Painting the Sand

by Kim Hughes GC

  George was a bear of a man, friendly, smiling and insisted on calling everyone ‘buddy’. He was chewing tobacco and spat gobs of black saliva every few seconds. My mood worsened when a dishevelled group of Afghan National Police emerged from another vehicle. I was always wary of the ANP. They had an appalling reputation in Afghan and were largely despised by the locals. Many were drug addicts and most were corrupt. This bunch seemed to be particularly wired, smiling widely and wanting to shake hands with all of us. George explained, in a southern states drawl, that an ANP call sign had found a Remote Controlled IED (RCIED) and in their inimitable way had pulled it out of the ground. The bomb was now lying on a roadside waiting to be cleared. I tried to get some sense of what was going on via a Terp, who was part of the US team, but the Afghan commander kept saying that the bomb was now safe, which clearly it wasn’t.

  ‘Is it an intact IED?’ I asked George and then the Terp.

  The Afghan commander gave a lengthy reply but the Terp simply said: ‘He doesn’t know.’

  I turned to George. ‘OK. I think it’s best if we just go and have a look. Not really getting any sense here, are we?’

  He nodded in agreement while the Afghan commander added, ‘Go, yes, go.’ Possibly the only English he knew.

  The IED was sitting on a small bank, similar to a bund you might see in the English countryside, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. RCIEDs need to be monitored by the enemy so that they could be detonated when a target entered the killing zone – but this one obviously wasn’t.

  The ANA had literally dug it out of the ground, probably with their hands, and left it in the open. Whenever possible we tried to tell the ANA that if they found an IED to leave it alone and call for a bomb disposal team. But they rarely did. Dozens of Afghan police and soldiers had been killed or maimed pulling bombs out – but they carried on regardless, almost as if it were a slight on their manhood to ask for help.

  There was no immediate threat so I quickly got to work, hoping that the sooner we got the job done the quicker we would get back to Bastion. I recovered the RC pack and blew up the main charge – technically it was a straightforward job, taking around thirty minutes to clear.

  Once completed I turned to George. ‘Right, job done. Now what?’

  ‘Well, buddy, we’re going to get a vehicle to come and collect you.’

  ‘To take us where?’ I responded impatiently.

  ‘To Lashkar Ghar. The vehicles are coming from Lash and they’ll take you back there for a nice cool shower and some chow,’ he said smiling.

  ‘You’re kidding, right? It’s going to take the rest of the day to get back to Lash.’

  I couldn’t believe it. We were minutes from landing in Bastion, living the dream, looking forward to a cold smoothie in the Green Bean Cafe and now we were going to trundle across the Helmand desert for the rest of the day.

  It took another two hours before the vehicles arrived and another three hours before we arrived, hot, tired and pissed off in Lashkar Ghar, the provincial capital of Helmand, and the HQ of all British forces in southern Afghanistan. It was brimming with top brass and not the place any soldier wanted to be for too long. It was now around 2000 hrs, although I had lost all sense of time, and I made an immediate beeline for the Ops Room to get an update on what was happening.

  I asked, actually demanded, to use a secure line to call the Ops Room in Bastion: ‘Staff Hughes here. My call sign is in Lash. Can you give me an update on our extraction?’

  ‘You’re to wait out until a decision has been made on what we’re going to do with you,’ said an anonymous watch-keeper.

  I could barely control my anger. ‘What do you mean by “what we’re going do with you”? The decision should be how are you going to get us out of here so we can strip our kit out ready for the move back to the UK.’

  But the watch-keeper was only passing on the message. I spent the rest of the evening going backwards and forwards to the Ops Room gradually pissing off everyone with my continual requests for a flight out. It was only after the third visit that the Lash Operations Officer turned to me and said: ‘Your aircraft is inbound. You are going back to Keenan.’

  My morale hit the floor. If I hadn’t been so pissed off it would have been funny.

  ‘No, that can’t be right. We’ve just come from Keenan. We’re finished, we’re heading home.’

