Far From Breaking Waves

By Brad P Vincent

This is the true narrative of a military diver and bomb disposal operator who, after a dynamic career being one of the select few British Royal Navy Mine Warfare and Clearance Diving (MCD) specialists, finds himself Far From Breaking Waves in the land locked country of Afghanistan serving as a member of the Royal Australian Navy. There are even fewer Australian MCDs. The book chronicles his time based in the dangerous war torn city of Kabul as ISAF’s Chief of Counter Improvised Explosive Device Exploitation, and his voyage through an exciting adventure packed career to get there.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadOnTime BV
• Release date: Feb 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9781742842752

Book preview

Smashwords Edition

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Far From Breaking Waves

Copyright © 2012 Bradley Vincent

Cover Design – Paul Furse Photography

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The information, views, opinions and visuals expressed in this publication are solely those of the author(s) and do not reflect those of the publisher. The publisher disclaims any liabilities or responsibilities whatsoever for any damages, libel or liabilities arising directly or indirectly from the contents of this publication.

A copy of this publication can be found in the National Library of Australia.

ISBN: 978-1-742842-75-2 (pbk.)

Published by Book Pal

www.bookpal.com.au

* * * *

In memory of the ultimate sacrifice of:

Andrew Russell, David Pearce, Matthew Locke, Luke Worsley

Jason Marks, Sean McCarthy, Michael Fussell,

Gregory Michael Sher, Matthew Hopkins, Brett Till

Benjamin Ranaudo, Daren Smith, Jacob Moerland, Ben Chuck

Timothy Alpin, Scott Palmer, Nathan Bewes,

Jason Thomas Brown, Grant Kirby, Thomas Dale

Jarad MacKinney, Richard Edward Atkinson,Jamie Larcombe,

Brett Wood, Marcus Case, Andrew Jones, Rowan Robinson,

Todd Langley, Andrew Gordon Jones, Bryce Duffy, Ashley Birt,

Luke Gavin, Blaine Diddams, Mervyn MCDonald,

Nathanael Galagher, James Martin, Stjephan Milosevic,

Robert Poate, Scott James Smith...

Lest We Forget

They don't want us, they want our bodies;

need our talents, not ourselves.

Conflict calls for dedication,

expertise enhanced by nerve.

Now ascends the banished leader,

outcast of promotion's cull,

Weaving spells of valour's mystic vital whisper,

Follow all!

But do not bring your conscience;

do not bring your soul.

The first you'll not be needing, the second will be stole.

Commander N A 'Bernie UXB' Bruen MBE DSC WkhM

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Contents

Dedication I

About the Author

Dedication II

Glossary

Foreword

Prologue

1 Four Countries, Seven Days

2 Kabul Arrival

3 The Long Voyage to Afghanistan–The Very Start

4: The Handover, the IED Problem

5 Settling In and Acclimatization

6 The Long Voyage to Afghanistan – Trips South

7 The Streets of Kabul –The First Callout

8 The Road to Bagram

9 The Long Voyage to Afghanistan –The Red Sea

10 The Tali Band, the Social Scene and Fallouts

11 New Friendships

12 The Long Voyage to Afghanistan – The Grimsby Crisis

13 A Policy Change and a Trip North

14 Operation Almost Certain Death

15 Reflections of Home

16 The Long Voyage to Afghanistan –CD at Last!

17 The Festive Season

18 The Long Voyage to Afghanistan - Deep Treasure

19 The Return

20 The Long Voyage to Afghanistan –Consolidation Years - Part I

21 Pakistan or Bust

22 The Long Voyage to Afghanistan –Consolidation Years - Part II

23 The End of a Sickly Season but Not the Bloody War

Post Script… and another thing!

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About the Author

Bradley Vincent joined the Royal Navy in 1983. Becoming a Minewarfare and Clearance Diving specialist, this chronicle follows him through a dynamic 27 year career from the frigid waters of Scotland to the deserts of Afghanistan and many places in between. He now lives with his family in Sydney Australia.

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Dedicated to my wife Julie and two sons Brent and Luke. Without their love and support I could never have achieved any of this.

