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

  Vast areas of Taliban-controlled Helmand had effectively become minefields where soldiers literally feared to tread and in some bases units were sustaining 20 per cent casualties. Towards the end of 2009 the volume of IEDs being laid by the Taliban had fixed the British troops within specific boundaries from where the insurgents would attack and ambush at will. By the end of the Grenadiers’ tour, in March 2010, the battlegroup alone would have experienced some 1,000 IED incidents. Movement beyond these boundaries was at best highly dangerous and at worst suicidal. Small incursions into enemy territory risked unnecessary casualties among the British forces and threatened to damage or undermine the morale of the troops.

  But under General McChrystal’s strategy of protecting the civilian population centres, it was imperative that ISAF did not remain inside fortified compounds, safe and secure but isolated from the people they were supposedly trying to protect. The butcher’s bill for such a strategy was high and the highest price being paid in the autumn of 2009 was that paid by the British. The casualty rate of the British force in late 2009 and early 2010 outstripped that of every other NATO country in Afghanistan, including the United States.

  In September 2009, No. 2 Company were deployed to the northern tip of Nad-e’Ali, in an area known as Luy Mandah, where they relieved the soldiers of 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, who had fought in Operation Panchai Palang. The battalion suffered many casualties and the Welsh Guards were also the first regiment to lose their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe, in the Afghan War.

  Number Two Company’s headquarters was FOB Waheed, which was essentially a large fortified compound sitting on the junction between the Luy Mandah Wadi and the Nahr-e-Burgha and Shamalan canals. The area had once been the centre of a thriving community with a bazaar but it had long been deserted by the time the Grenadiers arrived. It was now Taliban territory, with a small, transient civilian population who worked on their farms during the days and returned at night to their families in more secure parts of the district.

  The company were based in three locations in the Luy Mandah area. As well being the company headquarters, FOB Waheed was the base for 6 Platoon, along with interpreters, mainly from Kabul, a Fire Support Group (FSG), an additional Fire Support Team (FST) from 1st Regiment Royal Horse Artillery, a section of Grenadier Mortars, an Electronic Warfare Detachment and two sections of engineers.

  The soldiers of 5 Platoon and elements of the FSG were located in a compound known as Crossing Point One, while 4 Platoon, with elements of the company headquarters, were housed at another nearby location, known as Crossing Point Luy Mandah.

  When the Grenadiers arrived in Luy Mandah they entered a hostile environment. The company headquarters and its two satellite bases were surrounded on three sides by various insurgent groups, who were well armed and composed of experienced fighters, while to the north was the desert. The vast majority of locals had fled, and some of those who had remained were probably sympathetic to the Taliban. The area was also one of the few in Helmand where ISAF troops did not partner either the Afghan Army or the Afghan Police.

  Nevertheless, life ticked along for No. 2 Company, and they enjoyed being detached from the battalion headquarters and out of sight of senior officers and the thunderous voice of Regimental Sergeant Major Darren Chant. The painful heat of the late summer was behind them and the soldiers quickly established a routine. Boredom had yet to raise its head as it was still early in the tour, and quiet periods were inevitably ended by a shoot-and-scoot attack by the Taliban. But everything changed in early October.

  Although only 20, Guardsman James Janes was, in the eyes of many of the more inexperienced soldiers in 6 Platoon, an old hand. He had previously served in Helmand in 2007 and was widely trusted by everyone within the unit, especially his commander, Lieutenant Alex Rawlings, and platoon sergeant, Chris Dougerty.

  Jamie fulfilled a long-held ambition when at the age of 16 he was selected for training at Harrogate Foundation College before moving on to complete his infantry recruit training at nearby Catterick. Although one of the youngest on the course he passed out with little difficulty and was posted to the Grenadier Guards. While the rest of the battalion deployed to Helmand in 2007, Jamie, still only 17, was forced to wait until his eighteenth birthday before he could join his mates in the province. Two years later Jamie volunteered to become one of the platoon searchers. Jamie’s job was to be point man, searching ahead for IEDs with a Vallon mine detector, putting himself at risk not only from hidden bombs but also from insurgent snipers. Despite the dangers, Jamie relished the challenge.

