Bomb Hunters: In Afghanistan With Britain's Elite Bomb Disposal Unit (3 page)

I’ve come back to Helmand to try to understand why anyone would want to become a bomb hunter. I want to get inside their heads, learn about their fears and concerns, the unimaginable stresses they face every day and what drives them on knowing that one mistake, one single slip, can mean death. For three weeks I will be an embedded journalist working alongside both the bomb-hunting teams of the CIED Task Force and the Grenadier Guards battlegroup.

It is virtually impossible to report from Helmand without being embedded. The risks are so great that independent travel is a non-starter. Travelling independently through Helmand could only really be achieved by striking some sort of deal with the Taliban in order to pass safely through areas under their control. Even if that were achievable there would still be every chance of hitting an IED or finding yourself in the crossfire of a battle between the insurgents and British troops.

Being an embedded reporter has its advantages, the most important being safety. To a certain extent journalists are exposed to the same risks as soldiers, but because you are not playing an active part in a battle you are not fighting through Taliban positions, so you have to be fairly unlucky to be killed or injured. But there are disadvantages. All of my copy will be scrutinized by censors who will check it for anything which could be construed as a breach of operational security. Before any journalist can embed with the British Army, he or she must sign the ‘Green Book’, a contractual obligation stating that the Ministry of Defence will scrutinize all copy, pictures and video before publication.

Most journalists don’t have a problem with this, even if it does run counter to the idea of a free press, and I for one would not want to write anything which might put a soldier’s life at risk.

The C-130 slams into Camp Bastion’s darkened runway, and the relief on board is tangible. The engines once again begin to scream as we slow to a halt. Beneath the green gloom of the safety lights, the troops begin to ready themselves for disembarkation. The Herc’s rear ramp opens, like a giant mouth, revealing a kaleidoscope of orange, yellow and white lights blinking through the desert dust. This is not a military camp, it’s a small city, dominated by the monotonous drone of departing aircraft, some carrying troops, others bearing the coffins of the fallen.

One by one we silently disembark, keeping our personal thoughts private, each wondering what the future will bring. Beneath a star-lit sky we are led in single file from the airstrip to waiting buses, before being driven to one of the ‘processing centres’ where fresh troops undergo their final preparations for war. The week-long Reception, Staging and Onward Movement Integration (RSOI) programme is effectively designed to fine-tune the soldier so that he can hit the ground running. In effect it’s the last chance to get things right before coming face to face with the enemy.

A two-tier war is being fought by the British Army in Helmand. The ‘teeth arm’ troops, those involved in the day-to-day fighting and killing, live in small patrol bases, where the conditions range from sparse to austere. Toilets are often holes in the ground, soldiers keep clean with a solar shower – a bag of water which has been left to bake in the sun – and meals are a mixture of fresh food and Army rations. Six months on the front line is a dangerous existence with few comforts.

But those troops who remain in bases like Camp Bastion or Kandahar Air Base live, by comparison, in air-conditioned luxury, with hot showers and fresh food, and where off-duty hours can be spent in one of the many gyms or watching premiership football on satellite television. ‘Life in the rear,’ as the American troops in Vietnam observed, ‘has no fear.’ The majority of those soldiers based at Camp Bastion will never set foot beyond its gates, but while they might not take the same risks as the front-line soldiers their job is just as vital. They keep the war machine moving by ensuring that the right food, water and ammunition arrive at the right place at the right time. It’s a job which lacks the ‘glamour’ of battle but is just as important.

The coach snakes its way through the camp, passing row upon row of huge tents which were once white but have now taken on the hue of the desert. I’ve been coming to Camp Bastion since 2006, and every time I return the place has grown. Someone once said that the best decision the British Army ever made in Helmand was to build the base in the middle of nowhere. Had it been near a town or an area of habitation, the chances are that it would have been mortared or rocketed every night.

