Painting the Sand

by Kim Hughes GC

  Dave, listening to the radio, turned to me and whispered, ‘Hades One Zero is down.’ Fully, the lead search man, had stepped on the IED.

  I began to go through the various options in my mind. I was itching to get forward, possibly to conduct a post-blast investigation, or see if I could help in any other way when I heard another massive explosion. I looked over at Lee, my mind now racing. Something had gone very badly wrong. A few minutes later a platoon sergeant appeared out of the gloom, rifle at the ready and sweat running down his face from beneath his helmet.

  ‘Kim, I need your team up at the front,’ he said breathing heavily. ‘We’ve had two IED strikes and we’ve now got multiple casualties – it’s a cluster fuck.’

  I turned to Lee just before we set off. ‘We need to be careful, mate. We haven’t isolated this, we don’t know what we are walking into.’

  The team moved along a line of silent soldiers, stepping over the legs and bodies as they lay in cover watching intently for enemy movement. We must have been some hundred metres from the point of the blast and it seemed to be taking forever when suddenly we came to the edge of the wadi. It was now dawn and birdsong filled the air as the sun began to bring some warmth to the early morning chill. A faint mist hung just above the river, while over to the east fields of corn swayed gently in a warm summer breeze.

  Eventually I reached the head of the column. The pungent odour of recently detonated explosives hung heavily in the air and the ground where the IEDs had been triggered was still smoking. Soldiers were lying on the ground as if frozen by fear and at first it was impossible to tell who was dead or alive. My heart pounded as the enormity of what was unfolding hit home.

  Peering through the weak dawn light there was a small mound, almost like a bundle of rags, scorched black and red. Then slowly, very slowly, an arm rose into the air. It was a soldier, horrifically wounded, covered in blood with the lower half of his body missing. He seemed barely conscious.

  Then a loud piercing scream split the air and as I got closer I realised it came from a female medic lying in a crumpled heap with one leg so badly damaged it appeared to only be attached by a few sinews of connective tissue.

  ‘Why aren’t you helping your mates!’ I shouted, enraged by the lack of activity.

  The sergeant turned, his face filled with rage and fear, but before he spoke I knew what he was going to say. The soldiers were in an IED minefield.

  15

  Painting the Sand

  Someone once said when you’re in a minefield tread carefully and try and get to the other side. It was sound advice and something that flashed across my mind as I began formulating my plan. Dead, dying and wounded soldiers were trapped in an area of hell about a third of the size of a football pitch. It was always advisable to assume that where there was one IED there could be two and if there were two, then . . .

  ‘Fully was lead search man,’ the sergeant said, breathing heavily and breaking my concentration. ‘He stepped on an IED. Both legs gone above the knee. We tied tourniquets around what was left of his legs and got him onto a stretcher. As we started the evacuation, one of the two stretcher-bearers triggered another IED. They are both Fusiliers and we think they are dead.’

  As he spoke the haunting sound of the Muslim call to prayer echoed around the valley. The sound of the explosions would have already alerted the Taliban. There was time to get the dead and injured out but not much.

  ‘That’s one of the lads,’ the sergeant continued, pointing at a soldier who was clearly dead. The young Fusilier had lost both legs and an arm and the force of the blast had bent what was left of his body in half. ‘We think the other stretcher-bearer was blown into the reeds.’ He pointed at a piece of ground about twenty metres away. ‘We haven’t been able to make any contact with him and no one has been any further forward than this since the second blast.’

  The sergeant’s eyes were wide and empty. His hands were trembling and his white, mournful face was spotted with dirt and blood.

  ‘We have three more casualties,’ he said. ‘The medic who has sustained a bad leg injury and two other soldiers with unknown injuries, but they’re conscious and don’t appear critical. No one is moving. The sergeant major has ordered everyone to stay still.’

  The brief took no more than thirty seconds. It was a shocking scene but I felt no real emotion, just a sense of appalling waste. The priority was to get the wounded out and back to Bastion; dealing with the dead would have to wait.

