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

  It’s a sombre journey. We all cling to our seats as the aircraft descends at an impossible angle. Beneath the dim, green glow of the safety lighting, a silhouetted soldier begins to vomit. The acrid smell of a partially digested meal drifts through the cabin and I feel my gag reflex kicking in. My comfortable, peaceful civilian world is inexorably slipping away. I begin to sweat profusely beneath my helmet and combat body armour, or CBA, scant but necessary protection against a missile strike or ground fire from an anti-aircraft gun. The lumbering aircraft begins to pitch and roll in a desperate attempt to avoid missile lock-on.

  One of the crew is monitoring the ground outside with night-vision goggles, searching for the tell-tale flashes of anti-aircraft fire. A missile strike at this altitude would not be survivable. I wonder if the rest of the passengers, like me, are urging the pilot to fly faster. No senior military official will admit it publicly but the current thinking in the Ministry of Defence is that is just a matter of time before the Taliban acquires surface-to-air missiles and manages to shoot down a troop-laden Herc flying into Helmand. Such a catastrophic event, the loss of dozens of British troops in a single incident, could finally kill off the dwindling public support for the war in Afghanistan and signal the beginning of the end for the entire NATO mission.

  A young Army officer sitting on my right conjures up a nervous smile but his eyes tell another story. It’s his first tour in Helmand and he has never flown in a Herc before. I attempt to allay his fears by giving him the thumbs up. But, in truth, I’m probably just as worried as he is. I’m not a good flyer at the best of times and all sorts of ‘what if’ thoughts are running through my head. Six hours earlier, when we arrived in Kandahar Air Force Base, known within the military as KAF, the young officer reminded me of a timid boy attending his first day at school. Fresh-faced and awkward, among no friendly faces, he sat by himself for several hours with his head buried in a Dick Francis thriller, before boarding the flight to Helmand.

  I’m on board what they call the ‘KAF taxi’ – effectively a military shuttle flight into Helmand from the sprawling Kandahar Air Base. I’m one of more than 100 passengers flown into Afghanistan on an ageing RAF TriStar – it first came into service in the early 1980s and was already second-hand. Hopefully the aircraft’s engines are in better shape than the passenger cabin because that is well and truly knackered. If the TriStar was a civilian plane, I’m pretty sure it would be grounded. Parts of the interior are held together by 3-inch-wide silver masking tape and the toilet doors have a tendency to fly open while in use – ‘The in-flight entertainment,’ some wag commented – but, frankly, it’s good enough for ‘our boys’ flying off to war to fight and die for Queen and Country. The TriStar is straight out of the military manual of ‘making do’. It’s what happens when the armed forces have been underfunded for decades. It is, as one senior officer told me, a third party, fire and theft, rather than fully comprehensive, insurance package.

  Afghanistan has its own unique smell – it’s the dust in the atmosphere – and it’s on the plane thousands of feet above the desert; for me it’s the smell of fear, death and courage, and there is no other smell like it. The fear, and also the excitement, of being in a war zone are already beginning to build inside me and giving rise to a mix of emotions. I have yet to arrive and already part of me is wishing that I was back home, in a warm, safe house with my family. Instead I’m just minutes away from landing in one of the most dangerous places on earth.

  Fourteen hours ago I was sitting in the bleak departure lounge at RAF Brize Norton along with several hundred soldiers. All tired, all sad. For them the long goodbye had come and gone – they were just at the start of their six-month tour. Six months of fear, broken up by bursts of excitement and long stretches of unimaginable boredom. There is nothing romantic about front-line life in Helmand: it is hard, dangerous and dirty. Generals and politicians fighting the war from their desks in Whitehall might talk about the importance of nation building and national security, but for the soldiers at the bullet end of the war it’s all about survival. From the private soldier, who joined the Army because it was the only job available after eighteen years on a sink estate, to the Eton-educated Guards officer, winning is coming home alive and not in a Union Jack-draped coffin. Soldiers in Helmand fight for themselves and each other – grander notions are for others to hold.

