board reveals the location of one of the RESTs and reads: ‘Team Illume – Loves the jobs you hate!’ The sign also reveals that three members of the team are battle casualty replacements – soldiers flown in to replace those who have been killed or injured. It is clear that black humour is one of the life-support systems for anyone involved in IED work, but even though soldiers are flippant about the risks it is an unwritten rule that they never joke about their dead or injured colleagues.
Within a few minutes of arriving at the Task Force Headquarters I meet up with Staff Sergeant Karl Ley – a man who, at 29, has become something of a legend in the IEDD world. Badger, as he prefers to be called – and I’ll explain why shortly – has come to the end of his six-month tour of duty and in that time he has defused 139 Taliban bombs. It’s a record.
Chapter 2: Badger’s War
‘I thought, this is where I cop it; I’m going to be hit in the back and the lights are going to go out and that’s going to be it. No more life, no more wife, no more kids.’
Staff Sergeant Karl Ley, ATO, 11 Explosive Ordnance Disposal Regiment, Joint Force EOD Group
The dust cloud mushroomed into the air, momentarily enveloping the armoured column snaking east across the flat desert plain.
The logistics convoy, one of many that day traversing the arid expanses of Helmand, had paused at the head of a dried-out river bed which for centuries had served as a transit route into the town of Musa Qala, home to an isolated British base in the north of the province.
Like the many bases which pepper Helmand, the one at Musa Qala was wholly dependent for its survival on Combat Logistics Patrols (CLP) – vast, 100-vehicle armoured convoys which delivered food, water, fuel, ammunition and mail to every isolated compound in the province. As there were too few helicopters, resupply by CLP was vital. The men and women of the Royal Logistic Corps who still today keep the convoys moving, often risking daily ambushes and IED strikes, really are the unsung heroes of the Afghan War.
As the dust cloud began to settle, troops from the front two vehicles jumped from the back of their Mastiff armoured troop carriers and scanned the surrounding desert. Gunners provided cover with .50-calibre heavy machine guns and automatic grenade launchers were trained on potential enemy ambush sites.
There were only a few routes into and out of the wadi and the Taliban knew them all. Each was a natural ambush site and had to be cleared of IEDs before convoys could proceed. Briefed on the task ahead, the first group of soldiers began preparing to clear routes while others moved into position to provide covering fire should the Taliban attack. The mid-morning sun had already begun to blast its intense heat onto the desert. Searching vulnerable points was a routine event for the soldiers but there was always a need to guard against complacency. For those tasked with route clearance there were no short cuts. At least once a week a soldier in Helmand was either killed or injured by an IED and many of the casualties were searchers – specifically selected and trained for the task of finding hidden bombs.
In the shade of an armoured vehicle the soldiers checked their Vallons by swinging them over a metal object, the high-pitched whine of the alarm indicating they were in prefect working order. Searching for IEDs is now a well-established discipline. Working in pairs, the soldiers moved along the dried river bed, swinging the mine detectors in sequential arcs, always left to right. The carefully choreographed movements of the searchers – each focusing on the imaginary lane stretching out before him – should ensure that any device would be detected, but it was going to be a slow process. Depending on the amount of metal debris in the ground, which, along with other factors, could cause false readings, searching could prove a very long job but one that could never be rushed.
After about forty-five 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
