Painting the Sand

by Kim Hughes GC

  Lee looked at me and raised an eyebrow. Finally the captain shook my hand and welcomed us to his base and explained that an hour earlier one of his soldiers had stepped on an IED while out on patrol and lost both his legs. The soldier, he went on, had earlier been part of the team that had found the IED at the VP. During the clearance operation the Estonians carried out a search of several abandoned compounds that overlooked the VP and could have been used as remote firing points. But with just a few men they were unable to hold the ground and were ordered to clear a route for another of their patrols to pass through the area. After being informed that a UK Brimstone team was being flown into Pimon to clear the device at the VP they reoccupied the nearby compounds, which had been left unmanned for an hour. It was while the compounds were unmanned that the Taliban had returned and placed another IED in one of the previously cleared buildings.

  ‘Those mother fucking Taliban, I will kill them all,’ he added.

  I was left in absolutely no doubt that he would keep his promise.

  Lee and I returned to where the rest of the team were waiting and I briefed them on the situation. ‘One of the Estonians has just lost his legs. His brother’s also based here as well. The Taliban went back into a cleared building and placed a device and the Estonians didn’t clear it again when they re-entered. They’re obviously pissed off so don’t expect too many smiles. They might be looking for some payback so there’s a good chance it could get a bit cheeky.’

  A convoy of two armoured vehicles ferried us for about a kilometre along a rutted desert track to the area of the VP. The vehicles halted in a cloud of dust, the rear doors swung open and the unsmiling Estonians indicated for us to get out. The suspected IED was located on a T-junction – a classic Taliban ambush point. Any NATO vehicle moving along the track would be forced to slow down making themselves vulnerable to both pressure-plate and command-initiated IEDs.

  As I climbed out of the armoured vehicle I was hit by the desert heat and the ripe smell of sewage bubbling up from a stagnant canal running adjacent to the track. The water was green and opaque. Clouds of mozzies and flies buzzed above what I assumed was human shit floating along. Some of the soldiers gagged, spat and cursed those who had sent them to Afghan. Almost from the moment I stepped from the vehicle I had a bad feeling.

  We immediately swung into operation, clearing the area around the vehicles and under Chappy’s supervision established an incident control point (ICP) while the Estonians looked on, appearing slightly bewildered. There was too much dead ground in the immediate area where the Taliban could make a covered approach to our position. A group of compounds around eight hundred metres away appeared to be full of murder holes (holes made in compound walls to enable the Taliban to shoot at us) and there weren’t enough Estonians to properly secure the area. Despite the warning signs my supercharged self-confidence kicked in and I began formulating my plan.

  There was a very tense atmosphere, not just among the Estonians but in the general area. It was simply too quiet and my gut instinct and training told me that was not good. EOD Operators always have to look for the absence of the normal and the presence of the abnormal. There should have been some activity but there was nothing, no kids, no farmers and no one using the road. What did they know that we didn’t?

  The search team sat down in the shadow of one of the Estonian vehicles, relaxed but ready to fight if needed. I went through the plan with Lewis and Lee, sorted my kit, and checked that my pistol had a round up the spout in case things kicked off. The joking and banter that usually accompanied lulls in activity was absent and the anxious looks on the faces of my team and the Estonians revealed that everyone expected the day to get nasty. But I felt oddly energised by the situation, almost looking forward to it all going tits up so I could test myself under even greater pressure.

  I cleared a path down across the undulating desert track to where the Estonians had found the bomb. Dave was positioned in dry ditch running alongside the track, ensuring that I was within his ECM cover and he could give me some covering fire if needed.

  The Estonians had done a good job in exposing the ground around the bomb and even from twenty metres the main charge, housed in a yellow palm oil container, was visible. I moved forward and carried out a search of the ground around the main charge but as I did so I started getting loads of metal hits on my metal detector – metal had been scattered all around and I couldn’t locate the pressure plate. Something definitely wasn’t right so I returned to the ICP and discussed the situation with Lewis.