* * * *

Glossary

AK47 7.62mm assault rifle (Taliban insurgent /Insurgent)

CEXC Combined Exploitation Cell

C-IED Counter Improvised Explosive Device

ECM Electronic Countermeasures

EOD Explosive Ordnance Disposal

F88 Australian 5.56mm rifle

IED Improvised Explosive Device

IEDD Improvised Explosive Device Disposal

ISAF International Security Assistance Force

ISI Inter Services Intelligence (Pakistan)

KCP Kabul City Police

M4 US 5.56mm rifle

MCDO Minewarfare Clearance Diving Officer

MCM Mine Countermeasures

NDS National Directorate of Security (Afghan)

RAN Royal Australian Navy

RLC Royal Logistic Corp (British)

RPG Rocket Propelled Grenade

SA80 British 5.56mm rifle

SOP Standard Operating Procedures

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Foreword

This is my story. Along with a précis of my Navy career that led me to a land locked country, it gradually tells of my six month deployment in Afghanistan, seconded to the International Security Assistance Force in the Counter Improvised Explosive Device branch, based in Kabul. I have not embellished or added to the events, it is merely an account of my small team’s experiences and my observations. I know there are others who did it much much tougher than me and my ‘shipmates’; I have the greatest respect for those guys and girls, all of us doing as directed by our individual governments.

Some believed in what we were doing, some didn’t. I am of the latter category. I firmly believe that nothing I did over there has made Afghanistan and the world a better or safer place, though others may beg to differ.

You decide for yourselves. In the meantime there are at least 39 Australian soldiers dead out of the over 3,400 coalition soldiers killed since the October 2001 invasion. 2010 was a particularly bad year with over 700 troops blown up or shot dead. There were 217 through mid-June 2012 shortly before this book went to print and the number wounded is off the charts. Sadly no one can say exactly how many Afghans have died, but it is well over 12,000. Was it really all about stopping Afghanistan from being a safe haven for terrorists, keeping terror from our shores, revenge for 9/11 or something else?

We have been told to steel ourselves for more fatalities and keep counting bodies.

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Prologue

Matt and I looked at each other, it was clear that we were getting way out of our depth. For once, the Afghan Police had set up a ring of steel around the incident area, but they had let us through after I waved our Dari written ‘get into gaol free’ card. We were now well inside the inner cordon, staring back out at the Afghan troops and directly in the line of fire between them and the insurgents running amok within the Ministry of Justice building. I glanced back to find I was looking down the barrel of a 50 cal machine gun, manned by a twitchy-looking young Afghan Army conscript, perched in the turret on top of his US gifted Hum vee. Matt pointed this out and I moved swiftly out of his firing arcs. None too soon either, several shots rang out from inside forcing us to duck behind the concrete pillars of the building opposite the Ministry, the rounds zipping over our heads. The thump of grenades detonating inside the Ministry could be heard, along with screams and shouting. I was fairly sure we weren’t being directly targeted at this point, but I wasn’t sure how much longer that would last.

About 40 minutes earlier up to seven Taliban insurgents had shot their way into the Justice Ministry. It was one of several incidents that were occurring in Kabul at that very moment, a carefully orchestrated complex attack. The other three attacks had been initiated by suicide bombers who had run into various Afghan Government buildings across the city, closely followed by their AK47 assault rifle wielding brethren. Their mission was simple; kill as many people as they could before being killed themselves, ensuring that the security forces across Kabul were stretched as thinly as possible. We knew that the other International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Counter Improvised Explosive Device (C-IED) teams were covering the first attacks. Unknown to us at the time, this building was the main target; at least two of the insurgents inside were wearing suicide vests.

I was very conscious that we stood out like the proverbial dogs bollocks, conspicuous because we were the only two ISAF soldiers within miles of the incident. An Arab television crew was about 20 metres away filming our every move. No doubt we would be splashed across the Muslim world on Al Jezeera television later, especially if we were taken down in a hail of gunfire. The fact that I wasn’t actually a soldier was moot at this point; I had learned to think like one in the months I had been in country doing a job very different to any I’d done previously. In my ‘day’ job I was Royal Australian Navy Minewarfare Clearance Diving Officer, MCDO for short, familiar with all things that had a maritime flavour. Here in Afghanistan I was far from breaking waves, about 700 miles as it happened.

Just beyond the camera crew, huddled around the corner were a group of Senior Afghan Police and other officials, like us well within the inner cordon. Unlike us, they had no ballistic protection, namely helmets and body armour. I had discovered that the Afghan brass had the intense desire to be right in the middle of dangerous situations, generally doing nothing but adding to the chaos. Their enthusiasm could not be faulted; unfortunately it was rarely, if ever, funnelled in the right direction. It didn’t matter if they were moving a piece of furniture around a room or overseeing a bomb scene, it would always take five times the number of people it really required, all of them trying to take charge, all of them with a different idea of how it should be done. It was a great deal of jibber jabbering and if the aim was achieved at all you’d be lucky. Hence the reason why we were on scene. Our job was to assist and advise them on confirming, clearing, cordon and control of a kinetic situation, generally incidents related to improvised explosive devices, IEDs. Advising on furniture removals wasn’t really our thing. Up to this point all our callouts had been to the aftermath of suicide bombings, this one was turning out to be very different.