  It was the same for me when I served as a young officer in 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment in Northern Ireland in the late 1980s. Every member of 3 Para knew why the British Army was on the streets of Ulster. We understood the politics, the tribal tensions and the history, but it mattered little to any of us. Soldiers do not fight for Queen and Country: they fight for each other. They do not fix bayonets with the government’s foreign policy objectives ringing in their ears: they do so because they are professionals trained to obey orders. It’s the same in Helmand today. Every soldier still wants to win a medal but he also wants to make it home in one piece.

  But with glory comes a terrible price. In Helmand, a front-line soldier stands a one-in-ten chance of being killed or injured; those are not good odds. Looking around the departure lounge at RAF Brize Norton, I wondered which of my fellow passengers would not survive the six-month tour, and I doubt I was the only one with that thought in their mind. The atmosphere was subdued, depressing even. Some soldiers entered the room with eyes reddened by tears, doubtless wondering whether they would ever see their loved ones again. Part of me, sitting here now descending into the Helmand desert, wonders the same.

  There was once a time when I thought that as a journalist I was safe in a war zone. It’s a foolish notion. Why should I be less at risk than anyone else? But I believed it nonetheless. I have worked in several war zones – the Balkans, Iraq, Northern Ireland – and I always thought death and injury were something that happened to others. Mainly soldiers or journalists who forgot to obey the rules or who simply pushed their luck too far.

  That was until one of my best friends, Rupert Hamer, was killed while on assignment in January 2010 after the US armoured vehicle in which he was travelling was destroyed by an IED. He was working as a reporter alongside photographer Phil Coburn, and the pair were both attached to the US Marines Expeditionary Force when he was killed. They were part way through a two-week assignment and were returning from a shura, or meeting of elders, when the tragedy struck. Phil and Rupert were sitting beside each other inside a 30-ton heavily armoured Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle when they hit a huge improvised explosive device.

  The main charge was composed of ammonium nitrate powder and aluminium filings, and when these are mixed together in the right quantities the result is lethal. The explosive was packed into several yellow palm-oil containers buried about 15 cm beneath the ground. The detonator was probably made from a Christmas tree light, or something similar, with the bulb removed. The bomb was one of the largest ever seen in Helmand.

  The MRAP more or less remained intact – the front and rear wheels and axles were blown off – but the shock wave which tore through the vehicle was devastating. Despite wearing helmets and body armour and being strapped into their seats, Rupert, Phil and four US Marines all suffered multiple injuries. Phil and Rupert were sitting side by side, but while Rupert died Phil survived, though the bones in his feet were smashed beyond repair and both feet were amputated. Four US Marines travelling in the vehicle were seriously injured and a fifth was killed.

  Death in Helmand is random – it has killed the best in the British Army, possibly even the best of the best. Every soldier from private to lieutenant colonel – all the ranks in a battlegroup – have been killed in action in the province since 2006. Not since Korea has the British Army been in such a bloody fight, and every indicator suggests it’s going to get worse.

  I last spoke to Rupert less than two weeks before he was killed. It was an unusually warm day in early January. He had called me from Kabul while waiting for a flight to Helmand. I was sitting on a chair in m
y garden, guffawing with laughter as he relayed in detail all the hilarious events that had befallen both him and Phil in the short time that they had been in Afghanistan.

  Rupert was in good form, joking about the Marines’ lack of organization and saying that by comparison they made him look organized. My last words were, ‘E-mail me when you can, and look after yourself.’ As he set off for Helmand, I went to Austria for a week’s skiing holiday with my family. Rupert was killed on the following Saturday, 10 January.

  The first thing my wife, Clodagh, said to me after I told her Rupert had been killed was, ‘It could have been you.’ At that moment I vowed never to return. Fuck it, I thought to myself. It’s not worth it. Not for a few stories for a newspaper. But even as the words formed I secretly I knew I would return. The problem for me is that I find war zones exciting places. There is a thrill to being under fire, even risking your life, always in the knowledge, of course, that, as an observer, rather than a protagonist, I was somehow invulnerable. Rupert’s death shattered that illusion, but as the shock of his loss gradually lessened I was soon beginning to convince myself of the need to return.