  On 5 October 2009, by which time the company had pretty much established their presence in Luy Mandah, Jamie’s section was attached to an Irish Guards multiple of around sixteen men. A platoon of ‘The Micks’, as the Irish Guards are fondly known, was attached to the battlegroup as much-needed reinforcements. The mission that day was to conduct a patrol in the area of Checkpoint Luy Mandah. The plan was to move along and clear a track, which had not been used for many months, up to a canal bridge, and obtain any intelligence from local farmers, if there was any, before returning back to their base. The route took the troops directly into what was effectively Taliban-controlled territory. On one side of the track, which was around 5 ft wide, was a canal and on the other was a small wall forming the boundary of a pomegranate orchard. In any other circumstances it would have been an idyllic setting, but that day the track became a route into hell.

  The platoon moved along the track in three distinct groups, each led by a Vallon operator at the head of an eight-man section. The guardsmen forming the lead element of 4 Platoon quickly began to identify suspected IEDs on the track. It was immediately clear that the route had been heavily mined. Jamie’s section, which was bringing up the rear, moved along the track carefully, giving the marked IEDs a wide berth. By the time the platoon had reached the canal bridge, at least six IEDs had been identified.

  The patrol moved down into the canal, where the cold water was waist-deep, and continued with the patrol for around 50 metres before turning back. Jamie was one of the first out of the water. The bank was slippery with wet mud and each soldier needed help climbing out. As each soldier was hauled out Jamie pointed out the location of a marked IED. What happened next remains unclear but there was a massive explosion, caused either by Jamie stepping backwards on to another unmarked device or by vibrations through the ground from the presence of several soldiers in a confined area which triggered an IED. The blast was massive, resulting in the traumatic amputation of Jamie’s arms and legs. Also injured in the explosion were Lance Corporal Gareth Harper and Guardsmen David Clark and Jordan Pearson.

  Despite his horrific injuries, Jamie was still alive. But he was very close to death and, unbeknown to the soldiers at that time, he had just minutes left to live. The loss of blood from a quadruple amputation would have been rapid and massive. Jamie’s chances of survival were poor, but his fellow soldiers fought hard to keep him alive. He received immediate medical attention and his huge blood loss was controlled by the application of four tourniquets to what was left of his shattered limbs. It was now urgent to get the wounded guardsman to a secure HLS in order that he could be evacuated back to the field hospital at Camp Bastion. But within minutes of 6 Platoon’s withdrawal they came under a fierce Taliban rocket and machine-gun attack. Bullets raked the ground beneath the soldiers’ feet and zipped through the air above them. Rocket-propelled grenades crashed and exploded among the troops, some detonating in the air about their heads, showering them with razor-sharp slivers of white-hot shrapnel.

  It was a bitter fight made all the more desperate by the knowledge that Jamie’s young life was ebbing away. The twenty or so soldiers who made up the patrol were almost completely surrounded and pinned down. Back at the company headquarters Major Richard Green ordered the FSG and their three Mastiff armoured personnel carriers, which were at the time conducting a routine administration run between Waheed and Crossing Point One,
to make their way to the contact point and assist with the casualty evacuation. The urgency of the situation was not lost on the FSG. They had heard over the radio that the injured soldier was a quadruple amputee. As soon as the vehicles arrived at the contact point they began to attract Taliban fire.

  Guardsman Robert Ashley, who fought in the attack, described it as ‘the most fierce battle I’ve ever been in. We were almost completely surrounded.’ After four years of fighting, insurgent commanders had acquired a detailed understanding of British tactics. The Taliban knew, for example, that after an IED strike British troops would normally call in a helicopter evacuation if the casualty was seriously wounded, as was normally the case with an IED. The Taliban also knew that the British would do everything in their power to save a wounded comrade no matter how severe his injuries. It was an act the insurgents could exploit.

