2-17（在线收听）

17.

I went on patrol. I drove with a convoy of Scimitar tanks from FOB Edinburgh through MusaQala, and beyond. The road took us down through a wadi, in which we soon came upon an IED.

The first one I’d encountered.

It was my job to call in the bomb experts. One hour later the Chinook arrived. I found it asecure location for landing, threw a smoke grenade to indicate the best spot, and to show whichway the wind was blowing.

A team quickly hopped out, approached the IED. Slow, painstaking work. It took themforever. Meanwhile, we were all totally exposed. We expected Taliban contact any second; aroundus we heard whizzing motorbikes. Taliban scouts, no doubt. Clocking our location. When themotorbikes got too close, we fired flare guns, warning them off.

In the distance were poppy fields. I looked off, thought of the famous poem. In Flanders fieldsthe poppies blow…In Britain the poppy was a symbol of remembrance, but here it was just thecoin of the realm. All those poppies would soon be processed into heroin, sales of which wouldpay for the Taliban bullets fired at us, and the IEDs left for us under roads and wadis.

Like this one.

At last the bomb experts blew up the IED. A mushroom cloud shot into the air, which was sodust-saturated you didn’t think there could be room for any more.

Then they packed up and left, and we continued north, deeper and deeper into the desert.