We started to send all of the boxes of propellant out to a spot and line them all up, then place one end of a piece of time fuse cut for 15 minutes into a charge bag and the other set up with an M60 igniter we could safely burn off. We must have carried out at least a dozen of these burns until we discovered that placing the boxes of propellant in among the demolition shots, each comprising tonnes of high explosive ammunition, involved much less stuffing around and was just as effective. Not to mention it made the shots themselves look far more impressive — a huge fire ball shot hundreds of metres or even kilometres in some instances into the sky.
There were many bunkers that had a mixture of explosive ordnance and small arms ammunition — basically billions of rounds of bullets. We were directed to destroy certain types of bullets but to repack and palletise others like the 7.62 millimetres ammunition used in the Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles that the Iraqi Army and police forces used. Like most communist block small arms ammunition, which is where the AK-47 originated, the bullets were packed in large tins a bit bigger than a shoe box. We found that if we lay the tins of bullets at the bottom of the shot boxes and then covered them with high explosive projectile we would not only completely destroy every single bullet but we would blow all of the scrap pieces into the ground. We placed hundreds of thousands of AKs under our shots and destroyed them as well as billions of AK-47 rounds still in cans.
It got to a point where those of us still working in bunkers and sending the loaded boxes to the laydown lot were starting to compete against each other to see how many shot boxes our group could fill in a day. The local labourers in our teams would do their best to keep up with the Aussies loading boxes and at times the pace got so fast we had to slow them down for safety concerns. Obviously they never had that problem within the sloth teams simply because they never got out of their cars. The locals figured that if they were taking it easy then why shouldn’t they.
The main local supervisor was a great bloke. He honestly wanted to do the best he could and he ran his group of ammunition handlers like a military unit. Every morning they would all be lined up for roll call in their particular working teams. All the teams were designated by a colour and each team had its local team leader. Very rarely did the team leader actually do any physical work because as far as he was concerned he was the supervisor and one step better than the rest. We did, however, have a couple of excellent supervisors who used to bust a gut with their men and work hard all day. One in particular used to throw rocks at whoever in his team was slacking off and give all of the crap jobs to the constant offenders.
On one particular day one of the locals who would have fitted right in with the sloth teams due to the fact that he would never do anything to raise a sweat was having a particularly sluggish day. This supervisor must have shouted at him a dozen times until he’d finally had enough. I was down the bottom end of a bunker when I heard a distinct ‘crack’. I looked around to see the lazy prick out cold on the ground in the middle of a pile of soaked propellant and the supervisor standing beside him with a broken piece of Army green board ripped off an ammunition box in his hand. I did what all responsible Australian supervisors would do and went outside and had a nice cup of tea from my thermos flask. For four weeks every year Iraqis, like all Muslims, celebrate Ramadan. This is a period of the year when they fast basically from sun up to sun down and don’t even have a drink of water. Getting any of the locally hired people to do much during this period was almost impossible. Not that I could blame them. During that first Ramadan sometimes the temperature was at a constant 40 degrees Celsius during the day. We did our best to work as much as we could inside the bunkers and keep the men out of the sun but at times it just wasn’t possible. There was constantly work that had to be done outside and consequently we had men dropping like flies. There was an understanding during this period that if they didn’t want to come to work their jobs would be held for them until the end of the Eid holiday, which occurs directly after Ramadan finishes. If they took days off they wouldn’t get paid, and we were paying them more per day for working for us than Saddam used to pay per month when they were conscripted into the army.
It’s amazing to think that these people now happily working for us who were so poor only a few months prior that they couldn’t even afford a pot to piss in, were now so proud simply because they were earning a measly eight dollars American a day. Every pay day they got onto the buses, dancing and singing, and headed back to Najaf. Apparently during Saddam’s time even a high school teacher who was well respected in the community was only paid the equivalent of ten dollars a month. If you were in the army as a sergeant you would only get five. Most of the time soldiers in the army were never paid and just to top it off, if you complained you would be beaten in front of everyone with a cane. Nice.
7
Mass Weapons of Destruction
Hungarian Projectile, 82mm Mortar,
High Explosive Anti-tank (Heat), BEKM-82
Iran had heaps of old Russian T55 tanks during the Iraq–Iran war. Although there are heaps of better ways to attack a tank mortars can be effective if the people directing the tubes themselves know what they’re doing. These Hungarian mortar rounds are specifically designed for use against tanks. High explosive anti-tank, or HEAT rounds as they are commonly known, have an internal shaped charge. HEAT rounds come in dozens of forms but this one in particular is fired from an 82 millimetre mortar platform. When a round hits the armour the explosive charge shoots a white hot plug of molten metal through the hull. On the inside of the hull where this plug comes through, a scab of molten steel blows through and all around the turret and inside the hull. It’s not the explosion of the mortar that kills the occupants but the large chunks of molten steel bouncing off and splattering the steel inner hull and detonating any ammunition inside the tank that it comes in contact with — basically the same way as an anti-tank mine works.
