ianstone
08-08-2010, 01:50 PM
'My life hung by a thread, all for the want of a £10 cable': Decorated bomb disposal officer speaks of the terror of confronting a roadside IED
By Captain Kevin Ivison, Gm (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=y&authornamef=Captain+Kevin+Ivison,+Gm)
Last updated at 12:12 AM on 8th August 2010
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Captain Kevin Ivison was awarded the George Medal for the incredible bravery he showed while defusing a roadside bomb in Iraq after an earlier blast killed two soldiers.
Now, in the first part from his extraordinary new book, he describes the mission that started with him knowing he would die - and ended with him becoming a hero . . .
A telephone call from the Ops Room: 'Contact IED - two fatalities, one secondary. Not many details, but it happened around Red One in the centre of town.' A 'secondary' was an improvised explosive device designed to kill troops sent to the scene to help victims of the first blast.
There was only one man within hundreds of miles who could defuse the secondary, make it safe to recover our friends' bodies and work out how to stop this happening again. That was me, the Ammunition Technical Officer (ATO) - or bomb disposal operator.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/07/article-1301130-0AAE94DE000005DC-183_634x537.jpg Kevin Ivison reveals the terror of confronting a roadside IED and reveals how, shamefully, soldiers lives' are put at risk by incompetence and penny-pinching
I looked at the map and traced the red route with my finger, stopping at the circle marked One. This was known as Red One, the hardest part of Al Amarah, the most violent town in Southern Iraq.
I had previously been deployed to the roughest parts of Northern Ireland, the Balkans and even Afghanistan, but Al Amarah was something else entirely. This was bandit country, a 'Wild West' frontier town on the border with Iran where so much British blood had already been spilt since Saddam's regime had been destroyed.
Seven successive British battle groups had garrisoned this town since the ground war ended and in that time had won every fight, every contact and every engagement except for the most important one - the battle for hearts and minds.
Even on that day, February 28, 2006, three years after British troops first arrived here, with millions of pounds poured into reconstruction projects, the locals still detested our presence, raining high-explosive rockets on to our camp at night and blowing up patrols during the day.
It was my job to protect the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards Battle Group from both. Before today we had lost no one to either. Now I had been told Captain Rich Holmes, the Police Joint Operations Committee (PJOC) liaison officer and a friend of mine, was one of the dead men.
Each person had their own measure of courage at the beginning of a tour, but each rocket that slammed into the earth around our feet brought us closer to our limit. In recent days I had noticed my hands shaking uncontrollably while trying to eat.
Going out to Iraq, I had the full support of my parents - my father had a 25-year career in the Army - but my relationship with my girlfriend Beth foundered shortly after I passed the High Threat Improvised Explosive Device Disposal course.
We spent too much time apart. She ended it two months into my deployment in Northern Ireland, cut short when I was posted to Iraq in November 2005.
The red route was a dual carriageway leading East-West, with the Olympic Stadium due South and open ground to the North. Blocks of flats lining the route provided refuge for snipers and a vantage points for bombers.
I had never seen a body, never been to a funeral and had never lost comrades in combat before. It was going to be quite a day.
Jay, my second-in-command, came to me. I could see he was upset. 'The Wheelbarrow's f*****,' he said. The Wheelbarrow was £500,000 worth of vital robot, capable of viewing bombs with cameras, cutting wires and 'disrupting' or destroying IEDs with water jets.
'It won't work. The batteries aren't charged, and it won't f****** work. I...I am just so sorry.'
We had reported the problem months ago - to no avail. Our DIY efforts had kept us going for weeks, but now it had failed. I'd have to walk up to the bomb and disable it with my own hands. My life expectancy had just dropped through the floor.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/07/article-1301130-0AAE9575000005DC-994_634x375.jpg Death trap: The scene in Al Amarah just after two soldiers died in an IED blast. Captain Ivison then had to defuse a second bomb that had been planted by the insurgents
We raced from our camp, four miles south of Al Amarah, to town in a convoy of two Warrior tanks and two bomb vans. We reached the red route and, a few hundred yards away, Red One became visible. It was carnage.
Soldiers ran in all directions to find cover behind armoured vehicles, cars or buildings. Some stood, some lay prone and some knelt, their fingers clutching the trigger; all wore the same expression of fear and determination.
Commanders screamed instructions at their men and hundreds of locals stood in groups, some only yards away from the cordon. A significant minority were cheering and shouting as sniper bullets flew towards the UK forces.
I ran to meet the incident commander, Lieutenant Steven Freer, tucked in behind his own Warrior. Petrol bombs landed at our feet, and soldiers rushed around with fire extinguishers and jumped under cover as rounds rained down.
Before me, two medics tried to load a bloodied, unconscious casualty into their ambulance while ducking away from a petrol bomb that shattered against the side of their vehicle.
A soldier leapt from his Warrior and sprinted towards the ambulance with his fire extinguisher, but was stopped short by three rounds peppering the road in front of him.
Half a dozen fires lit the scene, two or three licking lazily along the tarmac road as others burnt fiercely in the pile of detritus that lined the red route.
Ahead, some 60 yards away, I could pick out two Snatch Land Rovers, one crashed into the side of the other in the middle of the road.
Two of our friends lay dead and if we ever wanted to see camp again, we were going to have to fight our way through an increasingly angry crowd or drive straight towards the secondary bomb.
I crouched next to Lt Freer. I could see where the explosion had occurred. On the right-hand side of the road a crater less than a yard in diameter smouldered. Earth had be en thrown in an arc up to 30 yards away from the crater.
This bomb had contained at least 30lb of high explosive. The blast alone would have been more than enough to tear arms and legs from their sockets.
Steve described what had happened: 'We'd travelled down this road towards the PJOC to pick up Rich. We went a long route back, not an obvious route, and they still got us. We'd gone through here only about 20 minutes before we were hit.