  Lewis already looked concerned even before I started speaking. It was hot but he seemed unusually sweaty and tense.

  ‘I dunno what’s going on here,’ I said. ‘I can’t find the pressure plate so I’m going to smash it with a ground clearance charge.’

  But Lewis remained silent.

  ‘Come on, what’s up? Talk to me, Lewis.’

  ‘It doesn’t feel right to me, boss,’ Lewis said. ‘The charge is on a T-junction, exactly where you would expect it to be. The ground is open, there are compounds overlooking our position and the area’s deserted.’

  Soldiers, especially those in bomb disposal, can be notoriously superstitious and often swayed by gut instinct, which is no bad thing, and Lewis was always one to trust his gut.

  ‘Yeah, but there’s a bomb and we ain’t leaving until it’s done so let’s crack on,’ I responded nonchalantly.

  Back down at the device, I cleared an area close to the palm oil container and was just about to place the clearance charge when the ground erupted in a huge explosion about fifty feet in front of me. The blast covered me in dust and the shockwave made my eyes water. I coughed and spluttered and then shouted ‘RPG!’ as the explosion rumbled away.

  Seconds later what felt like the entire Taliban insurgency opened up with every weapon in their arsenal. Bullets were fizzing past my head and thumping into the ground around my feet, sending up splashes of dust and dirt. Tracer rounds ricocheted off the ground with a loud peeow and rocketed skywards. I lay down, trying to make myself as small a target as possible. The crack of bullets f lying overhead sounded like an endless firework display and for a few, brief seconds I felt trapped by indecision. Were the Taliban aiming at me or was I caught in the crossfire? The Taliban often opened fire with AK 47s on fully automatic and accuracy went straight out of the window, with rounds f lying everywhere. RPGs were now exploding in front and behind me and I felt as though I was at the centre of a maelstrom, unable to think clearly. It wasn’t fear exactly, just a state of confusion, as though I had lost the power to make a decision, almost like suddenly finding yourself in the middle of a violent, crashing storm.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the Estonians began returning fire, using every weapon they had, from assault rifles to the heavy machine guns mounted on top of the APCs. The firefight went into overdrive and I was caught in the middle. Then when the realisation hit home that neither side was actually aiming at me, I was almost able to relax a bit and started to think a little more clearly.

  The Taliban had moved into the same compounds that had given me some cause for concern when we first arrived. It was impossible to see any enemy, just the muzzle flashes of the weapons firing from murder holes. Rather than feeling fear I was fascinated. I watched the muzzle flashes, almost felt the crack of the bullets passing overhead and then heard the distant noise of the gun being fired.

  Rather than make a run back to the safety of the Estonians, I decided to carry on laying the ground clearance charge, forcing the noise of gunfire to the back of my mind. My concentration was again broken by Dave’s shouting.

  ‘Kim, Kim – we’re in contact!’ he shouted as he took cover in the ditch. ‘We’re being shot at.’

  ‘Well fire back!’ I shouted. Dave looked surprised and then began firing his SA80.

  I continued excavating only for the Estonian commander back at the ICP to demand that I return, or at least get into cover.

  I quickly fini
shed laying the charge, grabbed my metal detector and returned along the cleared path back to the ICP, occasionally ducking or dropping to one knee every time some bullets came my way.

  Lee was standing by an Estonian officer, who was attempting to control his troops’ rate of fire.

  ‘What’s up?’ I said, slightly provocatively.

  Lee went to answer but was interrupted by the Estonian.

  ‘We’re in contact, we need to leave now,’ he answered in a thick eastern European accent.

  ‘Shoot back. They’re miles away. You’ve got snipers, right? Then let them solve the problem. I’m here to clear that device. You get on with sorting the enemy out. They’re not going to try and outflank us. They are eight hundred metres away across open ground. We’ve got armoured vehicles. You’ve got us out here to do a job and we’re going to do it. I’m not coming back here tomorrow when we can get it completed today. Accept the fact that we’re in some sort of contact and give me some cover.’