  Rather than randomly laying IEDs, the Taliban began to plan their ambushes to second and third levels. For example, IEDs would be planted not just along a track but also on all possible casualty extraction routes and on likely helicopter landing sites. Furthermore, the Taliban began to follow up IED strikes with ambushes – as in the attack on 5 October 2009. With Taliban fire raining down on the soldiers, the heliborne medical teams were unable to land close by and were forced instead to land inside the company headquarters. Back at the ambush site, the troops loaded the injured onto the Mastiffs, while the gunners in the vehicles’ turrets laid down a heavy weight of fire. At one stage Guardsman Josh Shelton was suppressing four different Taliban firing points.

  It took thirty minutes for the soldiers to fight their way back to the base, by which time Jamie’s vital signs suggested that he was probably dead. The fact that he had survived for so long was testament to his inner strength and to the incredible work of the combat medics who accompany every patrol. ‘Is he alive?’ asked Major Green as he helped carry the wounded soldier from the Mastiff to the waiting helicopter. The look on the medic’s face showed no answer was needed. Major Green was horrified by Jamie’s injuries but kept telling him to ‘hold on’. The reality, however, was that Jamie was already dead. His brain had stopped functioning and the flickers of life which the medics had identified were his vital organs closing down.

  Within seconds Jamie was on board the helicopter and in the hands of a surgeon and a team of paramedics. As the dust storm kicked up by the departing helicopter began to settle, the exhausted soldiers began to arrive on foot back at FOB Waheed. They were shattered, many were covered in blood which was not their own, and others were carried to the medical centre for the treatment of their wounds.

  No one spoke because there was nothing to say. Jamie hung on for a few minutes longer before his shattered body could fight no longer. An hour later No. 2 Company were told the news they had expected: Jamie was dead, and everyone in the company was devastated. There were many tears and many questions, and company morale took a beating. But the platoon was back out on patrol the next day and the day after that. Now wasn’t the time to mourn; that would be done later, in the Guards Chapel in London, after the soldiers had returned home. And so life continued for No. 2 Company at a steady pace; steady for Helmand, that is. Every day or so they would be attacked by the Taliban, sometimes twice a day, and then on 3 November news began to filter into their base that five members of the battlegroup had been gunned down by an Afghan policeman.

  Within a few hours of the deaths at Blue 25, Major Green decided to press ahead with the IED ambush. The orders for the launch were sent to Lieutenant Craig Shephard, who was charged with ironing out the finer points of the operation before its launch. Later that night, sipping instant coffee in the secure confines of Crossing Point One, Lieutenant Shephard, Sergeant Dean Bailey and Company Sergeant Major Pete Downes put the finishing touches to the plan. The murders at Blue 25 and the death of Guardsman Janes had dented morale. Both events had shocked No. 2 Company, but especially the nature of Guardsman Janes’s death. And there was sheer outrage at the murders of the five members of the battlegroup and at the gloating propaganda of the Taliban, who later claimed that the rogue policeman was a Taliban agent.

  Lieutenant Shephard was not cast from the same mould as the average Guards officer. With his close-cropped hair and muscular arms, he took pride in his physical appearance and harboured an ambition to join the Guards Parachute Platoon, which forms part of 16 Air Assault Brigade.

  ‘It was a case of thinking out of the box,’ he explained to me during a period of relative quiet between operations. ‘We knew the Taliban would not be able to resist attacking a casevac, so it was a case of, how do we exploit this?’ In the weeks in which 5 Platoon had been based in Luy Mandah, the soldiers had managed to gather a great deal of intelligence about the Taliban’s routine, number of fighters, favoured firing positions and location of IEDs on Route Jupiter, one of the main transit roads through the area. Every time there was an explosion, intercepted Taliban radio chatter revealed that the insurgents assumed an IED had been detonated. All intelligence suggested that the best way to ambush the Taliban was to set up a fake IED strike. There was also a need to blow a hole in a wall which ran alongside Route Jupiter as it was providing the Taliban with cover during firefights. So a decision was taken to kill two birds with one stone: blow a hole in the wall and attempt to lure the Taliban into the ambush.

  Lieutenant Shephard prepared the plan, then briefed Major Green and the rest of the platoon. One of the key concerns was the prospect of locals being caught up in the ambush, so Major Green insisted that no phase of the operation was to be launched without his express approval.