'All of a sudden the road went quiet, cars just disappeared off the side of the road. There was an Iraqi police car following us that stopped a few seconds before the explosion.
By the time I realised they were stopping other cars from following us it was too late - the next thing I remember is the explosion.'
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/07/article-1301130-0AAE97E5000005DC-200_634x445.jpg Steady hands: Capt Ivison removing mines from inside an oil tanker
This device had been put in place in the 20 minutes between the patrol passing Red One and returning over the same spot with Rich on board. Elaborate devices take much longer to position than that. This was a quick but deadly job.
I had to get to the centre of the action. The Snatch vehicles and crater were not far apart: the clues they would provide about the secondary bomb could save lives. I ran toward the crater and passed Dr Rick. 'Rick, tell me about the injuries. Are they blast, fragmentation?'
Small metal fragments come from grenades, burns come from incendiary devices, dislocated limbs from blasts and more traumatic injuries from EFPs ( Explosively Formed Projectiles).
Rick responded with a torrent of medical speak. I got the gist: 'Metal fragments, traumatic injuries to the upper torso.'
EFPs were designed to destroy tanks and are made primarily of plastic explosive with a copper liner to provide the lethal blow. The force of the detonation wave on the curved, dish-like liner causes the copper to collapse in on itself and within a few milliseconds compresses it into a solid metal slug.
This slug is then projected forward at velocities of up to 3,000 yards per second, punching through anything in the way.
Rick had left a grim trail of bloodied bandages, abandoned breathing aids and other medical detritus. Spreading over the road was a pool of blood. A fire blanket had been blown out of the Snatch and lay spread across the tarmac.
I was still 20 yards from the scene of the explosion and could see soldiers in a defensive position around the Snatch vehicles, looking through their rifle sights and scanning 360 degrees. I sprinted and dived behind a ridge of sand as a volley of shots sprayed the road around me.
Next to me Steve Freer's secondin-command, Sergeant Spire, who had been in the ambushed patrol, looked up from his radio.
'I need to get up there.' I pointed at the Snatch vehicles.
'Aye, I thought you were gonna say that.' Spire snorted a half laugh. 'Follow me then, and stay low.'
As we jogged forwards he pointed to the fire blanket. 'That's Captain Holmes.'
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/07/article-1301130-0AB88D7F000005DC-271_634x473.jpg Hero's Honour: Kevin Ivison is congratulated by the Queen after she presented him with the George Medal in 2006
My friend Rich Holmes, his body now covered by a sheet, had fallen in line with the crater. I was so close now that I decided to go straight there - to the contact point, to Ground Zero. This was almost suicidal.
You never go to the contact point unless you have cleared every inch of the area around it, but this wasn't like training. In training the Wheelbarrow rarely fails, time is much less of an issue and every task has a safe solution. I couldn't yet see that this one did.
I frantically metal-detected a few inches ahead of me as I searched a route over the two yards of baked mud that separated the road from the contact point. There were shards of metal everywhere. My detector beeped constantly. I threw it back into the cleared area behind me; my eyes would have to do.
I needed to find the bomb fragments that would tell me how the explosive was set off. Fragments such as a piece of command wire or the casing from a PIR (Passive InfraRed) movement sensor could tell me how the bomb was initiated and give me vital clues to disarm the secondary. There was nothing.
I turned my attention to the vehicles. The Snatch 'armour', designed to stop stones in Belfast, flapped impotently in the wind. Dozens of holes ranging from the size of a grain of rice to a dinner plate perforated the right-hand side of Rich's vehicle.
Each entry point was coated in copper, the crucial material used in the manufacture of EFPs. Just one EFP could produce two or three large metal slugs, weighing up to a couple of pounds each, and many small fragments weighing a fraction of an ounce.
The smallest fragments may be stopped by the bodywork of the Snatch but the largest would not stop for many hundreds of yards.
On the other side, the door had been thrown open by the detonation. I could see clearly where the larger lumps of copper had exited the vehicle. Inside was a body, still sitting in the driver's seat, staring straight ahead. 'Lee Ellis,' said Sergeant Spire who had appeared at my side.
There were field dressings and syrettes of morphine. Rick had tried his best but had been unable to save him.
'Sir.' Sergeant-Major Tam Russell, the soldier in charge of our escort, was running towards me with someone else in tow. 'This is Highlander McNeil.' He was the driver of the lead Warrior in the convoy that had been attacked.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/07/article-1301130-0AB88E1C000005DC-703_634x286.jpg Kevin defuses his last bomb in Iraq
'When I heard the first explosion, I knew I was supposed to put my foot down, to get the f*** out of that situation,' McNeil said. 'I had just put my foot down when I saw something up ahead, it was right in the middle of the road. I slammed the brakes right on and stopped dead.
'It's big, about the size of a couple of ammo boxes. It just looked odd. It's the wrong kind of yellow. Everything in this country is f****** yellow, but not that kind of yellow.'
His Warrior had stopped ten yards closer to the secondary than the Snatch vehicles and was now positioned side on to the bomb, offering some limited protection to the troops who still refused to leave their wounded comrades' side.
'After I had slammed the anchors on,' said McNeil, 'an Iraqi police car sped up the road behind me, straight past me and drove off the road, and away from the secondary before getting back on the road.'
The Iraqi police either had eyes like hawks or knew that the secondary was there. It wasn't just the insurgents we were fighting.
McNeil then pointed out the device on the right-hand side of the central reservation, about 60 yards ahead. Iraqi towns often had piles of rubbish, bricks or sand at the side of the road, but this thing was different.