I was fearful that one of the Taliban insurgent berserkers inside the building would spot us lurking outside and let rip with his AK47. I learnt later that they had already murdered several of their countrymen by this point, shooting, stabbing and garrotting the wretched Ministry workers as they went from room to room. I scanned all the windows through the optic sight of my Steyr F88 rifle; a 5.56mm bullet already locked in the breach, my thumb clicking off the safety. Matt was doing the same with his Brit issued SA80. If a bearded face had appeared at any of the windows we certainly weren’t going to be asking questions.

Matt was slightly more qualified in the soldiering department than me, a British Royal Logistics Corp EOD Technician Captain, but I was leading this mission. We’d left our armoured vehicle on the edge of the cordon guarded by Strickers, another member of our small team. Strickers was a Royal Navy Petty Officer whose real trade was ship communications. He was as much out of place as I was but fortunately for him he was on the right side of the cordon. Not for the first time during this deployment I was wondering what on earth I had set myself up for.

I looked to my left and saw Mohammed, our interpreter and ex Mujahedeen, slowly strolling down the middle of the street, not a care in the world. He’d seen it all before and was clearly unconcerned with the casual violence being enacted on his fellows not metres away from us.

‘Mohammed for fuck sake get in cover!’ I shouted across to him. ‘For one thing, we need you to talk us out of this mess, for the other you’re making Matt and me look like complete jerks!’

Mohammed sauntered over and joined us behind the pillars.

‘I need a weapon, Mr Bradley.’

I considered the pros and cons of handing him my 9mm Browning as we paused for breath….

* * * *

Chapter One:

Four Countries, Seven Days

‘Is there a Lieutenant Commander Vincent here?’

‘That’s me.’

‘Sir, please can you call home immediately.’

It was the worse news and was a pretty poor start to my six-month deployment; my Dad had just passed away after a relatively routine operation had gone horribly wrong.

It was 31 August 2008. I had been in the blistering 55 degrees Celsius heat of the Kuwait desert for less than a week, conducting the final Force Preparation training or RTO&I (Rest Training Orientation & Integration) prior to my operational gig proper in Kabul, Afghanistan. I was due to take over as the Exploitation Leader within the International Security Assistance Forces’ Counter Improvised Explosive Device section. It was a relatively new joint job filled by Bomb Disposal Technicians from either Australian Army, Navy or Air Force. I would be the third Aussie to pick up the reins, and the second Navy Minewarfare and Clearance Diving Officer in the post.

The news of my Dad’s death was a crushing blow, despite the fact that we’d all witnessed a slow decline of his health during the previous three years. He had a called me a few weeks earlier to let me know that he was going in to hospital to have abdominal surgery. It was an operation that came with some risks and if anything happened to him during or immediately after surgery he didn’t want to give us any surprises. His foresight served him well.

I had to go home for his funeral and with my military’s blessing began making preparations for the journey back to my old homeland of England. I was painfully aware that I could be delaying the departure of Pete, nicknamed ‘Kermit’, the Air Force officer I was due to relieve. We had been chatting to each other via email for several months, and I knew that he had set up a detailed two-week handover program to ensure I had a good grasp of my new duties. Luckily for me he was happy to extend for the week I had given myself to get back to the UK to say goodbye to my dad.

With a heavy heart I was once more standing in the departure lounge of an airport just six days after saying farewell to my wife Julie and our two sons Brent and Luke at the Sydney Kingsford International. Despite being in the Navy for over 25 years, that departure was especially painful. Neither of my sons could remember my going away for any length of time, even Julie had missed the really long trips of my early career. I had done most of my long operational deployments before they were born or when they were too young to recollect it. The fact that this time I was going to participate in a distant war made it all the more poignant; until that moment I think everyone, including myself, had forgotten I was in the military. It was particularly hard on Luke, the youngest at 16.

