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

by Sean Rayment

  ‘The best thing that I could do was to stay on the roof until someone tells me what has happened. As the radio operator my job is to stick by the radio come what may. I’m the link to the outside world and, apart from anything else, I had left my body armour, helmet and rifle in the ops room downstairs. Then there was another burst, this time from inside the accommodation. That’s when I thought, fucking hell, someone’s inside and they are shooting. At first I thought the Taliban had managed to get inside the base and were attacking the soldiers. It was really confusing and you can imagine the sense of panic.

  ‘I dived into the sangar behind me and the guy on duty was armed with a general-purpose machine gun, I saw his rifle behind him, so I grabbed hold of it and waited for the Taliban to attack us. Then one of them came up the stairs and said, “One of the ANPs has just gone mad and is shooting everybody. We need medics. People have been hit.” I got straight onto the radios and began feeding the information back to the headquarters.’

  The whole shooting incident lasted around thirty seconds. A thin veil of blue gun smoke hung over the central courtyard. Nine of the sixteen British soldiers were dead or injured.

  By this stage Gulbuddin had already fled the compound and disappeared into the surrounding countryside, leaving in his wake a scene of bloody chaos. Neither the British troops nor their police counterparts had time to react. Many of those injured had not even realized that they had been shot by a member of the police. Shortly after Gulbuddin fled, the Taliban began shooting at Blue 25, an act which has led to the suggestion that Gulbuddin was a Taliban agent and the attack was part of a well-coordinated plan. There is no real evidence to support such a claim and the Taliban could have simply been responding to the sound of shooting inside the base.

  Meanwhile, in the area where the soldiers slept, one of the beds had caught fire. A round had ignited something in one of the rooms and ammunition was starting to explode. There was a real possibility of a major fire breaking out. Fuel jerry cans were close by but further damage was prevented by one of the interpreters, who grabbed the cans and moved them to another room.

  Up in the sangar, Pete Baily sent a request for medics. He also sent one of the soldiers down to the scene of the crime to find out the full extent of the casualties. ‘I needed to know who had been hit and where. I needed that sort of information so that I could get the ball rolling. At this stage I still didn’t know that we had fatalities.’

  When the soldiers returned to Baily, they broke the news that Sergeant Major Chant was dead. ‘I was in a different world at that time,’ Baily recalled. ‘It was like being hit with a sledgehammer. It just didn’t seem real. One second everything was normal, the next there was chaos and death – it was that quick. I was reeling. Nothing made sense. The thought going through your mind was, this isn’t real, it can’t be happening. I thought, now I’m in charge, and I was terrified. My initial instinct was to man that radio and get any information I could back to the headquarters – that was my job. At one point it was like a training session where you are suddenly hit with all of these different scenarios to see how you would react. It just felt like that, it was unreal.’

  Daz Chant and Sergeant Telford had been killed instantly. Guardsman Major hung on for a little while longer. He had been hit in the torso but a bullet had passed through his head. His friend, Guardsman Alexander Bone, had tried to keep him alive but his wounds were simply too grave. Corporal Boote had also been shot through the head and had died instantly. Despite sustaining severe injuries, Corporal Webster-Smith made it onto the helicopter, but died later.

  Lance Corporal ‘Woody’ Woodgates was the most seriously injured. One bullet had hit him in the leg and two more had hit him in the lower back and exited his body through the stomach. ‘He was carried upstairs and placed in the sangar,’ Lance Sergeant Baily explained. ‘The whole situation was still really confused and the rooftop was the safest place to be. The gate was open, the police had gone, we had mass casualties and there was always the chance of a follow-up attack. The only thing going through my head was: get the guys to cover their arcs [of fire], look after the wounded, and pretty much wait for the cavalry to arrive. Woody was in a really bad way and at one stage I didn’t think he was going to make it. He was in a lot of pain and all the medical kits were downstairs. He was screaming for water and morphine and was drifting in and out of consciousness. I put Woody in the sangar on his own because he was the most seriously wounded and I had one guy looking after him. I kept talking to him, encouraging him to hold on, telling him he was going to be OK. At one point he stopped talking. I had thought he was gone, dead. I was shouting out his name and then I went to have a look in the sangar. There was blood everywhere but he was still alive.

