Bomb Hunters: In Afghanistan With Britain's Elite Bomb Disposal Unit

by Sean Rayment

  Despite the danger, Oz, like every other ATO working in Helmand, never wore his protective body suit. ‘It’s too hot to wear a suit out here and it’s tactically not feasible,’ he said. He saw the suit as an easy way for the Taliban to identify him. ‘Every time we’re out on the ground we’re obviously denying them their kill against us, so in effect we’ve become a high-value target for them, as they are for us. Certainly a few times, certainly in Sangin, we’ve been targeted and over the old Icom they say, “The bomb team is here, let’s hit them.” They call us the bomb team, according to the interpreter – probably “wankers” in the local language.’

  Over the next few months Oz’s team were called out to dozens more IED incidents, some where soldiers had been killed and wounded and others where by luck the device had failed to explode. ‘I have been to a couple of devices that have been very unstable. The bomb makers’ construction of the devices isn’t brilliant. A loose wire in the wind could create a short, so when I have my fingers in there I have to pay attention.’

  On 8 October 2010 Oz was dispatched to the district centre to deal with a device which the ANA had discovered while on patrol. The IED consisted of an artillery shell placed close to seven large cans of diesel. If the bomb had detonated it would have devastated the area. On arrival the ANA soldiers led Oz directly into the IED’s killing area. The Afghan soldiers had not warned the public for fear that the device might be detonated by the Taliban once they knew it had been found. Oz realized that he was not only at personal risk but so were around forty civilians who were in the immediate danger area, and time was not on his side.

  Oz moved up close to the device and quickly assessed that the shell was part of a live radio-controlled IED. It was also clear that the bomb was almost certainly being overwatched by the Taliban. Oz felt that he had no choice but to conduct a manual neutralization. To do this he employed a render-safe procedure which is only ever used in the gravest of circumstances and is conducted at the highest personal risk to the operator. Oz insisted that his team move back out of the safety area before neutralizing the bomb. Once again the heroism he displayed went beyond the call of duty.

  After the incident Oz said, ‘My heart’s not racing at all when I go in.’ But then he corrected himself: ‘No, that’s not true, there are some points when it does. There’s a lot of apprehension, a lot of adrenalin going through you at the time, especially when the device is something a little bit different, when you know that it is targeting you, but it’s important to appear calm. The guys look at you, they draw strength from you. For an infantry commander on the ground, it’s a hell of a weight off his shoulders when you come in.’

  Defusing was not Oz’s only task, however. He also had to gather the vital forensic evidence which enables military teams to trace the militants who smuggle, make and plant IEDs. Forensic evidence was what Oz called ‘the big picture in the IED loop’, and it’s their expertise in gathering this that sets British high-threat IED operators apart from any others.

  ‘As British teams, we’ll get everything out of the device because our skills and drills are the best in the world, believe it or not. Because of our background and what we’ve learned over the years in places like Northern Ireland, it allows us to adopt some techniques in order to gain vital information from devices. It’s all about getting the forensics, matching it, and going that way round it as opposed to just making it safe. We want to capture them, to get criminal convictions.’

  After Oz’ s work in the Pharmacy Road operation – as well as defusing a large IED in the centre of a bazaar which, had it exploded, would have killed many civilians – rumours began to circulate in the Task Force that he was in line for a gallantry medal. ‘I am just looking at getting home with my legs,’ was his response.

  Working in Sangin was beginning to take its toll on Oz and his team. Barely a day seemed to pass which didn’t require Oz to put his life on the line. Back in Camp Bastion his boss, Major Tim Gould QGM, the officer commanding the JFEOD Group, was concerned about Oz’s mental and physical health. ATOs need to be managed very carefully. In 2009 they were a scarce resource and they remain so today. Oz insisted that he was tired but fine and wanted to stay in Sangin.