  Fully was the most severely wounded and had sustained multiple injuries. He had been blown up twice and was barely conscious. He was already in shock and had lost a lot of blood from the double traumatic amputation. The female medic was awake and although in a lot of pain, she did not appear to have life-threatening injuries. A few feet away the team were standing silently awaiting orders.

  ‘Malley, you need to search up to Fully. Take the infantry medic with you and search a wide path, quickly but don’t rush, then search a working area. Make sure you spray-paint your cleared paths so they’re obvious.’ All clear lanes were marked with spray-paint so that soldiers entering a danger area knew where to stand. It was a slow process but the only real way to ensure that everyone stayed inside a safe area.

  Paddy, one of the searchers, who was also a trained medic, began to clear a path to the wounded female medic to prepare her for evacuation.

  ‘Work quickly, lads, but be careful. No more casualties today,’ I said as they got to work. ‘Chidders, we need to bang out an isolation. We have to be sure there are no other wires running into this area.’

  ‘Roger,’ replied Chidders and within a matter of seconds he’d briefed his team and was slowly moving in a wide arc around the target. But then progress was slowed almost immediately when they discovered a network of wires running into the target, which added even more confusion to an already fucked-up situation.

  Malley had made his way to Fully where the medic went to work on him. His condition was critical. Still alive, but only just.

  ‘We need to get him out of here ASAP!’ the medic shouted. ‘Fully, Fully. Can you hear me? We’ve got you, mate. We are going to lift you out of here and take you back to Bastion.’

  Fully was barely conscious. He was slipping away.

  More soldiers arrived and Fully was placed on a stretcher for a second time before being carried out of the killing area to the HLS for a rendezvous with the MERT.

  Paddy had by now made his way to the injured medic. He was trying to keep her calm and pleading with her not to move when Sapper ‘Foz’ Foster, who was clearing the ground around Paddy, shouted: ‘Kim, we’ve got another IED!’ He was pointing at the ground near where Paddy was kneeling over the casualty.

  ‘Right, come back to me. Then clear me to the device and I’ll deal with it,’ I said, ensuring that my voice sounded calm.

  Foz approached me swinging his metal detector from side to side. He then did a very military ‘about turn’ allowing me enough room to walk in his footsteps right up to the IED.

  The bomb, buried in the gravelly bottom of the dried riverbed, was less than an arm’s length from Paddy. He was hunched over the casualty, sitting on his ankles and tying a field dressing around a horrendous, gaping leg wound. When I reached him, he looked up at me as though saying: ‘What am I supposed to do, I’m not trained for this.’

  The female medic was in a bad way. The muscle hung from her shinbone and the bottom half of her leg was barely attached. She had lost a lot of blood and was going into shock.

  ‘You’re doing fine, mate. Stabilise the wound so we can get her out. Do what you can,’ I said before getting to work on the IED.

  EOD training dictated that in an ideal world a cordon should be thrown up and everyone evacuated but that wasn’t going to happen because there were simply too many injured and dead people on the ground. It was crucial not to overcomplicate a very dangerous situation. I had to work on what was known. It was a Category A scenario – meaning there was a gr
ave and immediate threat to life. There was no time to conduct the usual EOD procedures of clearing devices remotely. The rules had to be ignored. I had to conduct what’s called a ‘manual action’ – get inside the bomb, cut the wires and pray it wasn’t booby-trapped. It was a risk but a calculated one. I had trained for this very situation. Back in the comfort of the Felix Centre you wished for the chance of dealing with a Cat A scenario; now here it was as real as the sun in the sky.

  I dropped down, lying flat on my stomach and slowly ran my Hoodlum – a small hand-held metal detector – over the ground and almost instantly got a metal hit. A high-metal pressure plate buried just below the surface of the dried riverbed. The injured medic’s screams had become a whimper. She was slipping away. I looked up at Paddy and he mouthed the words ‘Not good’.

  I searched around for part of the device, a wire that I could attack. It didn’t take long. I allowed myself the briefest of smiles as I uncovered a length of white twin-flex wire. I pulled my snips out from the front of my body armour, held my breath and carefully cut one of the wires. There was something reassuring about the snip sound and I felt totally in control. I quickly taped both ends of the exposed wire. By cutting the wires I had effectively put a ‘switch’ into the system, making it safer than it had been a few minutes earlier.