  Rupert always said to me, ‘If you are going to report the war, then you have to see the war,’ and he was right. Just before I left, my 6-year-old son asked me why I was going to Afghanistan. ‘To carry out research for my book and to report on what is happening in the country,’ I told him, hoping that he wouldn’t ask me if I was going to do anything dangerous. ‘Why can’t you just get the information off the internet?’ he responded, looking confused. ‘Because that’s what somebody else has seen and witnessed,’ I replied. ‘I need to see what is going on for myself so that I can write about it.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I think I understand.’

  So here I am on a C-130, ten minutes away from landing in Helmand, the centre of a war zone where every day British troops are being killed and injured. So much for never returning. And the news from the front line is not good. In Sangin, a town in the north of Helmand, six soldiers have been killed in the first week of March. Four of the dead were shot by snipers. Taliban shooters are good, and the Army is understandably nervous. Enemy snipers are feared and hated by all armies and run the risk of summary execution if captured. Snipers will go for the easy kill or one designed to shatter morale: the young soldier, the commander, the medic. Morale in Sangin had understandably suffered. Soldiers were being picked off at the rate of one a day. Although the sniper is guaranteed to generate fear, in Helmand the IED, the unseen killer, remains the soldiers’ worst nightmare. A step in the wrong direction, a momentary lapse of concentration, can mean mutilation, the loss of one or more limbs, or death.

  Lose a leg in what is known as a traumatic amputation and you have just four and a half minutes for a medic to staunch the wound before you fatally ‘bleed out’. The time decreases with each additional limb lost, and that is why no quadruple amputee has yet survived.

  IEDs are now being manufactured on an industrial scale – it is no longer a cottage industry. Bomb factories in some parts of Helmand can produce an IED every fifteen minutes. Made from pieces of wood, old batteries and home-made explosive, they are basic and deadly. The Taliban have already produced IEDs with ‘low metal’ or ‘no metal’ content, which are difficult to detect. So, as well as using equipment to detect bombs, troops also need to rely on what they call the ‘Mk 1 eyeball’, hoping to spot ground sign.

  In Helmand the IED is now the Taliban’s weapon of choice and the main killer of British troops. The field hospital in Camp Bastion now expects to treat at least one IED trauma victim every day. Between September 2009 and April 2010 there were almost 2,000 IED incidents.

  The human cost of this war has never been higher. Since 2006 more than 350 soldiers have been killed and more than 4,000 injured. Of these, more than 150 have lost one or more limbs. And those are the statistics for just the British forces. Every country with troops in Helmand – the United States, Estonia and Denmark – has suffered similar losses.

  In one week alone in February 2010 there were 200 IED incidents – that is, bombs being detonated or discovered. Do the maths – that’s over 9,000 a year. Or more than one IED for every British soldier serving in Helmand.

  The job of battling against this threat falls to the Joint Force Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group, part of the Counter IED, or CIED, Task Force. At the tip of the spear are the Ammunition Technical Officers, or ATOs, the soldiers who defuse the Taliban IEDs – the bomb hunters. Also called IED operators, the ATOs work hand in glove with the RESTs. It is a fantastically dangerous task, not because the devices are sophisticated but because of the volume of bombs. The number of IED attacks started to go through the roof in 2008, a development which was entirely unpredicted. Back then there were just two bomb-disposal teams in Helmand because someone, somewhere in the Ministry of Defence did not regard Helmand as a ‘high-threat’ environment. That was the official version of events but in reality Iraq was still the priority and there were simply not enough bomb hunters to serve in both theatres. The following year IEDs were killing more soldiers than Taliban bullets. By the middle of 2010 the CIED Task Force began suffering casualties on a scale which had not been seen for thirty years.

  I’ve come back to Helmand to try to understand why anyone would want to become a bomb hunter. I want to get inside their heads, learn about their fears and concerns, the unimaginable stresses they face every day and what drives them on knowing that one mistake, one single slip, can mean death. For three weeks I will be an embedded journalist working alongside both the bomb-hunting teams of the CIED Task Force and the Grenadier Guards battlegroup.