Our belongings are dumped in the desert dust by an Army lorry and chaos ensues as 100 individuals search for the bags in the pitch blackness. The soldiers are told to collect their kit and move into one of the briefing rooms – I say goodbye to the young Army officer, shake his hand and wish him luck, silently hoping that he makes it home safely in six months’ time. The weary soldiers file into a tent to begin a series of briefings through which many will sleep. I’m left with the lasting impression that Camp Bastion is one giant processing centre. Every night hundreds of tired, nervous and confused troops arrive to feed the war machine, and every day, or almost every day, the dead, the wounded and the lucky fly out.

Twenty hours ago I left my home in Kent and kissed my wife and sleeping children goodbye and said a silent prayer as the first cuckoo of spring sang the dawn chorus. Now I am in another world, where the threat of death and violence is always present. Not for the first time I ask myself, what am I doing in Afghanistan? It’s 5 a.m. Helmand time, and finally I get some sleep.

Rupert Hamer was not the first person I have known to be killed in Helmand. While embedded with the Grenadier Guards in November 2009 I met Sapper David Watson, who was a member of a REST. He struck me as a quiet but professional soldier who was completely committed to his job. He was killed in an explosion in the Sangin area on 31 December. I met Sergeant Michael Lockett in 2008 when he was awarded a Military Cross after serving in Helmand in 2007. He returned in 2009 but was killed in action on 21 September, just a few weeks before he was due to return to the UK.

In July 2008 I was embedded with the Parachute Regiment for a short period at FOB Inkerman, just north of Sangin town. There had been a spike in Taliban attacks over the past two months and just two weeks before my visit a suicide bomb had killed three members of the regiment. On one early-morning patrol in which I took part, I met Lance Corporal Ken Rowe, a member of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, and his dog Sasha. Everyone immediately warmed to both man and dog. I think there was something about Sasha that reminded everyone of home, but less than a week later both were killed in an ambush.

Then there was Warrant Officer Class 2 (WO2) Gary ‘Gaz’ O’Donnell. War is one of the few human endeavours that create real heroes, and one of those was Gaz. He was a high-threat IED operator – one of just a handful of soldiers gifted with the skill of being able to defuse home-made bombs in the most deadly place on earth.

I first met Gaz in Helmand in July 2008. I was told that Gaz was worth chatting to because he had a ‘nice collection of war stories’. I wasn’t disappointed. My lasting memory is of him sitting astride a quad bike dressed in just his body armour, helmet, shorts and a set of cool civilian shades. It was on one of the training grounds in Camp Bastion, where troops coming fresh into theatre are taught the basics of ‘Operation Bama’ – the process of locating and confirming the presence of IEDs in Afghanistan.

Gaz’s dress code broke all the rules, and the smile on his face said he was loving it. I liked him as soon as he shook my hand. He was a combination of unruffled calmness and mischief. His thick red hair was long and unkempt, as was his moustache. His obvious disregard for dress regulations was the flip side of his professional life, where his unwavering allegiance to a set of rules and self-discipline kept him alive. Gaz was already a veteran of Iraq, Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone and two tours in Helmand. He was a legend in the counter-IED, or CIED, world even before he arrived in Afghanistan.

Blazoned across his broad shoulders was a tattoo: ‘Living the Dream’. It was his motto. He had already won the George Medal in Iraq and was destined for another top gallantry award for his work in Helmand. Gaz lived to defuse bombs – it was his calling.

At 24 years old Gaz joined the Army relatively late in life. The delay was due in part to a failed experiment as a rock guitarist – another tattoo of a cannabis leaf, also on his back, was a memento of a more hedonistic life.

From the day he joined up Gaz wanted to become an IED operator. But it was to be a long haul. After passing basic training he was posted to Germany to serve in 3 Base Ammunition Depot, learning the trade of the Ammunition Technician. But when the opportunity came to take the Improvised Explosive Device Disposal Course, he passed with flying colours. A feat he also managed to achieve on the IED High Threat course, to become one of just a handful of bomb-disposal experts to pass the course first time.

