A friend of mine has just come home from six months in Afghanistan
He came round for a chat and we got talking about what he has seen over the last six months.
To me he will always be a little squrt but after hearing what he does on a daily basis he could perhaps be one of the bravest men on earth.
This is some of what we talked about.
He is an ATO In the Army.
Up before daylight,washing and shaving in freezing cold water that he said gave his hands cramps.
Stinking toilets that are holes in the ground.
Night time temperatures that are freezing but daytime temperatures approaching 50 degrees c in the desert.
Carrying a 40 kg pack everywhere.
All while facing Terry.
Terry is what the Army calls the Taliban.
He is an ATO in the Army.
Spending his days looking for Terrys weapon of choice the IED. An IED is a home made weapon consisting of a basic switch circut inside a container buried in the ground with a current of a couple of 1.5 volt batteries.
When this is stepped on BOOM.
Blowing people or vehicles to pieces.
So what does he do.
A team will go looking for IED's,When they find one they call for him. He arrives has a look and decides the best way to make it safe.
70 % of the time he will do the walk.
The walk is making sure everyone is back a safe distance and then arming himself with a metal detector,paint brush and a pair of wire cutters and then walking to the IED.
When he locates it he then brushes the earth away to reveal the IED and then he has to make sure there are no remote wires as Terry has made a new IED that can be made to explode from a distance of 200 metres by simply pulling on a wire.
Once he is satisfied he can try and disarm it.
Finding the power sauce and cutting the power then he can safely blow it up in a safe location.
"Surely you must wear body armour" i said.
The body suite weighs 50 kg which is to heavy to wear in the heat.
So armed with just a paint brush and cutters he disarms the bomb laying on his belly often out in the open and as he says a cracking target for Terry.
An ATO is a prize for Terry and rewards to people who kill them can be cash.
He even told me he has seen kids bury the IED's for Terry.
Now Terry is getting educated and the only real way to find IED'S is with a metal detector and now Terry have been making no metal IED's.
So if there is no metal the metal detector will not find it and if they use wire thin enough it wont pick that up either.
They have found batteries 250 metres away from wooden IED's by chance so as he said it explains why the USA and England are taking heavy hits as we are the main players in bomb disposal.
He is home for Two Weeks and then he is going back.
In the last six months he has cleared 149 IED's sometimes taking as long as six or seven hours to clear one.
He says its just luck he hasn't been blown to pieces,"Better men than me have been blown up but they might have just switched off for one second".
I have grilled my friend and wrote some notes so i will post them on here as and when time permits.
So Hughsey this is for you,Thanks for sharing your information with me and you are one of the bravest men on the planet and i for one salute you.
Keep coming home safe,But you drink like a fag.