  Digging deeper, I found a pressure cooker filled with explosives and pieces of scrap metal, whatever Terry could throw into the mix. The bomb, although still a threat, was now safe and the evacuation of the injured medic began. Just as I began to feel that we were getting a grip on the situation one of the searchers announced that he’d found another IED.

  ‘Christ. Right, mark and avoid. I’ll deal with it.’

  I turned to Lewis who was monitoring events from just outside the killing area. ‘Get the satphone out and ring Bastion. Tell the SAT there have been two explosions, we’ve got injured and dead and multiple devices.’

  I brought my metal detector into action once again, clearing a path to the IED, where the corner of a pressure plate had been exposed. I followed the same procedure again. Searched and located a wire, which I was just about to cut, when Foz shouted that he had found a third IED.

  ‘Roger. Mark and avoid and I’ll deal with it after this.’

  I cleared a path up to where Foz was kneeling over a pressure plate.

  ‘Nice one,’ I said patting him on the back. Once again I used the same procedure to locate, cut and tape the wires.

  Then the shout went up again: ‘IED Find.’ The bomb was found by one of the search team clearing a route to the second stretcher-bearer who had been blown into a reed bed at the top end of the area now identified as the main killing zone.

  ‘Another one. Jesus. How many are there?’ I said out loud. ‘Roger. Same procedure. Mark and avoid. I’ll deal with it after this.’

  The devices needed to be cleared if we were to evacuate all of the casualties and dead safely. Over the next fifteen minutes, three more IEDs were found bringing the total to seven. The size and design of the main charges varied. Five of the charges were contained in pressure-cookers and two were in plastic containers. The bombs were all impregnated with pieces of scrap iron and steel, such as nails, nuts and bolts. They were designed to kill or at the very least cause horrendous injuries – on both counts the Taliban had succeeded. The design and layout of the minefield was quality. Someone had really done their homework and my gut told me that the Taliban’s top bomb team in Sangin must have designed the ambush.

  In between clearing the IEDs, I also took photographs of where casualties had been taken, both the wounded and the dead. The evidence gathering was crucial. There would be a follow-up investigation and it was Brimstone 42’s responsibility to get as much information and detail from the scene as possible.

  As daylight crept into the valley the ground-sign, the disturbed soil left behind after burying an IED, was becoming more obvious and exposed – there were bombs everywhere, at least ten. Only those which represented a threat to our movement were dealt with.

  Within thirty minutes of the first explosion the four wounded soldiers had been evacuated and we prepared to move the dead. Time was now running out and it was surprising that the Taliban hadn’t turned up to take us on. As I surveyed the area I felt something wasn’t quite right. I’d been so focused on the mission that the obvious hadn’t occurred to me and then the penny dropped. No power packs. Pressure plates, main charges, wire and dets had all been located but no power packs. Not one. But the bombs were live. So what was going on?

  I retraced my steps to the site of the earlier explosions and began to sift through the rubble in the craters. No batteries, just wires everywhere. I traced a wire to see if it was connected to a battery somewhere in the distance but discovered that the wire had been spliced onto another wire. Initially I was baffled, then I realised that the wires from all the devices were connected to a central power line. Each device had its own main charge, pressure plate and detonator but they were all powered from a central source. The IEDs were wired in such a way that one could explode while the others could remain intact – exactly what had happened earlier that morning.

  The Taliban could arm or disarm the entire IED belt or minefield by disconnecting the battery. Once disconnected a tank could literally be driven over the pressure plate and it wouldn’t function. This gave the Taliban freedom of movement right across the wadi without fear of stepping on one of their own devices. But when they saw British or ISAF forces were on the move up the wadi they simply reconnected the battery and the whole area became a live minefield. As a tactic it was outstanding and something never seen before in Helmand.

