Braver Men Walk Away Read online

  But the way I viewed the Sexpo’s role was not the way the Met viewed it; early on the assumption was made that this new, senior post would be non-operational, that the Sexpo would undertake a working day much like any other manager. I violently disagreed: it was my belief that no one could head an operation such as this without active participation in its work. You had to know what it was like, out there on the streets, you had to stay in touch with the changing trends and innovations in terrorism at first-hand, not via the experiences of others or neatly stacked pages of official reports. A good boss should always be interested in the work of his team and the challenges they face but there’s nothing like risking your own life as an incentive to keeping up to date with what’s happening all around.

  The early days, then, were difficult: although the Sexpo job description didn’t require me to work shifts, we were so understaffed that it would have been impractical, not to say irresponsible of me, to stick to the letter of my contract. I therefore found myself working very long hours; the conventional hours of a manager as well as doing operational shifts around the clock.

  I might have been earning a higher salary, but the gap between theory and practice was wide: for instance, I no longer qualified for either extra payment or time off in lieu of weekend working; the thought rapidly dawned that if I’d been blown up by a bomb on a Sunday afternoon then insult would have compounded fatal injury – I’d have departed this life in my own time and at my own expense …

  Fortunately, as soon as the Met discovered what was happening, steps were immediately taken to deal with the problem. The result meant that I could go on being both Expo and Sexpo and be paid for the privilege.

  It all meant I could go on being The Bomb Burglar.

  The nickname came about as much as a result of circumstance as my own enthusiasm for the work. Every bomb situation is frightening. But every bomb situation is interesting – you simply don’t know what you’ll find.

  All Expos are fascinated by bombs otherwise they wouldn’t do the job. Cliché or not, EOD is a way of life: the challenge of the unknown is a constancy. The next bomb could well be of a design and type you’ve encountered before, but it could also be something entirely new, something which will test your skills and judgement to the full.

  Which meant I couldn’t just sit behind my desk when a call came in, knowing that a situation would have to wait because the duty Expos were all out on jobs. I had to get my things together and go. Duty calls, I’d tell myself, but the other Expos tended to regard such behaviour with a wry smile. Said one of them: ‘I’ve only got to be in the loo when the Hotline rings and by the time I’ve come out, Peter’s already half-way to the job.’

  In a different kind of job, in a different type of organization, this sort of behaviour could well have been counter-productive. The Explosives Office, though, is different; what welds its members together is a spirit and self-motivation of a very unique kind.

  So yes, some of my colleagues might’ve grumbled about The Bomb Burglar. But they also knew that as long as Gurney was nicking bombs rather than counting paper clips, the danger of the organization becoming just another component of a bureaucratic machine was very remote indeed.

  12

  Still Here

  17 December 1983: the Saturday before Christmas. I was driving home when I heard the news on my car radio. There had been a bomb explosion outside Harrods. I stopped the car and used a payphone to tell the office I was coming back in. Then I rang my driver and asked him if he’d come back too.

  By the time I arrived at the Bungalow there were a number of jobs waiting to be dealt with. The Expo on the scene at Harrods was apparently going to be there for quite a while. I cleared the other jobs and then, when things slackened off, went over to Knightsbridge. Three hours had elapsed since the blast. I thought my colleague might appreciate assistance or a break.

  There was the usual chaos in the vicinity of the incident, people milling about and traffic jammed up in all directions because of the closure of the main thoroughfare. I found my colleague gathering debris for forensic analysis and asked his permission to enter the area (an Expo never sets foot on another’s patch without consent).

  It was quiet around Harrods. Quiet and still and empty except for a couple of police officers. In the glare of the streetlamps, I found myself walking across ice – no, not ice: though the whole area was glistening as if dressed for the season it was actually covered with glass, with shards and fragments of what had once been the store windows. In some places the glass was ankle deep. It crunched underfoot or shifted under the weight of my passing footfalls, tinkling.

  The bomb had been placed in an old car parked facing the wrong way in a narrow one-way street alongside Harrods. A warning had been given by the IRA but the wording was deliberately ambiguous. The police were evacuating the scene when the bomb exploded.

  I looked at the dimly lit and shattered showcase displays, now open to the night air and a wind which chafed at ragged Christmas decorations, which stirred at torn drapes and made them slowly billow. In buildings higher up the street, fairy lights continued to flash. Everywhere I looked I could see evidence of the season of goodwill to all men – wrapping paper, presents in pretty boxes, baubles, decorations, twisted strands of Christmas Tree lights.

  ‘… jingle all the day, oh what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh … Oh … Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way …’

  The sound suddenly surged and ebbed. Then came: I’m dreamin’ of a White Christmas … Just like the Christmas cards I write …’ The echoes were now gilded with a sweet sentimentality.

  The strangely scented air was now overpowering, drenching the night with sweetness. The blast had swept through the store’s cosmetics and perfumery counters. Now, though, different scents assailed me: burnt oil, burnt rubber, the smell of explosive, the stench of burnt flesh.

