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

by Sean Rayment

  It almost defies belief that the Taliban can make something so devastating with items that can be found on practically every farm in Helmand. Although ammonium-nitrate fertilizers were banned by President Hamid Karzai in February 2010, it is estimated that there are hundreds of thousands of tons of the material in circulation in Afghanistan. More is smuggled across the border from Pakistan and Iran every day and it is estimated that it will take years before supplies in circulation are exhausted. It strikes me that banning ammonium-nitrate-based fertilizers is nothing more than a cosmetic act. In Northern Ireland they were banned from the early 1980s and the Troubles still rumbled on for another decade, with fertilizers still forming part of the main ingredient of the IRA’s home-made bombs.

  With the bombs cleared it’s time to return to Shawqat. Everyone is looking forward to a rest and a shower, but then a message comes over the radio during the journey back that another IED has been found on the same route which Woody cleared a few hours earlier. ‘It’s going to be a long day,’ is his only response as he closes his eyes and falls into a deep but short-lived sleep.

  Within half an hour our convoy has returned to the area where today’s operation began several hours earlier. I’m reminded of the film Groundhog Day. Standing in the doorway is the silhouetted figure of a 6 ft 2 in. Scots Guards sergeant. He greets Woody with a firm handshake and ready smile. ‘Back already,’ he says. ‘Missed it too much,’ replies Woody, who manages to conjure up a smile even though he is exhausted.

  The sergeant immediately emabrks on a faultless but speedy briefing on how the suspected device was discovered. ‘We were doing a route clearance from Yellow 21, which is about 500 metres to our rear. It was a routine task and we were clearing using our normal drills. It was quite a lengthy task. We had a four-man barma team and two hedgerow men to cover the outside and two covering the inside of the road. The Vallon men interlocked their arcs to make sure the whole route was being covered. As we advanced up this road, Guardsman Warren Forrest got a high reading on his Vallon. He went straight into his confirmation drills. He walked back, drew a line in the sand, and then started his confirmation from there. It was a very brave thing for a young guardsman to do. He then started digging to try and confirm that there was a device. But the ground was very hard. We couldn’t get a confirmation. That’s about it.’

  The soldier, a guardsman – the most junior rank in the Brigade of Guards – appears from behind the Warrior seconds after the sergeant calls for him. He looks too young to be in the Army.

  ‘Hello, mate, I’m Woody, the ATO. Your sergeant says that you think you found something up the road,’ says Woody. ‘Can you tell me exactly what happened and what you saw? But tell me your name first.’

  ‘I’m Warren. We were pushing along the track,’ the soldier replies in a strong Glaswegian accent. ‘I had got about 100 metres from here and I got a tone on the Vallon. I checked the Vallon and then shouted, stop. Marked the site and told the sergeant what I had found. It was a very similar tone to one I got before, a few days ago, when I found another PP IED.’

  Guardsman Forrest then takes Woody to the bomb’s location, around 100 metres forward of our position. When Woody returns a few minutes later he is not convinced that the soldier has found an IED.

  ‘If I was a betting man I would bet that it’s just a piece of metal in the ground,’ says Woody, rubbing his chin. ‘The ground feels rock solid, so the easiest and safest thing to do is break up the ground with some PE and then go and have a look. I’ve got a couple of pounds of PE I could use, but that might be a bit much. The idea is to blow up the ground rather than make the device function. If there is something there and it goes off when I blow up the ground, I’ll be able to tell from the explosion. There is a big difference between a piece of PE and a 10 kg device. I’m going to try and carry out a further confirmation myself, but if I can’t then I will use some PE. There is no ground sign, so if there is anything there it was buried a long time ago. I’m going to try and locate it with the hand-held detector and place the PE by the side of it.’

