Bomb Hunters: In Afghanistan With Britain's Elite Bomb Disposal Unit (30 page)

Unfortunately for the ANP, the Taliban have noticed their propensity for perceived bravery and have started to modify basic pressure-plate devices by attaching a pressure-release switch. This is nothing sophisticated and can be as basic as the type of switch which turns on the interior light of a car. The unsuspecting ANP officer who finds the bomb will cut the power supply from the pressure plate in the belief that the bomb has been rendered safe, only for it to explode when he releases the pressure by pulling the bomb out of the ground.

Woody lifts up the larger of the two containers and says, ‘That one weighs about 20 kg. That would have been enough to take out a vehicle.’ Pointing to the other, he adds, ‘That’s got about 10 kg of HME. That would definitely kill or injure. At the very least it’s going to take your legs off and it would probably destroy a smaller vehicle. So we’ve got two bombs, one larger than the other, and we know that they were placed along the same stretch of track, so that makes you wonder what the Taliban were trying to achieve. I think they were probably trying to take out a vehicle and then get another casualty with the small device in a follow-up clearance.’

Warriors have been used elsewhere in Helmand since 2007, but they have been in this part of the province for only a matter of weeks. The Taliban are masters of observation. Whenever any new unit, piece of equipment or type of vehicle arrives in an area the local commander will almost always start a small-scale intelligence-gathering operation before attempting to carry out an attack. The Taliban will simply watch, wait, record, and then react.

Although there is some migration of Taliban tactics across Helmand, some units of insurgents can become quite insular and dislocated from the main Taliban central command. If the Taliban were a pan-Afghan cohesive force conducting mutually supporting operations across Helmand and the rest of the country, they would pose a much greater threat to NATO. But since 2006, when British troops first entered Helmand, their tactics, although often deadly, have never really moved beyond ‘shoot and scoot’.

Sitting down by the two bombs, Woody begins to explain how the Taliban are becoming increasingly sophisticated in some of their attacks. ‘One of the current concerns is that the Taliban will try and take out a Warrior – that would be a bit of a coup for them. The Warriors have only been in this part of Helmand for a few weeks and we know the Taliban are looking and watching. They have all the time in the world, so it is easy for them to put a device in with a certain amount of explosive, say 10 kg, and wait and see what effect that will have on a Warrior. The type of vehicle you have will reflect the size of the main charge the Taliban use. Taliban tactics aren’t haphazard; they may have been a bit like that a couple of years ago, but not any more. They are still basically hit-and-run but with a lot of thought behind them. They will put a 10 kg device in the road and see what happens. The next day or week another one will go in with 15 kg and then another with 20 kg, until they get the desired effect, and they will build their tactics around what happens. They’re in no rush, they have no timeframe, they are always going to be here. The clock is ticking for us, not them.’

Woody is ready to dispose of the two bombs but the search team have failed to materialize. I can sense his frustration but he keeps his thoughts private. Rather than wait for the searchers to turn up, Woody decides to reconnoitre an area 200 metres to the front of the base, in what is effectively no man’s land. I watch him disappear into the distance, clearing the ground in front of his feet with the Vallon. One of the Scots Guardsmen with our team senses my concern for Woody and assures me that he is pretty safe. ‘He will be covered by the sangar and the boys up there have got a .50-cal HMG and a 7.62-mm GPMG and a sniper.’

Ten minutes later Woody returns to the perimeter wall. ‘Right, I’ve found a site – it’s about 200 metres north from here. Boonie, I’ll need a couple of sticks of PE and we’ll blow the two bombs together. Any sign of the search team?’

‘Haven’t seen them,’ replies Boonie.

In the world of IED disposal it is vital that rules and procedures are followed to the letter and that when an order is given it is acted on. Every member of the IEDD and search teams must have an absolute understanding of their role and that of every member of the team. Woody likes to run a relaxed ship but that method of leadership will only work if everyone toes the line. ‘OK,’ he says to no one in particular, ‘there are going to have to be words.’

Twenty minutes later Woody returns and tells Boonie that the bombs are primed and ready to be blown. He has placed a couple of sticks of military-grade plastic explosive between the two containers and attached a detonator to a length of det cord which is connected to the PE. Woody hands Boonie a length of wire the end of which is connected to the detonator 200 metres in the distance. Our small party moves back inside the camp and takes cover behind an 8 ft Hesco wall.

‘Get ready for a loud bang,’ says Woody, now smiling again. Boonie shouts, ‘Controlled explosion in figures two,’ then repeats the warning. Two minutes later he presses a black button on his green firing box and, almost instantaneously, a massive explosion fills the air around us. I can feel the force of the blast in the pit of my stomach and within a few seconds pieces of the desert which have been sucked into a large mushroom cloud begin to shower down on us. The massive explosion was caused by just 30 kg of home-made explosive and it seems almost impossible that anything, apart from the largest and most heavily armoured tank, would escape either total destruction or severe damage. The effect on a human body would be devastating. ‘If you stepped on something that big you would be vaporized,’ says Woody. ‘You would be literally blown to pieces, but the pieces would be very small. There wouldn’t really be anything left to send home.’

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.