HALO Hero

A chap called Guy Marot gave us a talk at the Bridport Camera Club last night.  He has spent most of his life rendering explosive devices safe in various places around the world and his talk was very interesting, enlightening.  He was part of the effort contracted by the British Government to return the mined areas of the Falklands back to the populace – 122 of them, I think he said.  That took from 2009 to 2020.

He was in NI as an Army officer before that, Serbia and the Congo as well.  He also spent time in Libya after the fall of Gaddafi as a member of the ICRC team – I didn't know that the Red Cross was instrumental in such clean-up operations.

The devices on the table in front of him: a large anti-vehicle mine and some small anti-personnel mines.  The thing with springy prongs is the tail of a bomblet from a British cluster bomb – one of 147 in a BL755 – now illegal.

It was interesting but also quite depressing: how much effort goes into making areas of the world uninhabitable for decades after conflict.  What will Ukraine look like?