  The minefield wasn’t something the everyday Taliban could throw together on their own. Its design required a detailed understanding of electronics as well as talent. The Taliban were getting help. But from whom? The Pakistanis? The Iranians? If anyone knew they weren’t going to tell us.

  Following the casualty evacuation, the pace of events began to slow down a little. It was now time to retrieve the dead. I stood for a second, just a few feet from one of the fallen, trying to take in what had happened, the carnage and loss. What a fucking waste.

  The platoon sergeant, who’d first led us to the scene of the explosion, shouted over to me. ‘Kim,’ he said getting my attention, ‘I need that lad’s dog tags.’

  My heart sank and Lewis’s head spun round, his eyes caught mine and his expression said it all. I stopped and paused, steeling myself for the inevitable trauma. ‘Just get on with it,’ I said silently and cleared a path to where he had fallen.

  The bomb had caused appalling injuries. What was left of his body was battered and torn beyond recognition and stripped of all dignity. His was not a soldier’s death.

  ‘Your guys don’t need to see this. Move them back,’ I told the sergeant.

  I dropped down so that I was kneeling by his side, grabbed his body armour and rolled his torso onto one side, holding part of his body with my legs to prevent him from rolling back. The Rifles’ standard operating procedure stated that dog tags should be placed inside the body armour. I unzipped the pocket on the front, containing the ballistic plate, retrieved his tags and threw them over to the sergeant. I breathed a sigh of relief and prepared to stand when the sergeant said: ‘Hang on, Kim, they’ve got to stay with the body. I needed his number for ID purposes so that I can confirm he was KIA.’

  I lay with the dead soldier by my side, hoping that his death had been quick and painless. I thought of home, my son and vowed at that moment that I would survive this shithole. After what seemed like an age, the sergeant, who had taken a note of the soldier’s name and Army number, threw the tags back. I placed them back in the pocket and made sure they were secure, knowing all too well the value these have to bereaved parents back home. Parents who within a matter of hours would have their lives blown apart and broken forever.

  I was trying to do the best job I could for him and bring some dignity to his passing. I pulled
my legs back and very gently rolled his body back and patted him on the shoulder as if to say, ‘Rest now. Your job is done.’

  16

  Aftermath

  The centre of the killing zone was dominated by two large blast craters just a few feet apart. The ground around them was stained with blood that had dried into the wadi and turned a dark-brown colour. Blood-soaked field dressings and bandages lay trodden into the ground. The smell of death hung heavy in the air.

  The two dead soldiers remained undisturbed, one in the reeds, the other in the open, almost as if they were peacefully sleeping. The rest of the soldiers involved in the operation had barely moved or spoken a word for almost an hour. Bastion had already been informed of the identities of the dead. It flashed across my mind right at that moment, as I slowly, carefully walked back towards the dead, that someone, somewhere in the UK, dressed in his best military uniform was going to make that dreadful journey to the next of kin. There would be that knock on the door, a moment of confusion, then disbelief and anger followed by unimaginable sorrow and pain.

  ‘We’ve got to get this lad into a body bag and back to Bastion,’ I said to the platoon sergeant. ‘I’m afraid I won’t be able to do it on my own.’

  A young soldier, possibly only eighteen, stood up, his eyes red with tears, his face contorted with grief. One of those killed was his best friend. He was sobbing, almost uncontrollably, but there was no sense of shame. There were times during that harrowing morning that almost everyone felt like crying. He walked towards me as the sergeant handed me a body bag.

  ‘It’s all right, mate, I’ve got this, your sergeant will help.’

  ‘No, I want to help, I want to carry him out of here,’ the young lad said, wiping away the tears. ‘He was my best mate.’

  The dead soldier was carefully and gently manoeuvred into the body bag. I was determined that the dead were treated as respectfully as possible given that we were still in a tactical environment, a minefield and no doubt being watched by the Taliban. Four soldiers came forward and lifted the black bag, each grabbing a handle. No one spoke. Another four from the same platoon were lifting the other dead soldier out of the reeds at the same time. The rest of the search team stood motionless in respectful silence until the dead had been carried out of view to the HLS where another chopper was inbound.