Bomb Hunters: In Afghanistan With Britain's Elite Bomb Disposal Unit (22 page)

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.

‘I was almost killed the other day.’

Staff Sergeant Gareth Wood, ATO, 11 EOD Regiment, Royal Logistic Corps, serving with JFEOD Group

‘If you’re lucky, and I mean really lucky, you will leave Helmand with your team intact – no one killed or injured, no amputees. But you know you are going to get blown up, you know you are going to get shot at. You will have close shaves and you just have to hope that luck is on your side. But there are only so many rolls of the dice you can have before you get a double six. We all know that, but we train ourselves not to dwell on what might happen. I suppose you could say that we are living in denial but I don’t think there is any other way of getting through Afghan other than to have that sort of mentality.’

Woody and I are chatting over a cup of Army tea in one of the two steel-reinforced bunkers that serve as the canteen for the 150 soldiers operating from FOB Shawqat, the main headquarters of the Grenadier Guards battlegroup, to which Woody and his team are currently attached. It’s around 8 p.m. and the soldiers have finished their evening meal, a chicken curry followed by semi-frozen Black Forest Gateau, all washed down with an orange-coloured, sickly sweet squash. Curry is an Army staple – back in Camp Bastion the food halls where the soldiers eat offer it as a menu choice every day – but in Shawqat curry is a rarity and always a crowd-puller. It’s comfort food, it reminds the soldiers of home.

The bunker is lit by a series of low-hanging fluorescent lights emitting a dull-greenish hue. On one wall is an electric fly-catcher which periodically spits out a series of cracks every time a fly is zapped. The previous evening soldiers were betting on how many flies would be killed in one, five and ten minutes.

A 50-in. flat-screen TV fills a wall at one end of the building where three young soldiers sit engrossed in
The Hurt Locker
. It’s one of the many oddities of life in Helmand that many soldiers appear to relax by watching war films or playing violent computer games.

Woody looks over his shoulder and stares at the TV for a few seconds. Then he turns to me and a wide, toothy grin creeps across his face. ‘Hollywood,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘You just knew they weren’t going to get it right. You wouldn’t last five minutes if you behaved like that out here.’

I’ve now been with Woody and his team for over a week. I’ve seen him pull bombs from the ground after hours of toil. I’ve seen him tense, frustrated, angry and relieved, and I’ve listened to him talk longingly of his wife and 3-year-old twin daughters. But with so much to live for and so much to lose, I still can’t quite understand why Woody is a bomb hunter. Helmand province, the largest in Afghanistan, is without doubt currently the most dangerous place on the planet. Woody knows the risks. He is horribly aware that a simple mistake, a momentary lapse in concentration, can spell disaster. He is no stranger to death. One of his best friends, Staff Sergeant Olaf Schmid, was killed in Helmand while Woody was completing his High Threat course.

Woody’s face is friendly and burnished to a rusty light brown by the hundreds of hours he has spent exposed to the desert sun. His eyes are quick and alert and his face carries a happy smile. The dirt and sweat have been washed away but the fatigue of war has taken its toll. His cheeks are hollow, he admits to often being too exhausted to eat after a particularly difficult job, and, like most of the ATOs operating in Helmand, he has acquired dark rings beneath his eyes.

To date Woody’s team have been blown up twice and he can’t remember exactly how many times they have come under fire since they arrived in January 2010. He thinks, though he can’t be certain, that he and his team have disposed of something like thirty bombs. But Woody tries not to count. I have never met a soldier who is not superstitious, and Woody is no different. Staff Sergeant Olaf Schmid and Captain Dan Read both counted the number of bombs they defused, and both are dead, Woody tells me. He is now convinced that counting bombs brings bad luck.

Woody’s first brush with death occurred when he was part of the High Readiness Force in early March 2010. His team were flown by helicopter into FOB Inkerman to clear two recently discovered IEDs. The base was named after the Inkerman Company of the Grenadier Guards, under whose watch it was established in June 2007. It sits right on the edge of the fertile green zone and was built to interdict Taliban movement towards Sangin district centre. At the time the base held the dubious distinction of being one of the most attacked in Helmand. I have been embedded in Inkerman twice before, in 2007 with 1st Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment and in 2008 with 2nd Battalion Parachute Regiment, and on both occasions the base came under Taliban attack.