Luke and I were very close and I became aware that I was breaking his heart by leaving. He had become my scuba dive partner, as well as my training partner and there was rarely a time when we weren’t doing some physical activity together. Brent and I had also enjoyed this closeness once, but sadly at the time, we had drifted apart. At the departure he seemed much harder to read. We hadn’t really seen eye to eye for a few years, a combination of teenage angst, teenage arrogance, having to be a hard arse parent and teenage rebellion without a cause. Well in fairness to Brent he did have a cause. We’d previously lived in the USA on an exchange posting when I was with the British Royal Navy. Peering back across the Atlantic to the UK during the four-year tour, neither my wife nor I were particularly keen to return to a life in England. We certainly didn’t want to return to Portsmouth, aka ‘Dog Shit City’ in Navy parlance, where I’d likely end up being based. Although we loved the USA, we didn’t want to stay there either. I’d fallen in love with Australia back in 1987 when I visited the country on a Royal Navy ship, so as a family we sat down and all agreed to immigrate there. We did not predict that our eldest son, Brent, 15 ½ at the time, would fall in love himself a few short weeks after the conversation.

As all parents who have experienced teenagers know, teenage love, especially the first experienced, is a powerful, determined and of times destructive force. Hormones, sex and irrationality completely take over a young body and the world compresses into a microcosm centred on the teenagers who are in love. The universe must revolve around this microcosm, and heaven help any parent or person who dares intervene. As a teenager once, I had lived in one of those microcosms myself. Of course, in this context, the plan to immigrate to Australia did not fit in at all well.

Suffice to say, things had not gone particularly well with Brent since we had arrived in Sydney. Despite all the odds he had managed to cling firmly to his relationship with his US-based girlfriend, Holly. I say US-based, but she was actually a Brit. In a world when I was the teenager, a few lovelorn letters sent over a distance of 12,000 miles would soon have put paid to such a relationship. However, the marvels of modern technology allowed them to maintain very close contact, relatively cheap international phone calls, texting and Internet all combined to ensure an enduring and passionate love. It was an all-consuming infatuation in which my wife and I had firmly become the evil enemy. Our attempts at rationalisation were interpreted as direct assaults and only succeeded in sealing the epoxy resin that bonded their relationship and drove a wedge in ours.

My departure from Sydney on that day was year three of Brent and Holly’s all-enduring partnership. Despite this it became a very emotional moment for us all and a very hard goodbye. The fact that I was going off to a war was not lost on anyone, including Brent. Had my masters and commanders told me at that moment that I didn’t have to go after all, I would have been very relieved. As we embraced and said our farewells Brent said, ‘You know Dad, six-months isn’t a long time, and I should know.’

He was referring to the fact that he had managed to fly back and see his girlfriend only a few times since we arrived in Australia. In my own sadness I was suddenly aware of how hard it must have been for the pair of them if they loved each other even half as much as I loved my family.

To be honest, I hadn’t experienced homesickness like it since my first few years in boarding school as a child. I’d forgotten what a wrench it was being separated from family and friends. Perhaps if I’d been deploying with other Navy folk as a formed unit or in a ship, things would have felt different. As it was, I was on my own amongst strangers, mostly Army and ultimately travelling to a country that was completely land locked. The nearest beach would be over 700 miles from where I would be based in Afghanistan. Many times I was to be asked what the hell is a diver doing here? At that moment I certainly had no answer.

I was still feeling pretty homesick when I received the news of my Dad’s death.

The journey back to England was uneventful. I used the flight time to compose a eulogy to my dad and reflect on our times together. Dad was the sole reason I had joined the Navy to become a Clearance Diver. He introduced me to the world of scuba diving when I was 14 and I never looked back. As I enjoyed with my son Luke, Dad and I used to be dive partners. At the time he was in the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and we used to belong to various RAF diving clubs, taking every and any opportunity to get our heads wet. I learnt to dive around the cold, tidal and often black waters of the UK and loved every moment of it. It was to stand me in good stead when I eventually got selected for Clearance Diving training.

I arrived at Heathrow the day after Dad had died, realising belatedly that I would have to enter the country via the non-British Passport Holders line with all the other ‘foreigners’, having left my British passport in Australia. I resented the hell out of it as at the time I was still paying tax in the UK on various earnings but wasn’t being a burden on the system at any level. Then, having experienced the usual and expected delays of travel through the world’s busiest airport, I hired a car and headed down to North Devon and my hometown of Barnstaple.

The next few days were a blur. My dad’s exact cause of death was unknown so an autopsy would have to be conducted before the funeral. To be honest I never really knew for sure what he had actually died from, and despite the autopsy I still don’t know the full story to this day. We were told pneumonia but it really didn’t make any sense to me in the context of his illness prior to his abdominal surgery. To me, my dad was always fit and strong, so what had weakened his immune system so that he couldn’t stave off pneumonia with the aid of the strongest antibiotics?