It was the wrong kind of yellow. Directly opposite, a red flag was attached to a lamppost. The enemy tactic of camouflaging IEDs often made it difficult for them to see their own devices. Sometimes the location of a bomb was marked with a pile of stones or a lamppost with a flag hanging at its top.
The ground around the bomb was completely flat with a dusting of rocks, so it was unlikely the detonator was linked to a hidden pressure pad. I could see no command wire - that would probably have been visible on the road.
If this was a bomb, it was probably either radio-controlled or, more likely, armed by a radio signal and then 'initiated' - set off - when a PIR sensor attached to it detected movement nearby.
With the Royal Engineers Search Team, I conducted an 'isolation' patrol, looking all the way around the device - at a distance of about 50 yards - to confirm that there were no command wires. Nothing.
Shots rang out from the top of the flats and I could see soldiers diving for cover. We had been lucky with the sniper so far; our own teams had managed to keep him off target, but men would start to fall before long.
I grabbed the radio and called my second-in-command: 'Jay, get the suit ready, I'm going to manual this f*****.' I headed back to the ICP (Incident Control Point). Huddled between our vans, the sides of which drummed with the hail of rocks, my team strapped me into the EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) suit that would offer minuscule protection against the device that lay in wait.
The suit felt as if it weighed a ton. The 70lb of protective Kevlar plates conspire not only to slow an operator down but also to massively restrict his movement. And it wasn't remotely bulletproof. All in all, I was the easiest of targets for the snipers lurking behind the clothes that were hung across many of the open windows in the flats.
I shuffled toward the front of the ICP, the visor on my helmet already dripping with condensation as I leant down to pick up my rucksack, which was loaded with 60lb of tools and weapons.
Fitzy was my Electronic Countermeasures (ECM) operator, a post known as 'Bleep' in the Army. It was his job to track attack signals from among the flotsam of radio traffic and block them. He was my single line of defence against bombs initiated by phones, radios and even electronic car-door openers.
'Fitzy, I need you to look after me on this one.'
Fitzy grabbed my arm and lifted my visor; he couldn't look me in the eye. 'I can't provide you cover.'
I went numb. 'My ECM is f*****. It keeps cutting out. I've had problems with the power supply before and have ordered a replacement power lead. I've asked again and again but never got one. It's due in a week.'
I was going to die. If my threat assessment was correct, if all my training and experience had led me to the right conclusion, then I would be dead in a few minutes. My team would see their boss evaporate before their eyes and Al Amarah-would turn into a full-scale riot. But there was no choice.
We couldn't move our friends' bodies and recover their vehicles until I defused that bomb; it would be too dangerous to attempt that kind of recovery with the secondary so close. Added to that, the device was blocking our way out, and no one wanted to fight through the crowd that blocked the road behind us.
Even if we did get past the bomb without defusing it, some poor Iraqi would be sent to dispose of it and would have even less of a chance than I did.
'If your ECM is only on for ten seconds during the task, that may be all I need,' I said. 'My only chance is you and your van. Just give me whatever cover you can.'
I could see the place where I was likely to die. If I was lucky, my killer would wait until I was close enough to kill me instantly; if not, I would live long enough to see my limbs torn from my body.
Twenty-two British soldiers had been murdered on these streets. I desperately did not want to become number 23, but the thought of being torn apart by a baying mob terrified me even more.
I ushered Jay to one side. 'I'm not going to make it through this one, Jay.' Tears were rolling down my cheeks. 'You have to remember a couple of things for me. I need you to tell my parents that I love them very much . . . and I need you to get a message to Beth.
'Tell Beth I loved her and that I will always love her.'
I looked him in the eye and then turned away, towards the bomb.
'Kev,' said Jay. He never called me Kev, always Sir, Boss or el Capitano if he was feeling cheeky. I turned to face him. 'You can tell them yourself,' he said. 'You know what to do. You're gonna be OK.'
I half smiled and faced the bomb once again.
There was nothing left to do but walk - the longest walk. Our instructors used to tell us the job was 99 per cent boredom, one per cent terror. This was one per cent time.
Fitzy revved his engine and gave me the thumbs up: he was ready to move his van as close as he dared so he could try to block signals to the bomb.
I readjusted the rucksack on my shoulders and stepped out of the ICP. I had made the hardest step - the first - and was now on my own.
Walking towards a bomb is not a subconscious action; every step requires thought, every movement is controlled. Step left, step right, kneel. Stop, lift visor, scan. Visor down, stand, step left, step right. My senses were on fire as I made agonisingly slow progress.
Fitzy and his van had come far enough. I pointed to the ground and mouthed: 'Here.' He jumped out of the cab, ran to the back door and climbed inside. He would be desperately trying to jam the firing signal but his chances of success were pitiful. My life hung by the thinnest of threads, all for want of a £10 power cable.
Left step, right step, stop. I placed the rucksack down, knelt and pulled out my binoculars. Visor up, I examined every inch of ground between me and the bomb, and then the bomb itself.
I searched for a wire, a battery, a weak point, a link in the circuit I could break. If I saw a wire I could cut it from ten or 20 metres away by shooting it with my Stand-Off Disruptor, which is essentially a mini cannon. We could all go home. There was no wire.
Somewhere on that bomb sat the PIR. I had no idea where or in which direction it was pointed, but I assumed the bomber planted this device in the hope of hitting a vehicle, so it was most likely to be looking across the road.
My route straight along the central reservation seemed to be the least likely place the terrorists would target.
I had entered the IED's killing zone. The exertion of carrying my own bodyweight in EOD suit, tools and kit had already brought me to the brink of exhaustion and I still had the really difficult bit left.
Left step, right step, watch the shadow, left step, right step, stop. Close now, get on to your front and crawl. Only 20in to go. Crawl more slowly. I was right next to it. I had beaten the PIR. How was I still alive? Why hadn't they just pressed the button? Why had the sniper spared me?
