Bomb Hunters: In Afghanistan with Britain’s Elite Bomb Disposal Unit. Sean Rayment
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but what they could do was make commanders question whether holding on to Sangin was worth the growing casualty rates.
Every battlegroup which deployed to the Sangin Valley knew they would not return to the UK without sustaining losses. By the end of their tour in April 2010, 3 Rifles battlegroup, based in the Sangin district centre, had suffered more fatalities than any other unit that had served in Helmand since 2006.
The Taliban operating in the valley had developed a fearsome reputation for being ruthless and inventive, especially in their use of IED ambushes. Some soldiers have likened them to the IRA in South Armagh in Ulster during the Troubles in the 1980s and 1990s. The South Armagh Brigade was the only IRA unit which was never infiltrated by British intelligence. It was close-knit, tough and fearless, with commanders who were always seeking new ways to attack British bases and kill soldiers with specially designed bombs and mortars.
For the ATOs Sangin was probably the least popular and most challenging of all the battlegroup locations in Helmand. Such were the dangers of serving there that IED teams were changed every six weeks and no new ATOs or search teams were ever sent to the area for their first tour.
The narrow alleyways, the rat-runs and the lush fields of the Green Zone, criss-crossed with irrigation ditches, streams and canals, were exploited to the full by the insurgents. Patrolling British troops were channelled into classic ambush sites almost from the moment they left the front gate of the base. Once inside the Green Zone practically all movement was restricted to foot, and the field of view, especially in the summer with the crops tall, could be as little as a few metres. Fighting was at close quarters and often brutal – bayonets were always fixed and often used.
IEDs are produced in Sangin in prodigious numbers and are used to channel and restrict the movement of British troops. The Taliban bomb makers in the area were regarded as the best and most innovative in all Helmand. New devices were often tested in Sangin before being exported to other parts of the province. The Taliban would watch every move the soldiers made, noting their favoured routes, crossing points and rendezvous points. They understood British tactics, knew how troops would respond in a firefight, knew how long it would take to call in an air strike and the Army’s casualty evacuation procedures. There were only so many places where a helicopter could land and evacuate an injured soldier, and the Taliban knew them all. Routine patrolling through some of the built-up areas close to the base was impossible. Rather than walk along a track or road, troops moved from compound to compound by scaling 15-ft-high walls in a bid to beat the bombers. The soldiers knew this activity as ‘Grand Nationaling’.
Pharmacy Road in Sangin town was the most deadly street in the whole of Afghanistan. Since the British first moved into the area, hundreds, possibly thousands, of devices have been planted on it, killing dozens of soldiers. Any operation which required troop movement on this road had to be carefully planned and searched. By April 2010 160 soldiers of the 281 soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2006 have died in Sangin town and the surrounding area. I have been on patrol in the area on several occasions, taken part in operations, and have come under fire on several occasions and I can still recall the sense of relief I felt every time a patrol ended.
The main British base in the Sangin area of operatons, FOB Jackson, sat on the periphery of the district centre and was bisected by the Helmand canal, which offered the troops based there temporary respite from the summer heat and boosted morale. Dotted throughout Sangin are smaller patrol bases, such as PB Tangiers, an ANA base close to the district centre, and PB Wishtan, at the eastern end of the notorious Pharmacy Road. The casualty rate in PB Wishtan was so high in the summer of 2009 that troops, with their customary black humour, renamed it PB Wheelchair.
The soldiers who have to patrol in Sangin day after day, sometimes twice or three times a day, often after having witnessed a fellow soldier having one or more limbs blown off, need truly remarkable courage. And it’s worth remembering that many of them are just 18 or 19 and on their first operational tour.
Despite the risks, Oz Schmid was in his element and relished the challenge. This easy-going, fast-talking Cornishman had an infectious smile and a fantastic sense of humour. He had named his squad ‘Team Rainbow’ after the gay pride emblem, because he claimed they were the only ‘all-gay IEDD team in Helmand’. The team members were nicknamed Zippy, Bungle and George, and their mascot, a duck, was known as Corporal Quackers. It was all part of the coping mechanism adopted by Oz and his team.
Like every ATO in Helmand, Oz knew that death lurked around every corner. Every bomb had to be treated as a unique event. Taking short cuts or making assumptions could end in a trip home in a body bag. As if to emphasize the dangers Helmand held for ATOs, Captain Daniel Shepherd, 28, was killed defusing a roadside bomb in Nad-e’Ali a month after Oz arrived in Helmand. He was the second ATO to die in Afghanistan. Like Gaz O’Donnell, who had died eleven months earlier, Captain Shepherd hadn’t made a mistake; he was just unlucky. As one soldier later told me, ‘That kind of shit can just happen in Afghan.’
In an interview he gave before he was killed that appeared in the Sunday Times on 8 November 2009 Oz referred to Dan Shepherd’s death and how it had shaped his view of the role of ATOs in Helmand: ‘There are times when I’m actually thinking about Dan and I’ll go down the lonely walk, as they say, get to the target and think, what am I doing here? But it’s a flash through my head, if you like.’ Oz was typical of most ATOs I have met: they never think about their own safety and are far more concerned with the lives of their fellow soldiers.
‘Nine times out of ten, in fact 99.99 per cent of the time, I’m down there and I’m doing it as quick as I can, because obviously the longer the guys are down on the ground the more they present themselves as a target.
‘And then obviously once we’re out on the ground, other things, atmospherics around us, you know I’m getting dicked as well – they’re trying to look and see what I’m doing, so it’s a lot of focus into what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. My brain’s always thinking about the device: how I’m going to render it safe. It’s not necessarily wandering off to: am I going to get home? Every device is different in its own little way … you have got to find exactly what it is and come up with the best way of dealing with that, so your mind is constantly focused on that. I don’t really think about the enemy. There have been a couple of piss-take jobs, though, where they are trying to have a bit of a joke. I found a dollar on top of a pressure plate in Nad-e’Ali the other week.’
On 9 August 2009 Oz took part in an operation to clear Pharmacy Road, which runs east from Sangin town centre out to PB Wishtan. By this time the area directly around the PB had become one of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan, with one in three of the soldiers based at Wishtan being killed or wounded that summer. Several of those had been killed or injured close to the base and the dozens of IEDs which had been laid in the area meant that patrolling was almost impossible. PB Wishtan was cut off from resupply by land. Bomb-damaged vehicles had been turned into a basic but effective roadblock and Pharmacy Road was riddled with IEDs. Three previous attempts to clear the road, which is lined by 15-ft-high mud walls, had all failed.
The operation began at 5.30 a.m., just before the sun appeared over the horizon. Specialist Royal Engineer searchers, flanked by soldiers from the Rifles, pushed out from FOB Jackson and began the search. The troops made steady progress until they came to a military digger which had been blown up by the Taliban during a previous operation. All around the vehicle the ground was littered with IEDs. At around 0800 hrs and with the temperature already in the mid-40s, Oz set to work. Within 100 metres he found and cleared the first IED of the day.
Oz had planned to use a remote-controlled vehicle to clear another device but as it moved into the danger area the robot struck an IED and was destroyed. Knowing that the Taliban were probably in the area and monitoring the progress of the operation, Oz moved forward again and cleared a route to within 5 metres of the vehicles.
‘We started searching forwards along the road again,’ he explained. ‘We found another bomb half a metre away from the lane that I’d used to search up to the vehicle. We sent two little robots out and they got blown up, so I went on my feet.’
His team then moved into a compound adjacent to the stricken vehicles and began preparing