  The team had been waiting patiently for a couple of hours, sitting on the floor near to the HLS in the hope that we’d be returning to Bastion. They had showered and got dressed into their clean kit. I had stripped out my man bag and repacked my day-sack.

  Later the Operations Warrant Officer called and confirmed our worst fears. Brimstone 42 was heading back to Keenan to provide cover for the third phase of an ongoing operation.

  ‘Bad news, guys. We’re being extended out on the ground. We’re heading back to Keenan.’

  If someone had burst into tears at that moment or thrown a major tantrum, I wouldn’t have blamed them. Everyone took it badly for different reasons and I could see by the look on Dave’s face that he was very frustrated. But no one complained. Everyone nodded and accepted the situation. The following morning the team flew back to Keenan where Major Plant was waiting for us.

  ‘Seriously, what are you doing here?’ he asked, genuinely confused.

  ‘Being fucked around, sir. We’re going to be your IEDD team for the next few days.’

  He looked slightly embarrassed and asked me to come into the Ops Room where we discussed the next phase of the operation.

  ‘It’s going to be busy. And it could get a bit cheeky,’ he said slightly apologetically and he wasn’t wrong.

  23

  Is that a Fucking Rubber Dinghy?

  Six days after Brimstone 42’s tour was supposed to be over, the team was back on operations providing EOD support for a joint ISAF and Afghan National Army operation code-named Tufaan Dakoo. The operation was an attempt to close down the Taliban’s freedom of movement in a large chunk of the Green Zone where the ground had become laced with IEDs.

  The cruel heat of the Afghan summer was slowly ebbing away as the first signs of autumn began to appear but the days were still long and sleepy hot. It was day two of the operation and the plan was to close all of the Taliban’s routes into an area of five square kilometres. Every road, bridge and track was physically blocked and guarded by ISAF British and Danish troops. But one route was left open. Ideally, the enemy would enter the area over a course of a few days, plant their IEDs and withdraw. ISAF would then use an Unmanned Air Vehicle such as a Reaper to track the Taliban back to their bomb factories. But rather than go after the guy planting the IED we’d smash the lot of them once we knew where they were based. At least that was the plan.

  It was 23 September and the entire Brimstone 42 team was relaxing in a secure area close to a bridge code-named ‘Mickey’, one of several crossing points over a fast-flowing tributary of the Helmand river. Our role was to react to any IED finds and given that our tour was meant to be over we were all hoping for a quiet day.

  Mickey was a bridge typical to the area. It was wide enough to take a standard saloon car with a couple of feet to spare and about forty feet in length. A simple construction of steel girders and concrete, it had possibly been made by British engineers a few years earlier. It had been blocked off with a large Hesco chunk and coils of razor wire that should have made using the bridge impossible. But a Taliban bomb team had managed to booby-trap the bridge with a command-pull IED.

  At sometime during the previous evening when darkness had fallen, a Taliban IED team swam across the river and buried a main charge, battery pack and firing switch almost at the foot of the main barricade. They had also managed to dig in a long piece of kite string that would act as the command wire without being seen. Once in place they swam back to the other side and ran the kite string off into the distance to a position that allowed them to monitor the bridge.

  The following morning, a Danish major,
in charge of the operation, accompanied by Major Sam Plant, the officer commanding FOB Keenan, went to inspect the engineering works on the bridge. The route up to the Hesco barricade on the bridge had been searched earlier for IEDs by Danish engineers and declared clear. So the two officers confidently marched up to the bridge while around twenty soldiers secured the area.

  All seemed quite normal until the ground in front of them began to move. A member of the Taliban was trying to initiate the main charge buried beneath the officers’ feet by tugging on the kite string. The two officers momentarily froze before performing a quick about-turn and took cover behind a bank.

  Although not known at the time, the main charge was a 105mm artillery shell packed with home-made explosives. Quite how such a huge lump of metal could be missed by soldiers searching for IEDs remains something of a mystery. The command-pull initiation failed because the kite string became entangled in the razor wire.

