30th January

Cheeky motherfuckers! I found an IED 200m west down the Neb in a ditch in a fucking blind spot of the super sanger! Normal patrol, and we were following an irrigation ditch just in W6A AO, and I glanced down and saw some string going across the ditch, for a second I thought it was okay, as the locals string off their fields so they know where to plant the seeds etc, but as I looked in the field there was no string marking it out, so I took a knee and shouted ‘STOP’, then Jim came running back down to my position and asked what was up, I explain what I thought and he said, ‘Yeah mate fair play’, and radioed up to get Dunc the Valum man down to check it out. As he did he was getting a big double tone hit, high metal content, enough for a 10 liner to get sent up to the EOD.

Well the 10 liner was sent up at 1000, and they got to us at 1400, 4 hours sat in that ditch securing a pissing IED, still better then one of finding it the other way. We were firm in the ditch around spot 9 W6A, not 150m up from the IED, and the EOD confirmed a 105mm shell packed with HME (homemade explosive)., and after a lot of photo taking they blew this thing up and fuck me, 150m away with all our head down this thing was nasty, no other word for it, the shockwave was so intense it made my stomach turn.

We were informed that, that thing was to be used like a claymore just on a bigger scale, and if one of us had set that off, that’s a KIA and the lads around that bloke would have been diffy a few body parts and fragged to shit. So we got back to Qudrat at 1630 after leaving at 0900 this morning, been mega sitting around in a ditch all day bineing and shooting the shit with the lads on the ground.

Just glad a saw that string because I dread to think what if!