  ‘At that stage I wasn’t really sure how many dead and injured there were. Liam was downstairs, he was too badly wounded to be moved, and one of the terps [interpreters] stayed with him. I was really scared at the time and I just grabbed hold of that radio like it was a lifeboat and started passing over all the information. I sent the message to the headquarters that Sergeant Major Chant was dead. He had his own callsign, which was “Mongoose 99 Charlie”. I sent the message “Mongoose 99 Charlie is down”, which meant that the sergeant major was dead, then I sent “Mongoose 96 is down”, which was Sergeant Telford. I was just in automatic mode. I knew that the HQ would want to know as much as possible; they needed to know who was killed and injured and it was down to me to pass on as much info as possible.

  ‘The radio operator at the other end was fantastic, he was very calm and simply said, “Yep, Roger.” He didn’t panic at all. Every time I sent over details of the dead and injured I just got a “Roger” – and that’s what I needed. God knows what they thought was happening in the ops room, it must have been mayhem. I can’t remember a lot of what I said or what I did. The adrenalin was pumping and things happened so quickly, but I do remember passing over the callsigns of the dead.’

  Back at Shawqat the news was greeted with disbelief, but immediately, like a well-oiled machine, the operations officer and his team began organizing the casualty evacuation. An emergency air medical evacuation request was sent to Camp Bastion informing the hospital that there was a mass-casualty situation with at least four dead and four T1 – the highest level – casualties with multiple bullet wounds.

  The order was simultaneously given for the soldiers from the Operational Mentoring and Liaison Team, the OMLT, pronounced ‘omlet’, who formed the Quick Reaction Force (QRF), to charge down to Blue 25 to assist with the casualty evacuation and to help in the event of a full-scale Taliban attack.

  Lieutenant Colonel Walker was out visiting another checkpoint when he was told that there had been a contact at Blue 25. The colonel’s convoy was only 5 km away from the incident but the threat from IEDs buried along most of the transit routes effectively meant that it would take at least an hour to reach the stricken troops. In November 2009, as it is today, only routes which are overwatched by ISAF troops, the police or the Afghan Army are effectively risk-free. All others must have every inch checked by troops equipped with mine detectors. Any IEDs discovered are then ‘marked and avoided’ or cleared in situ. There was no ATO in the commanding officer’s convoy – being such a rare asset, the ATO and his IED disposal team were already deployed on another operation.

  Speaking in the immediate aftermath of the attack, Colonel Walker, who was clearly still shaken by the deaths of his soldiers, told me, ‘We heard over the radio that there was a contact at Blue 25. It took two or three seconds to sink in and I thought, damn, that’s my team. We were told that it was under attack and I felt, well, if it’s under attack, I know the position, it’s fortified, the boys will be in it, the sergeant major will be all over it – I’m happy. Patrol bases and checkpoints were being attacked pretty much every day so when the contact report came over it wasn’t really anything to worry about – it wasn’t an unusual event.

  ‘I was almost inclined to say, “OK, fine
, no matter, give me an update when it’s over.” Then we were told that it was serious and that there were casualties. We immediately headed off [towards Blue 25] and then it came over the radio that there were ISAF dead, which is just chilling when you hear that as a commanding officer.

  ‘It trickled in that there were three dead and that it was a mass-casualty situation, which sounded horrific. Then we were told that there were four dead and the remainder were seriously injured and the evacuation was taking place. At that point your heart just sank. We were only 5 km away, but on these roads, with the threat of improvised explosive devices, that is around forty-five minutes to an hour away.

  ‘So we made our way down and going through your mind is the worst – you’re asking yourself, who’s dead? I knew there were four dead and I knew that they had been shot from inside the base. But that was all I knew.’