  Minutes later Brimstone 42 were told to get their collective arses up to bridge Mickey.

  Major Plant was waiting to brief me. ‘Staff – morning. Bit of a funny one this. I was carrying out an inspection of the bridge when the ground began moving. There’s a piece of string running along the bridge and into the distance, possibly into that compound close to the tree line approximately three hundred metres away. Whoever was on the end gave it a few good tugs and has exposed part of the IED. We beat a hasty retreat back here.’

  ‘OK, sir, no dramas. Give me a few minutes and I’ll give you a plan of action. We’re going to establish an ICP in this area but my REST will need to clear the area first.’

  The ICP was positioned around a hundred metres from the bridge on one side of a small embankment, which provided cover from the enemy’s side of the river. As I surveyed the area my gut told me this wasn’t going to be a straightforward job. A track ran over the bridge into the distance and another track hand-railed the river on the far side of the bank. The kite string attached to the IED ran over the bridge and disappeared, probably into a large, abandoned compound around three hundred metres directly ahead and left of the bridge. Either side of the track, on the other side of the river, were two large fields growing a mixture of crops, including maize, wheat and poppy. Over on the far right, but slightly closer to the river, was another abandoned compound, almost directly opposite where the ICP had been established. The whole area was flat and open with plenty of potential enemy firing points. It was a perfect ambush position for the Taliban and we were now slap bang in the middle.

  With the ICP marked and cleared, the new team RESA, a young thrusting lieutenant, and I began to plan how we were going to smash the task. As we chatted through the various options an infantry sergeant known as ‘Trees’, probably because he was over six foot five, appeared with a broad smile across his face. I had grown friendly with Trees – I never knew his real name – over that summer and every time our paths crossed he asked me the same two questions.

  ‘How many bombs, Kim?’

  I looked up and I saw Trees’ smiling face. ‘Fuck knows, mate. Lost count but well over a hundred.’

  ‘You going out dressed as a Dane or one of us?’

  I laughed out loud. ‘As you see me.’

  I had spent so much time with the Danes and trashed so much of my own kit that I had developed a bit of a reputation for wearing mixed dress – Danish combat trousers and a British camouflage jacket. The Danish combats were a deep-green camouflage material, ideal for the Green Zone and made of rip-stop material. It was mega kit, much better than our own. Desert camouflage was pretty good in the desert but once you went into an area where crops were being cultivated it was useless – you were dressed in light sandy-brown gear when all around you was green.

  Trees gave me a breakdown of the situation as he pointed at the bridge: ‘If you look really carefully you’ll be able to see the string running back over the bridge and beyond into the distance.’

  ‘I can’t see anything,’ I said, squinting into the distance.

  Trees was a sniper and was carrying some pretty Gucci kit. He pulled out a laser rangefinder and said, ‘Try this.’

  And there was the string as clear as day.

  ‘I’ll swap you my best set of Danish combats for this,’ I said to him, hanging on to his rangefinder.

  ‘Fuck off,’ he said, smiling and snatching it back.

  The IED was in a sort of limbo. The Taliban couldn’t detonate it but that didn’t mean it was safe. Another tug on the kite string might work so the IED had to be treated as if it was in a dangerous state.

  Back with the rest of the team I began to run through the various options. Firstly, a wider search of the general area needed to be conducted, which entailed crossing the river, cutting the string and taking control of the device away from the Taliban. Then the river would have to be recrossed ensuring there were no other command wires coming into the area. The river was the obvious hurdle. Anyone crossing it would be completely exposed and although there was no sign of enemy activity it had to be assumed that the Taliban were watching. No one would want to be in the middle of the river if a firefight kicked off.

  There was a collective rubbing of heads as we brainstormed the problem. Jake, who was now the new search team commander, quickly pointed out that the river was fast-flowing and an unknown depth. Anyone attempting to cross it would have to ditch their body armour, helmet and most of their kit.

