Kicking Bombs Read online

  KICKING

  BOMBS

  IN THE LAND OF SAND

  KICKING

  BOMBS

  IN THE LAND OF SAND

  BARRY STEVENS

  Copyright © Barry Stevens 2013

  First published 2013

  Copyright remains the property of the authors and apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission.

  All inquiries should be made to the publishers.

  Big Sky Publishing Pty Ltd

  PO Box 303, Newport, NSW 2106, Australia

  Phone: 1300 364 611

  Fax: (61 2) 9918 2396

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.bigskypublishing.com.au

  Cover design and typesetting: Think Productions

  Printed in China by Asia Pacific Offset Ltd.

  For CIP data contact the National Library of Australia.

  CONTENTS

  1 Pre-deployment

  2 Fort Bliss, Texas, USA

  3 Arriving in Baghdad

  4 An Najaf

  5 Taking Inventory

  6 Playing with Explosives

  7 Mass Weapons of Destruction

  8 Convoy to Babylon

  9 Grabbed

  10 The Farmhouse

  11 The Mud Hut

  12 Shifted

  13 The Container

  14 A Visit from Hadji Mohammed

  15 Intervention from Torture

  16 Video Message to the World

  17 Ben

  18 Hadji Mustafa

  19 The Iraqi American

  20 More Torture

  21 Dexter

  22 Question Time with Colonel Safi

  23 The Black Sack

  24 Escape

  25 Rescued

  26 Ibensina Hospital

  27 American Agencies

  28 Landstuhl Military Hospital, Germany

  29 Back Home

  Weapons List

  Dedicated to

  “The Old Man”

  Sydney “Doug” Stevens

  A true Aussie battler who left us on Australia Day 2013

  1

  Pre-deployment

  Landmine Anti-Personnel PRB-M409

  Made in Belgium. Anti-personnel mines are actually designed to severely injure rather than kill people. If a soldier is brutally wounded he’s out of the fight, and possibly will need four people to carry him to safety, a medic and another couple of people to drive an emergency vehicle such as an ambulance or helicopter. Then he needs a large medical team to amputate what’s left of his legs. However, if a mine kills a soldier the mission continues on, one man short. The psychological side of landmines are even worse than the actual physical threat; soldiers concentrate more on where they are going than the actual mission at hand, and most tactical mine fields are designed to move soldiers into a specific area best suited by the enemy and almost always covered by fire. The PRB M409 is plastic-bodied and the explosive used is Trilene.

  My mate Tripod and I were sitting in our office with our feet up on my desk when the unexpected phone call came through. The hot Queensland sun was blasting through the office window and we were sweating like pigs. We were a bit depressed really; it was our last day in the office, which meant our enterprise hadn’t succeeded.

  Tripe was throwing scrunched up paper balls into one of the ceiling fans that languidly churned the humid air. One of them spun off and went flying, landing in the waste paper bin at the end of the room.

  ‘HOW IS HE?’ Tripe roared, as I rolled my eyes.

  That’s when the phone rang.

  ‘You gonna answer that, CJ?’

  ‘Nuh. It’ll just be that Pakistani prick again telling me my computer’s possessed or something.’

  ‘Just answer the fucking phone, Craig.’

  ‘All right, Jason!’

  Nobody called him Jason. He was Tripe — short for Tripod because of his huge … Let’s just say it had nothing to do with his intestines. Tripe for short. And he spoke a lot of that. We’d been in the army for years together. He was built like the proverbial brick shithouse and he looked like a badass, but he was smart and funny. The best mate a bastard could have.

  We’d been doing our best to make a dollar from the unexploded ordnance survey industry — looking for and clearing undetonated ammunition. The two of us had played around with a lot of explosives in the army. In fact our pioneer section’s motto was ‘if in doubt, slab out’, which meant that if you weren’t sure if you had enough explosives on whatever you were blowing up simply chuck as much as you could fit onto it. We started our demolitions training in Tin Can Bay a few hours north of Brisbane where we initially learnt to blow up everything and anything we could get our hands on. These ‘targets’ as we called them ranged from old cars to railway iron and even the odd safe that had been written off because no-one could find the keys or combo.

  After some time spent in the army, climbing the rank ladder, we ended up at the Infantry Centre in Singleton doing an Officer Non-Commissioned Officer Pioneer Course where we were introduced to the destruction of malfunctioned ordnance; basically blowing up things like mortars and hand grenades that didn’t go bang like they were supposed to. These were classed as ‘blinds’ and it was a real buzz to get onto a range and get to play with some bang every now and then.