Like every bomb-disposal operator, Gaz was keen to get involved in the thick of the action in Iraq, but he was forced to wait until 2006, by which time he was a staff sergeant, before he finally got his wish. The war had gone belly-up, primarily because of the complete absence of post-operation planning. After defeating the Iraqi Army and deposing Saddam, the US and British forces managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. A Shia insurgency in the south quickly followed a Sunni revolt in the north. Reconstruction of the shattered state ground to a halt and al-Qaeda, the Islamist force behind the 9/11 attacks, managed to gain a foothold in the country.

By 2006, attacks against the multi-national forces in the south were a daily occurrence. With the help of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard the Shia insurgents managed to develop a range of highly sophisticated improvized explosive devices called Explosively Formed Projectiles, or shaped charges, which could penetrate armour and were detonated by infrared triggers.

These IEDs took a terrible toll on the British troops, killing and maiming hundreds, especially those travelling in the now notorious Snatch vehicles. These were lightly armoured Land Rovers once used to patrol the streets in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Snatches were originally designed to protect troops from small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and shrapnel. When the insurgency exploded in 2004, the British Army found itself without a vehicle in which troops could conduct patrols in urban areas, and the Snatch was sent to fill the gap. But such was their vulnerability to attack that within months the troops had dubbed the vehicles ‘mobile coffins’.

By 2006 reconstruction plans for Iraq had become a faded dream. Troops rarely ventured out of their bases without being attacked. The first sign that the Iraqi people in the south were not as welcoming as the government and the top brass might have hoped had come on 2 July 2003, when six members of the Royal Military Police were attacked and killed by a 300-strong mob in the town of Majar al Kabir.

By the end of his tour Gaz was estimated to have saved the lives of hundreds of British soldiers and was subsequently awarded the George Medal. By 2008 he was in Helmand, one of only two bomb-disposal experts who could be spared to work alongside soldiers fighting in the most mined country on earth. In April of that year Gaz was deployed to the province as a member of the Joint Force Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Group team. A month later he had obtained almost celebrity status after defusing eight IEDs in six hours.

The operation began on 9 May, when a Danish vehicle patrol approached a track junction in the Upper Gereshk Valley in central Helmand. It was a classic vulnerable point, or VP, an ideal location for the Taliban to plant one or more IEDs. At the top of the junction, on a ridge line overlooking the valley, was a position which had been used many times before by the Danish troops to monitor movement in the notorious Green Zone. A fertile plain bordering the Helmand River, the Green Zone was where the Taliban held sway. It was ‘Terry’s Turf,’ Gaz said, ‘Terry Taliban’ being a nickname for the insurgents.

The patrol stopped short of the crossroads and two British soldiers from 51 Squadron Royal Engineers, who were accompanying the Danes, began to scan the area. The two British engineers knew that in all likelihood the Taliban had probably buried at least one IED and, using their standard-issue Vallon mine detectors, the pair began searching the area. Moving forward in slow, measured steps, the two young sappers began swinging the detectors from left to right.

Within minutes one of the alarms screamed, signalling the presence of a suspect device. The Royal Engineer knelt down, pulled out a household paintbrush – a vital piece of equipment for every soldier in Helmand – from the front of his body armour, and gently began to brush away dust from the area where the detector had gone off. Within a few minutes the tell-tale shape of an IED pressure plate emerged. The device was marked and the two soldiers moved, one to each side of the track. Minutes later the alarm sounded again. Over the next two hours a total of eight booby-traps were found in a 75-metre radius. It was the largest multiple-IED site ever seen in Helmand.

Back in Camp Bastion, while Gaz was tucking into a pot noodle, his favourite snack, and watching the TV, a ‘ten-liner’ requesting an IED operator suddenly popped up on a computer screen in the operations room of the Joint Force EOD Group. The ten-liner is so named because it reveals ten lines of information about an IED: date, grid reference (location), description, activity prior to find, rendezvous location and approach, incident commander, tactical situation, threat assessment, initial request, requested priority (immediate, pre-explosion, post explosion, urgent, minor, routine, no threat).