The bomb lay a few inches from my face, the size of two ammo boxes. Inside lay one, maybe two steel cylinders, only a few inches across but packed with enough plastic explosives to kill most armoured vehicles.
A small electronics pack would be hidden somewhere from which electric cables would lead towards shiny detonators, one inserted into the back of each EFP.
I knew intimately how these devices worked; I could attack any part of the system with a simple pair of pliers, pull out the detonators, untwist the arming wires or even target the electronics pack itself. If I could get to them.
Insulating foam, sprayed from an aerosol can and now hardened into a tough plastic, coated every surface of the bomb. I could cut through it, but it would take too long and the risk of jolting the device would be too high.
I couldn't just blow it apart: if I could bring it back intact, scientists could pore over it and extract every nugget of information about its capabilities and the bomb-maker. If we could do that we might catch the killers.
My choice of weapon for tackling the bomb was critical. Too much power meant it would evaporate, along with all the forensic evidence: not enough power meant the bomb would just get angrier and even less predictable and I would have to walk up to it all over again.
One piece of equipment, a Sliver, a sophisticated explosive device about two-thirds the size of a paving slab, would separate the components without detonating the bomb, rendering it safe but not destroying it.
The Sliver had to be positioned within a fraction of an inch of the bomb to function correctly. I would have to slide a couple of inches further forward than I was already.
I inched the Sliver across the ground, constantly checking its proximity to the device and the fall of its shadow, and urging myself to get it just a bit closer.
Somehow my educated guess on which direction the PIR was looking had paid off and allowed me closer than I had thought possible. Just a fraction closer.
I glanced at the crowd to my right: any one of them could now be reaching into their pocket and wrapping their fingers around the radio-control transmitter. I would be the only person who wouldn't hear the explosion.
My heart raced as I slowly removed my hands from the edges of the Sliver, now in the perfect position. Sweat fell from my chin as I slowly stood up, checked the equipment one last time, backed away a few steps and turned.
I walked deliberately, carefully, along the same path that I had used to approach the device. The first ten yards were agony as I continued to wait for the intense heat and light of the bomb finally detonating, but it never came.
The familiar faces of the team poked out from around the back of the van. I thought I had been out only a few minutes, but it had been around 30.
I had walked only a few hundred yards, but had used so much adrenaline that I now had no energy left. I could feel every ounce of the suit's armour. My team tore the suit off me and I felt as if I was floating. My combats had turned dark with sweat and clung to my body.
Jay attached the firing device to the cables leading to the Sliver and checked everyone was out of the way. The loud <cite>boom </cite>echoed off the walls of the flats nearby and a tower of black smoke appeared from where I had left the Sliver.
As the echoes subsided, the crowd began to shout, scream and cheer. More excited than angry, they had seen an explosion, were all safe and knew that we would be leaving as soon as we could.
I could not be sure the area was safe until I had seen it myself. As I approached to within 20 yards I could see the bomb had been disabled, the components were separated and the device was no longer a threat.
Lumps of plastic explosive covered the immediate area. The electronics pack lay just a foot or so from the device's original location.
I had beaten the bomb - but I had no idea how close I would come to losing my mind as a result.
Our kit was worn out and the Land Rovers were 'mobile coffins'
My instructors had been only half right. I had seen the one per cent terror and the 99 per cent boredom, but they never mentioned the 50 per cent b*******.
While I spent inordinate amounts of time on trivial administration, no one seemed willing or able to help with the big issues.
My Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) vehicle developed a fault that would leave the Wheelbarrow robot dead for no apparent reason, my Electronic Countermeasures (ECM) equipment often failed due to a faulty power lead, and my EOD weapons were rotting after three years in the Iraqi desert.
Dozens of email requests and long conversations with the EOD Group had produced no answers to these critical problems; my team, the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, and I were less safe because of it.
Sometimes it seemed that there was no one in my chain of command between me and Tony Blair who had the slightest clue about contemporary bomb-disposal operations.
Our Senior Ammunition Technician (SAT), John Hall, was vastly experienced, but as a Warrant Officer (Class One) had a limited say in policy.
It appeared to me as if a chain of command had been constructed to keep anyone with knowledge of improvised explosive device (IED) disposal away from appointments where they could save British and Iraqi lives.
In 2007 I was deployed again to Iraq, this time to Baghdad in a weapons intelligence role, and came across a British platoon that had travelled up from Basra in their Snatch Land Rovers.
This platoon had lost two of its men only two weeks earlier: an improvised Claymore mine had detonated as they drove past, sending ball-bearings tearing through the side of the vehicle, igniting some phosphorous grenades and killing the men.
To my horror, the platoon were still using the same type of vehicles and were now tasked with escorting VIPs along Route Irish, between Baghdad Airport and the Green Zone, the most dangerous road in the world.
Meanwhile, the American forces were busy replacing their 13,000 Humvees with huge, expensive Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles that were capable of withstanding all but the biggest explosions, thanks to their special armour and blast-deflecting V-shaped hulls.
But British soldiers were still chancing their lives every day in vehicles that were inadequate for the job. Nothing had been learned from the deaths of many soldiers in Snatch vehicles.
They had little armour to speak of, were too slow and obscured the vision of everyone inside.
They were not called mobile coffins for no reason; we gave the terrorists the perfect opportunity to kill lots of soldiers with one bomb. They were so used to targeting Snatch vehicles that they had even designed IEDs simultaneously targeting the driver, passengers and top cover. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. We were being let down by our political masters.
That faulty £10 ECM power cable that almost resulted in my death at Red One? A replacement arrived the day after that incident. We had been requesting a new one for weeks.