  On the evening of 30 October Oz called home and spoke to his wife, Christina. She later recalled that he sounded uncharacteristically strained after being left exhausted by yet another four-day operation in the Sangin area. With tears leaving tracks down his dust-covered cheeks, he said, ‘I’m hanging out, hun. Can you come and get me, babe?’ Of course she couldn’t, but she reassured him that he had just two days to push before he was due to return home for his two weeks’ R&R.

  On 31 October, Halloween, the day before he was due to fly home, Oz and his team were called out on another task, one which required him to defuse three devices. As the day drew to a close the team were about to return to the base when one of the searchers discovered a command wire running down the alleyway they had been working in. Oz’s team had unwittingly walked into a trap. They had no idea at which end of the alley the device was located and so had no safe route forward or back. Oz immediately seized the initiative and traced the command wire to a complex IED. The device was linked to three buried charges designed to take out an entire patrol. His team withdrew and cleared an ICP while Oz moved forward. That was the last time he was seen alive. Oz was killed instantly while dealing with the first device. In five months in Afghanistan he had defused sixty-four IEDs; the sixty-fifth killed him.

  His wife was told later that evening that Oz was dead. Later Christina recalled, ‘I wasn’t surprised. I got this gut feeling after he called me for the last time. He never speaks like that. He was exhausted. He said he had been out there too long and could I come get him. I told him I couldn’t.’

  At about 9.30 p.m. on 31 October 2009 Christina watched as two men wearing green berets approached her house. ‘I thought, oh my God, what are they doing here?’ Laird, her 5-year-old son, thought it was Oz, his stepfather, returning home. ‘I can remember saying he’s definitely not here. It’s not Daddy, I told my son. I asked them why they were there. I said, “Just tell me he can talk. I don’t care about his legs and arms. Can he talk?” They looked at me and said, “Let us in.” I didn’t cry. No one else was hurt. I remember thinking what a relief that was.’

  In the moments after Oz’s death the news began to filter back to the CIED Task Force headquarters in Camp Bastion. The J Chat said that a Brimstone callsign – indicating an IED team – had suffered a fatal casualty. Then the screen displayed ‘SC’ – the first two letters of Oz’s surname – followed by the last four digits of his Army number, which together made up his Zap number, a personal coded number given to operational troops. Oz was the third ATO to be killed in action in Helmand in thirteen months. It was an attrition rate that had not been experienced by the world of bomb disposal for almost 40 years.

  Later that evening, at FOB Price, near Gereshk, Badger made his routine evening call to the ops room just to let them know everything was OK. ‘I called in and Major Gould, my boss, answered and said, “Badger, I’ve got some bad news. Oz is dead.” It was like being hit in the stomach with a cricket bat. I was devastated.’ Badger found himself a quiet corner and began to cry. ‘I knew I had to tell the boys. They all knew Oz, so it was important they were told as soon as possible. So you have to man-up, wipe your eyes, wash your face, and break the news. There were a lot of tears – it was a very difficult evening for everyone in our community.’

  Four days after Oz was killed I arrived in Helmand for a three-week embed with the Grenadier Guards. I had never met Oz, but I knew that as an ATO he was an extraordinarily brave soldier. While I was waiting to transit forward from Camp Bastion, a special service was held for Oz before his body was repatriated to the UK. Hundreds of soldiers attended and many of those who served with him were in tears. I have attended several of these services, and they are all moving, sometimes traumatic events. But Oz’s was different: it was transp
arently clear that the Army had lost someone very special.

  Lieutenant Colonel Rob Thomson, the commanding officer of the 2 Rifles battlegroup, described Oz, in the hours after his death, as ‘simply the bravest and most courageous man I have ever met. Superlatives do not do the man justice. Better than the best. Better than the best of the best.’

  Two weeks after Oz’s death, Captain Dan Read, a fellow ATO, was wounded by shrapnel when a soldier standing close by detonated a victim-operated IED. Captain Read was a very popular officer who had joined the Army as a private but later passed the officer selection course and attended the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. Although his injuries were not serious, as most of the shrapnel hit his arms, he was sent back to the UK to recover.