The IED threat in the Sangin area is so high that ATOs are only sent on attachment to the resident battlegroup after they have completed at least two months in Helmand. The same rules, however, do not apply to the HRF who fly in, do the job, and fly out.

For bomb hunter callsigns Brimstone 32 and 45, the high-risk search team, the mission, on paper at least, appeared to be relatively routine. Two bombs had been located in the area, a pressure-plate device on Route 611, the main transit link between FOB Inkerman and Sangin district centre, some 8 km to the south, and one closer to the base.

‘We were on HRF and were choppered into Inkerman the night before,’ recalls Woody, between sips of hot, sweet tea. ‘We were briefed on the task – it was basically a clearance op. We worked out our plan and we were all happy – well, as happy as you can be in Sangin.’

The bomb hunters left at first light in a convoy of Mastiffs supported by soldiers under the command of Company Sergeant Major Pat Hyde of A Company, 4 Rifles, a man who had developed the reputation of being a bomb magnet after having been blown up at least twelve times in five months.

Woody continues, ‘We got up in the morning at first light and headed south down Route 611 towards Sangin, where the first job was. The plan was to deal with that bomb, then return to the one closer to Inkerman and deal with that. But no job in Sangin is ever what you think it is going to be. We had been told that the first bomb was effectively a pressure-plate device but when we got there we discovered that there was a pressure plate and also a command wire linked to the bomb. Since the device was first discovered the Taliban had come in and changed it. It seems they had been monitoring the area and had obviously seen that it had been discovered. Once that had happened they knew that it would have to be cleared. It was on the 611, so it couldn’t be ignored. And the only people who clear bombs are ATOs. The route is overlooked by a number of patrol bases, so the enemy shouldn’t have been able to get anywhere near it, but somehow they did. The Taliban are pretty cheeky in Sangin.

‘The main charge was an anti-tank mine and I think they had basically modified the device so that it could be detonated by command pull or by pressure. I think the idea behind the command wire was the hope that they might get a kill when a soldier made an approach during the confirmation.’

Despite the complication of the double trigger, Woody and his team were able to deal with the device relatively quickly. The soldiers knew the threat was high and that the risk of attack was very real, so no one wanted to hang around a minute longer than necessary. The isolation searches had to be quick but thorough. By late morning the troops were heading back towards Inkerman to complete the second and final task.

Woody explains, ‘We identified the area where the second device was buried – the soldiers from the Rifles had pinpointed it. The Mastiffs secured the area and we began clearing it. After the ICP was secured, the search team went out and began the isolation, a wide search of the area around the location of the bomb to ensure it was free from command wires.’

Above the ICP was a small outcrop on which sat an old, abandoned compound. Locals had recently been digging for rock in the area, possibly for use on their own homes. While the troops were preparing for the next stage of the mission they noticed a young boy, aged around 10, with a dirty face and matted hair, watching them closely. The soldiers waved and the boy, smiling, waved back.

A few of the troops shouted,
‘As-Salaam Alaikum’,
the traditional Pashto greeting, which translates as ‘God be with you’ but also serves as a simple ‘hello’. The boy’s face lit up and he gleefully shouted back, ‘Hello, soldier.’ Everyone laughed and relaxed. The boy’s presence was, on the face of it, reassuring. But in Sangin nothing is quite what it might at first seem, and many soldiers believe the Taliban operate there with the sympathy and support of the local population.

‘I wasn’t really taking much notice,’ says Woody. ‘We’d just come back in off the isolation and people were sorting their kit out, dropping their bags, and I was concentrating on what I was going to do next, which was the first approach – going down the road. I was in my zone and the security of the area was the responsibility of the infantry.’

