Bomb Hunters: In Afghanistan with Britain’s Elite Bomb Disposal Unit. Sean Rayment

used to drag the vehicles off the road. Clearing bombs from the route to the vehicles had taken an hour, during all of which time Oz had been completely reliant on his own eyesight and his understanding of enemy tactics. As the light began to fade he once again led a high-risk clearance of the stretch of road from which the vehicles had been taken away and removed a further two devices.

      The whole operation had lasted eleven hours. It had been fraught with danger, and luck had also played a large part in ensuring that there were no British casualties. Oz and his team were drained, physically, emotionally and mentally; they had discovered a total of thirty devices and defused eleven, but the road was open and C Company, 2 Rifles, were resupplied. Although it was clearly a team effort, the mission would have failed if it had not been for Oz’s heroic and selfless acts.

      Despite the danger, Oz, like every other ATO working in Helmand, never wore his protective body suit. ‘It’s too hot to wear a suit out here and it’s tactically not feasible,’ he said. He saw the suit as an easy way for the Taliban to identify him. ‘Every time we’re out on the ground we’re obviously denying them their kill against us, so in effect we’ve become a high-value target for them, as they are for us. Certainly a few times, certainly in Sangin, we’ve been targeted and over the old Icom they say, “The bomb team is here, let’s hit them.” They call us the bomb team, according to the interpreter – probably “wankers” in the local language.’

      Over the next few months Oz’s team were called out to dozens more IED incidents, some where soldiers had been killed and wounded and others where by luck the device had failed to explode. ‘I have been to a couple of devices that have been very unstable. The bomb makers’ construction of the devices isn’t brilliant. A loose wire in the wind could create a short, so when I have my fingers in there I have to pay attention.’

      On 8 October 2010 Oz was dispatched to the district centre to deal with a device which the ANA had discovered while on patrol. The IED consisted of an artillery shell placed close to seven large cans of diesel. If the bomb had detonated it would have devastated the area. On arrival the ANA soldiers led Oz directly into the IED’s killing area. The Afghan soldiers had not warned the public for fear that the device might be detonated by the Taliban once they knew it had been found. Oz realized that he was not only at personal risk but so were around forty civilians who were in the immediate danger area, and time was not on his side.

      Oz moved up close to the device and quickly assessed that the shell was part of a live radio-controlled IED. It was also clear that the bomb was almost certainly being overwatched by the Taliban. Oz felt that he had no choice but to conduct a manual neutralization. To do this he employed a render-safe procedure which is only ever used in the gravest of circumstances and is conducted at the highest personal risk to the operator. Oz insisted that his team move back out of the safety area before neutralizing the bomb. Once again the heroism he displayed went beyond the call of duty.

      After the incident Oz said, ‘My heart’s not racing at all when I go in.’ But then he corrected himself: ‘No, that’s not true, there are some points when it does. There’s a lot of apprehension, a lot of adrenalin going through you at the time, especially when the device is something a little bit different, when you know that it is targeting you, but it’s important to appear calm. The guys look at you, they draw strength from you. For an infantry commander on the ground, it’s a hell of a weight off his shoulders when you come in.’

      Defusing was not Oz’s only task, however. He also had to gather the vital forensic evidence which enables military teams to trace the militants who smuggle, make and plant IEDs. Forensic evidence was what Oz called ‘the big picture in the IED loop’, and it’s their expertise in gathering this that sets British high-threat IED operators apart from any others.

      ‘As British teams, we’ll get everything out of the device because our skills and drills are the best in the world, believe it or not. Because of our background and what we’ve learned over the years in places like Northern Ireland, it allows us to adopt some techniques in order to gain vital information from devices. It’s all about getting the forensics, matching it, and going that way round it as opposed to just making it safe. We want to capture them, to get criminal convictions.’

      After Oz’ s work in the Pharmacy Road operation – as well as defusing a large IED in the centre of a bazaar which, had it exploded, would have killed many civilians – rumours began to circulate in the Task Force that he was in line for a gallantry medal. ‘I am just looking at getting home with my legs,’ was his response.

      Working in Sangin was beginning to take its toll on Oz and his team. Barely a day seemed to pass which didn’t require Oz to put his life on the line. Back in Camp Bastion his boss, Major Tim Gould QGM, the officer commanding the JFEOD Group, was concerned about Oz’s mental and physical health. ATOs need to be managed very carefully. In 2009 they were a scarce resource and they remain so today. Oz insisted that he was tired but fine and wanted to stay in Sangin.

      On the evening of 30 October Oz called home and spoke to his wife, Christina. She later recalled that he sounded uncharacteristically strained after being left exhausted by yet another four-day operation in the Sangin area. With tears leaving tracks down his dust-covered cheeks, he said, ‘I’m hanging out, hun. Can you come and get me, babe?’ Of course she couldn’t, but she reassured him that he had just two days to push before he was due to return home for his two weeks’ R&R.

      On 31 October, Halloween, the day before he was due to fly home, Oz and his team were called out on another task, one which required him to defuse three devices. As the day drew to a close the team were about to return to the base when one of the searchers discovered a command wire running down the alleyway they had been working in. Oz’s team had unwittingly walked into a trap. They had no idea at which end of the alley the device was located and so had no safe route forward or back. Oz immediately seized the initiative and traced the command wire to a complex IED. The device was linked to three buried charges designed to take out an entire patrol. His team withdrew and cleared an ICP while Oz moved forward. That was the last time he was seen alive. Oz was killed instantly while dealing with the first device. In five months in Afghanistan he had defused sixty-four IEDs; the sixty-fifth killed him.

      His wife was told later that evening that Oz was dead. Later Christina recalled, ‘I wasn’t surprised. I got this gut feeling after he called me for the last time. He never speaks like that. He was exhausted. He said he had been out there too long and could I come get him. I told him I couldn’t.’

      At about 9.30 p.m. on 31 October 2009 Christina watched as two men wearing green berets approached her house. ‘I thought, oh my God, what are they doing here?’ Laird, her 5-year-old son, thought it was Oz, his stepfather, returning home. ‘I can remember saying he’s definitely not here. It’s not Daddy, I told my son. I asked them why they were there. I said, “Just tell me he can talk. I don’t care about his legs and arms. Can he talk?” They looked at me and said, “Let us in.” I didn’t cry. No one else was hurt. I remember thinking what a relief that was.’

      In the moments after Oz’s death the news began to filter back to the CIED Task Force headquarters in Camp Bastion. The J Chat said that a Brimstone callsign – indicating an IED team – had suffered a fatal casualty. Then the screen displayed ‘SC’ – the first two letters of Oz’s surname – followed by the last four digits of his Army number, which together made up his Zap number, a personal coded number given to operational troops. Oz was the third ATO to be killed in action in Helmand in thirteen months. It was an attrition rate that had not been experienced by the world of bomb disposal for almost 40 years.

      Later that evening, at FOB Price, near Gereshk, Badger made his routine evening call to the ops room just to let them know everything was OK. ‘I called in and Major Gould, my boss, answered and said, “Badger, I’ve got some bad news. Oz is dead.” It was like being hit in the stomach with a cricket bat. I was devastated.’ Badger found himself a quiet corner and began to cry. ‘I knew I had to tell the boys. They all knew Oz, so it was important they were told as soon as possible. So you have to man-up, wipe your eyes, wash your face, and break the news. There were a lot of tears – it was a very difficult evening for everyone in our community.’

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