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

rely on their mine detectors. By now the sun was starting to rise in the sky and the bomb hunters were warned by intelligence officers from the battle-group headquarters that the Taliban were moving into the area. Staff Sergeant Hughes pushed on to the next device. Once again it was a pressure-plate, or victim-operated IED (VOIED), linked to what was a central power source. It immediately struck Hughes that he was dealing with a complex device not seen in Helmand before. He was now in a whole new dangerous world with only his wits and skill to rely on. All the bombs were laid out in exactly the same way and were composed of a pressure-plate IED which sat directly on top of a 20 kg main charge of explosive. There was every possibility that if one bomb detonated they would all explode at the same time.

      Again Hughes conducted a Cat A neutralization, and again any error would have proven fatal. Less than two minutes after the second device had been neutralized a third was discovered near one of the dead soldiers. The device was located on the extraction route over which the casualties would have to pass. For the third time in less than twenty minutes Hughes carried out a Cat A task.

      As the sun began to illuminate the wadi, dark patches of disturbed soil could be seen all around. Hidden beneath each site was a bomb. In an area of 40 metres by 50 metres the bomb hunters found seven bombs. In addition they identified the locations of another six devices from ‘ground sign’, disturbed earth left after a bomber has planted a device, and left these in situ.

      Hughes was moving back along one of the cleared routes close to where a fallen soldier lay when a platoon sergeant asked him to remove the soldier’s dog tags. The soldier had sustained a triple amputation and his face was covered in severe lacerations. Hughes rolled the dead soldier onto his front and pulled out the two dog tags from beneath his body armour. He took one off, threw it to the platoon sergeant, and put the other back securely on the dead soldier so that he could be formally identified later. He rolled the body back into its original position and gave him a comforting pat on the back.

      Before the wounded could be evacuated, two more devices which had been discovered on the extraction route needed to be neutralized.

      Despite the carnage, Hughes managed to maintain his composure until a stretcher party arrived to collect the bodies. It was clear that one of the young soldiers on the team had been good friends with at least one of the dead. The fusilier began to sob uncontrollably when he saw his friend lying dead in the dust of the dried river. Suddenly the full enormity of what had happened began to dawn on everyone involved in the operation. Up until that point Staff Sergeant Hughes and his team had been wholly concentrating on locating and neutralizing Taliban bombs. His focus broken, he turned away, his eyes welling up with tears. No one spoke. The bomb hunters hung their heads as the young soldier was carried away. Everyone knew there were many more tears to come.

      Just forty-five minutes after Hughes arrived at the scene, more than a dozen devices had been located and seven had been cleared, five by a Cat A action. After the bombs were neutralized, the injured and dead were removed. Fully didn’t make it – his injuries were too severe. The three other wounded soldiers all recovered. The team didn’t know it at the time but they had just completed what was later described as the single most outstanding act of explosive ordnance disposal ever recorded in Afghanistan, for which Staff Sergeant Hughes was later awarded the George Cross. By the end of his six-month tour he had cleared 118 bombs.

      Chapter 1: Living the Dream

      ‘Bomb disposal – it’s the best job in the world.’

      WO2 Gary O’Donnell GM and Bar. Killed in action September 2008.

      0345 hours, 10 March 2010, Helmand, Afghanistan.

      The Hercules drops like a stone through the black Helmand sky, its four overworked engines groaning. Most of my fellow travellers are boyish-looking soldiers in crisp new uniforms – fresh meat for the Afghan war machine. Many of the soldiers are battle casualty replacements (BCRs), sent to Helmand at short notice to replace those killed or injured fighting the Taliban.

      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