Woody and Kev, the RESA, were discussing the best line of approach, while some of the search team began to relax and light up cigarettes. Richie, the lead searcher, was folding the stock of his Vallon when the ridge line above them erupted and the ICP was hit by a volley of rocks and shrapnel. Punched by the blast, Richie fell to the ground holding his groin as a large plume of dust and smoke enveloped the soldiers. ‘Contact IED. Wait, out,’ was frantically dispatched over the radio as the sound of thunder echoed around the valley. ‘It was an almighty explosion, a fucking great bang,’ recalls Woody, now more animated than he had been earlier. ‘We were all showered with rocks and shit. It was really close, you could feel the shock wave. The detonation was about 30 metres away, and that’s pretty close. Your ears are ringing, your nose is running, there’s dust in your eyes, and you’re wondering who’s been hit. I can smile about it now, but at the time you’re thinking, what the bloody hell was that?’

Richie was rolling around on the ground, his knees bent up to his chest, shouting, ‘Shit, shit, shit,’ still unsure how badly he’d been injured. Sapper Dan Taylor-Allen ran over, grabbed Richie and asked him if he was hit. ‘In the nuts, man,’ said Richie. ‘I’ve been hit in the fucking nuts.’

Dan was joined by other members of the team, who told Richie to stop moving and quickly examined him. A wound in the groin from a piece of shrapnel can rupture the femoral artery and cause death within minutes. But whatever had hit Richie had not broken the skin: it had just given him one hell of a painful whack in the testicles. As they searched through his trousers they discovered the tip of a .50-cal bullet.

‘Initially we didn’t have a clue what had happened. We were all pretty shaken up. We called in the contact but we didn’t want to move up to the high ground because the likelihood was that we would be hit by the Taliban. Although we were pretty shaken up we still had a bomb to pull out of the ground. So there was nothing else to do but to push on with the job.’

Woody continues, ‘From the intelligence we gained afterwards we think that the Taliban had dicked us as we came into the area and while we were doing the isolation clearance word got back to the local Taliban. Two guys were seen in the area on a motorbike and we think they set an improvised claymore mine – which was basically a lump of explosive with lots of pieces of metal in there – like the .50-cal bullet tip which hit Richie. They set the device up – it would have been a compound pull or a command wire – gave the wire to the boy, told him to pull the wire when they disappeared down the road, and fucked off. They may have given him a few dollars or something, I suppose, as a bit of an incentive – that or threatened to kill his family. So the lad, who a few minutes earlier had been smiling and waving at us, pulls the wire and bang – we get blown up. If it had been 10 metres closer we would have taken some casualties. That’s the sort of shit that can happen in Afghan.’

Intelligence obtained later suggested that the Taliban had probably been monitoring the progress of the bomb hunters from the moment they left FOB Inkerman several hours earlier by using the well-established ‘dicking screen’. It’s almost certain that the bomb used against the patrol had been constructed some days or possibly weeks earlier but had been reconfigured to attack an opportunity target. Woody explains, ‘Command wires are pretty basic but very effective. The bomber just waits for a target and then touches the end of a wire against a battery and bang. The bomber can be over the other side of a wall from a bomb, or 100 metres away. The command pull is also pretty effective too. The command pull is generally a bit of string which will go to a command pull switch, generally a drinks bottle of some sort with a bare wire loop inside so there are two wires looped over each other on the insulated part and when you pull them they move to the uninsulated part, the circuit is completed, and the device functions. That device was either a command wire or compound pull.

‘There was no time to think about what might have been, so instead of shitting ourselves we all had a good laugh. We couldn’t believe that it was a child that did it. We were only waving at him a minute earlier – little bastard tried to take me out. So we went and searched down and found the device, which was a command-pull IED, and we dealt with that. It was a couple of anti-tank mines, so about 10–15 kg of explosive. We sorted that out and then went back to Inkerman – and that’s a fairly normal day out in Sangin.’

I suggest to Woody that having just been blown up is probably not the best preparation for defusing a bomb. ‘Wouldn’t it have been safer to call in another team, given that you were all probably shaken up?’ I ask.