I am sure that he had some form of cancer but had elected not tell us about it, perhaps so we didn’t worry. I think it is a natural parental instinct not to burden your kids with undue worry. He had already insisted that I wasn’t to come back to the UK to see him post his operation, not that my pre-deployment preparation timetable would have allowed me anyway. Knowing him he would have given me a hard time had I turned up at his bedside. You shouldn’t have too many regrets in life but like many folk before me (and many more ahead of me) I was regretting that we saw so little of each other in the preceding four years.

My time in the military had seen me move all over the UK and beyond on various tours of duty. The combination of my busy work life, my own family and the fact that Dad had re-married (my parents divorced when I was 12) and had his own young family, resulted in few visits far between. Little did I suspect that when we said our pre-emigration goodbyes, on the doorstep of his house two years previously, that that would be the last time I saw him alive. The dreams of us diving the Great Barrier Reef together would never be realised. Having said all that, I believe the times I did spend with him were quality, and we had many long conversations by phone, many essay like emails and I was content that there was nothing left unsaid between us.

The authorities insisting on having an autopsy looked like it would be a problem for my timeline; the C130 transport aircraft for Kabul was due to leave Kuwait in six days and I needed to be on it. I expected a bureaucratic battle to get any resolution and had resigned myself to the fact that I would probably not be able to stay for the funeral itself. I was pleasantly surprised, if anything can be deemed pleasant in such circumstances, when my sister, citing my situation managed to get the autopsy arranged in record time and the funeral was set for the coming Friday.

I stayed at my brother Mark’s place on the edge of Exmoor over the next few days, in the house he shared with his common-law wife. Dad’s second wife of 30 years had invited me to stay over at theirs, but the sad fact was I had never gotten close with any of the ‘new’ family; Dad’s death had brought that into sharp relief. In the days before the funeral, Mark and I took the time to revisit some of the places that Dad used to take us as children before the split with my Mum: the Braunton Burrows, Crow’s Point, Instow and Hartland Point, our coastal favourites. We’d play this excellent game at night down at Instow beach, where Dad would stand on the concrete roof of an old World War II bunker with a big torch. He turned in slow circles using it as a search light and we would all creep up on him in the shadows behind the dunes, trying hard not to get caught in the spotlight’s glare. It was adrenaline filled fun for us kids, he would come storming off the roof after us if he spotted us and we’d run screaming in delicious terror into the dark sand labyrinths.

They were happy days back then and we helped each other with some of the sorrow when we visited those places and memories together. On the day of the funeral Mark and I, along with our half-brother Matthew and our Uncle Barry, carried Dad to his final resting place.

I didn’t hang around after that, once I said goodbye to Dad I was keen to get back to the Middle East and on with the task I’d left Australia for. The following morning I drove back to London and returned to Kuwait.

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Chapter Two:

Kabul Arrival

The amount of people on the C130 ‘Fat Norman’ flight had gradually whittled down as the giant flying bus had done its rounds of Afghanistan. Stopping first at the military airbase of Kandahar, in the badlands of Helmand province, then the joint Aussie Dutch base of Tarin Kowt in Uruzghan province, before finally heading North and East to Kabul. So far we had been on the flight for seven hours, with another two to go and it was getting dark, but luckily we’d been allowed off the aircraft briefly to stretch our legs at each stop. The aircraft had flown a torturous dogleg route to avoid Iranian airspace, I guess it wouldn’t do at all if an Aussie C130 full of armed troops had to do an emergency landing in Iran; it is quite probable we’d all still be there now if it had.

For that past four hours we had been wearing our body armour and helmets, ever since flying over the Afghanistan border in fact. There was a slight risk that the Taliban insurgent had acquired some Soviet era surface to air missiles, not that wearing body armour or a helmet would have helped us much if they had taken a successful pot shot. Rules are rules though. With body armour, webbing, helmet, weapons and ammunition, I had added another 35 Kg to my weight; it was additional weight I was to become very used to. The Aussie Diggers on the ground had to contend with that and more as they conducted long foot patrols in their operating areas, so I wasn’t about to complain, most of the time I would be wearing it whilst sitting in an armoured car anyway.

Despite the uncomfortable kit, the steady droning of the aircraft lulled me to a fitful sleep, I was dog tired having subjected my body to several quick time zone changes in the past few days. I woke with a start when the engine pitch changed and the C130 tilted sharply down