Bomb Hunters: In Afghanistan With Britain's Elite Bomb Disposal Unit (24 page)

‘Then you get some devices which may have a pressure-release switch with a pressure plate, so it can go off if you put pressure on or take pressure off. What the Taliban try and do to catch us out is put a number of pressure-plate devices down a route, so you get quite comfortable, and then they will throw a cheeky one. So you might arrive at the site and there in front of you is a pressure-plate IED. So no dramas – normal stuff. You have the pressure plate, power source and main charge, and then in parallel to the circuit there might be a pressure-release switch with a bit of rock or metal weighing it down. And this is all buried under the ground, so you move or someone moves the bit of rock to get a better working position, and bang, you’re dead.’

Woody laughs, then goes on, ‘There was this one time where I had to deal with a pressure-release device which had been in the ground for a while. It had been found by soldiers who had conveniently put loads of rocks around the device, which was their way of marking it, and you think, brilliant, now which stone has got the bomb under it? It was one of those classic situations where someone is trying to be helpful but actually making your job very difficult. I’m always aware that not every device I come across is going to be a pressure-plate, so you need to keep your wits about you. I’m not so nervous when you come across a new type of bomb. The way I look at it is, that’s another one ticked off the list. There are a lot of different devices out there, so you want to find at least one of each fairly early on. That gives you the confidence to know that you are going to be able to deal with anything you might come up against – or at least that’s what you tell yourself.’

But in bomb disposal there is never a 100 per cent guarantee of success or survival. Luck always has a part to play. Staff Sergeant Olaf Schmid, who now has almost legendary status in the EOD world, was a close friend of Woody’s. Both were men at the very top of the profession.

‘Oz was a one-off,’ says Woody. ‘I’d known him since he was an ammunition technician when he first joined the trade. He was a great laugh and a bit of an animal with a drink inside of him. He would come up and lick your face. He was a genuine soldier, he loved it, every minute.’

Like many soldiers who knew Oz Schmid, Woody was devastated when he learned of his death. The news was broken to him while he was driving from his home in Stoke to Didcot. ‘I was in the car and I got this call. It was something like, “Got some bad news for you, Woody. Oz is dead.” I was utterly stunned. I just couldn’t believe it. I got the news just before I hit this big roundabout and I kept going round and round it, thinking, this can’t be happening. I still can’t really believe that’s he’s gone. I’ve been so busy since he was killed that I’ve hardly had time to take in what’s happened and then every now and then his death hits home and you realize he’s gone for ever.

‘Oz was a good ATO, he was an assault IED operator, the same as me, so that’s an extra string to your bow, and there are not many that have got it. He had passed his High Threat and he had done quite a few IEDs and he loved Sangin, and no one wants to go to Sangin. It’s horrible and he loved it, which tells you a lot about the sort of bloke he was.

‘Oz’s death was the start of a really bad period for us all. First there was Gaz O’Donnell in 2008, then Dan Read, and that was bad enough. Then Oz was killed and two weeks later I was on a course and I got a text saying that Corporal Loren Marlton-Thomas had been killed and WO2 Ken Bellringer had been badly injured and his legs were broken. Then, a few hours later, I got another text, which said that Ken had lost both legs below the knee, then another which said they had gone right at the top. And back in the UK you’re thinking, what the fuck is going on out there?’

On New Year’s Eve Sapper Dave Watson, a high-risk searcher, was killed during a patrol close to Route 611 in the area of PB Blenheim, just south of FOB Inkerman. The blast blew off both his legs and an arm and he later died of his wounds. On 11 January Captain Dan Read was killed and on 8 February WO2 Dave Markland was blown up and killed in one of the shaping operations prior to Operation Moshtarak. A week after Dave Markland was killed, Sapper Guy Mellors was blown up during a clearance patrol, again on Route 611, near PB Ezaray, a few hundred metres from the point where Dave Watson had been killed.

