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

by Sean Rayment

  After several minutes Woody prepares to extract the bomb from the ground using a hook and line. It’s an unsophisticated piece of kit but it works perfectly well. It allows the bomb to be pulled from the ground from a distance. ATOs have learned to their cost over the past thirty years that most of the actions they make while defusing bombs should be done from as far away as possible. By using the hook and line, Woody can pull the bomb out of the ground from more than 50 metres away if necessary. If there is a second bomb it will detonate now. But the ground is rock hard and it takes the combined strength of Woody and Boonie to pull it out. Everyone waits for an explosion which doesn’t come.

  Woody returns to the compound with Corporal Richard Lacey, the weapons intelligence specialist, who photographs all of the components so that they can be studied in detail later. The pressure plate and the detonator are retrieved and placed in plastic bags for further forensic examination, but the explosive will be blown up inside the compound.

  Corporal Adam Butler, the acting team commander, who took over when Loz was killed, has soft, kind eyes and the demeanour of a man who encourages others through gentle persuasion rather than aggressive shouting. He has a rich country accent and despite his age – he, like the others, is only in his twenties – is now on his second tour in Helmand. I ask him what life is like for a high-risk search team. ‘You get used to the dangers but you never get complacent,’ he tells me. ‘We know what the Taliban are trying to do and we just have to stay one step ahead. Team work is our route to making it out of Helmand alive. If someone makes a mistake, then he or all of us could be killed or injured. We can’t afford to have a bad day or switch off, so the pressure can be phenomenal, but I think we’ve all grown used to that. We all share the same risk, but Richie, as the lead searcher, does more searching, so I suppose you could argue that he is more at risk. He was the lead searcher when Loz was alive and so I decided to keep him as the lead when I took over. It’s not good to change things around too much.

  ‘But sometimes I might switch it around if we are doing lots of searches in one day – just to give Richie a rest. The other day when we did a route search there were quite a lot of isolations. We ended up doing about eight isolations over about seven or eight hours. Richie was in and out of the ditches all day long and so we changed things around a bit just to give him a break. You’ve got to rest them, otherwise they can go stale.’

  The lead searcher is something of a talisman for the team, because their lives depend on him. Soldiers are very superstitious and it is very important that his mates believe Richie is a naturally lucky person. His role is to lead the way – he has to be 100 per cent focused 100 per cent of the time, and he admits, ‘It can be pretty tiring sometimes. The risks? You take a risk every time you cross the road, eh? I don’t really think about it. I suppose I just get on with the job and hopefully everyone makes it back. I don’t really worry too much about it. You’ve got to be good at the job, you’ve got to learn quickly because the Taliban aren’t going to give you a second chance, and I think you need that little bit of extra luck sometimes. You can be the best searcher in the world but one piece of bad luck and you could be killed. It’s got nothing to do with bad drills, just bad luck. In Afghan you always want to be lucky – being lucky is better than being good. Plenty of guys good at their job have been killed out here but the lucky ones survive.

  ‘I’ve had two close shaves in vehicles where we have been blown up, and Inkerman was pretty intense because there are so many threats. It’s very unpredictable and the Taliban will take you on all the time. The last time I was up there there was more pressure because they had been targeting isolations. So you’ve got to be really on the ball. In some areas the risk is less but in Inkerman and Sangin you can get channelled into alleyways, so the threat is greater.’

  ‘Sangin is an absolute hell-hole,’ Adam adds in agreement. ‘It’s basically one big fucking minefield. The Taliban will take you on wherever and whenever they can. When you get told you’re going to Sangin – it’s like, “Shit!” All anyone wants is just to get out of there alive. No one gives a fuck about hearts and minds, you just want to get out in one piece.’

  Adam is married with a young son whom he misses terribly. As we chat in the ICP he talks longingly of his family back home, especially little Alfie. When he shows me a picture of his son I notice small tears beginning to form. ‘I can’t wait to see my little lad, he’s a lovely boy,’ he says, almost lost in thought. ‘I think about him all the time. He means the world to me. Sometimes I miss him so much it’s almost unbearable. That’s the thing about kids – you really miss them, but thinking about them just makes you sad. He’s only three and I’ve already deployed on two six-month operations since he was born. I’ve already missed a third of his life – and nothing will bring that back. For me that’s the hardest bit. Part of you thinks, I don’t want to do this any more, I want to watch him grow up and be with him. I want to play football with him and read books at night. That’s not much to ask, is it? I just want to be a normal dad. The thing which really scares me, more than any IED, is how my family would cope if anything happened to me.’

