Bomb Hunters: In Afghanistan with Britain’s Elite Bomb Disposal Unit. Sean Rayment
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Logistic Corps. His academic prowess at school – he obtained A-levels in geography, history, sociology and general studies, having earlier gained nine GCSEs – could have taken him to university and then on to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst to train as an Army officer. He had been offered places at university, including King’s College London, to pursue war and peace studies, but the idea of spending three years ‘locked in lecture halls’ and then facing a large debt at the end of his degree didn’t appeal.
‘I just had this vague notion of wanting to join the Army,’ Badger told me. ‘Some of my friends had already joined, so I went to an Army careers office and they must have been short of ammunition technicians that week because they sold it quite well to me.’
Ten years later Badger was posted to Helmand as part of Operation Herrick 11. His bomb-disposal team was one of dozens of units attached to 11 Light Brigade. Somewhat surprisingly, given the scores of soldiers killed by IEDs, Badger describes the task of defusing home-made bombs as his ‘comfort zone’. ‘The infantry think my job is scary, they are terrified of IEDs because they are this unseen threat in the ground which just keeps killing and wounding them, but they are my comfort zone. It is all about what you are used to.
‘The infantry expect to get into firefights with the Taliban and many of them actually want to. That’s what they joined the Army to do – go to Afghanistan and kill the Taliban. And when the shooting kicks off you can actually see that some of these guys are really in their element, it’s what they were made for. But not me. Firefights terrify me. Give me an IED to defuse any day. It’s all about your comfort zone. I hate coming under fire, it terrifies me. I will try and dig a hole with my spoon to get into some sort of cover.’
In September 2009 Badger was dispatched to Patrol Base Woqab, near Musa Qala, to attend to a device which had recently been discovered by the local infantry battalion. The bomb was a PP IED and in itself didn’t present much of a challenge to the bomb hunters. Outside of Sangin, the Musa Qala Taliban were regarded as the ‘hardcore’ element in Helmand – always ready to take on ISAF, the International Security Assistance Force, and experiment with new devices in the hope of catching out an ATO. It wasn’t lost on Badger that this was the same area where Gaz O’Donnell had been killed on 10 September the previous year.
It was an ordinary shout. The search team deployed, cleared the area, checked for command wires, but none were found. Badger cleared a safe lane down to the device and began defusing the pressure plate, which went without a hitch. The plate had been cleared and the time had come for Badger to destroy the home-made explosive in situ. ‘We don’t recover the main charge. It’s just too risky, so what we do is destroy it using conventional military high explosive. I set up the explosive, the last thing I did was to connect the detonator, then moved back to the ICP, where Stu fire-connected it to the firing circuit and detonated the main charge.’
As soon as the explosion rumbled across the valley, the local Taliban sprang into action, assuming that one of their devices had been triggered and that ISAF or the Afghan National Security Force (ANSF) – which draws on the ANA, the ANP and other police units – would have casualties, in which case they would be vulnerable and therefore ripe for ambush. What they found when they arrived at the scene was a lone, unarmed British soldier walking slowly in open ground – the perfect target.
Around fifteen minutes after the explosion Badger had made his way back to the site. ‘I went back down the road to check that everything had worked and then the Taliban opened up good and proper. It was a case of “fuck me”. The Taliban opened up with everything. The bullets were cracking above my head. There was single shots, automatic fire, RPGs coming in. I could hear the bullets zipping past me. It was absolutely terrifying. I was thinking, “How they can they be so close without hitting you?” And you’re saying, “Those cunts, those cunts.” I thought, this is where I cop it; I’m going to be hit in the back and the lights are going to go out and that’s going to be it. No more life, no more wife, no more kids. And so I’ve gone from being in my comfort zone – defusing an IED – to being absolutely shitting myself in less than a second, and all the time I’m sprinting like a crazy man trying to get back.’
Badger was on his own in open countryside, 80 metres from his team and safety. There was no cover to hide in, and if he moved out of the metre-wide safe lane he risked triggering an IED. The only option was to turn and run.
‘I ran like the wind itself – Usain Bolt had nothing on me. When you’re neutralizing an IED and the Taliban start shooting, the best thing you can do is to drop to your belt buckle and let the infantry win the firefight. In the past that’s what I’d done. As long as the rounds are landing too close, you’re pretty safe. I always ask the infantry commander what he wants me to do if we get involved in a contact and nine times out of ten he’ll say, “Sit tight, hide and we’ll win the firefight.” They don’t exactly expect us to do a great deal of fighting.’
Badger came bounding back into the ICP and, although he was terrified, the rest of the team were in fits of laughter. ‘I was shaking like a shitting dog,’ he told me, a broad grin on his face. ‘I’d come about as close as you would want to come to being shot, and all your mates are laughing at you. It was because of the look on my face as I came running in. I was knackered and out of breath and you think, that was too fucking close.’
Although his team frequently came under fire, Badger maintains that he never got used to being attacked. A month later, in October, he was teamed up with Warrant Officer Class 2 Dave Markland, a 36-year-old who had served in the Army for almost twenty years. Dave entered the world of ordnance disposal at a relatively late age. Much of his early career had been spent as a Plant Operator Mechanic – they’re known as ‘Planties’ – and passed his RESA course in the spring of 2009. Badger and Dave became firm friends – their different characters seemed to complement each other – and developed a working relationship that was the envy of many within the task force. Dave was physically large – 6 ft 4 in. tall and weighing in at around 16 stone – ‘but his personality made him even seem bigger’, according to Badger. He was one of those individuals whose greatest enemy was boredom – and the long, dull days of inactivity in Camp Bastion.
In late November 2009 Badger and Dave were dispatched to FOB Keenan, near the town of Gereshk in central Helmand, to take part in Operation Gumbesa. Gereshk sits astride Highway One, otherwise known as the ‘Afghan ring road’. It forms part of the old Silk Route and still has key strategic significance for both the Taliban and ISAF forces. It has been at the heart of many battles, with the military initiative constantly switching between the British troops and the Taliban. The presence of ISAF troops has brought some stability to the area. The town has a hospital with both male and female doctors and has around twenty schools, which are attended by around 20 per cent of the population.
Taliban bomb teams were targeting FOB Keenan, and dozens of devices had been laid in the area with the aim of restricting the movement of the Danish battlegroup based locally. The FOB is sited directly behind a hamlet and the inhabitants of this were in just as much danger from the IEDs as the ISAF forces. Part of the CIED mission is to clear IEDs out of civilian areas. The local population is only too well aware of the damage the devices can cause, since hundreds of civilians are killed and maimed every year. An IED is totally indiscriminate, and although the Taliban will arm some devices only at certain times of the day to avoid civilian casualties, most are not monitored and will kill and injure anyone – man, woman or child – who detonates it.
The first day of Operation Gumbesa began at around 0700 hours when Badger, the IED Team 4, WO2 Markland and the Royal Engineer searchers, together with their infantry force protection, patrolled out of the base. The cruel heat of the summer had subsided but the temperature could still reach the mid-30s in November, although by that stage Badger was fully acclimatized.
The operation went as planned on the first day. Badger, Dave and the search team managed to find, defuse and recover seven devices in about ten hours. They were delighted with their efforts. That night interpreters in FOB Keenan could hear the Taliban angrily discussing the team’s success over their Icom radios. The Taliban’s two main methods of communication are mobile phones and Icom radios. The second broadcast on known frequencies and can easily be intercepted with an Icom