Red One, by Captain Kevin Ivison, is published by Orion at £18.99. To order your copy at the special price of £16.99 with free p&p, please call The Review Bookstore on 08 5 155 0713 or visit maillife.co.uk/books
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By Captain Kevin Ivison, Gm (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=y&authornamef=Captain+Kevin+Ivison,+Gm)
Last updated at 12:12 AM on 8th August 2010
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Captain Kevin Ivison was awarded the George Medal for the incredible bravery he showed while defusing a roadside bomb in Iraq after an earlier blast killed two soldiers.
Now, in the first part from his extraordinary new book, he describes the mission that started with him knowing he would die - and ended with him becoming a hero . . .
A telephone call from the Ops Room: 'Contact IED - two fatalities, one secondary. Not many details, but it happened around Red One in the centre of town.' A 'secondary' was an improvised explosive device designed to kill troops sent to the scene to help victims of the first blast.
There was only one man within hundreds of miles who could defuse the secondary, make it safe to recover our friends' bodies and work out how to stop this happening again. That was me, the Ammunition Technical Officer (ATO) - or bomb disposal operator.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/07/article-1301130-0AAE94DE000005DC-183_634x537.jpg Kevin Ivison reveals the terror of confronting a roadside IED and reveals how, shamefully, soldiers lives' are put at risk by incompetence and penny-pinching
I looked at the map and traced the red route with my finger, stopping at the circle marked One. This was known as Red One, the hardest part of Al Amarah, the most violent town in Southern Iraq.
I had previously been deployed to the roughest parts of Northern Ireland, the Balkans and even Afghanistan, but Al Amarah was something else entirely. This was bandit country, a 'Wild West' frontier town on the border with Iran where so much British blood had already been spilt since Saddam's regime had been destroyed.
Seven successive British battle groups had garrisoned this town since the ground war ended and in that time had won every fight, every contact and every engagement except for the most important one - the battle for hearts and minds.
Even on that day, February 28, 2006, three years after British troops first arrived here, with millions of pounds poured into reconstruction projects, the locals still detested our presence, raining high-explosive rockets on to our camp at night and blowing up patrols during the day.
It was my job to protect the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards Battle Group from both. Before today we had lost no one to either. Now I had been told Captain Rich Holmes, the Police Joint Operations Committee (PJOC) liaison officer and a friend of mine, was one of the dead men.
Each person had their own measure of courage at the beginning of a tour, but each rocket that slammed into the earth around our feet brought us closer to our limit. In recent days I had noticed my hands shaking uncontrollably while trying to eat.
Going out to Iraq, I had the full support of my parents - my father had a 25-year career in the Army - but my relationship with my girlfriend Beth foundered shortly after I passed the High Threat Improvised Explosive Device Disposal course.
We spent too much time apart. She ended it two months into my deployment in Northern Ireland, cut short when I was posted to Iraq in November 2005.
The red route was a dual carriageway leading East-West, with the Olympic Stadium due South and open ground to the North. Blocks of flats lining the route provided refuge for snipers and a vantage points for bombers.
I had never seen a body, never been to a funeral and had never lost comrades in combat before. It was going to be quite a day.
Jay, my second-in-command, came to me. I could see he was upset. 'The Wheelbarrow's f*****,' he said. The Wheelbarrow was £500,000 worth of vital robot, capable of viewing bombs with cameras, cutting wires and 'disrupting' or destroying IEDs with water jets.
'It won't work. The batteries aren't charged, and it won't f****** work. I...I am just so sorry.'
We had reported the problem months ago - to no avail. Our DIY efforts had kept us going for weeks, but now it had failed. I'd have to walk up to the bomb and disable it with my own hands. My life expectancy had just dropped through the floor.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/07/article-1301130-0AAE9575000005DC-994_634x375.jpg Death trap: The scene in Al Amarah just after two soldiers died in an IED blast. Captain Ivison then had to defuse a second bomb that had been planted by the insurgents
We raced from our camp, four miles south of Al Amarah, to town in a convoy of two Warrior tanks and two bomb vans. We reached the red route and, a few hundred yards away, Red One became visible. It was carnage.
Soldiers ran in all directions to find cover behind armoured vehicles, cars or buildings. Some stood, some lay prone and some knelt, their fingers clutching the trigger; all wore the same expression of fear and determination.
Commanders screamed instructions at their men and hundreds of locals stood in groups, some only yards away from the cordon. A significant minority were cheering and shouting as sniper bullets flew towards the UK forces.
I ran to meet the incident commander, Lieutenant Steven Freer, tucked in behind his own Warrior. Petrol bombs landed at our feet, and soldiers rushed around with fire extinguishers and jumped under cover as rounds rained down.
Before me, two medics tried to load a bloodied, unconscious casualty into their ambulance while ducking away from a petrol bomb that shattered against the side of their vehicle.
A soldier leapt from his Warrior and sprinted towards the ambulance with his fire extinguisher, but was stopped short by three rounds peppering the road in front of him.
Half a dozen fires lit the scene, two or three licking lazily along the tarmac road as others burnt fiercely in the pile of detritus that lined the red route.
Ahead, some 60 yards away, I could pick out two Snatch Land Rovers, one crashed into the side of the other in the middle of the road.
Two of our friends lay dead and if we ever wanted to see camp again, we were going to have to fight our way through an increasingly angry crowd or drive straight towards the secondary bomb.
I crouched next to Lt Freer. I could see where the explosion had occurred. On the right-hand side of the road a crater less than a yard in diameter smouldered. Earth had be en thrown in an arc up to 30 yards away from the crater.
This bomb had contained at least 30lb of high explosive. The blast alone would have been more than enough to tear arms and legs from their sockets.
Steve described what had happened: 'We'd travelled down this road towards the PJOC to pick up Rich. We went a long route back, not an obvious route, and they still got us. We'd gone through here only about 20 minutes before we were hit.