  The scene within the courtyard resembled a slaughterhouse – four dead soldiers lying down together, with gaping wounds caused by the effect of a high-velocity round at close range. The soldiers who witnessed the carnage were almost paralysed with shock.

  Lance Sergeant Baily recalled, ‘It was surreal. Something in me took a step back and let the training kick in. When the lads told me that the sergeant major and Sergeant Telford were dead something in me just said, “You’re in charge now, mate,” so I got on with it. So I detailed guys out in their firing positions and waited for the operational mentor and liaison team to arrive. When they got there I made sure they knew where the emergency helicopter landing site was – the helicopter was inbound at that point. I was also on the radio for the whole time. When the chopper came, we covered the arcs to make sure that the insurgents weren’t about to attack the casualty evacuation. When the helicopter did arrive there was some sporadic gunfire from a tree line a few hundred metres from the base, but it was short-lived and had no effect.’

  The OMLT medic arrived and immediately set about categorizing the wounded into those who would survive and those who were close to death. He also had to confirm that those who had been assumed to be dead were actually dead. Even for a trained medic the scene was shocking.

  Lance Sergeant Baily described the courtyard of the compound where the killings took place as a ‘scene out of a murder movie’. ‘It was absolutely horrific – those memories will never leave me. There was blood everywhere and kit all over the place. The dead were just lying where they fell.’

  The need now was to get the seriously injured back to Camp Bastion as quickly as possible. The living were the priority, not the dead; they would have to wait. The most seriously injured, Lance Corporal Woodgates, Lance Corporal Culverhouse and Corporal Webster-Smith, who was by this stage very close to death, were the first to be extracted by helicopter. The rest of the injured were taken back to FOB Shawqat in an armoured Pinzgauer vehicle, at which point it was discovered that one of the bullets had nicked an artery in Lance Corporal Namarua’s leg and he had started bleeding profusely, but the blood flow was quickly stemmed by the medics who had arrived with the OMLT troops.

  Lance Sergeant Baily and those not injured then began the process of clearing the rest of the rooms in the compound to make sure that there were no other gunmen hiding. ‘After we cleared the rooms, I had to go through a list of all the guys we had at the base and categorize them as either dead, injured or alive. I was pretty much on autopilot at that stage. The guys who had survived uninjured were sitting around smoking. They were very quiet, I don’t think anyone was speaking. One of the guys looked at me and I said, “Are you all right?” and he broke down, so I went over to him and gave him a hug. It was the only thing I could think of at the time. I then looked at the terp and he started crying too, and I gave him a hug as well. I thought to myself at that stage, I can’t cry now, I’ve got to keep it together for these guys.’

  Meanwhile Colonel Walker headed straight for his headquarters, where on arrival he was met by the senior major, Andrew James, who had known and served with Daz Chant for the past eighteen years.

  Colonel Walker continued, ‘I was met by the Senior Major when I arrived back at Shawqat. The look on his face told me everything and he said that the sergeant major was dead. It was a desperate blow, but by that stage I somehow had kind of expected that to be the case; no one had mentioned his name before that. And then he explained that Sergeant Telford had been killed, a very gentle man, and that one of the [Royal Military Police] corporals had been killed and that Guardsman Major had been killed.

  ‘Jimmy Major had just joined us and was going to be 19 in a couple of days’ time, and this was his first tour. Then later, some time after, I learned that the second RMP corporal had died, and your heart sinks. It was a treacherous act, it was monstrous. Gulbuddin was a man the sergeant major had helped train and they were killed then, when they were unarmed and off their guard. So you take a pause, you take a breath, and realize you have got to take control of the situation and deal with the living.’

  Colonel Walker went down to the regimental aid post and visited the casualties, during which time the survivors began to arrive back at the main base. The injured and some of the survivors were in a state of shock; others became very emotional as the enormity of what had just happened began to sink in.

