and that’s been hard, but compared to some people I’ve had it easy.’
I’m chatting to Badger in a vast green Army tent crammed full of cots ready for fresh troops coming into theatre. The whole of Camp Bastion is in a state of flux because the several thousand men of 11 Light Brigade are leaving and the men of 4 Mechanized Brigade are beginning to arrive. It is a routine handover, known as a roulement or relief in place (RIP), which takes place every six months. It’s easy to spot the difference between the two sets of troops. Those who are coming to the end of their tour appear more rugged and suntanned, their uniforms are worn, and their eyes tell a different story from those of the new guys. The RIP is a fantastically busy period, and Camp Bastion swells to almost twice the number of British troops, many of whom are going through RSOI training. After a journey through the night they are pitched into a series of lectures in tents where the temperature hits 32°. Some of the men have not slept for twenty-four hours, and they struggle to stay awake. The troops are warned of the various dos and don’ts in Helmand – such as do drink plenty of water and do wash your hands every time you go to the toilet and don’t approach Afghan women, ever, or pick up anything which may be remotely interesting from the ground while on patrol because it might be attached to a bomb. Those troops going to the front line are pitched into a series of day and night live-firing exercises on ranges beyond the camp wire.
Overall it is an exhausting and sometimes frightening experience, but especially so when they get onto CIED training. Much of this will have been covered in numerous exercises before their deployment, but here in Helmand the training is somehow more frightening. Everyone knows that the next time they carry out the same drills will be for real. The instructors – members of the CIED Task Force – have a captive audience. No one wants to miss out on a piece of information, a tip with the benefit of someone’s experience. Mistakes on exercises back in the UK are acceptable but in Helmand they may cost an arm, a leg or a life.
The soldiers are taught how to search, confirm and recognize buried IEDs using Vallons. Over the next six months the soldier will learn how to recognize the detector’s various alarm tones. Again and again the instructors remind them to look for the ‘absence of the normal and the presence of the abnormal’.
As we sit talking inside the 30-ft-long tent, which even in the dry heat of Helmand still smells damp, Badger tells me of the worst period of the tour. In the space of three weeks one of his best friends had been killed, another had been wounded and sent back to the UK, and a third had suffered a double amputation after stepping on a pressure-plate IED. The three men were all ATOs and were all doing exactly the same job as Badger when they were killed. The first of Badger’s friends to fall was Staff Sergeant Olaf Sean George Schmid. Oz, as he was known, was one of the true characters of the bomb-disposal world – he was known to everyone and loved by most. He was a huge personality, cocky and scruffy, but he was also an excellent bomb hunter. He had spent several years serving with 3 Commando Brigade and proudly wore his Para wings and famous Green Beret and revelled in his status as an Army Commando.
Oz was irrepressible. His favourite saying when morale would take a bit of a dip was ‘Let’s man-up and get on with it.’ Every morning without fail those who walked past his bed in his tent in whatever part of Helmand he was working would be greeted with one of two phrases: ‘Suck us off’ or ‘Two sugars with mine.’ He once attended a memorial service in Sangin for a fellow soldier killed in the area a few days earlier but fainted through exhaustion. When he came round, a padre was standing over him, asking if he was OK. Oz opened his eyes and responded with, ‘Get off my fucking hair.’
It was as a chef that Oz originally joined the Army in 1996, but while serving with an infantry unit in Northern Ireland he saw a bomb-disposal team at work and felt he had suddenly found his calling. Oz arrived in Helmand in July 2009 on Operation Herrick 10 and immediately took part in Operation Panchai Palang, or Panther’s Claw, a multi-national operation designed to push the Taliban out of central Helmand before Afghanistan’s ill-fated presidential elections. Oz, known as ‘Bossman’ by his team, was one of Badger’s closest friends. The two had known each other for around eight years and were on the same High Threat course before being deployed to Helmand.
‘Oz filled the room, absolutely filled the room,’ Badger said, a broad smile lighting up his face. ‘He was a fantastic bloke, a great laugh. He was the loudest man I knew, he was brilliant. Before you go on any course in the Army, you get a set of joining instructions and at the back of that is a course list. I would always flip to the back and look at the list and if Oz’s name was on it you knew it was going to be a good one. It would be two weeks of hard work but two weeks of hard drinking. Oz worked hard and played hard, that was his way.’
In August 2009 Oz was attached to the 2nd Battalion Rifles battlegroup, based in Sangin, which was quickly developing a reputation as a graveyard for British troops. Since June 2006, when members of 3 Para moved into the valley, barely a week has passed without the Taliban launching some sort of attack. Sangin held special significance for the Taliban. It was one of the main opium centres in Helmand and thus had the potential to provide the Taliban with the hard cash they needed to sustain the insurgency. The Taliban knew they couldn’t defeat ISAF troops in a stand-up fight 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