  With the poppy harvest just a few weeks away, the Taliban have been placing IEDs in poppy fields in the hope that they will deter the ANP from destroying the crop. It is a tactic which is only partially successful. Woody explains that the Taliban will also hide bombs in trees which are effectively improvised claymores designed to decapitate soldiers, or bury them in the walls either side of alleyways. ‘They will put an IED anywhere to try and catch you out – not just in the ground – so you have to think three-dimensionally.’

  Just before Woody ‘goes down the road’ for the second time, several soldiers standing on one of the Warriors begin shouting aggressively. A civilian motorcyclist with a pillion passenger is rapidly approaching. One of the soldiers immediately shouts, ‘Boss, miniflare’ to his platoon commander in the vehicle to our rear. The platoon commander fires a red flare and the interpreters begin shouting at the motorcyclist to stop. It is a moment of heightened tension. If the civilian fails to stop, warning shots will be fired, if time allows, otherwise the soldiers will resort to lethal force. Suicide bombers have used motorcycles to target and kill several British soldiers in the past few months and no one is prepared to take the risk. I look round and can immediately see about a dozen grim-faced soldiers, fingers on triggers, ready to let rip at the motorcyclist and his burkha-wearing passenger if they fail to stop. Fortunately the civilian has taken heed and slowly comes to a halt with a look of bemusement on his face. I wonder if he realizes how close he has just come to being shot dead.

  As we wait for Woody to return, swallows are swooping above our heads and two soldiers discuss the merits of having a dog with young children. ‘I might get one for the wee nipper when I get back. He’ll love it. He’ll think Christmas has come early,’ says one. ‘A lot of work, though,’ says the other. ‘Yeah, I know, but worth it just to see the look on the young lad’s face when you walk in with a wee puppy in your arms and say, “Here’s your doggy, son.”’

  Their reflections on life back in the UK are interrupted by Woody, who tells the crouching soldiers that an explosion is imminent. ‘Take cover,’ shouts Boonie. ‘Controlled explosion is about to take place. Everyone happy?’ he asks, before shouting, ‘Standby, firing!’ A loud bang follows, but it’s PE and not Taliban explosive which has detonated.

  Woody returns to the site of the detonation and carefully searches through the broken hard mud – there is no device. The Vallon’s alarm was reacting to some discarded pieces of metal, as he suspected.

  When he comes back he looks fatigued and has a wry grin on his face. ‘There was nothing there, just a few bits of metal in the ground. I don’t blame the soldiers, they are just following the procedures, and it’s right that they do, but every time I have been called out on a double tone there has been nothing there. It’s slightly frustrating but I can understand why I have been called in. The soldiers can’t get into the ground to confirm the presence of a device because it is too hard and they can’t mark and avoid because they are here to clear this route. It’s just one of those things. But if you don’t have overwatch on a route, then two days after you clear the devices the Taliban will put them back in the ground. We should only clear routes that are going to be overwatched, otherwise the soldiers should use alternative routes. I’m not being precious but we are a pretty rare asset out here and a little bit more thought should go into how we are used. We are not here to clear every single device – just the ones that are either a risk to us or preventing movement of our forces. The Taliban want to get you bogged down clearing everything and sometimes I think we are falling into that trap.’

  As we walk back to the Warrior for our journey back to FOB Shawqat, the sense of achievement among the soldiers is obvious. Smiles, which have been absent for a large part of the day, suddenly emerge on relaxed faces. Brimstone 42 were confronted by the first of the many challenges that will dominate every day of their lives for the next six months and they have
had the best of all possible starts.

  ‘The lads did well. It was quite slow at the beginning, which is what you would expect and want really, because the last thing you would want is for the team to rush the job, but on the whole I’m pleased. I think we’ll make a good team,’ says Woody as we walk back to our Warrior. By the time we arrive back at FOB Shawqat, most of the soldiers are too tired to talk. Weapons are unloaded in the firing bay and the search and IEDD teams silently disperse in the hope of a good night’s sleep in preparation for another mission tomorrow.