  The colonel, who was originally commissioned into the Irish Guards, had come to rely heavily upon Sergeant Major Chant, whom he described as ‘my conscience, my right-hand man’. He went on, ‘From the first day that I took over command of the battalion through to the day the sergeant major died I would consult him on every significant decision concerning soldiers or the regiment.

  ‘The tragedy is that as I was going through the formalities of writing up notes on the incident my instinct was to turn to the sergeant major and say, “Right, what do we do about this?” But obviously he’s not there and that’s when you realize you are on your own at that point.

  ‘I missed him very, very quickly and I still do, but for the battlegroup he was a really big personality and this will come out in the telling as people remember him. He has left us a great legacy; every word he said will be remembered. Yes, he was a living legend, but my God now he is preserved.’

  Back in the safety of the camp the survivors had to relive the horrific events by writing formal statements which would form the basis of an inquiry by the Royal Military Police Special Investigation Branch.

  It was at this stage that Lance Sergeant Baily came close to breaking down for the first time since the attack. ‘I was writing down what had happened and I looked up and one of my mates from the signal platoon walked in. He had this moustache he had been growing and because I had been away for two weeks I hadn’t seen it. I looked up at him and I was just on the cusp of crying when I noticed the moustache and I just burst out laughing and said, “What the hell is that?” It was literally a “laugh or cry moment”.

  ‘There have been a couple of times when I came very close to crying but I just got a grip of myself and said, “No, not yet.” I made a pact with myself that I wouldn’t let it affect me until I get home. I told my wife what had happened on the phone before the news broke, and said, “This has happened but don’t worry, I’m OK.”

  ‘That night when I went to bed, I closed my eyes and I was back on the roof again and I was thinking what a complete idiot I was for not having my body armour and helmet. I did get to sleep and there have been a few nights when I couldn’t sleep. I’ve spoken to a few people about events but really only when I felt that I needed to. Sergeant Telford was a good friend and I knew how hard losing a good friend was going to be. I had known him since I joined the Army and I have lost other friends before – two were killed on our last tour here in 2007. Having been through that experience before, I knew that I had just got to crack on and do my job.’

  Slowly the news began to circulate that Corporal Webster-Smith had also died and that Lance Corporal Woodgates was in a very critical condition. Many of the soldiers who knew the dead were reduced to tears, while others were a
ngry and felt a sense of deep betrayal that a police officer could cold-bloodedly murder men who had been helping him bring law and order to his country. There were fears that some soldiers might exact some form of retribution on members of the police. But the Grenadiers reacted with the utmost professionalism. There was no reaction, no calls for retribution, just a deep sense of personal loss.

  The wounded were soon confronted by mixed emotions: elation at their survival but also guilt arising from the belief that they may have been able to do more.

  Guardsman Loader, who a month earlier had lost one of his best friends when Guardsman James Major was killed, was mystified as to how he survived the attack with just a single bullet wound to the hand. ‘I don’t know how we managed to get out of that situation and still manage to be here, all right, talking and walking. I have never, ever seen so much blood in my entire life, all over the floor, all over me, all over my legs, all over my hands. It’s lumps of blood. I’ve never seen lumps of blood before like I did then.

  ‘It’s hard to explain, I just really do not know how we survived. Someone must have been watching over us. Because I thought that was it. So many times, at so many points, I thought that was it. I’ve never been so scared in my life. Every single move that I made, the thought before it was, what if I do this and I run into him? I mean, so many thoughts of, what if I do this and because of this it’s the reason that I die today? So there was so much going through my head, my whole body was in overload. I didn’t know what to think, didn’t know what to do.’

  Lance Corporal Namarua, who had been hit twice and was incapacitated, also pretended he was dead as the policeman ran around shooting. ‘That’s when my mind started going about my little one and my wife, and have I done enough, you know, with the insurance,’ said Nammers in the days after the attack. ‘I was the last one to get shot, it’s like my fault for not getting the bloke. I feel guilty for not doing anything. You know, I should have killed him. I should have killed him that day.’