Bomb Hunters: In Afghanistan With Britain's Elite Bomb Disposal Unit (4 page)

Gaz and his search team were on HRF standby and at a drop of a hat they could deploy to anywhere in Helmand to defuse IEDs armed with only the information contained within the ten-liner. And on the morning of 9 May 2008 Gaz was called to the ops room, where Major Wayne Davidson, the officer commanding the EOD squadron, told him he had a task. ‘Sounds relatively straightforward,’ were the major’s parting words as Gaz went to brief his team. The ten-liner stated that there were one or more pressure-plate IEDs in a vulnerable point in the Gereshk Valley.

Within ten minutes Gaz’s team, which consisted of his No. 2, or second in command, the electronic counter-measures (ECM) operator and the infantry escort, the last basically his bodyguard, were ready to move. A few moments later the REST and the RESA had assembled in the briefing tent.

‘This should be interesting,’ Gaz said, then explained the situation. ‘We’ve got multiple IEDs in an area which looks like an overwatch site into the Green Zone. Chances are it’s been used by ISAF before and a pattern has been set. We’ll learn more when we arrive. Questions?’ There were none – everyone knew the score. ‘Good – let’s go.’

Within forty minutes Gaz, his team and the search team were airborne, heading for the IED site in a Chinook helicopter.

Even before leaving the safety of Camp Bastion, Gaz knew the ‘bomb suit’ – an all-encompassing piece of body armour designed to protect ATOs from the effects of an explosion – was not an option. The bomb suit weighs almost 50 kg and the temperature was already 45°C. He knew that he was unlikely to last more than twenty minutes inside it. Besides, a bomb suit is really designed to protect the operator when either walking to or away from the bomb. Gaz took his chances; it was a calculated risk but one which he believed favoured him.

‘By the time I got to work,’ he explained later, ‘the wider area had been cleared by the search team and the area was secured. An incident control point had been cleared and I was happy. I moved forward, took a moment to gather myself, and then began to work methodically through the area. I have been an ATO for a long time and worked in some pretty nasty environments, but I had never encountered nothing like that before. It was pretty tense.’

Gaz spent hours on his hands and knees, his face just inches away from the IEDS. Had any one of them exploded, he would have been killed instantly.

It was the same routine for each bomb. Walk down the cleared lane, locate the device with the hand-held metal detector, and try to isolate the device from the power supply. Operators must always be aware of the potential for other threats in the area. There have been occasions where another device has been placed to target the operator, such as a so-called command IED, which could be something as simple as a hand grenade with a piece of wire or string tied to the ring pull at the end of which is an insurgent waiting for the right time to strike.

This is the most risky period for any IED operator. Once they ‘go down the road’ or ‘take the long walk’ to the bomb, they are on their own and effectively isolated – and make a very inviting target. Everyone else in the team, including supporting troops, must be outside the blast radius.

‘It was 11 a.m. and it was getting pretty hot,’ Gaz explained. ‘I wanted to save as many of the devices as possible so that we could extract the maximum amount of forensic information.’ Just when he thought he was finished, he discovered another IED. But this time it was attached to a command wire, which can either be pulled to initiate the explosion or linked to a power source such as a battery and detonated electronically.

Gaz was stunned. ‘At that stage I didn’t know whether I was being watched by the Taliban who were waiting for me to get close to the device. It was a very sobering feeling. You’re there staring at something, knowing that it could go bang at any moment and that would be it: “game over”.’ But Gaz pushed on and successfully disabled the command IED. ‘I don’t know if I was being watched and the Taliban just decided not to detonate it. But I think it was there to catch out an IED operator. Maybe I was just lucky that day, and that suits me just fine.’

By early evening Gaz had finally completed the mission. He was physically and mentally shattered, dehydrated, his face red and sore after hours in the intense desert sun. It was only when he returned to the incident control point (ICP) for the final time that the fatigue hit him like a left hook. ‘I eventually finished at 6 p.m. I was out there for seven hours but to be honest I didn’t really notice the heat because I was so focused on the task. It was only when I got back into the ICP and it was time to return to Bastion that I realized I was knackered. My arms and legs felt as though they were made from lead and I had a thumping headache.’