  On one particular shot in Singleton I remember we blew up over 20 full drums of aviation fuel that were contaminated with water. The choppers couldn’t use it so we got to blow it up. We set up the drums in a circle, 20 metres in diametre, with them all pointing into the centre. In the middle we stacked the rest of the drums up in a pyramid. The drums had a heap of dishwashing liquid poured into them — from memory I think we ‘acquired’ eight 20-litre drums from the Q Store. Fuel and detergent makes a basic form of napalm, or foo gas as we called it. When the fuel is exploded and is set alight the bubbles caused by the detergent increases the size of the explosion, plus it tends to burn longer instead of simply going up in a quick flash and woof. All of the drums had detonation cord wrapped around their tops with at least half a dozen slabs of comp B buried at their bases. The whole lot was connected up with det cord. We had everything covered so it would all go off within one-hundred-thousandths of a second. We had ring mains, which are rings of det cord running the perimetre of the shot; and crossovers, which are lengths of det cord crossing the shot from one side of the ring main to the other. All of these lengths of det cord were tied and taped together. Each drum was connected with lengths of det cord and just to make sure it went off in a huge ball of flame we had a trip flair also wrapped in det cord on a star picket at the base of the pyramid.

  This shot was so fucking big that the centre warned air traffic control at Sydney Airport. There were TV and radio announcements made so no-one freaked out. That night at 8pm sharp there were literally hundreds of people standing outside their houses, pubs and cafés in Singleton town ready to watch the flash — and Singleton township is probably 10 kilometres as the crow flies from where the shot was going to go off.

  Everyone from the course gathered 1000 metres away from the shot site. This is the minimum safety distance when you are using explosives on a steel target and unfortunately the drums themselves restricted us. We all stood watching as the two lucky bastards who had got to pull the M60 igniters drove up to us in the viewing area. It was 20 minutes until ignition. When it got closer the boys started to count down the seconds. Every second under or over the zero point would cost them a beer. Lucky for them, right on the nose the whole thing went up. It was amazing. Even from a kilometre away we could feel the heat. The fireball went up at least
2 kilometres into the night sky and culminated in a perfect mushroom with a few distinct smoke rings emanating from the stem. It was like we’d brought Hiroshima to the Hunter Valley.

  After the course we ended up becoming instructors ourselves. Our love for the rush of using explosives proved to become something of an addiction we could never get enough of, and we volunteered as instructors or range safety officers on every course we could. After a tour of East Timor I was posted to the Australian Army School of Military Engineering at Holsworthy in Sydney. I was excited as all hell about the posting right up until the point when I got there and discovered that an infantry pioneer sergeant in an Engineer Corps Unit was as welcome as a leper in a whorehouse. It wasn’t long before I realised that I had to get the fuck out of there before I smashed some prick and ended up in jail for assault … again.

  But we’d been out of the army for eight months now. Now we were Craig Jackson and Jason Hammond, entrepreneurs. But two or three companies dominated the UXO industry in Australia, and strangely enough managed to set the whole thing up in such a way that it was almost impossible for any newcomers to get in. Especially a small privately owned company like ours.

  When the Defence Unexploded Ordnance Panel (DUXOP) was being set up in the nineties in Australia the members took advice from these few Australian companies that were already operating. Unfortunately at this point in time these same companies were the only ones conducting clearance operations and almost all of these were unregulated at this ‘pre-DUXOP’ stage. So the panel itself was given a heap of bad advice that would only be a benefit to those who were already operating or the government DUXOP people themselves personally. I’m not saying they may have been swayed one way or another due to the promise of some extra income or anything like that but it certainly seemed that way. The owners of these companies were ex-Australian Army — mostly ex-engineers — who employed their mates. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; I totally agree with the jobs-for-the-boys routine especially when it comes to ex-military mates.

  When the DUXOP was finally set up in Australia and the prerequisites for any future companies, who would obviously be in competition, were discussed and implemented these original companies made damn sure that it would be as hard as hell to get recognised. They ensured that they were the only ones qualified to bid for future contracts, and secured their own futures, despite never having had to prove that they could pass the requirements themselves.

  As if all of this wasn’t tough enough the people within the DUXOP itself were either serving or ex-military mates of those who owned the existing companies and ‘may have given’ some preference towards them rather than any new kids on the block.

  One of the biggest problems Tripe and I faced was trying to get the necessary insurance required to be qualified by the DUXOP. After 9/11 company insurance had shot through the roof and as soon as we mentioned that we were an organisation basically looking for unexploded ordnance in public places you can imagine how we were handled by every blood-sucking insurance broker we spoke to, regardless of the fact that there hadn’t been a single reported incident in Australia since the industry began. Even pre-DUXOP. The only company that was interested was a UK-based organisation that demanded $10,000 per month, paid one year in advance, regardless of whether we had a contract or not. Even a company like McDonald’s has injuries and I’m certain the odd fatality. Do they pay 10 grand a month for each of their stores? I doubt it very bloody much!

  We tried everything possible to get a contract, and put in bids for every overseas opportunity that we came across. Every rumour of related work we investigated. We were working our arses off in the background doing crap work for a carpet company just so we could pay the bills and keep the dream alive.

  We were set up in a government office, paying for rent and advice that was supposedly designed for new businesses that had enough potential for the state government to spend some money on. Hopeful entrepreneurs were supposed to be supported and taught how to successfully set up their business and market their product. What a load of crap! If these so-called experts were any good at what they were doing they would all be in multi-million dollar businesses of their own and not in a minimum paying 9 to 5 government job. The government was simply being the government. It had great success holding numerous conferences and seminars attended by hundreds of hopeful Aussie citizens who dreamed of having their own business but ended up getting nothing but a stale sandwich, a cold cup of coffee and a bill.