'All of a sudden the road went quiet, cars just disappeared off the side of the road. There was an Iraqi police car following us that stopped a few seconds before the explosion.
By the time I realised they were stopping other cars from following us it was too late - the next thing I remember is the explosion.'
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/07/article-1301130-0AAE97E5000005DC-200_634x445.jpg Steady hands: Capt Ivison removing mines from inside an oil tanker
This device had been put in place in the 20 minutes between the patrol passing Red One and returning over the same spot with Rich on board. Elaborate devices take much longer to position than that. This was a quick but deadly job.
I had to get to the centre of the action. The Snatch vehicles and crater were not far apart: the clues they would provide about the secondary bomb could save lives. I ran toward the crater and passed Dr Rick. 'Rick, tell me about the injuries. Are they blast, fragmentation?'
Small metal fragments come from grenades, burns come from incendiary devices, dislocated limbs from blasts and more traumatic injuries from EFPs ( Explosively Formed Projectiles).
Rick responded with a torrent of medical speak. I got the gist: 'Metal fragments, traumatic injuries to the upper torso.'
EFPs were designed to destroy tanks and are made primarily of plastic explosive with a copper liner to provide the lethal blow. The force of the detonation wave on the curved, dish-like liner causes the copper to collapse in on itself and within a few milliseconds compresses it into a solid metal slug.
This slug is then projected forward at velocities of up to 3,000 yards per second, punching through anything in the way.
Rick had left a grim trail of bloodied bandages, abandoned breathing aids and other medical detritus. Spreading over the road was a pool of blood. A fire blanket had been blown out of the Snatch and lay spread across the tarmac.
I was still 20 yards from the scene of the explosion and could see soldiers in a defensive position around the Snatch vehicles, looking through their rifle sights and scanning 360 degrees. I sprinted and dived behind a ridge of sand as a volley of shots sprayed the road around me.
Next to me Steve Freer's secondin-command, Sergeant Spire, who had been in the ambushed patrol, looked up from his radio.
'I need to get up there.' I pointed at the Snatch vehicles.
'Aye, I thought you were gonna say that.' Spire snorted a half laugh. 'Follow me then, and stay low.'
As we jogged forwards he pointed to the fire blanket. 'That's Captain Holmes.'
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/07/article-1301130-0AB88D7F000005DC-271_634x473.jpg Hero's Honour: Kevin Ivison is congratulated by the Queen after she presented him with the George Medal in 2006
My friend Rich Holmes, his body now covered by a sheet, had fallen in line with the crater. I was so close now that I decided to go straight there - to the contact point, to Ground Zero. This was almost suicidal.
You never go to the contact point unless you have cleared every inch of the area around it, but this wasn't like training. In training the Wheelbarrow rarely fails, time is much less of an issue and every task has a safe solution. I couldn't yet see that this one did.
I frantically metal-detected a few inches ahead of me as I searched a route over the two yards of baked mud that separated the road from the contact point. There were shards of metal everywhere. My detector beeped constantly. I threw it back into the cleared area behind me; my eyes would have to do.
I needed to find the bomb fragments that would tell me how the explosive was set off. Fragments such as a piece of command wire or the casing from a PIR (Passive InfraRed) movement sensor could tell me how the bomb was initiated and give me vital clues to disarm the secondary. There was nothing.
I turned my attention to the vehicles. The Snatch 'armour', designed to stop stones in Belfast, flapped impotently in the wind. Dozens of holes ranging from the size of a grain of rice to a dinner plate perforated the right-hand side of Rich's vehicle.
Each entry point was coated in copper, the crucial material used in the manufacture of EFPs. Just one EFP could produce two or three large metal slugs, weighing up to a couple of pounds each, and many small fragments weighing a fraction of an ounce.
The smallest fragments may be stopped by the bodywork of the Snatch but the largest would not stop for many hundreds of yards.
On the other side, the door had been thrown open by the detonation. I could see clearly where the larger lumps of copper had exited the vehicle. Inside was a body, still sitting in the driver's seat, staring straight ahead. 'Lee Ellis,' said Sergeant Spire who had appeared at my side.
There were field dressings and syrettes of morphine. Rick had tried his best but had been unable to save him.
'Sir.' Sergeant-Major Tam Russell, the soldier in charge of our escort, was running towards me with someone else in tow. 'This is Highlander McNeil.' He was the driver of the lead Warrior in the convoy that had been attacked.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/08/07/article-1301130-0AB88E1C000005DC-703_634x286.jpg Kevin defuses his last bomb in Iraq
'When I heard the first explosion, I knew I was supposed to put my foot down, to get the f*** out of that situation,' McNeil said. 'I had just put my foot down when I saw something up ahead, it was right in the middle of the road. I slammed the brakes right on and stopped dead.
'It's big, about the size of a couple of ammo boxes. It just looked odd. It's the wrong kind of yellow. Everything in this country is f****** yellow, but not that kind of yellow.'
His Warrior had stopped ten yards closer to the secondary than the Snatch vehicles and was now positioned side on to the bomb, offering some limited protection to the troops who still refused to leave their wounded comrades' side.
'After I had slammed the anchors on,' said McNeil, 'an Iraqi police car sped up the road behind me, straight past me and drove off the road, and away from the secondary before getting back on the road.'
The Iraqi police either had eyes like hawks or knew that the secondary was there. It wasn't just the insurgents we were fighting.
McNeil then pointed out the device on the right-hand side of the central reservation, about 60 yards ahead. Iraqi towns often had piles of rubbish, bricks or sand at the side of the road, but this thing was different.
It was the wrong kind of yellow. Directly opposite, a red flag was attached to a lamppost. The enemy tactic of camouflaging IEDs often made it difficult for them to see their own devices. Sometimes the location of a bomb was marked with a pile of stones or a lamppost with a flag hanging at its top.