I’d met Dave Watson a few months earlier in November 2009, while I was on an earlier embed with the Grenadier Guards battlegroup. I accompanied him on a routine change-over of troops south of Nad-e’Ali district centre. The journey to the base was only about 6 km but it took the Mastiff convoy almost six hours. Every few hundred metres the vehicles would stop and the soldiers would begin another search. Many of the troops going into the base were very inexperienced and, frankly, scared. I could see that Dave’s calm confidence was a great boon to the young soldiers who were also helping in the search for bombs. He was a friendly and warm soldier who impressed me enormously. The spate of deaths shattered morale in the EOD world. It wasn’t just the bomb hunters who were struggling with the losses, but also their families, wives, mothers, fathers, husbands, sons and daughters. More bomb hunters had now been killed in just a few weeks than in the past thirty years.

Woody tells me, ‘All those guys killed and injured in such a short space of time – there had been nothing like that since the 1970s in Ulster. I knew all the ATOs, some I knew very well and they were good operators, just as good as me, and you can’t help but think if it can happen to them then it can happen to me. The thing is, in Afghan you don’t have to do anything wrong to get yourself killed – you can’t say, “His death was caused by a mistake.” You can be doing everything correctly and be killed – it’s just the way it is in Afghan.’

Every time an ATO or any soldier is killed by an IED an investigation is conducted to try to establish the sequence of events that led to the death. But there are often significant problems in trying to piece together that sequence of events and work out what the bomb was composed of.

‘There are many explanations as to what happened to Oz,’ Woody tells me. ‘It could have been another command wire that was missed, it could have had a booby-trap. You never really know because that bit of the bomb has functioned as intended and when that goes off all the components get destroyed – there’s nothing left.

‘We know that when Oz arrived there were three main charges in the area. He dealt with one, he was dealing with another one when he got killed, and there was another one remaining which his No. 2 dealt with to make the area safe so that his body could be extracted. Other than that there are just a few explanations as to what happened. An investigation is conducted and you try and establish first of all whether all the proper procedures were followed. Did they do all the things they were supposed to do, such as a proper isolation? But it’s very rare that you can nail it down to one specific event. I know Oz had been quite ill before he died. He had D and V for at least a week, ten days before he was killed. D and V is pretty grim and that would have taken its toll. All of the guys killed died around the four-month point. That might have just been a coincidence but it may be that they had become exhausted by the workload. We used to do four-month tours at one time. Four months in Iraq and four months in Afghanistan. I think the Army saw it as a way of getting eight months on operations out of us. Now that Iraq is over we are doing six-month tours in Afghan and that is a long time, very long – like I said before, there are only so many times you can roll the dice before you get a double six. Oz had dealt with a fair few bombs, sixty-four in four months, and he did twenty-three in one day and was killed. But Badger [Staff Sergeant Karl Ley] did 139 in six months and went home. So how do you explain that? It’s just luck, I suppose – good luck if you make it, bad luck if you don’t.’

I didn’t come across a single ATO who complained about his workload, even though they are some of the most hard-pressed troops in Helmand. But it was painfully clear that vastly more bomb hunters were needed in Afghanistan. The shortage has been caused, in part, by a recruiting cap a few years ago – a purge which was imposed upon the Royal Logistic Corps by the bean counters in the Ministry of Defence.

The search for additional resources within the EOD world has been dubbed by some as the ‘Oz Schmid effect’. Following Oz’s death the press became mesmerized by the stoicism and fortitude of his wife, Christina, and suddenly bomb hunters were big news. For the first time it became clear to the public that ATOs were being pushed well beyond the limit of what could ever reasonably be expected of them. Ripples of panic ran through the government and the Ministry of Defence, who were worried that they would be seen as doing too little to counter a threat which was killing and injuring soldiers every day, and so the order went out that more ATOs needed to be trained. What the politicians failed to grasp, however, was that the job of an AT or an ATO is a trade. ATs are trained to store, handle and work with all types of explosive and ammunition – and only part of that trade is IED disposal. It can take up to seven years for a soldier of non-commissioned rank to become fully qualified in IED disposal. In an attempt to boost numbers, the Defence EOD Operators’ course was created.

Explosive ordnance disposal is conducted by the Royal Engineers, the Royal Navy and the RAF, as well as the Royal Logistic Corps. The EOD groups within these units also carry out IED disposal, but only those who have completed the High Threat IED course are qualified to serve in Afghanistan, and the vast majority of these are members of the RLC.

