Standing Well Back
20th Century

Garland’s first IED attack

I continue to be interested by the story of Herbert Garland detailed in this blog a couple of weeks ago.   I have found some more details here (the primary source being Garland’s own reports held in the UK National Archives) of Garland’s adventures.  Garland had a very dry sense of humour and his reports are full of droll phrases.

Some examples:

Garland went to the town of Yanbu in what is now Eastern Arabia to help the Arab revolutionaries defend it against the Turks.  The defences were short of firepower, but Garland found an ancient Turkish cannon at the fort but as it “was apt to fire astern instead of forward we relied on its warlike appearance to help us scare off the Turks”

Here’s his own words describing  the first IED attack on the railway at Toweira station, I think on the night of 20 February 1917. After a week’s camel ride to the attack point, Garland argued over the tactics for the IED attack with his Arab guide. The guide wanted him to place the device and then scarper, but garland wanted to watch the explosion from a nearby hill. As Garland says “The approach of the train five minutes after starting work settled the matter.”

The trains rarely ran at night which was the cause for surprise. Garland, hearing the shriek of a whistle followed by the squeal of wheels was startled. He scrabbled for the three 5 pound cartons of dynamite which he jammed into the hole under the track he had started excavating.   He pulled from under his black Arab cloak the action of the old Martini Henry rifle. Its barrel had been sawn off and the trigger guard removed so that all that was left was an oblong of brown steel from which the trigger protruded, exposed.  This he loaded with a round of ammunition.. Turning the mechanism upside down, so the trigger was uppermost he wedged it under the rail, bullet pointing into the explosive, trigger brushing the rail above.  The lights of the engine were now close, barely two hundred yards away, travelling at, he guessed, 25 mph.  He got up and ran “ I wished I had devoted more time to physical training in my youth,” he says. His Arab robe swirled around his legs, as if determined to trip him up. Beneath his bare feet, the stony ground felt like ”carving knives, bayonets and tin tacks”.

As the locomotive’s front wheels passed over the device , nothing happened, but a split second later the heavier driving wheels of the train flexed the track enough to pull the trigger.  The explosion threw the train from the track, followed by the carriages behind it as they fell down a stony embankment with a “clanking, whirling and rushing” noise.   It was “the first time that the Turks have had a train wrecked” he reported. Some commentators have said it was the first ever act of sabotage committed by the British Army behind enemy lines.  I’m not sure of that – its an interesting thought – if any reader of this blog can think of an earlier sabotage attack by the British, please let me know.

 I’m truly fascinated that Garland was copying, in part, the IED design used by the Boers some 15 years earlier.  I’ve blogged an image of that Boer device before – but here it is for ease.  Somewhat different but very similar in many ways.

I’m intrigued as to how Garland learned about and decided to copy the Boer IED.  The concept of using a bullet fired from a gun as an initiation mechanism was not that unusual – indeed some of the fenian devices of the 1880s used a similar principle.

In looking closely at the role of the Arab Bureau, of which Garland and Lawrence were part a couple of interesting things come out:

Firstly, while I admire Garland’s efforts immensely, of course I’m torn because essentially he was planting IEDs and I’m normally interested in defeating IEDs and view with contempt those who plant them so there is a dichotomy there that I’m struggling with.

If you were to think of modern day night vision images of local terrorists  planting roadside IEDs being planted next to a road in Iraq or Afghanistan there is very little difference between that and the descriptive image Garland gives of himself scuttling away from the railway track near Toweira in 1917.

Separately I’m intrigued as to the parallels with the Arab Bureau and modern day “special forces operations” in terms of working within a country aiding revolution, identifying future leaders amongst a revolution, encouraging the right people, discouraging the “wrong” people, and enduring battle alongside indigenous forces.   Garland and indeed Lawrence didn’t regard themselves “special forces” and were essentially amateur, but there is no doubt that the paradigm they developed by the seat of their pants is identical to certain SOF principles being developed (again) today.

Next I’m going to hunt out details of Garland’s grenade launcher.

20th Century

Bimbashi Garland

Bimbashi Garland – The man who taught the Arabs about IEDs – a British Ordnance Corps officer and metallurgist.  Thanks to Leslie Payne for flagging this gentleman polymath to me.

Previous posts have detailed some of the remarkable polymaths who have played in the explosive field, like the Earl of Suffolk GC.  Major Herbert Garland OBE, MC FCS is another of these and it’s a remarkable story with real currency.   Herbert Garland was born in Sheffield in 1880. In the years before World War One he was employed firstly as a soldier – an “Ammunition Examiner” of the Ordnance Corps trained at Woolwich, posted to the Channel Islands and then to Khartoum,  then as a government explosives expert as a superintendent at an Army munitions laboratory in Cairo.  During this time his hobby was archeological metallurgy, and Cairo was certainly the place to follow that interest.