  Lee gave me a wink and told the search team to start engaging the enemy. It was like letting a greyhound out of the cage as the searchers ran, dived into their defensive positions and began firing at the enemy with small, controlled bursts.

  While the Estonian officer began barking orders at his men Lewis fired the clearance charge. The shockwave swept back up the track towards us, a short, sharp, crisp explosion. A few minutes later, with the battle still raging, I returned to the IED. The blast had ripped open the palm oil container but there was no HME, only shipyard confetti, metal gearing and nails.

  ‘What the fuck,’ I said out loud. ‘How is that supposed . . .?’ It then dawned on me that the IED and subsequent attack was part of an elaborate, well-planned Taliban ambush, and we had walked right into the middle of it. The question for me was: who were the Taliban after? Was it the Estonians or were they targeting ATOs? There had been some intelligence suggesting that the Taliban wanted to kill a bomb disposal operator. After all, we were effectively spoiling their fun.

  ‘It’s a come-on!’ I shouted across to Dave who was busy taking carefully aimed shots at the compounds. At this point, and I still have no real idea why, I started laughing.

  With the situation becoming increasingly hairy, I decided to head back to the ICP picking up Dave on the way.

  ‘You OK?’ I said standing over him. ‘Shall we head back?’

  But by the time we got back to the ICP one Estonian vehicle had already left.

  ‘Where’s the other vehicle?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s gone. You were taking too long,’ a large monosyllabic Estonian NCO responded.

  ‘So how’s my team meant to get back to the PB?’

  ‘Walk,’ was the one word response.

  Lee had the situation under control, explaining what had happened with the vehicle and how we were now going to get back. There was not enough room for everyone in the one remaining APC so half the team took cover on the safe side and tried to return fire as it slowly withdrew back to the patrol base.

  The vehicle should have been going at walking speed but it got faster and faster and our walk soon turned into a jog. The Taliban, possibly thinking that they had us on the run, appeared energised by our departure and their rate of fire intensified. Rounds pinged and twanged against the vehicle’s metal hull, which seemed to cause the driver to increase the speed so that our jog turned into a run.

  By the time we arrived at the PB we were on our chin-straps, and too exhausted to give the Estonians shit for their crap driving. Despite their exhaustion the team was buzzing, each with his own war story. They had been in contact and survived. Everyone was smiling and laughing. ‘Did you see how close . . . Did you see that RPG . . .’

  I slumped against the wheel of one of the vehicles to catch my breath and thought about what had happened over the last couple of hours. It was my first serious contact and the bullets had been landing dangerously close but I wasn’t in the least bit scared. There was no rush of adrenalin and certainly no fear – not what I had expected. Was it the God complex kicking in? My actions had almost been reckless. Had I been injured or killed other soldiers would have had to put their lives at risk to extract me. But what was I supposed to do? Was it better to be fearless or scared? What would keep me alive longer? I wasn’t sure. But there had been barely time to think.

  Later that evening, we were back in PB Argyll and at what was the start of a sustained period of intense activity – one job after another, not really knowing where we were going or who we were working for. The workload had gone through the roof and days, sometimes weeks, merged into one continuous deployment, where our only rest was when we lay down on our beds. While the IED teams were being worked into the ground, the infantry were getting hit hard, sometimes losing two or three soldiers in complex IED attacks. But throughout that busy period I never doubted that I would survive, I didn’t even think I was going to get injured and while morale in Brimstone 42 was high, in some units we visited it was rock bottom, usually because they had just lost someone. IEDs had now completely reshaped the way the war was fought. A year earlier perhaps 5, maybe 10 per cent of all attacks were IEDs; now it was up to 50, and higher in some areas, and the victims weren’t just soldiers but also civilians – men, women and worst of all children.

  Those who survived were often damaged, both mentally and sometimes physically by what they had witnessed. Seeing someone you know turned into red mist in front of your eyes literally seconds after you’d just been in conversation with them was a terrible, traumatic experience often made even worse by being told to pick the bits up that were left and put them into a bin bag so that something could be sent home.

