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

minutes, when the soldiers had pushed about 100 metres into the wadi, an alarm sounded. The whine was loud and the meter reading indicated a significant metal device in the ground. The soldier knew instinctively that just half a metre in front of him was an IED. Speaking nervously into his personal role radio, he said, ‘I’ve got a strong signal – I’m going to confirm.’ Back at the head of the convoy, his section commander responded, ‘Go easy, no need to over-confirm. Just do what you need to.’

      The soldier was now an isolated figure, made all the more distant by the watery effect of the heat haze. His colleagues had already withdrawn to a safe distance in order to minimize casualties if the bomb detonated.

      Bending down on one knee, he put the Vallon to his right and from the front of his CBA removed a paintbrush. Gently, and with a technique learned through hours of practice, the soldier began brushing and flicking away the fine desert sand. Almost every thought emptied from his head as he focused on clearing the dust away from the area where he suspected the device was buried. A fist-sized stone was sitting right on top of the spot where he believed the bomb was hidden. He stopped and stared. What to do? Licking the sweat from his top lip, he realized that whatever was causing the Vallon to shriek was buried in the parched desert directly beneath the stone. The initial inspection revealed little. If he was to investigate further, the stone would have to be removed. Gently wrapping his gloved hand around the object, the soldier began to lift.

      The unmistakable sound of metal grinding on metal emerged from the ground beneath his feet. He froze. Just 5 cm beneath the soil an IED was about to explode. The two metal contacts, which would complete the electrical circuit when connected and detonate the 20 kg of home-made explosive, had moved to a distance of less than 0.5 cm apart. When the contacts touched, the device would explode.

      Beads of sweat rolled down the soldier’s face. His eyes widened and his pupils began to dilate, a natural reaction to the adrenalin beginning to surge through his veins. Motherfucker! What the fuck do I do now? Don’t panic – absolutely do not panic.

      It wasn’t a PP IED that had been discovered, but a pressure-release, or PR, device, one of a new generation of IEDs recently devised by Taliban bomb makers, and the stones were the trigger. Pressure-release bombs operate in the opposite way to pressure-activated devices. Detonation occurs when pressure, such as a weight, is removed.

      The soldier released his grip on the stone and hoped for the best – in theory if the pressure was reapplied the electrical contacts should remain apart. He held his breath and carefully, his eyes tightly shut, began to withdraw his hand. The grinding stopped. He almost collapsed with relief. Grabbing his Vallon, he stood up, took two steps back, and let out a long breath before turning around and retracing his steps through the safe lane he had cleared earlier, back to the head of the convoy.

      ‘I think it’s a PR,’ he told his section commander, his eyes still filled with fear and relief. ‘I nearly set the bastard thing off. For fuck’s sake give us an ash.’

      Back in the cool, air-conditioned ops room at the HQ of Joint Force Explosive Ordnance Disposal (JFEOD) Group, the first details of the ten-liner – in this case a request for an ATO – started to emerge on the computer screen via the secure J Chat e-mail system. Dispatching a team of bomb hunters to clear a route for a logistics convoy was standard procedure for the EOD headquarters. It was a routine job and no one in the ops room batted an eyelid. In September 2009 bombs were being discovered every day, sometimes every hour of every day, in Helmand. No one was going to get excited about a bomb in a wadi. Had a similar scenario played out in Ulster some fifteen years earlier, the clearance operation would have been a major event, the Defence Secretary would have been informed and the story would have led the news.

      Staff Sergeant Karl ‘Badger’ Ley and his IEDD team, callsign Brimstone 32, were fresh into theatre. That was obvious to every one of the several thousand soldiers garrisoned behind Camp Bastion’s concrete and barbed-wire walls. For a start their complexions were too pasty, their uniforms were crisp and starched, but most of all they didn’t look knackered. Badger’s team had just completed their RSOI training and were now officially classed as ready to deploy, as the HRF, to anywhere in Helmand. In theory teams new into theatre should have a few days, maybe a week, to acclimatize and sort their kit out before starting on their first operation. But the reality was different. Badger, like every ATO who had gone to Afghanistan before him, was beginning to realize that what he had learned on his High Threat course bore little resemblance to the reality of daily life on operations.

      Within twenty-four hours of completing RSOI, Badger’s team received their first shout. Earlier that morning he and the other soldiers in Team 4 – No. 2 operator Corporal Stewart Jones, Lance Corporal Clayton Burnett, who was the ECM operator, and Lance Corporal Joe Brown, by trade a driver but acting as the infantry escort – had spent most of the morning packing and repacking their operational equipment, trying to get the weight down and fit everything they needed into two Bergens. All the operational kit went in one of the rucksacks while personal items, such as clothing, rations, water, sleeping bag and mat, and what soldiers call ‘comfort items’ went in the other. Around 10 a.m., just as Badger was thinking of heading over to the welfare tent for a coffee, the operations room’s runner poked his head through Team 4’s tent and said, ‘Badger, you’ve got a shout on. You need to get to the ops room for a briefing.’

      Within the hour Team 4 and their equipment, along with a seven-man team of specialist Royal Engineer searchers, were on a Chinook heading for a desert HLS close to where the convoy was being held up. The chopper landed amid a dust storm of its own making and within seconds the soldiers were off. Badger’s tour had just begun.

      Although Badger and his team had been in Helmand for only a few days, the rest of the search team were coming to the end of their tour. The partnering of teams fresh into theatre with those that have a few months’ experience under their belt ensures a continuity of expertise. Both the bomb-disposal teams and the Royal Engineer searchers form part of the CIED Task Force, which also includes weapons intelligence specialists, members of the Royal Military Police and Royal Engineer bomb-disposal officers. The Task Force’s main, although not only, task is to dispose of or defuse regular munitions, such as artillery shells, rockets, mines and hand grenades. As well as finding and dismantling the IEDs, it creates a database of suspects based on forensic evidence obtained from devices ‘captured’ intact. Every time an ATO manages to ‘capture’ a device complete information is obtained which can be fed into the database, and this may one day identify the bomb makers and bomb emplacers, as well as reveal from where the components of the device have been sourced.

      Badger was just beginning his first operational tour to Afghanistan, but he had deployed to Iraq as a No. 2, worked in Belize and Northern Ireland, and defused many IEDs back in the UK as a member of Nottingham Troop and Catterick Troop, both of which are part of 11 Explosive Ordnance Disposal Regiment, the unit responsible for dealing with IEDs in the UK.

      As soon as he was out of the helicopter Badger automatically began to assess the situation around him. Rather than just focusing on the bomb, he was also assessing the tactical situation, the terrain, and the disposition of friendly and potential enemy forces.

      The convoy commander explained the situation to Badger, who immediately suspected the device was a pressure-release IED; that, he thought, would explain the sound of grinding metal. Badger was aware that the Taliban knew that British soldiers and members of the Afghan National Army (ANA) or Afghan National Police (ANP) would sometimes move rocks or stones when trying to confirm a device. Someone, somewhere had set a pattern and the Taliban were trying to exploit it. Badger knew he would have to be on his guard. Like all ATOs operating in Helmand, he was acutely aware that for the Taliban there was no greater prize than killing a member of a bomb-disposal team.

      The ANP had already developed a reputation for having a robust approach when dealing with IEDs. Rather than call for assistance from the British or US, many Afghans would attempt to deal with the devices themselves and several of their number had been killed or seriously wounded by the devices. It seemed that many police commanders viewed calling in an operator to deal with an IED as a slight on their honour, and that seeking help was tantamount to an admission of cowardice. So instead the ANP would try to deal with the device – sometimes