To the three bravest of women:

my mother, my sister and my daughter.

Lighting the Fuse

Stories from Britain’s first female bomb disposal expert

Lucy Lewis

Contents

Dedication

Title Page

Author’s Note

In Memoriam

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

Epilogue: What Happened Next . . .

Afterword: What Does the Army Do All Day?

Acknowledgements

Credits

Copyright

Author’s Note

This book is based on my diaries, records and recollection of events. The following names are pseudonyms: Corporal Gregg, Jane, Ken, Captain Wallis, Staff Sergeant Beech, Captain Flatley, Colonel Knight, Miss Morton, Ben, Jackie, David, Graham, Roger, JJ, Bob, Mark, Tennison, Thompson, Newman, Taylor, Corporal Thorpe and Fred.

In Memoriam

Captain Lisa Head

Killed defusing an IED in Afghanistan 19 April 2011

Aged 29

‘I fear there is a complex against women being

connected with lethal work. We must get

rid of this.’

Prime Minister Winston Churchill to his

Secretary of State for War, 1941

Prologue

‘This could be it,’ I mutter to myself, as I try in vain to make out the faces of the people on the pavement, all just a blur by the time we’ve reached and swept past them. The buildings we whizz past blend into one amorphous block. I am in the passenger seat of a speeding Land Rover, its blue lights flashing as we try to keep pace with the police escort up ahead. I cast a sideways glance at the driver, Corporal Gregg, whose eyes are bright with excitement. He bites his moustached top lip and grips the swinging wheel for dear life as he just about keeps the wallowing hippo of a vehicle in the middle of the narrow Kent road. Our Land Rover is heavily laden and rolls perilously on the corners. I cautiously glance back to check the kit stowed behind us; we are carrying boxes of sensitive detonators but also enough plastic explosive to practically vaporise us. The hairs on the back of my neck prick up in nervous anticipation as my lunch begins to make itself known in the pit of my stomach. I’m starting to feel nauseous – I hate being car-sick.

I am twenty-six years old, a Duty Bomb Disposal Officer, the first woman ever to be listed on the Operational Bomb Disposal Officer Roster and this is my very first emergency call-out. We are on our way to investigate the report of a bomb found when a homeowner was digging in his garden on a newly built housing estate, trying to set out the flower beds.

Corporal Gregg glances over at me. I have worked with him before but only in the relative calm of the Regimental Headquarters, where he is one of my troop of clerks. I trust him completely but I don’t want to give anyone the chance to tell the story of the vomiting female bomb disposal officer. There are plenty of men who still think the high pressure, high stakes world of bomb disposal is no place for a woman. It’s one extra distraction I have to get out of my mind if I am going to focus on the job ahead. Not for the first time I think of the old Ginger Rogers adage, that she had to be able to do everything Fred Astaire did but backwards and in heels.

Luckily Corporal Gregg is clearly enjoying himself too much to notice my nervousness. As we hurtle through the countryside in the wake of the police car, he hauls us around a roundabout. The opposing traffic has pulled over to let us pass. All they see is a large white Land Rover flash past with its front wings painted red. No one remembers that the red wings were the wartime equivalent of blue lights when the blackout didn’t allow lights at all – and for fifty years they have put out the same message: ‘Let us through,’ they scream, ‘there’s a bomb we need to make safe.’

I grit my teeth, trying to focus on the task ahead and resisting the temptation to hang on to the grab handle above the passenger door. As well as the nervousness, a bigger part of me is alive and buzzing with the excitement of possibility – this could be it! My big World War II German iron bomb! The type every Royal Engineers bomb disposal officer longs to be called to. This is what all the training was for: all those hours spent practising drilling into bomb fuzes, learning to wire up explosive charges and examining suspicious rusting lumps of metal. When we arrive at the bomb all eyes will look to me for guidance. I’ll be making decisions that are the difference between life and death. Ever since the beginning of the Blitz in 1940 it has always been men who set off to deal with the unexploded bombs and munitions that war leaves behind, with little protection against the danger. Today, for the first time ever, it will be a woman – me. No pressure.

A few hours earlier I had been spending a quiet Sunday afternoon ironing my kit, a classic military pastime, and checking my duty pager every few minutes. I wasn’t nervous so much as expectant, as if I suspected what the day would hold.

Right now, as I’m flung sideways against the door, it’s like being on the fairground waltzers and we’re gaining on the police escort that is guiding us to our target. As we race through the empty Dartford Tunnel all traffic is stopped, because live explosives aren’t allowed to share the confined space with other vehicles. Not for the first time I think about the route that has brought me here, to this point.

‘We’re getting close.’

I nod. This is it.