When the war started he joined the “Arab Bureau” along with TE Lawrence and a rag tag bunch of businessmen, spies, soldiers and intellectuals. The Arab Bureau’s role was a model of modern day irregular warfare and I’ll write about them more in the future. Basically they had a very broad remit to develop intelligence and undertake operations across the Arab world in support of Britain’s war aims.  It was a model of fusion between military and political activity that is rarely seen. Lawrence of Arabia’s activities where just a part of their activity.  As an organization it wasn’t without its critics who saw them as a group of amateurish and incompetent pro-Arab dilettantes.  It’s intruiging to me that quite a few of the Arab Bureau, including Lawrence, Garland and (the not famous enough) Gertrude Bell shared a common interest in archaeology. 

Garland, given a Special List commission,  became the Bureau’s explosive expert, despite a somewhat casual approach to explosive safety. He developed grenades and an improvised mortar systems to launch the grenades, which was used extensively at Gallipoli.  An image of Garland’s mortar is here

Garland also designed a range of IEDs used by Lawrence and Garland himself in the Arab revolt against Ottoman rule. In fact it would appear Garland was doing this work well before Lawrence joined the Bureau. Garland planted the IED that derailed the first Ottoman train near Toweira station in 1917, using an improvised pressure switch mechanism.  Interestingly he built and emplaced his IEDs so that they would not be spotted by Turkish troops employed to check the line before a train ran.

Garland was an Arabic speaker and earned high praise as a teacher of his dark arts.  I rather like this quote from Lawrence of Arabia about thim; Lawrence had travelled to Yenbo, the base of the Arab army under Feisal “where Garland single-handed was teaching the Sherifians how to blow up railways with dynamite and how to keep army stores in systematic order. The first activity was the better.”

In 1918 he was sent to Medina to accept the Turkish surrender.  Lawrence assessed Garland’s contribution to the revolt as “much greater” than his own.   Garland died in 1921, his health destroyed by the campaigns he fought in the Middle East – and it took his wife two years to claim a war pension, as at first the military pensions department refused to accept his illness was directly connected with the rigours of his wartime experience, riding with the Bedu across the deserts of Arabia.

I’m reminded of my favourite quote from The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T E Lawrence, and very possibly my favourite quote ever:

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.

Garland like his colleague Lawrence, was a dreamer of the day. Sua Tela Tonanti.

19th Century

Copycat IED attacks – 100 years apart

One of the reasons I study historical IED attacks is the parallels with current IED attacks. Sometimes the parallels need a bit of analysis to see; sometimes the parallels are frankly startling.  He’s some specific UK examples.  It is often forgotten that the Irish terrorists have been planting IEDs in England since the late 19th century.  There were then subsequent campaigns in 1939 (the “S Plan”) and later in the 20th century. It is interesting that sometimes the exact same targets were attacked.

The IRA’s “S Plan” in particular, although largely unsuccessful, posed an intriguing terrorist threat worthy of study because the IRA in the early months of 1939 attacked the national electrical power supply infrastructure in the UK. Not with much success, I admit, but nonetheless with clear strategic intent.  There are a few other terrorist campaigns where specific aspects of infrastructure have been targeted but this is an interesting one. Details of the quite broad ranging S Plan attacks are here.

Below is a list of attacks that match or replicate IED attacks from earlier campaigns. In particular I would highlight the repeat attacks on Victoria Station (three times), and Hammersmith Bridge

Prisons:

1. 1867 – A “fenian” device used to breach a prison wall at Clerkenwell

2. 1939 IRA device blew up against the wall of Walton Gaol in Liverpool

London Train/ Tube stations

1. 1883/1884/1885 IEDs exploded at Gower St Station (now Euston Square) and Victoria Station left luggage office. Device defused at Charing Cross Station. Other devices exploded in tunnels

2. In 1939/1940 Devices exploded at Tottenham Court Road, Leicester Square, Kings Cross and Victoria Station left luggage office then in 1940 Euston station. IRA two devices defused at Baker Street

3. 1991, 1992 IEDs at Paddington station, Hammersmith and Victoria Station, London Bridge station, other devices on trains and near stations