  It is virtually impossible to report from Helmand without being embedded. The risks are so great that independent travel is a non-starter. Travelling independently through Helmand could only really be achieved by striking some sort of deal with the Taliban in order to pass safely through areas under their control. Even if that were achievable there would still be every chance of hitting an IED or finding yourself in the crossfire of a battle between the insurgents and British troops.

  Being an embedded reporter has its advantages, the most important being safety. To a certain extent journalists are exposed to the same risks as soldiers, but because you are not playing an active part in a battle you are not fighting through Taliban positions, so you have to be fairly unlucky to be killed or injured. But there are disadvantages. All of my copy will be scrutinized by censors who will check it for anything which could be construed as a breach of operational security. Before any journalist can embed with the British Army, he or she must sign the ‘Green Book’, a contractual obligation stating that the Ministry of Defence will scrutinize all copy, pictures and video before publication.

  Most journalists don’t have a problem with this, even if it does run counter to the idea of a free press, and I for one would not want to write anything which might put a soldier’s life at risk.

  The C-130 slams into Camp Bastion’s darkened runway, and the relief on board is tangible. The engines once again begin to scream as we slow to a halt. Beneath the green gloom of the safety lights, the troops begin to ready themselves for disembarkation. The Herc’s rear ramp opens, like a giant mouth, revealing a kaleidoscope of orange, yellow and white lights blinking through the desert dust. This is not a military camp, it’s a small city, dominated by the monotonous drone of departing aircraft, some carrying troops, others bearing the coffins of the fallen.

  One by one we silently disembark, keeping our personal thoughts private, each wondering what the future will bring. Beneath a star-lit sky we are led in single file from the airstrip to waiting buses, before being driven to one of the ‘processing centres’ where fresh troops undergo their final preparations for war. The week-long Reception, Staging and Onward Movement Integration (RSOI) programme is effectively designed to fine-tune the soldier so that he can hit the ground running. In effect it’s the last chance to get things right before coming face to face with the enemy.

>   A two-tier war is being fought by the British Army in Helmand. The ‘teeth arm’ troops, those involved in the day-to-day fighting and killing, live in small patrol bases, where the conditions range from sparse to austere. Toilets are often holes in the ground, soldiers keep clean with a solar shower – a bag of water which has been left to bake in the sun – and meals are a mixture of fresh food and Army rations. Six months on the front line is a dangerous existence with few comforts.

  But those troops who remain in bases like Camp Bastion or Kandahar Air Base live, by comparison, in air-conditioned luxury, with hot showers and fresh food, and where off-duty hours can be spent in one of the many gyms or watching premiership football on satellite television. ‘Life in the rear,’ as the American troops in Vietnam observed, ‘has no fear.’ The majority of those soldiers based at Camp Bastion will never set foot beyond its gates, but while they might not take the same risks as the front-line soldiers their job is just as vital. They keep the war machine moving by ensuring that the right food, water and ammunition arrive at the right place at the right time. It’s a job which lacks the ‘glamour’ of battle but is just as important.

  The coach snakes its way through the camp, passing row upon row of huge tents which were once white but have now taken on the hue of the desert. I’ve been coming to Camp Bastion since 2006, and every time I return the place has grown. Someone once said that the best decision the British Army ever made in Helmand was to build the base in the middle of nowhere. Had it been near a town or an area of habitation, the chances are that it would have been mortared or rocketed every night.

  Our belongings are dumped in the desert dust by an Army lorry and chaos ensues as 100 individuals search for the bags in the pitch blackness. The soldiers are told to collect their kit and move into one of the briefing rooms – I say goodbye to the young Army officer, shake his hand and wish him luck, silently hoping that he makes it home safely in six months’ time. The weary soldiers file into a tent to begin a series of briefings through which many will sleep. I’m left with the lasting impression that Camp Bastion is one giant processing centre. Every night hundreds of tired, nervous and confused troops arrive to feed the war machine, and every day, or almost every day, the dead, the wounded and the lucky fly out.