The ground around the bomb was completely flat with a dusting of rocks, so it was unlikely the detonator was linked to a hidden pressure pad. I could see no command wire - that would probably have been visible on the road.
If this was a bomb, it was probably either radio-controlled or, more likely, armed by a radio signal and then 'initiated' - set off - when a PIR sensor attached to it detected movement nearby.
With the Royal Engineers Search Team, I conducted an 'isolation' patrol, looking all the way around the device - at a distance of about 50 yards - to confirm that there were no command wires. Nothing.
Shots rang out from the top of the flats and I could see soldiers diving for cover. We had been lucky with the sniper so far; our own teams had managed to keep him off target, but men would start to fall before long.
I grabbed the radio and called my second-in-command: 'Jay, get the suit ready, I'm going to manual this f*****.' I headed back to the ICP (Incident Control Point). Huddled between our vans, the sides of which drummed with the hail of rocks, my team strapped me into the EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) suit that would offer minuscule protection against the device that lay in wait.
The suit felt as if it weighed a ton. The 70lb of protective Kevlar plates conspire not only to slow an operator down but also to massively restrict his movement. And it wasn't remotely bulletproof. All in all, I was the easiest of targets for the snipers lurking behind the clothes that were hung across many of the open windows in the flats.
I shuffled toward the front of the ICP, the visor on my helmet already dripping with condensation as I leant down to pick up my rucksack, which was loaded with 60lb of tools and weapons.
Fitzy was my Electronic Countermeasures (ECM) operator, a post known as 'Bleep' in the Army. It was his job to track attack signals from among the flotsam of radio traffic and block them. He was my single line of defence against bombs initiated by phones, radios and even electronic car-door openers.
'Fitzy, I need you to look after me on this one.'
Fitzy grabbed my arm and lifted my visor; he couldn't look me in the eye. 'I can't provide you cover.'
I went numb. 'My ECM is f*****. It keeps cutting out. I've had problems with the power supply before and have ordered a replacement power lead. I've asked again and again but never got one. It's due in a week.'
I was going to die. If my threat assessment was correct, if all my training and experience had led me to the right conclusion, then I would be dead in a few minutes. My team would see their boss evaporate before their eyes and Al Amarah-would turn into a full-scale riot. But there was no choice.
We couldn't move our friends' bodies and recover their vehicles until I defused that bomb; it would be too dangerous to attempt that kind of recovery with the secondary so close. Added to that, the device was blocking our way out, and no one wanted to fight through the crowd that blocked the road behind us.
Even if we did get past the bomb without defusing it, some poor Iraqi would be sent to dispose of it and would have even less of a chance than I did.
'If your ECM is only on for ten seconds during the task, that may be all I need,' I said. 'My only chance is you and your van. Just give me whatever cover you can.'
I could see the place where I was likely to die. If I was lucky, my killer would wait until I was close enough to kill me instantly; if not, I would live long enough to see my limbs torn from my body.
Twenty-two British soldiers had been murdered on these streets. I desperately did not want to become number 23, but the thought of being torn apart by a baying mob terrified me even more.
I ushered Jay to one side. 'I'm not going to make it through this one, Jay.' Tears were rolling down my cheeks. 'You have to remember a couple of things for me. I need you to tell my parents that I love them very much . . . and I need you to get a message to Beth.
'Tell Beth I loved her and that I will always love her.'
I looked him in the eye and then turned away, towards the bomb.
'Kev,' said Jay. He never called me Kev, always Sir, Boss or el Capitano if he was feeling cheeky. I turned to face him. 'You can tell them yourself,' he said. 'You know what to do. You're gonna be OK.'
I half smiled and faced the bomb once again.
There was nothing left to do but walk - the longest walk. Our instructors used to tell us the job was 99 per cent boredom, one per cent terror. This was one per cent time.
Fitzy revved his engine and gave me the thumbs up: he was ready to move his van as close as he dared so he could try to block signals to the bomb.
I readjusted the rucksack on my shoulders and stepped out of the ICP. I had made the hardest step - the first - and was now on my own.
Walking towards a bomb is not a subconscious action; every step requires thought, every movement is controlled. Step left, step right, kneel. Stop, lift visor, scan. Visor down, stand, step left, step right. My senses were on fire as I made agonisingly slow progress.
Fitzy and his van had come far enough. I pointed to the ground and mouthed: 'Here.' He jumped out of the cab, ran to the back door and climbed inside. He would be desperately trying to jam the firing signal but his chances of success were pitiful. My life hung by the thinnest of threads, all for want of a £10 power cable.
Left step, right step, stop. I placed the rucksack down, knelt and pulled out my binoculars. Visor up, I examined every inch of ground between me and the bomb, and then the bomb itself.
I searched for a wire, a battery, a weak point, a link in the circuit I could break. If I saw a wire I could cut it from ten or 20 metres away by shooting it with my Stand-Off Disruptor, which is essentially a mini cannon. We could all go home. There was no wire.
Somewhere on that bomb sat the PIR. I had no idea where or in which direction it was pointed, but I assumed the bomber planted this device in the hope of hitting a vehicle, so it was most likely to be looking across the road.
My route straight along the central reservation seemed to be the least likely place the terrorists would target.
I had entered the IED's killing zone. The exertion of carrying my own bodyweight in EOD suit, tools and kit had already brought me to the brink of exhaustion and I still had the really difficult bit left.
Left step, right step, watch the shadow, left step, right step, stop. Close now, get on to your front and crawl. Only 20in to go. Crawl more slowly. I was right next to it. I had beaten the PIR. How was I still alive? Why hadn't they just pressed the button? Why had the sniper spared me?