  An old army mate of mine had given me a call to tell me about an American company looking for Aussies with unexploded ordnance (UXO) experience to go to Iraq to dispose of captured enemy ammunition. At this point Iraq was a complete shitfight with what proved to be the world’s third largest cache of ammunition on the planet scattered all over the country, totally unregulated or controlled. There were still huge areas with scattered ammunition just lying around on the surface of the ground completely open to the weather and unguarded right up and down the Iraq/Iran border. This was left over from the war that went on from 1980 to 1988. The Iraqis had dozens of ammunition cache sites spaced along the border for easy resupply. However, typically for the Iraqis, when it was all over in 1988 they just left the stuff lying there.

  Then in 1990 when the Iraqis invaded Kuwait they did the same thing and piled up thousands of tonnes more ammo in large cache sites all through the desert along the Kuwaiti border. In 1991 when the US-led coalition kicked their arse for the first time back to Baghdad they again just left it all where it was — again totally unguarded and exposed to the elements. During the war in 1991, as short as it was, the US Military blew the fuck out of most of the Iraqi artillery, armour and missile launch platforms. The Iraqi air defence was all but wiped out and the chance of them getting new weapons to fire their hundreds of thousands of tonnes of ammunition was zero because of the trade embargos.

  Just to make it worse, in 2003 when the US decided to finish the job they should have ended more than ten years earlier, even more unguarded highly explosive ammunition of every kind imaginable was simply left lying all over the desert. No wonder it became so easy for the Iraqis to strike back using improvised explosive devices or IEDs as they are known now. It was easier for them to get a 55 millimetre high explosive artillery round than it was to get a kilo of rice. It had become clear to the military minds in charge that there was a need to get rid of as much of this high explosive trash as quickly as possible. The US Army was busy enough fighting a war so they couldn’t do it, and the Iraqis certainly weren’t going to clean up after themselves, so it was left to a few US companies who had similar qualifications as the DUXOP in Australia to get stuck in and clean it up as quickly as possible. So the word went out internationally for people like me and Tripod to get into something that would be a once in a lifetime opportunity.

  At this time Iraq was a hotpot of action for ex-military people like me and Tripe. Nothing like this had occurred during our service; well, nothing more than a long walk up a thousand hills in East Timor anyway. Every time the TV was turned on the war in Iraq was in your face. The media was having a field day with it and everyone was aware of what was happening on a day-to-day, blow-by-blow basis. Saddam was now hiding under a rock somewhere and had the world’s most hitech army looking for him.

  It hadn’t been long ago that the Iraqi people were worshipping the Yanks as heroes for invading their country and kicking Saddam and his bunch of chronic masturbators out of power, but now it was a completely different scenario. It seemed that almost overnight everyone wanted to kill as many non-Iraqis in Iraq as they could. The Yanks have always been great at invading countries and spending trillions of dollars killing people, but winning hearts and minds after the conquest — not so much. If there is one single thing the United States Military really sucks at it is precisely this. They will always come up with a million reasons why it so quickly goes to shit, why the people turn to hating them so quickly, and how the enemy has made it impossible to maint
ain peace, but they never seem to understand that if they spent a fraction of what they spend on ammunition and men on simple things like new power stations and a reliable water supply the people would love them.

  Only days before the US and its coalition invaded Iraq, the markets were all trading, the kids were at school and everyone was getting on with their lives as if everything was normal. But seconds after the invasion the whole country turned into a massive shitfight. It could take decades before it gets even a little bit better let alone becomes a competently run nation with a stable government that can control its own corruption and the Sunni and Shiite Muslim factions who hate each other even more than the Yanks.

  At first I thought this incredible job offer may be just like a million other rumours I’d heard since I was discharged from the army but I thought what the hell, we’ll give it a go and send in our resumes.

  Tripe and I had both spent a lot of time and our own money in this office trying to get onto the DUXOP with no success and no real salary coming in for a year. We’d almost decided to face the fact that we weren’t going anywhere as far as the DUXOP was concerned and all we were doing was wasting our time and money.

  We’d even looked for real jobs. Tripe was looking at a permanent job with the carpet company we were doing part-time work for and I was going to do part-time work whenever I could get it. As I said, this was actually our last day in the office, but I still owed a bucket full of money for overdue office rent.

  Secretly, I felt really let down — more than a bit depressed. I can’t even explain how badly I felt. This project was everything to me. I had been working on the idea constantly for eight years, designing a remote-controlled vehicle that would destroy anti-tank and antipersonnel landmines as it passed over them. Really it wasn’t my idea at all; I just reinvented and improved a concept that had been around since World War I. The flail — a mechanical de-mining tool — was nothing but an armoured machine that had a heap of spinning chains with balls attached to the ends that hit the ground. When a ball hit a mine it either exploded the mine or smashed it into bits. Simple. The only problem is that the mines that have been developed over the past years are getting bigger and more powerful. Some anti-tank mines will lift a 60 tonne tank up and lay it upside down.