But it was a successful mission. Every IED operator wants to recover a device intact so that it can be forensically tested. At this stage, obtaining forensic information left on the device during its manufacture was still in its infancy, but within two years this skill would become key to defeating the bombers.

A smile spread across Gaz’s face as he continued, ‘I managed to disrupt all eight IEDs and all of the forensic information was recovered. That is absolutely vital. We need to know who is making these bombs and we can get a lot of that from the equipment. It was exactly the same as with the IRA. So if I can recover a device and we can get some forensic, then gleaming [soldier slang for brilliant or great], and I sleep well.’

Two months earlier Gaz had been called to deal with a roadside bomb which was blocking a convoy route, leaving large numbers of troops stationary and vulnerable in hostile territory. Wherever possible the Taliban will try to place their fighters in positions close to where they have planted IEDs so that they can follow up a successful detonation with an ambush.

Gaz, knowing the risks and the need for speed, worked solidly for twenty-four hours and discovered eleven devices. One of the bombs was attached to a command wire, which the Taliban attempted to initiate as he walked towards it. Gaz survived only because the device failed to detonate properly. Despite knowing that the Taliban were clearly watching him, he continued working until the entire area was made safe.

‘It was a tough job but in situations like that you just have to be methodical, keep a clear head, and trust your own judgement. I might be the person who goes in to disrupt the IEDs but it’s a real team effort. You have to have total confidence in your search team – and everyone shares the same risk.’

Sitting in the ops room in Camp Bastion, Gaz explained to me how the Taliban were beginning to change their tactics and how he believed the war in Afghanistan would change because the insurgents couldn’t win using conventional tactics.

As I sat sipping a cup of tea in the cool of the air-conditioned room, Gaz disappeared for a few minutes before re-emerging with a large plastic bag. ‘This is an IED,’ he said, holding it up for me to see like an angler with a prized catch. ‘I defused this one and brought it back a few weeks ago,’ he told me with a beaming smile. Before me was a man in his element, but it was clear that Gaz really had no concept at how extraordinary he was. Even those around him, IED operators more senior and experienced, seemed to be in awe.

‘This is the pressure plate,’ he said as he pulled what looked like a shallow rectangular wooden box wrapped in plastic torn from a dirty bag. ‘This is basically a large switch. You have a power source connected to these two pieces of metal and to a detonator. Step on this and the whole thing goes bang – it’s that simple, but it works and it’s deadly.’

The pressure-plate IED’s design is frighteningly simple. Inside the wooden case, which is about 40 cm long, 8 cm wide and 5 cm high, are two rusty saw blades about 15 cm long. The idea is that when pressure is applied to the box, the blades touch, the electric circuit is completed, and the device explodes.

I’m stunned. ‘Is that it?’

Gaz nods, smiling.

‘What’s the explosive composed of?’ I ask.

‘Anything Terry can get his hands on. Mortar rounds, artillery shells, land mines. This place has been at war for thirty-odd years, so there’s a lot of stuff lying around – and if they can’t find any explosive they’ll make their own.’

What’s it like being an IED operator? I ask Gaz. ‘Bomb disposal – it’s the best job in the world,’ he replies. ‘I wanted to do it from the moment I joined up. I love the challenge: when you go down the road it’s all down to you – your wits against theirs – and providing you stick to your training and don’t become complacent you should be OK. The Taliban are always developing their tactics, so we need to make sure we are really on the ball. I’m never nervous when I’m on a job, but I’m never complacent either.’

As we chat away in the ops room, leaning on a table which also doubles as a huge map board, Gaz tells me about an incident which even he admits was a little close for comfort.

Members of 2 Para based in the area of the Kajaki Dam, in the north of Helmand, had discovered an IED on a track leading to their base. As normal, a ten-liner was sent out by the troops and Gaz’s team were dispatched to the scene.