  Soon the casualties were coming in so thick and fast that the battle casualty replacements couldn’t keep pace with the rate at which soldiers were being wounded. A senior officer later told me, ‘We were unprepared for such large numbers of casualties. We didn’t have the resources in place and we couldn’t cope with the volume of casualties. We were in trouble.’

  Morale within the CIED Task Force had taken a bashing. ‘It was a very bad period, a dreadful few weeks,’ said Badger. But for him it was not just the loss of mates that was worrying. ‘Oz was at the top of his game,’ he said ruefully. ‘They were doing the same job as me and part of you does think, if it can happen to them, then it can happen to me.

  ‘After Oz was killed I had to phone my wife and tell her that there had been an incident and one of the lads had died. I said to her, “Don’t worry, I’m OK.” I’ve told her plenty of times that if they hear bad news on the TV or radio, then it means I’m OK because she would be told first. But all the wives are worried, worried all the time. I think it’s harder for them. Every time there’s a knock on the door their heart stops.’

  The period between August 2009 and March 2010 was one of the bloodiest in the British Army’s history of bomb disposal. It wasn’t just the British ATOs who had taken casualties either. Both US and Canadian ATOs have also been killed in southern Afghanistan. An SAS sergeant told me that he was in awe of the bomb-disposal units. He went on to describe an incident in which a US bomb-disposal officer was killed while taking part in a mission. ‘We were going into a compound and we had a US ATO with us. He got to the compound and he said, “I’ll go in first and clear it. You guys wait here.” He went in with his mine detector on his own, and about a minute later there was this huge bang. We followed up and he had been blown in half by the bomb. His bottom half had been completely separated. You’re like, “What the fuck?” Thankfully he had been killed instantly. We all owe our lives to him – if we had gone in the bomb would have taken out an entire SAS team.

  ‘These guys are incredible – people think our job is risky but it’s nothing compared to what these guys do. We always have plenty of intelligence, more often than not we know exactly what will be waiting for us. But these guys have to go in on their own. It’s incredible. The incident happened just before Christmas in December 2009. And his wife and two children buried him the day before Christmas Eve. Whatever way you cut it, that’s just shit.’

  A few days after Oz Schmid was killed, Dave Markland and Badger, lying on their beds in the FOB, made a pact. They promised each other that if either of them was killed – blown to pieces by an IED – nothing would be left behind. For the one event which terrifies ATOs and everyone in the world of bomb disposal is the prospect of their body parts being left on the battlefield after an attack. The size of the bombs being used by the Taliban in Helmand can literally blow a human to pieces. Everyone involved in bomb hunting accepts such a fate as a fact of life, and many take comfort from the fact that, if their number is up, they will know very little of it.

  While chatting about nothing in particular, Badger turned to Dave and said, ‘Oz, Dan Shepherd and Gaz O’Donnell were all at the top of their game, Dave, you know that. They were as good or better than me. So let’s make a pact. If I get blown up, I get blown out of the safe lane and we are under fire and taking casualties, promise me that you won’t leave me behind. You’ve got to promise me that.’ Badger was now sitting up and staring at Dave, who nodded and replied, ‘The same goes for me, Badger, mate. Now, enough morose talk. Let’s go and get a brew and check on the lads.’

  Badger and Dave had hoped to work together for the rest of their six-month tour. The two soldiers had developed a very special working relationship during the ten weeks they had spent together. But that plan was interrupted by their R&R after Christmas. Badger took his leave first and when he returned Dave departed. The planning for Operation Moshtarak, a military drive intended to clear the Taliban from central Helmand, was already underway and bomb hunters were urgently required for the so-called ‘shaping operations’ which took place a few weeks before the main event – the large-scale thrust into the heart of Taliban territory. Both men were due to take part in a shaping operation together but Dave’s return from R&R was delayed and Badger deployed with another search team.