  At the same time as what was happening in Afghan, politicians back in the UK were using the Army as a political football. Labour claimed we had enough of everything while the Tories said they would give us more of everything if they were in power – which we of course knew was a crock of shit. As a soldier you just have to learn to suck it up. There’s no point in moaning or thinking you’re hard done by; after all, we’re all volunteers.

  Over the next few weeks my God complex intensified. I was drawn to danger like a drug. The most enjoyable jobs were the most dangerous. After I’d found one bomb, I’d go searching for another, then another, always looking for the next challenge.

  But that all changed a few weeks later when my team became embedded with a British unit located in the district of Nad e’Ali. The main British base sat in the centre of the district and was known as FOB Shawqat and was the site of what was rumoured to be a nineteenth-century fort first occupied during the period known as the Great Game, when Britain fought a sort of covert war against the Russians for control of Afghanistan. It served kind of as a hub base around which were a series of satellite patrol bases that supposedly helped to secure the area. The small, less well-protected PBs needed to be resupplied with food, water, mail, ammunition and fresh soldiers by armoured convoys at least a couple of times a week. The convoys used roads and tracks largely over-watched by either NATO troops or our Afghan allies and so were regarded as ‘secure’ in that it was unlikely the Taliban would attempt to plant a device under the eyes of enemy troops. But there were also large sections of roads that were insecure and these had to be cleared by ground troops every time they were used by a resupply convoy. The result was that a simple forty-five-minute drive between FOB Shawqat and a satellite PB would often take several hours.

  During one early morning operation Brimstone 42 was tasked with providing EOD support for a resupply mission to a small base called checkpoint Hagi Lim. The team was split between two Mastiff armoured vehicles positioned at the back of a convoy, ready to move forward to deal with any potential IEDs. The convoy left Shawqat in the pre-dawn dark and I was asleep before our vehicle was a hundred metres from the gates. The Mastiffs are a major improvement on the ageing Bulldog armoured vehicles, which were largely regarded as deathtraps by the troops. Mastiffs were wheeled and had a V-shaped hull that helped defle
ct an IED blast and thereby reduced the chances of death and injury to those travelling inside.

  Earlier that day another Mastiff vehicle had struck an IED on a so-called ‘secured route’. No one was injured even though the vehicle was a write-off but the fact that the Taliban could plant a device on a secured route had put everyone on edge. It was simply impossible to search every inch of every road – to do so would mean that resupply operations would take days. So only unsecured areas, such as a bend in a road that couldn’t be overseen or vulnerable points (VPs), were searched. The searching of insecure roads, tracks or VPs was known as Operation Barma – a technique designed by expert search engineers to ensure the entire area is cleared using the trusted metal detector.

  An hour or so into the resupply mission the troops in some of the forward vehicles debussed to conduct another Operation Barma. The terrain was not demanding, classic Helmand Green Zone, with a canal running along one side of the road and a maize field on the other, but there was a small bridge that needed to be crossed and hence was identified as a vulnerable point and so had to be cleared.

  The soldiers moved into their formation and began searching. There were a few new guys on the operation who had been flown in as battle-casualty replacements and the resupply operation was the first time they had been out on the ground. The replacements were very young, just eighteen, fresh-faced and scared shitless. Some almost had to be coaxed out of the vehicle and ordered to take part in the clearance. Every soldier had to be able to execute confidently an Operation Barma and so the commander presumably thought no time like the present.

  The search progressed slowly. So slowly in fact that I had woken up and fallen back asleep, along with most of the rest of my team. But things got interesting when the lead searcher saw a flash of light cross in front of his path as he moved along the track, assuming at first that it was the silvery back of a lizard or some other reptile dashing into the undergrowth. He raised a fist in the air, the universal military sign to stop, dropped to one knee and spotted a shiny piece of metal. He moved closer for a better look when the ground in front of him moved, almost lifted up, not by much but enough for him to notice. It was a command-pull IED, which is initiated by the terrorist pulling a piece of string attached to the firing switch.