  Beneath the car lay the body of a police officer. He had been trying to get people to safety when the bomb went off and blew the vehicle into the air. It had come down on top of him. In the fierce fire that followed, both car and victim had been consumed. Now there was only a tangled mass of burnt metal, an unidentifiable body beneath it. From underneath the remains of the car a hand pointed straight up into the air as if reaching out for help.

  Near by, another victim lay in the sparkling debris. He was very tall, maybe 6 feet 4 inches, with only one apparent injury, the result of a fragment striking him in the middle of his forehead. If he’d not been so tall, the splinter would have missed and he’d still have been alive.

  I moved away, still conscious of the Christmas music, still fighting the nausea of the Christmas smell and the other darker scents behind.

  The third body was a young woman. She had been blown through a plate-glass window and lay tumbled and broken upon the tide of gaily coloured wreckage. At first I thought she was a mannequin. Her skirt had been blown off and she was wearing a little pair of panties decorated with a heart which embraced the message: I LOVE YOU.

  The safety switch on which I had so long depended failed me at that moment.

  Who had she been, this girl? For whom had she worn these clothes? Who had she loved, and who had loved her? I LOVE YOU.

  Too late I became aware of what was happening: I was breaking the unwritten rules which said I should remain detached. The body of a victim is a clue – sometimes, a vital clue – to the nature and performance of a bomb. To consider the victim as a person is to make a bad situation far worse. Bomb scenes are frightening places to be and a confident, controlled and detached explosives officer is essential to the whole operation. If an Expo is upset, is in tears or racked by anger, then that will show. If he is frightened, that will show too. If he lets anything in from outside it will disrupt him deep within, and when that happens everything can come apart.

  I turned away and headed back to the cordon and the metronomic sweep of dozens of blue lights. I had gone to Harrods as one who has a professional i
nterest in bombs, but because I had no active role to play I had nothing to stop my mind from ranging into areas filled only with a sense of painful futility.

  Later, in the safety of home, the tears finally came.

  The capability of the IRA to wreak havoc and terror on the mainland population shows little sign of diminishing. In the early 1970s, IRA strategists circulated an internal document which showed how economic damage running into millions could be caused by incendiary devices costing only a few pounds. Twenty years on, that strategy still holds true: IRA incendiary attacks continue to demonstrate the scale of disruption and destruction which can be inflicted at minimal expense to the perpetrators.

  In many ways this is a textbook example of what happens when society inadvertently allows itself to be terrorized, for the threat posed by this kind of campaign is magnified out of all proportion thanks to over-reaction by the authorities and over-emphasis by the media. Such ill-judged behaviour is not lost on the IRA; it now knows that even a series of hoax calls, interspersed with the odd incendiary or two, can paralyse large areas of London and other major UK towns and cities.

  The future is therefore likely to see a continuation of the existing pattern of tactics: shootings, hoaxes, bombs of increasing technological sophistication and what might best be termed as ‘pot-boilers’ and ‘spectaculars’, the former covering incendiary attacks and small explosive devices, the latter major attacks such as those at the Baltic Exchange in the City, and Staples Corner, where a vital artery in London’s road system was all but destroyed.

  The importance of the ‘pot-boiler’ (as well as the hoax) derives as much from what it is as what it represents: a further drain on security and police resources and a niggling reminder to society at large that the IRA is by no means a spent force. By contrast, the ‘spectaculars’ exist not only to cause widespread damage but to keep the terrorists on the front page, to demonstrate that at any time the IRA is capable of major attacks.

  Paradoxically, official response to both types of incident has been consistently inappropriate: the ‘pot-boiler’ has been played up, but the ‘spectacular’ played down, resulting in widespread misreporting. Although the media was told that both the City and Staples Corner devices were of the order of 100 pounds of Semtex, even from my cursory examinations of the bomb scenes the devastation shows the magnitude to have been far in excess of that – I estimate between 750 and 1,000 pounds of home-made explosive.

  I am at a loss to explain why the facts were not properly disclosed; as the IRA know the size of the devices they used, there is little point in withholding the information from everyone else. A further consideration also arises: anyone seeing the pictures of the aftermath of Staples Corner and the Baltic Exchange could be forgiven for thinking that if the terrorists can do so much damage with just 100 pounds of explosive, what could they do with a much bigger bomb?

  The fiction which began with Semtex – that the IRA was somehow in possession of a ‘super-weapon’ – thus runs on unchecked as the terrorists are handed another undeserved propaganda victory. The lesson is simple: whenever the facts are needlessly obscured or withheld, it is to the terrorist’s benefit, not society’s.

  The Harrods’ bombing was the one occasion when my internal safety switch failed to work. On the whole I have managed to maintain the detached attitude so crucial to the work of bomb disposal. And our professionalism is constantly being put to the test: Andy Clarke, the Explosives Officer I worked with during the London car bomb campaign of March 1973, once found himself on the receiving end of a ferocious cross-examination by a defence counsel.

  The Court case had nothing to do with terrorism – the accused was actually charged with safe-blowing. Andy, who had been tasked to the scene, made notes of what he had found there and what he had done and then wrote what should have been a comprehensive report. Unfortunately Andy was better at practice than theory; give him an incident to deal with and he would manage just fine, but give him a sheet of paper and a typewriter and he stared at the page in frustration.