  Adam first served in Afghanistan in 2007 on Operation Herrick 6. He says that the war was different, what he calls a ‘stand-up fight’. Now, he says, and his views are echoed by many soldiers, ‘It’s a dirty, nasty little war.’ He continues, ‘IEDs are everywhere and that has increased our workload massively. On Herrick 7 we only had two search teams, now we have a lot more, but we are still out every day. Personally, I haven’t seen any real improvements in this place since I was here last. I know Nad-e’Ali is safe now, but look at the manpower that was needed to secure this place. What did they say? Something like the biggest heliborne assault for fifty years, over 4,000 British troops. There are now checkpoints everywhere and you’ve got guys staging on 24/7, the blokes are really hanging out – there is no way you can do that in every AO. And if they are going make this place safe then you have to do that everywhere – that’s a massive undertaking.’

  When I ask Adam whether he thinks Afghanistan is worth the sacrifice, he replies, ‘That’s a very difficult question to answer.’ Waving his arms around, he asks, ‘Is this worth Loz’s life? I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s worth the life of a single British soldier. The politicians talk about sacrifice and duty but they are not the ones out here doing the fighting. Sacrifice is a lot easier to talk about when you’re not the one making it. But we are professional soldiers and we have got a job to do, so we get on and do it. We do it for each other – that’s it. The bottom line is, if we all do our jobs to the best of our abilities, then we’ve got a good chance of getting out alive. That’s the same for everyone.’

  Kev interjects and explains the true feelings of soldiers in Afghanistan. ‘To be honest, I think many of the lads try not to think about the whys and wherefores too much – we just crack on and get through it day by day. Every day you stay alive you’re a day closer to getting home.’

  The death of Loz returns to the conversation and the ICP falls silent. Adam was on a four-day Mastiff commander’s course when his boss was killed and it is clear that his absence on the day has led to some feelings of guilt. ‘Part of me wishes I was there because, you never know, it may have been different, maybe Ken wouldn’t have stepped on the bomb and Loz wouldn’t have been killed, but I know you can’t go through life thinking of all the what ifs. I knew Loz really well, he was such a great bloke, and we all miss him a lot. It was a really difficult time. The whole team took part in his repatriation ceremony back to the UK. We all carried his coffin onto the plane, which helped us come to terms with what happened and it allowed us all to say goodbye – but it was pretty heartbreaking. You can imagine how it must feel – we all came out together and then just before we go on R&R our commander is killed. It was shattering. Guys are getting killed all the time but you never think it’s going to be one of your mates, and when it does happen it’s the worst feeling in the wor
ld. We still talk about him quite a lot and then there will be things which remind us about him. I think that’s quite important. We’ll have a laugh and say, “Remember when Loz did this and that?”’

  Adam is staring into the distance and he begins to sound sad and regretful. ‘We had quite a shit R&R, to be honest,’ he says, with his head now resting on his knees. ‘You think it’s going to be this great release, but at the back of your mind you know that you are coming back out to this place. It made life at home pretty difficult. I kept arguing with my missus over little things. I think I was still pretty stressed. You expect everything to be great when you go back but you soon realize that life hasn’t stood still. Your family has a life too and it’s pretty hard for them when you’re away too. We think we have it hard, but it’s a bloody nightmare for the wives and families. It’s six months of gut-wrenching worry and you turn up in the middle of it and say, “Hi, I’m home,” and they’re glad you’re home but you’re also messing up the routine, upsetting the kids, and they know you’re going to bugger off again in a couple of weeks.

  ‘I think it was because of what happened to Loz and knowing that you are coming back out here, so you can’t relax. R&R is vital, you need to get home, you need a break. I would rather we did a longer tour but less frequently, like nine months but every three years – I think if that was on the table the blokes would go for it. We’ll be back here in two years. None of us want to come out here again. Everybody in our team knows someone who has been killed or injured. One of our mates, Dave “The Leg” Watson, was killed on New Year’s Eve. He was knocking down the wall of a compound as part of an operation. It was nothing really dangerous, just a straightforward operation, and he stepped on an IED. The blast blew off three limbs – he was a triple amputee and he died on the operating table. He was a brilliant bloke, the fittest man I knew.

  ‘And there was Captain Dan Read. He was a great bloke for an officer. He came up through the ranks and he had a good understanding of the lads, although the officers in our trade are all pretty good. Anyway, his team were taking part in a route clearance in Gereshk district centre – again a routine task, nothing you would call dangerous. An IED was found and they set up an ICP and searched it, just like we’ve done today, but somehow an IED was missed – there was a pressure-plate device in the ICP and the WIS corporal, James Oakland, stepped on it and was killed instantly. Dan Read was injured in the blast – he took some frag in the chest and arm – and so were a couple of other guys. The worst thing was that Jim had actually been sent out as a battle casualty replacement and had been in Afghan for about three months when he was killed.’

  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.’