  Dave arrived a few days later, but with little to do he quickly became bored and frustrated and was soon asking to be sent out on an operation. Major Gould recalled how Dave was ‘bouncing off the walls’. ‘He kept coming up to me saying, “Boss, you’ve got to put me out on the ground – I’m doing my nut here.” Eventually a task came up and I told Dave he was going out – he was delighted. I remember him coming up to me and shaking my hand before he went out. I looked him in the eye and wished him good luck – these things are important in our world.’

  The two bomb hunters were deployed to Battlegroup Centre South, in the Nad-e’Ali area of central Helmand, Badger to the north and Dave to the south. Both search teams were involved in a series of straightforward routine search and clearance operations. On 8 February Dave’s search team was dispatched to clear a route where a suspected device had been uncovered. It was a routine operation, the ICP was cleared by the searchers and the mission was going according to plan. But a mistake had been made. A pressure-plate IED which had been missed was detonated by Dave as he moved across to one side of the ICP. The blast was huge and devastating, killing Dave instantly. Badger was a few kilometres away, conducting a similar route-clearance operation, when he learned the dreadful news.

  Badger recalled, ‘I kind of found out by accident that Dave had been killed; no one officially told us. We heard a “nine-liner” saying that someone had been injured from a Brimstone team. We enquired and the Royal Anglian’s operations room told us that there had been an incident with a Brimstone callsign. At that point your heart starts racing and you are just praying that whoever has been injured is going to make it. We looked on the J Chat and I knew straight away that it was Dave.’ Seeing Dave’s Zap number, they realized straight away whose it was.

  ‘Dave was working with six Gurkhas,’ Badger continued, ‘so I immediately knew that he was the casualty. The J Chat said he was KIA. My heart sunk and I felt sick. I immediately got in touch with the ops room to try and find out what had happened and I was hoping against hope that a mistake had been made. It shouldn’t happen but it’s not unheard of for people to get Zap numbers wrong. But they confirmed that Dave was dead.

  ‘I never got the full details, just that he had been taken out by an IED and that it was quick – that’s all you can hope for really. It’s a small comfort and you just have to crack on. I was on my own when it was actually confirmed for definite that he was dead. I gave myself five minutes, had a little cry, and then you just have to man-up and go and tell the boys. I called the team together – we had all worked with Dave too and we were all very close. Everyone was gutted but we all had to remember that there was a job to do and we would be back out on the ground in the morning. As hard as it sounds, we couldn’t let ourselves be distracted by Dave’s death because we all knew that we could be the next to be killed.

  ‘Obviously you think about it when you are on your own or lying in bed at night but you have to trust
your drills and assure yourself that providing you do your drills correctly you should be OK. But Dave did nothing wrong.’

  With tragic irony Dave’s name was added to the memorial which he designed and built and which still stands in the quiet corner of the compound where the JFEOD Group is based. When the mission is over and the troops come home, the memorial will come with them.

  After a few weeks’ leave Badger will return to his unit where he will be given a pager and will command one of the many teams which provide IED coverage over the whole of the UK. Even back in the UK Badger will be called out two or three times a week to deal with devices ranging from a Second World War grenade found in a granny’s cabbage patch to a suspicious package left on a train.

  ‘It has been a gruelling six months,’ he says. ‘I’ve spent a lot of time sleeping on floors and I’m not getting any younger. You are working most days and it’s the sheer number of tasks you are asked to do which slowly grinds you down, and at the back of your mind you know you can’t make a mistake. It’s going to take time to settle into home life again – for the last six months I’ve been making life-and-death decisions, now it’s a case of shopping in Tesco’s and deciding which cereal I want – funny how life changes.’

  I say goodbye to Badger and wish him a good leave and a safe journey home. His tour is over but mine is just beginning. In a few days’ time I will once again be on the front line. I’ve only been in Camp Bastion for less than a week but already I feel it’s too long. I want to get out into bandit country again but this time will be different. This time I will be with the bomb hunters searching for IEDs. The promises I made to my wife and myself after Rupert’s death are already beginning to evaporate. Rather than finding reasons not to go into the danger zones, I’m doing the opposite.