  It’s 8 a.m. the following morning. Woody had been hoping for a slack day to sort out some personal administration and catch up on some report-writing, but it’s not to be. Over the past few weeks members of the ANP have been arriving at the gates of the compound belonging to the Nad-e’Ali district governor, Habiullah Khan, with a wide variety of unstable and highly dangerous unexploded munitions, such as RPGs, mortar bombs and artillery shells. These explosives which have failed to function are called ‘blinds’ by the British troops. Some of the munitions have been used recently against the British by the Taliban, while others are believed to be remnants of the Soviet invasion. Woody has been tasked to ‘dispose’ of them. It is a routine job both he and Boonie could do without.

  Woody, Boonie, the Intelligence Officer of the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment, which will be relieving the Grenadier Guards in the next few weeks, and a member of the Weapons Intelligence Section rendezvous at the ANP headquarters with Wali Mohammed, the regional head of the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan equivalent of MI5. Wali Mohammed is a shrewd character with sharp eyes and a ready smile. It is said that he has connections with everyone who matters, including the Taliban, and little happens in Helmand without his knowledge. For this former Mujahideen commander, the AK-47 and the RPG used to be the weapons of choice, but these days his battles are fought using a pair of mobile phones. I have met him many times and he’s is always polite and warm. But what you see with Wali is certainly not what you get. Governor Habiullah Khan might be the official head of the Nad-e’Ali district, but I have always been left with the feeling that Wali is the real power behind the throne.

  Wali tells Woody that all of the bombs and main charges were found by the ANP in the area of Shin Kalay, a small hamlet with a strong Taliban presence a few kilometres from FOB Shawqat. We are led outside to a haul of artillery shells, rockets, mortar rounds and IED main charges. All of the munitions have been fired and are in a relatively unstable state. One of the ANP officers moves over to the pile, picks up an RPG warhead, studies it, then drops it casually on the ground, much to everyone’s alarm. Back in the UK, unexploded ordnance would never be treated with such disdain. Out of the corner of my eye I can see the intelligence officer backing away with a look of sheer terror on his face. Woody immediately tells the interpreter to warn the ANP officer to treat the blinds with a little more respect.

  I ask Boonie whether the blinds are safe. ‘They should be, but you shouldn’t be chucking them around like that,’ he tells me. Woody smiles at me and adds, ‘Unnerving, isn’t it?’ The hairs on the back of my neck begin to rise.

  Speaking through the interpreter, Woody patiently tells Wali Mohammed about the danger of soldiers bringing in blinds and the need to treat them safely. ‘These are very dangerous items and could explode if not treated correctly. Your men should be told that these need to be handled with care. They don’t always have to bring them in. They could leave them where they are and we would go and destroy them. That is the safest way.’ Wali smiles and explains that he understands but his men have grown up in a country littered with mines and rockets and they hold no fear for them.

  The blinds will be taken back to the British base and kept there securely before being taken into the desert and destroyed with a load of other unexploded ordnance, while the palm-oil containers, the main charges of the IEDs recovered by the ANP, will be destroyed in an adjacent field.

  We walk to a corner of a field where there is a 10-ft-deep irrigation ditch running the length of the field, about 600 metres from the camp perimeter. The two large palm-oil containers each hold around 10 kg of HME. Woody prepares the plastic explosive which will be used to detonate the HME and begins moulding it into a ball. Rather than using an electric detonator, he is using a strip of fuse wire.

  ‘When we light this,’ Woody tells the interpreter, pointing at the fuse wire, ‘we have two minutes to get away.’ The terp repeats the message and there is nervous laughter among the ANP. Seconds later Woody lights the fuse and we all start walking across the field at a brisk pace, occasionally looking back over our shoulder. Woody stops walking and begins to give a countdown – thirty seconds, twenty seconds, ten seconds – and, right on queue, detonation, the ground in the distance rising up like a scene from the First World War.

  ‘That would ruin your day if it went off underneath you,’ he says. Non-survivable on foot, it would blow a Jackal in two and would do serious damage to a Mastiff, so it’s pretty nasty stuff.