‘It was a routine job – sort of thing I’d done many times before,’ he said, lifting his feet onto the end of the bench. ‘I went through all the normal drills, making sure everything was secure, and so I set about trying to render the device safe. I always work in the prone position – lying down. I find it more comfortable and you don’t present too much of an easy target to the Taliban. I was working away trying to isolate the power source. The device was different to others I had seen. In this case the trigger was an everyday clothes peg with two metal contacts fixed to the closing parts of the peg. The peg was being held open by a piece of rubber wrapped around the opposite end. I thought, I haven’t seen that before – that’s quite clever. While the contacts were held apart the device was safe but it was also connected to a power source, so it had to be isolated as well.’

As Gaz set about working on the device, he noticed out of the corner of his eye that the rubber started to move backwards along the peg. He had less than a second to react. Just before the rubber clip holding the arms of the peg apart snapped, he pushed his finger between the contacts, stopping them from snapping shut and detonating the bomb. With his other hand he pulled out a pair of pliers from the front of his body armour and cut the wiring to make the bomb safe.

‘I saw the ends of the peg moving,’ Gaz said. ‘I didn’t have time to think. I had to act straight away, so I jammed my fingers between the two contacts. I had to make an assessment that there wasn’t a secondary circuit. Then there was no other option but to cut the wires manually. Even for me that was a bit of a close shave.’

The device was wired to an 82 mm mortar and a 107 mm Chinese-made rocket: enough explosive to wipe out a dozen men. Had the peg closed Gaz would have been blown to pieces.

Facing death was part of every IED operator’s daily routine, yet the stress associated with working in Helmand in 2008 left Gaz unfazed. Just before I left him in the ops room, I asked Gaz if he ever worried about being killed. ‘It never enters my mind,’ he replied. ‘You can’t do this job and worry about getting killed.’

On 10 September 2008, less than a week before he was due to fly home to his family, Gaz was killed while trying to defuse an IED on a routine mission in Musa Qala. He was awarded a posthumous Bar to his George Medal on 4 March 2009.

Gaz was the first ATO to be killed in Afghanistan, and everyone who worked in bomb disposal knew from that moment on that his death wouldn’t be the last.

***

I awake, drunk with fatigue, to an announcement over the PA system: ‘Op Minimise is now in force.’ Operation Minimise is launched every time a soldier is killed or seriously wounded. When it’s in force all connections to the outside world – e-mails and phone calls – are suspended until twenty-four hours after the next of kin have been informed. There was a time, when the mission in Helmand was still new, when the launching of Minimise would temporarily silence laughter in the canteens and prompt soldiers to speak in hushed tones. Not any more. Today in Helmand violent and sudden death is a reality of life, and such announcements appear to barely register with the troops.

Stepping out of the large tent, I am greeted by a cloudless sky and the distant but distinctive ‘wokka-wokka’ engine tune played by an RAF Chinook landing on the flight line. Camp Bastion is now a fully-fledged multi-national base. It probably boasts a high ranking on the list of the world’s fastest-growing towns. In 2006, when the soldiers from the Royal Engineers began turning raw desert into a military base, it probably housed just 2,000 troops. Since then it has grown tenfold, although I doubt anyone really knows how many troops are actually based inside at any particular time. It now comprises Camp Bastion 1 and Camp Bastion 2, and the US Marines have grafted their own base, Camp Leatherneck, onto one side.

Bastion is richly endowed with creature comforts. There is Pizza Hut, a Chinese and an Indian takeaway, NAAFI and foreign equivalents, and the American PX store, which sells everything the modern fighting soldier needs. Soldiers with time on their hands can go to the gym, play computer games, jog in complete safety around the camp perimeter, or watch a premiership football match courtesy of the British Forces Broadcasting Service. The Danish battlegroup, which also has a headquarters in Bastion, put on a rock concert. There is even talk that the US Marines are planning to build a swimming pool to increase the comfort of those serving during the summer in Helmand, where temperatures can reach up to 50°.