re getting new kit all the time – but that won’t stop the blokes buying their own. A soldier will always want his personal kit, especially when you’re on an op like this.’ The sergeant’s opinion is more or less shared by everyone else. The SAS sergeant then adds, ‘If you really want good kit, lad, you should join the SF – we get what we want.’ ‘Yeah, the fucking SAS – more pay, best kit and you’re allowed to grow your hair long. Bunch of cowboys,’ says someone. That brings the response, ‘Right, next one who says the SAS are a bunch of cowboys gets it right between the eyes,’ and everyone falls about laughing.

The soldier who served with the Grenadier Guards in Helmand in 2007 says, ‘The vehicles we had in 2007 were shite, especially the Snatch – great for Northern Ireland, not so good for Helmand.’ A Snatch usually carries four soldiers – the driver and commander plus two more who can provide top cover through a hatch in the roof. The vehicle made its way into the public’s consciousness during the Iraq War, when the insurgency began to derail any attempt to undertake reconstruction in southern Iraq. The Army needed a versatile, manoeuvrable patrol vehicle, and the Snatch fitted the bill. It was regarded as a success until it began to be targeted by insurgents armed with Iranian-built improvised roadside bombs. Knowing its deficiencies, senior officers shamefully allowed the Snatch to resurface in Helmand, where it was again being used on operations until it was effectively withdrawn from service in 2008 after four soldiers – Corporal Sarah Bryant, Corporal Sean Reeve, and SAS reservists Lance Corporal Richard Larkin and Trooper Paul Stout – were killed when their Snatch was destroyed by an IED.

‘I’d refuse to go in a Snatch now,’ said one of the younger soldiers. ‘We all know the risks in Afghan and we’re all prepared to take them, but I wouldn’t want to travel in a vehicle which won’t offer any protection if you get blown up. You know that if you get hit when you’re in a Snatch you’re dead.’

‘There’s no such thing as a bomb-proof vehicle,’ adds another soldier, ‘and if there was you would still have to get out of it at some stage. Even the Mastiff has been taken out and blokes have been injured. Terry [Taliban] will take one out one day, it’s just a matter of time, it’s just about building a bomb big enough. In Iraq the Sunni managed to blow up US Abrams tanks. If you can blow up an Abrams, you can blow up anything.’

The conversation eventually peters out and one by one the soldiers go off to sleep, like me, beneath a pitch-black desert sky twinkling with millions of stars. A full night’s sleep is impossible. The ANA soldiers are jumpy and believe they have seen gunmen moving through the fields which ring the camp. Every hour or so a parachute flare is fired into the air, an event which is usually a precursor to a gun battle, but not tonight.

By 8.30 the following morning we are back in Shawqat and I meet up with Staff Sergeant Gareth ‘Woody’ Wood, who is an ATO. Woody has just returned from a four-day clearance operation in Chah-e-Anjir, the area from where I have just returned. He is exhausted and in need of a shower and a good night’s sleep but he greets me with a smile.

‘We’re going to do some bomb-hunting tomorrow,’ he says to me. ‘Coming along?’

‘Can’t wait,’ I reply, and I’m genuinely excited.

‘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.’