  Chapter 9: The Battle of Crossing Point One

  ‘It was like Zulu. The Taliban just kept coming and coming. It was suicidal. The more they sent, the more we killed.’

  Dean Bailey, 5 Platoon Sergeant, No. 2 Company, Grenadier Guards battlegroup

  The IED had been the Taliban’s weapon of choice since the middle of 2008, but among NATO troops in Afghanistan, especially the British in Helmand, casualties caused by blast only really began to soar in early 2009. The volume of bombs being laid by the Taliban was completely unpredicted, and initially this turned the conflict into a stalemate.

  By the time I was embedded with the Grenadier Guards in March 2010 almost every soldier serving in the dozens of different FOBs and PBs which peppered the Helmand landscape had encountered an IED in one capacity or another. The IED was a weapon all soldiers rightly feared but, in the best traditions of the British Army, commanders believed that the best way to defeat the significant psychological effect the IED presented was offensive action.

  This approach was typified by what became known as the Battle of Crossing Point One, which took place in November 2009, just hours after the brutal murders of five members of the Grenadier Guards battlegroup at Blue 25.

  It was in that same month, during a previous embed with the Grenadier Guards, that I first learned about the events at Crossing Point One. I had intended to visit the soldiers at the time but so ferocious was the battle that it was too dangerous to fly in by helicopter. Reluctantly, I had to wait another four months, until March 2010, to discover what befell a small, isolated group of British soldiers who, with guile and cunning, out-thought the Taliban and used the insurgents’ favoured weapons – the IED – against them. One afternoon I sat down with members of No. 2 Company, who told me how they fought and survived one of the most extraordinary battles of the conflict to date. This is their story.

  Morale was low, probably the lowest it had been. The men of the Grenadier Guards battlegroup knew that they would take casualties during their time in Afghanistan. Soldiers learn to live with the knowledge that in the Army death is part of their way of life. But no one had expected that British soldiers would be killed by those they were trying to help.

  The deaths at Blue 25 were a hammer blow for the battlegroup. The gunman, Gulbuddin, had killed without mercy and the Taliban were gloating, claiming that he was one of theirs, a spy who joined the police with the sole aim of killing British troops.

  But up in Luy Mandah, in the north of Nad-e’Ali, British soldiers were about to strike back. Major Richard Green, the officer commanding No. 2 Company, 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, had been planning an ambush which would exploit the Taliban’s fondness for attacking the casualty evacuation chain. It is important at this juncture to make clear that the ambush, which would have dramatic consequences, was not an act of retribution. The ambush was supposed to have been launched some weeks earlier but it was aborted for logistical reasons. Major Green was also determined th
at when it was launched the risk to the local population would be zero. Countering the insurgency, as he constantly told his men, would not be achieved by killing or injuring local people.

  Attacking the casevacs was a popular Taliban sport, especially when the injured soldier was the victim of an IED. The Taliban knew that British soldiers would at times act recklessly in order to save the life of a severely wounded colleague. The Taliban had watched and learned well. They had studied British tactics and had been able to predict their actions. Now it was time to turn the insurgents’ tactics against them. So, on the evening of Tuesday, 3 November, just hours after the murder at Blue 25, a plan which had been in the pipeline for some time came into action.

  In the short while that the Grenadier Guards had been in Helmand they had learned to live with the fear of knowing that they risked life and limb every time they left the safety of a base. The maxim ‘Knowledge dispels fear’ is often cited by instructors in the armed forces when training soldiers for dangerous tasks such as parachuting and bomb disposal, but in Helmand fear often plays a vital role. In many cases fear is an essential element in staying alive. Fear prevents complacency and promotes respect for the enemy’s capabilities. Practically every soldier fighting on the front line has either witnessed or knows of men who have been blown to pieces or suffered horrendous, life-changing injuries through being blown up.