Hammersmith Bridge

1. March 1939 Hammersmith Bridge attacked with two IEDs

2. June 2000 Hammersmith Bridge attacked with one IED

Houses of Parliament

1. 1884 Fenian devices exploded in the Houses of Parliament

2. 1974 IRA device exploded at the Houses of Parliament

Department stores

1. 1939 department stores attacked with incendiaries

2. 1991/1992 department stores and shops attacked with inendiaries

Scotland Yard

1. In 1884 a device exploded next to Scotland Yard, headquarters of the Metropolitan Police

2. In 1973, Police defused a bomb outside New Scotland Yard

Tower of London

1. 1885 An explosion at the Tower of London

2. 1974  An explosion at the Tower of London

Gasworks

1. 1883  A gas works was attacked with an IED in Glasgow

2. In 1939 gasworks were on the intended strategy of the IRA’s S Plan

3. In 1993 A gas works was attacked in Warrington

1910-1920

A Train Of Thought

A bomb on a railway line in Russia yesterday, 27th November, causes me to bounce, in a mind map sort of way along a series of thoughts. Let me try and replicate this below with, excusing the pun, a progression of thoughts in a train. I’ll put a link or two at each “carriage” so you can dig detail if you wish. I’m limiting my thoughts to bombs under train tracks and not bombs on trains.

The explosion yesterday appears to have derailed the train, killing at least 26 people. Interestingly there was a second explosion some hours later a short distance away – details are not yet clear.

Devices placed on railway lines, detonated as the train passes aren’t new in Russia. One occurred in 2007. Two Chechen terrorists were charged with the crime.

Earlier in Russia’s history trains were attacked by IEDs by other terrorists. Tsar Alexander II was the target of an IED attack in 1879 when the Narodnaya Volya terrorist group attempted to attack his train by placing explosives under the railway Livadia to Moscow, but they missed the tsar’s train. The Narodnicks attacked the Tsar seven times, finally killing him in 1881.

One of history’s best train bombers, arguably, was Lawrence of Arabia, famous for attacks on the Turkish controlled railways in Arabia during the ”Arab revolt”. This excerpt from a letter to fellow officers from Lawrence.

In a letter to fellow officers describing one of his daring raids on a Turkish train, Lawrence vividly captures the excitement he felt fighting in the desert. The train, he wrote, “had two locomotives and we gutted one with an electric mine. This rather jumbled up the trucks , which were full of Turks shooting at us. We had a Lewis and flung bullets through the sides. So they hopped out and took cover behind the embankment and shot at us between the wheels at 50 yards.Then we tried a Stokes gun, and two beautiful shots dropped right in the middle of them. They could not stand that (12 died on the spot) and bolted away to the East across a 100-yard belt of open sand into some scrub. Unfortunately for them, the Lewis covered the open stretch.”

In other conflicts too, IED shave been used against trains. The diagram below is of an IED recently researched by a colleague in South Africa dating from the Boer war and was a Boer IED used to attack trains. The device uses the trigger of a rifle which is pressed when a train travels over it.

EXTRACT FROM PAGES 25 & 26 – TO THE BITTER END BY EMANOEL LEE

This incident highlights the Boers’ success in wrecking trains, which plagued Roberts and Kitchener throughout the war.  No train was safe.  At first they were derailed by setting off dynamite as the train passed.  The attackers had to lie next to the line to light the fuse.  This was highly dangerous, and the Boers subsequently developed a safer method of stopping trains without injuring passengers or damaging the supplies they needed.  Old Martini-Henry rifles (for which there was no ammunition) were prepared by sawing off the butt behind the breech and removing the barrel a few inches in front of it.  The trigger-guard was the removed and the breech opened.  They inserted a cartridge without a bullet in the breech and placed a dynamite cartridge in the shortened barrel.  Stones were then removed under the rail to make a hole, which was packed with dynamite.  The mutilated breech of the rifle was then placed upside-down on top of the dynamite with the trigger just touching the rail.  When a train passed, its weight made the rail sag and set off the trigger.’

 

Jumping back to modern times, and to demonstrate the potential vulnerability of rail systems, the terrorists responsible for the Madrid train bombings were believed to have planted a device under the tracks of a Madrid express train to carry out a subsequent attack but they all died when their safe house was discovered before this follow on attack could be launched.  The 12kg device was found on April 2 2004 on the Madrid to Seville express line. Other islamist/Al Qaeda plots focused on train tracks are numerous.

In France a few years ago there was a bizarre extortion plot threatening trains that soaked up thousands of hours of track searching by the police.

Elsewhere, a wide variety of groups around the world have attacked train tracks and the trains that run on them. Northern Ireland, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, etc etc,  Here’s a couple of reports  from India both in the last two weeks which demonstrate how commonplace such attacks are:

I think this ‘train of thought’ technique works quite well – please feel free to add your own carriages of related material – remember this thread is explosions of tracks to attack trains not bomb on trains.

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