Soldiers can train to become an Ammunition Technician (AT) from the age of 18. Officers at the rank of second lieutenant can also train to become an Ammunition Technical Officer (ATO). After five to six years’ service ATOs and their equivalents in the other parts of the armed services, and lieutenants or junior captains who have around seventeen months’ service, will be considered for the sixteen-week Defence EOD Operators’ course at the Felix Centre, which is housed in the Defence Explosive Ordnance Disposal, Munitions and Search School at Kineton in Warwickshire. The course is also now open to any senior non-commissioned officer or junior officer from any other part of the armed forces who is shown to have the aptitude for bomb disposal.

Those who pass the course, around 50 per cent, will then be qualified for conventional munitions disposal, which can range from RPG warheads to Second World War grenades. They will also be qualified to deal with IEDs, but only in the UK and areas such as Cyprus, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands. After a year’s further training and experience of commanding an EOD team, some of the officers and NCOs who demonstrate the right aptitude will be offered the opportunity to join the seven-week Advanced EOD Operators’ course at Kineton, where they will learn how to dispose of IEDs primarily found in Helmand. Around 17 per cent of trainees pass the advanced course first time, while the second-time pass rate is around 40 per cent.

At the moment only those who have passed the advanced course can deploy to Helmand and undertake IED disposal, but that could change. There is a school of thought in the EOD world that believes that servicemen who have passed the sixteen-week Defence EOD Operators’ course could also be deployed to Helmand but would be restricted to dealing with specific devices such as disposing of RPG warheads or IED which can be neutralized remotely using robots. It then follows that the more advanced operators would be available for the more dangerous IED-disposal missions.

Within the EOD world such a departure is proving controversial. Many ATOs believe that the gold standard for IED disposal should be the Advanced EOD Operators’ course and that any change to that practice is exposing soldiers and the newly trained Defence EOD operators to very real risk. The other school of thought argues that there is a role in Helmand for those who have passed only the Defence EOD course. The US Paladin teams and the rest of the NATO IED disposal units are trained to the standard reached by Defence EOD operators, yet deploy to Helmand as IED operators. So, if that standard is good enough for the US and the rest of NATO, then why should it not be good enough for Britain? By setting the bar at a lower level than the British, US Marines are almost able to embed an IED operator with every platoon of thirty men. The British Army can only achieve embedding of a single ATO at battlegroup level – 1,500 men.

The question for the country’s defence chiefs is how much risk they are prepared to take. There is no doubt that, from the MoD’s position, the strategic harm which comes from the death of an ATO is far more damaging than the death of an infantry soldier. Over 300 British soldiers have been killed in Helmand and very few people in the country could name them all. Five ATOs have been killed and their names have a much higher profile. Interestingly, such a distinction does not exist within the US Marines, where the death of an IED operator is treated with no greater or lesser importance than that of a Marine.

Financial incentives are also being offered to ATOs who have completed one tour in Afghanistan but agree to a further four years’ service, which could include another tour in Helmand. Those who sign up will be paid an extra £50,000 over four years in addition to the extra £15 a day ATOs receive as part of their skills pay.

But increasing numbers of ATOs is not the sole answer to the problem of dealing with IEDs. Bomb-hunting teams always deploy as an eleven-man unit composed of the IED disposal team and the search team. One cannot deploy without the other. Producing additional ATOs is only half the battle. Additional high-threat searchers will also need to be trained, an issue which hasn’t yet been resolved.

‘There is only one ATO in the Nad-e’Ali battlegroup – me,’ Woody says with more than a hint of exasperation. ‘This place is absolutely saturated with IEDs and yet there is only one ATO – one IED disposal team, one search team. That means you come in off one job and you immediately go out on another. There are always more jobs than there are ATOs. Every battlegroup has a stack of devices for us to deal with. You are constantly in demand – you are doing planning for the ops, going to O-groups [Orders groups] and I have still got four reports to write. I will go out tomorrow and I’ll have to write up some more reports. It’s not just doing the bomb, it’s all the other stuff that goes with it, the administration, the planning.