  At 6.30 p.m. on 4 November troops began the first stage of the operation when the FSG set off on a night patrol. The soldiers had ditched their desert-pattern uniforms, opting instead for the green camouflage, which was considered more appropriate for the time of year. Everyone had been briefed on the plan and both night and day-time rehearsals had been undertaken. Section commanders had also planned a series of contingencies to cover, for example, what action soldiers should take if someone triggered an IED during the operation or how to respond if part of the patrol was ambushed by the Taliban. Every eventuality had to be accounted for so that every man would know how to react should the mission be compromised.

  Using excellent field discipline and barely making a noise, the troops managed to get into the area of a building known as Compound 26 without being seen. Other elements of the FSG – the machine-gunners, snipers and Javelin anti-tank missile operators – moved into position. Once the fire base was established, Sergeant Bailey set off with his team and moved into a position of overwatch on Route Jupiter, while Lieutenant Shephard’s team moved beyond them into another location. While passing through the garden of one of the compounds, Guardsman Rose, a member of Shephard’s team, spotted a potential IED. It was a moment of tension but everyone was aware of the need to keep the momentum of the operation going, so the IED was ‘identified and avoided’.

  ‘We continued and began to head south,’ said Shephard. ‘We reached an overwatch position on a bank south-east of Compound 50. I left Sergeant Roderick Tracey with the bulk of the multiple on overwatch to the south and south-east. Guardsman Peter Shields, Corporal Harry Noorhouse, Corporal Ronnie Parker, who led the engineers’ section, and his assistant and myself moved south into the open field adjacent to Jupiter. Shields Valloned up to Jupiter and with the four of us using optics we observed the surrounding area from a very exposed position. It took Shields seemingly for ever to Vallon a route across Jupiter. We knew it was riddled with IEDs, so we had to be extremely careful. In reality it took Shields about ten minutes to clear 20 metres, but it felt like an eternity.’

  Once the route was cleared, Corporal Parker moved across the road and began to prepare the explosive for the fake IED strike. Meanwhile Sergeant Bailey’s and Lance Sergeant Tracey’s teams monitored the surrounding area for Taliban activity. But there was a problem. Corporal Parker had only 25 metres of detonation cord, whic
h effectively put him well inside the explosion’s danger area. To survive he would have to face away from the blast, eyes closed and mouth open. Corporal Parker was unconcerned about the risks, but Lieutenant Shephard was worried.

  ‘I checked with Corporal Parker and he assured me he would be OK. I then checked with Rich [the company commander] and he was happy,’ Shephard said. ‘Twenty seconds later … bang, a massive explosion, which felt powerful enough to wake up the entire province. Corporal Parker upped and ran to me. Lance Sergeant Tracey and my group linked up with Sergeant Bailey. We threw red cylooms [luminescent markers] onto an obvious location to simulate the casualty evacuation. It was then a case of a quick head check to make sure that we had everyone together, and then it was best speed to Sergeant Bailey and back to our base. Sergeant Bailey was directly behind us and we were back in the base within fifteen minutes. Everything had gone like clockwork. By this stage the FSG were receiving Icom chatter. The plan was working. The Taliban were planning to move up what they described as a “long-barrelled weapon” – the game was on, the Taliban had taken the bait, and it was a case of watching and waiting for the time to strike.’

  The turbaned Taliban figures, AK-47s and Dragnov sniper rifles at the ready, emerged into the failing light of dusk on the hunt for injured British troops. Back in Compound 26, the snipers steadied themselves and waited for their targets to appear. Each sniper had a spotter using night-vision equipment – the night-time battlefield offered no hiding place for the enemy. Four hundred metres to the front two snipers spotted two armed men moving towards known fire positions. The snipers brought the cross-hairs of their telescopic sights to bear on the now stationary targets. Both snipers went for head shots, and the two insurgents fell dead. Their rifles were fitted with sound suppressors, which dulled the sound of the shots and so caused fear and panic in those who saw comrades fall.