  I knew how he felt. All my life I’ve hated paperwork too. Unfortunately this kind of antipathy can cause problems, especially when it leaves you open to challenge as an expert witness. You know what you did and why you did it, but if you haven’t explained everything in writing, then others can attack your professional credibility.

  The defence counsel tore into Andy. ‘So you’re saying you did carry out this particular procedure at the scene?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But it isn’t mentioned in your report.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Just like this other business, about what happened with the safe. That isn’t fully explained in your report, either.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Counsel turned theatrically to the Court, then back to Andy again. ‘You’re not a very good explosives officer are you, Mr Clarke?’

  ‘Well,’ said Andy, ‘I’m still here …’

  Still here: two words that separate the lucky from the unlucky. From those who make one mistake too many and those who do not. Still here, after all the years of tension and fear and close encounters with death. If you’ve gone into high-risk situations time and again and survived them, then you’re a very good explosives officer indeed.

  But the day comes when you can’t do it any longer. The pressure becomes too great, or ill-health intervenes, or you come up against the one obstacle that can’t be surmounted: retirement age. Retirement at sixty is compulsory. To an Expo whose nature is not to think that far ahead, retirement age is something that belongs to another day and comes to other people.

  When it came to me, I could have done without it. Someone said it was quite a distinction, reaching retirement age while still on ‘active service’; someone else said, Aren’t you glad, no more of this charging about London, never knowing from one day to the next what will happen?

  I didn’t reply. I didn’t know if I was supposed to feel or look any different. I was the same person who not long before had been sitting astride a mortar at the back of 10 Downing Street: same person, same year, but different age.

  It seemed to take for ever, parcelling up my things, emptying my office, taking home all the unlikely little souvenirs that had accumulated over the years. It also seemed as much like the beginning as the ending, for the view beyond the window showed a scene little changed from the day I first joined the Met’s Explosives Office: the capital still spread out beneath a grey winter sky; the Thames still flowed sluggishly under Westminster Bridge.

  Later there were parties, many of them connected with the Met, several of them not, social gatherings or festivities prompted by the Christmas season or the dawn of 1992. They were all in their separate ways enjoyable, but the best were the family parties, because no questions were asked, so no answers had to be given.

  My son and daughter were grown up now, with careers of their own. As for Daphne and me, we had long since parted. Our marriage had slowly run down to the point where there had been little sense in staying together. I left with no thought of marrying again, but then in the spring of 1983 I met Sheridan, a journalist; we were married seven years later.

  Sheridan was, and is, very special. For the first time ever I found myself truly sharing my work and my experiences with someone who listened and understood. She brought with her a new perspective, a new way of looking at the world; she raised questions and issues which made me re-evaluate many of the things I had previously found it easier to shelve. I realized then that I had been carrying too many pieces of locked baggage filled with suppressed memories.

  Although it was never easy to field a ready answer, I began to find it less awkward to respond to the questions that people always asked about a way of life that seemed quite inexplicable. The answers were not always what people expected; it is human nature to prefer intrigue to clarity, complexity to simplicity. Yet the answer to the recurring question was always simple: I did what I did because I enjoyed it and it challenged me
. How others in bomb disposal felt about their jobs I couldn’t say, although it was obvious that what bound us together transcended routine considerations like salaries and working conditions. I could only speak for myself, and say that I’d had a lifetime of bombs because I had never wanted anything else.

  There was one other question, asked sometimes directly, sometimes obliquely, that always touched upon the soul of the bomb man’s existence: how it is that he can continue day after day, knowing the risks.

  Bomb disposal operators may discuss each other’s ideas, problems, past mistakes and even near-disasters – the times when we’ve all thought, Oh Christ! this is the end of the line – but they don’t debate their innermost feelings. They don’t bring to the surface their fears and anxieties because to do so is to tread on dangerous ground; to do so is to bring to light something an individual might not wish (or be strong enough) to confront.

  Over the years, in various parts of the world, I’ve seen what happens as a result. I’ve seen men exhaust their last reserve of courage and, instead of acknowledging it and realizing that there’s no shame, no dishonour in losing the nerve to go on, have thrown themselves into ever more dangerous situations, taking risks that beggared belief.

  To their way of thinking, they’ve been testing themselves to the full, braving everything and defying anything which might compel them to give up their career. But an operator who is unable to maintain mastery over fear is an operator who shouldn’t be there; the risk posed by a bomb going off is already great and an operator who is coming apart is only adding to that risk.

  Bomb disposal men are conscious of the strength of nerve that is required, but it isn’t at the forefront of their minds. To the bomb man, bravery isn’t some swaggering display, some gung-ho exhibition of macho bravado. It is the mastery of fear, a mastery often maintained by sheer strength of will, which provides the adrenalin vital to take one through a testing situation. Above all, it is knowledge that sustains daily existence: the years of training, the accumulation of experience. It is knowledge that shores up a sometimes faltering heart, and underpins a faith in one’s own professionalism, a belief in one’s own abilities to tackle whatever the day may bring.