The bomb lay a few inches from my face, the size of two ammo boxes. Inside lay one, maybe two steel cylinders, only a few inches across but packed with enough plastic explosives to kill most armoured vehicles.
A small electronics pack would be hidden somewhere from which electric cables would lead towards shiny detonators, one inserted into the back of each EFP.
I knew intimately how these devices worked; I could attack any part of the system with a simple pair of pliers, pull out the detonators, untwist the arming wires or even target the electronics pack itself. If I could get to them.
Insulating foam, sprayed from an aerosol can and now hardened into a tough plastic, coated every surface of the bomb. I could cut through it, but it would take too long and the risk of jolting the device would be too high.
I couldn't just blow it apart: if I could bring it back intact, scientists could pore over it and extract every nugget of information about its capabilities and the bomb-maker. If we could do that we might catch the killers.
My choice of weapon for tackling the bomb was critical. Too much power meant it would evaporate, along with all the forensic evidence: not enough power meant the bomb would just get angrier and even less predictable and I would have to walk up to it all over again.
One piece of equipment, a Sliver, a sophisticated explosive device about two-thirds the size of a paving slab, would separate the components without detonating the bomb, rendering it safe but not destroying it.
The Sliver had to be positioned within a fraction of an inch of the bomb to function correctly. I would have to slide a couple of inches further forward than I was already.
I inched the Sliver across the ground, constantly checking its proximity to the device and the fall of its shadow, and urging myself to get it just a bit closer.
Somehow my educated guess on which direction the PIR was looking had paid off and allowed me closer than I had thought possible. Just a fraction closer.
I glanced at the crowd to my right: any one of them could now be reaching into their pocket and wrapping their fingers around the radio-control transmitter. I would be the only person who wouldn't hear the explosion.
My heart raced as I slowly removed my hands from the edges of the Sliver, now in the perfect position. Sweat fell from my chin as I slowly stood up, checked the equipment one last time, backed away a few steps and turned.
I walked deliberately, carefully, along the same path that I had used to approach the device. The first ten yards were agony as I continued to wait for the intense heat and light of the bomb finally detonating, but it never came.
The familiar faces of the team poked out from around the back of the van. I thought I had been out only a few minutes, but it had been around 30.
I had walked only a few hundred yards, but had used so much adrenaline that I now had no energy left. I could feel every ounce of the suit's armour. My team tore the suit off me and I felt as if I was floating. My combats had turned dark with sweat and clung to my body.
Jay attached the firing device to the cables leading to the Sliver and checked everyone was out of the way. The loud <cite>boom </cite>echoed off the walls of the flats nearby and a tower of black smoke appeared from where I had left the Sliver.
As the echoes subsided, the crowd began to shout, scream and cheer. More excited than angry, they had seen an explosion, were all safe and knew that we would be leaving as soon as we could.
I could not be sure the area was safe until I had seen it myself. As I approached to within 20 yards I could see the bomb had been disabled, the components were separated and the device was no longer a threat.
Lumps of plastic explosive covered the immediate area. The electronics pack lay just a foot or so from the device's original location.
I had beaten the bomb - but I had no idea how close I would come to losing my mind as a result.
Our kit was worn out and the Land Rovers were 'mobile coffins'
My instructors had been only half right. I had seen the one per cent terror and the 99 per cent boredom, but they never mentioned the 50 per cent b*******.
While I spent inordinate amounts of time on trivial administration, no one seemed willing or able to help with the big issues.
My Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) vehicle developed a fault that would leave the Wheelbarrow robot dead for no apparent reason, my Electronic Countermeasures (ECM) equipment often failed due to a faulty power lead, and my EOD weapons were rotting after three years in the Iraqi desert.
Dozens of email requests and long conversations with the EOD Group had produced no answers to these critical problems; my team, the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, and I were less safe because of it.
Sometimes it seemed that there was no one in my chain of command between me and Tony Blair who had the slightest clue about contemporary bomb-disposal operations.
Our Senior Ammunition Technician (SAT), John Hall, was vastly experienced, but as a Warrant Officer (Class One) had a limited say in policy.
It appeared to me as if a chain of command had been constructed to keep anyone with knowledge of improvised explosive device (IED) disposal away from appointments where they could save British and Iraqi lives.
In 2007 I was deployed again to Iraq, this time to Baghdad in a weapons intelligence role, and came across a British platoon that had travelled up from Basra in their Snatch Land Rovers.
This platoon had lost two of its men only two weeks earlier: an improvised Claymore mine had detonated as they drove past, sending ball-bearings tearing through the side of the vehicle, igniting some phosphorous grenades and killing the men.
To my horror, the platoon were still using the same type of vehicles and were now tasked with escorting VIPs along Route Irish, between Baghdad Airport and the Green Zone, the most dangerous road in the world.
Meanwhile, the American forces were busy replacing their 13,000 Humvees with huge, expensive Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles that were capable of withstanding all but the biggest explosions, thanks to their special armour and blast-deflecting V-shaped hulls.
But British soldiers were still chancing their lives every day in vehicles that were inadequate for the job. Nothing had been learned from the deaths of many soldiers in Snatch vehicles.
They had little armour to speak of, were too slow and obscured the vision of everyone inside.
They were not called mobile coffins for no reason; we gave the terrorists the perfect opportunity to kill lots of soldiers with one bomb. They were so used to targeting Snatch vehicles that they had even designed IEDs simultaneously targeting the driver, passengers and top cover. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. We were being let down by our political masters.
That faulty £10 ECM power cable that almost resulted in my death at Red One? A replacement arrived the day after that incident. We had been requesting a new one for weeks.
Red One, by Captain Kevin Ivison, is published by Orion at £18.99. To order your copy at the special price of £16.99 with free p&p, please call The Review Bookstore on 08 5 155 0713 or visit maillife.co.uk/books
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