We were soon on the road most of the time shifting from one location to another. Possibly one of the best times we had was when we were at Al Amara close to the Iranian border. This whole area was controlled by the British military and this particular point had the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment based at the old military air strip just outside of town. This was a huge bonus for us Aussies simply because we got along with the Poms extremely well and the Yanks didn’t. We were given great air-conditioned tents and were escorted everywhere by British Infantry in light armour. Mind you the food was complete crap, but you can’t have everything.
On one of the many day trips we went into an area that had the normal salad of scattered bombs lying around in the open along with a few very interesting shot-up trucks that were parked in between high berms. On the back of these trucks were tanks that looked like hot water systems and a series of pipes and hoses that all hooked up with something that looked like the smoke stack on an old steam train. The cab of the truck itself was completely air tight and had old gas masks scattered around on the floor. There was no doubt in our minds that these were something worth mentioning in our daily report. Strangely the next day when we arrived for work these trucks were gone and there was nothing but tyre tracks leading away from the area where they had been parked.
That same day everything went downhill. All of the activity over the past few days must have interested the local group of wannabe bad bastards. Less than an hour after we turned up some bastard started firing mortars at us. Tripe and I were the only two people laughing while everyone else was jumping into ditches and drains. Whoever had the mortar tube was completely useless. Initially the rounds were falling at least 500 metres away from us in a totally different direction from the axis from them to us. Then they would drop a round in a totally different direction all together. It was plain to see that these people had never fired a mortar in their lives. In spite of the fact that they were useless and had very little chance of hitting us we finally jumped into a culvert just in case they got lucky and managed to hit one of the shot boxes full of amm
unition that we had already packed. After a few minutes the Brit boys located the mortar down near a river bank and shot the shit out of the area with their .50 cals. As it turned out whoever was attempting to operate the mortar ended up getting away. Both Tripe and I wanted to hunt them down and give them a few lessons on bracketing techniques and the theory of mortar fire. They were so useless it was hilarious.
We spent the next few months cleaning up areas between Al Amara and Basrah under the watchful eye of the British Army. Everywhere we went we were under constant threat of roadside improvised explosive devices. The people in this area were experts at them and seemed to have the support of the local community in setting them up. Most IEDs are set up in places where no-one other than the intended victims will be affected, but around here they were setting them up in occupied streets and in the middle of towns. The only advantage of this was that if there was ever a spot where there no people were milling around you could be sure there was an IED set up waiting to be detonated.
Unfortunately this type of warfare has become preferred by many of today’s enemies simply because the type of people who use these IEDs are nothing more than cowardly bastards who don’t have the guts to fight like real soldiers. Often when they do manage to kill real soldiers using an IED, they dance around with their arms in the air singing and chanting religious mantras, when in reality they have accomplished nothing more than reinforced how the majority of the world sees them: nothing more than fanatical morons.
Although we had dozens of small attacks made on us we only really had one occasion when an IED came close. That particular morning prior to setting off towards Basrah we were warned by the British Intelligence section that they had been informed of a likely IED targeting us somewhere along the main road heading out of the ammunition supply point. As far as I was concerned it was simple; we went and worked somewhere else until the IED was found. But once again our brain dead Yank bosses made the decision to totally ignore the warning and go anyway. Fuck me, I thought Tripe was going to explode. I literally had to hold him back from beating the crap out of this bloke. A huge argument started between us and the upper management. We were told in no uncertain terms that if we didn’t like it we could resign. I was waiting for one of them to mention us being cowards or something similar but it never happened. I think they knew that if they did there would be no holding us back. As it turned out we got down to the site that day with no problems at all. We loaded up four semi-trailers with shot boxes full of rusty mortars and artillery shells and started the trip back.
We were less than 30 minutes into the trip when a huge explosion went off behind the F350 that I was driving. It hit so hard that the back of the truck lifted a good metre off the road. All I could see in my rear view mirror was dust. As soon as the rear wheels hit the ground I was gone like a fart in a fan factory. Our standard operating procedure for this was simple: go as fast as you can back to safety and let the military do the fighting, recovery and medical evacuation. I never thought I could go so fast in such a large vehicle; we were constantly on the radio reporting our position and trying to get word if anyone was hurt or worse. As soon as we got back into the Brit base we all took stock of who was there and what damage was done. The semi-trailer directly behind us was hit and out of pure luck no-one was even scratched by the blast. The Brit sergeant in charge of the convoy protection team told us that he thought that the IED may have been buried too deep along the side of the road and the thick bitumen running along the shoulder took the majority of the blast and shrapnel.