  More suggestions were put forward, some bordering on the insane, when out of the blue one of the Danish soldiers, who was listening to our conversation, said, ‘We’ve got a rubber dinghy.’

  I hadn’t quite understood what he said and initially dismissed his comments with a ‘Yeah, nice one, mate.’

  The brainstorming session continued for the next ten minutes or so but we were getting nowhere fast and I could see that Major Plant wanted to get a move on. I was on the verge of thinking that the job was potentially too dangerous when a Danish armoured vehicle appeared on the track and began heading towards our position. As the vehicle got closer I could see what looked like a boat strapped to its roof.

  I stood up, walked over to the now stationary vehicle and found myself standing next to the same Danish soldier who had mentioned something about a boat a little earlier.

  ‘Is that a fucking rubber dinghy?’ I said.

  The Danish soldier looked at me and laughing said, ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you.’

  As I walked around the vehicle wondering whether this was the solution to our problem, a couple of Danish soldiers lifted it from the roof. It was about seven foot long and three foot wide, black in colour and similar to a rigid inflatable boat (RIB).

  I turned to the Dane again: ‘What have you got a rubber dinghy in Afghan for?’

  ‘For river crossings,’ he responded, amazed that I was even asking the question.

  None of us had ever used a boat before on a Counter-IED task and our boat-handling skills were pretty non-existent. But within a few minutes we’d come up with what can loosely be described as a plan. The search team would clear a path while carrying the dinghy up and over the embankment and down to the water’s edge. We’d paddle across the river, conduct a search of the area, disabling the device in the process, then climb back into the boat and return while being protected by the Danish and British soldiers who had already occupied defensive positions on the friendly side of the river. I briefed Major Plant on our plan and he gave us the green light to execute.

  Tiggs, the new search team’s youngest member, led the way clearing the path swinging his metal detector from side to side, Jake followed and I brought up the rear along with another member of the team, called Smudge. We moved over the embankment and down towards the river. It was all going as planned until what seemed like the entire Taliban army opened up with sniper and automatic fire from a compound almost thirty metres directly opposite on the other side of the river.

  The bullets whizzed past just above us, so close that we could almost feel
the crack above our heads. Volleys of AK47 rounds tattooed the ground around our feet, spitting up dirt as they struck home. The entire area where the four of us were trying to launch the dinghy was lacerated by machine-gun fire, just like in one of those old Second World War movies. RPG rockets were flying overhead and thumping into the embankment behind. I turned to see where the fire was coming from thinking I might be able to engage some of the enemy but all I could see were muzzle flashes coming from the compound opposite.

  Everyone froze for a split second before all four of us scrambled up the bank and hurled ourselves over the other side. I somersaulted over the bank and Jake dived head first and landed on top of me with Tiggs and Smudge bringing up the rear. As we rolled down the other side of the bank we began to laugh uncontrollably. Somehow we had escaped being killed or wounded and our response was group hysteria. A few seconds later the British and Danish soldiers securing the friendly side of the bank opened fire with a vengeance. The compound opposite disappeared in a cloud of dust as the bullets struck the outer walls. Chunks of masonry, possibly centuries old, began to crumble. As the gunfire intensified so did our hysteria. I looked over at Trees and he was firing his sniper rif le shotgun-style because he was too close to the target to use his high-powered telescopic sight. Beyond Trees, through the noise and confusion of battle, a young soldier was preparing to fire his 40mm grenade launcher.

  ‘What’s he going to do with that,’ I thought to myself.

  The overeager soldier pulled the trigger and fired a red phosphorus grenade directly into the bank on the opposite side of the river. The grenade exploded on impact showered most of the British and Danish troops with small pieces of burning red phosphorus. Phosphorus will set light and burn through almost anything. Fortunately the damage was minimal but Trees was less than impressed. He put his rifle down, grabbed the young soldier by the helmet straps and gave him a major battlefield bollocking. The firefight died down after a couple of minutes and my team, using the embankment as cover, moved into a large unoccupied compound adjacent to the ICP.