It wasn’t long before our intellectual supervisor came over to where we were all gathered around our vehicles. Even before he managed to say a single word I grabbed him, threw him against a car door and laid half a dozen hard hits directly into his bony face. Not a single person tried to stop me. Not even the other Yanks attempted to step in. I looked this wanker in the eye and told him that if he wanted to sack me go ahead. Tripe strolled up to him and got nose to nose. By now the claret was flowing freely from his obviously broken nose. Tripe just stared at him for a good while, called him a few well-chosen names in a low but deep whisper and walked away. The next day the exsupervisor was sent back to An Najaf and I was placed in his position. Not long after the Al Amarah mission was completed we were sent to Babylon. I loved it! We were staying in tents that backed up against the walls of the ancient city itself. Every spare minute I had was spent looking through the ruins. King Nebuchadnezzar originally built the place during his life from 630 to 562 BC. It must have been an incredible place back in the day. The ruins themselves are still in extremely good condition but what has totally fucked it up is the fact that Saddam and his turds of sons built a replica of the city directly over the top of the ruins using them as nothing more than foundations. King Nebuchadnezzar personally signed something like every one in every hundred thousand bricks and had his symbol stamped into the brick beside his mark. Saddam, not to be outdone by the king, had his name stamped on one in a hundred. Not surprisingly the work built by the modern Iraqis is already falling to bits while the original remaining walls are still strong.
We spent most of every day in an area off the side of the major highway heading north from Babylon. We were working at an old ammunition supply dump that was built by the British after World War II. This place was very dangerous indeed. There were literally thousands of old hand grenades littered over the ground. The fly-off levers were rusted along with the pins that held the percussion caps back. We were convinced that if one of these went off it would start a chain reaction that we would not be able to control. Unfortunately these areas were mainly in locations where we had to work so something had to be done immediately before we could start with cleaning out the buildings themselves.
After a heap of discussions in relation to how we were going to fix the problem an incredibly experienced highly qualified group of explosive professionals came up with an ingenious solution that involved me dressed in a bomb suit driving a backhoe. Wankers! The plan was for me to don a bomb suit, jump onto a backhoe and dig a long, deep ditch along an edge of the grenades, lower the front bucket and push them into the drain like a dozer. Great idea as far as the others were concerned, but I was the poor bastard driving the thing. Incredibly not a single grenade went off. Once I pushed them into the drain we simply covered them with high explosive artillery shells and a heap of anti-tank mines, positioned a few well-placed slabs of C4, hooked it all up with some det cord, covered the whole thing with a heap of dirt and blew it all to hell.
We opened up one old bunker that was full of bright red 122 millimetre artillery rounds. Other than the red paint they had no markings on them whatsoever. We didn’t know what they were so we called in an ammunition expert from the US Army’s Corps of Engineers. This guy flew in on a Black Hawk and cordoned off the area with hazard tape. No-one was allowed to go within 300 metres of the bunker. When he went in he always wore a silver hazchem suit and was washed down when he came back out again. Finally one of the rounds was removed from the bunker and placed inside a lead-lined box and flown away for analysis. A week later we got the results of the tests. They were Iraqi artillery spotting rounds full of nothing but sawdust and cement, painted red so the artillery spotters could see where they land. Tripe and I laughed so much we had tears rolling down our cheeks.
The next morning when we got to work we caught a heap of locals trying to steal ammo from out of the bunkers. They had an old wheelbarrow fully loaded with 155 millimetre South African artillery rounds obviously destined for an IED somewhere. Tripe managed to break the nose and cheek bone of one of the heroes who thought he could take Tripe on and win. Well, he was proven wrong very quickly. We zip tied them all up and handed them all over to the New Iraqi Army people, who gave then a nice cup of tea, a fresh scone and set them free without any questioning at all.
On the last day into the ammo point we were stopped by an Iraqi policeman in a new Toyota Landcruiser all painted up in police colours. He had run a car of
f the road just up in front of us and still had the driver handcuffed to the door. He warned us that this man was acting very suspiciously on the side of the road and tried to get away after he was spotted. Tripe and I walked over to where the policeman said he saw him and found a car battery and a heap of wires heading off in the direction of the road. That was enough for us. We jumped on the radio and called in the local US Navy Bomb Disposal Unit so they could have a good look at the area with their remote-controlled gizmo. We just turned around, went back to camp and had the day off on full pay while the Navy boys made the area safe for us to return. The official report stated that the ambush area was almost one kilometre long and had over 50 large artillery rounds positioned on both sides of the road. Obviously it was set up especially for us. Lucky for us there was at least one honest Iraqi policeman and he was working in our area on the day.
After we completed all of the sites around Babylon we stayed there for an extra week while we planned our next mission in Karbala. It was a chance for us to get some well-earned rest and have a good look around Babylon. The food there was incredibly good. One thing I’ll definitely give the Yanks is that they really know how to set up a mess hall. Nothing is spared and everything is flown in fresh from the States. The mess hall itself at Babylon was an old sports centre on the bank of the Euphrates River. Legend has it that after an Iraqi soccer team lost a game at one of the Olympics to Iran, Uday Hussein, Saddam’s son, lined them all up under the awning of the sports centre, mowed them down with an AK-47 and rolled their bodies into the river.
Kicking Bombs Page 5