REVIEW: ORDERS, DECORATIONS, MEDALS AND MILITARIA: 11 SEPTEMBER

Bomb disposal has long been known as one of the most dangerous occupations in the military. Having to disarm a device in the immediate aftermath of a colleague’s death in an explosion takes a singular type of courage.

That was the challenge for Commander N. A. ‘Bernie’ Bruen, Royal Navy, in some of the most perilous conditions during the Falklands War in 1982. Now, his outstanding Gulf of Suez mine disposal M.B.E., Falklands War bomb disposal D.S.C. group of ten has come to auction at Noonans, selling for £85,000.

The Naval Review, November 2007 (Vol. 95, No. 4), explained just how difficult the situation was in which Commander Bruen, in charge of Fleet Clearance Diving Team in Operation ‘Corporate’, and his team found themselves:

“Throughout the Falklands campaign, the members of the Fleet Clearance Diving Teams lived and worked in atrocious conditions. Performing most of their bomb disposal and repair work at night during lulls in the air raids, they slept in cramped spaces in odd nooks of ships or ashore in damp, makeshift shelters. Much of their diving was conducted in dark fetid compartments surrounded by jagged steel edges, explosive debris and freezing water contaminated by oil, battery acid and raw sewage…”

One of the most reported and tragic events of the Falklands War took place on the evening of 25 May, 1982, when a 1,000lb bomb struck the British Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Sir Galahad. The bomb failed to explode and it fell to Lieutenant Bruen, Officer in Charge Fleet Clearance Diving Team 3, to remove it.

According to the London Gazette citation for Bruen’s subsequent Distinguished Service Cross (8 October 1982), “The bomb was lodged in a difficult position, surrounded by broken batteries which had splashed acid around the compartment. The decision was taken to raise the bomb to the vehicle deck and dispose of it overboard. This difficult and dangerous task was successfully completed by the team in the early hours of the following day. During the operation, Lieutenant Bruen showed great personal courage and impeccable leadership.”

As Bruen himself later wrote: “We had to keep the thing at a certain angle so that it would not go off. The idea then was to sink the inflatable so that the bomb would go down with it, but once my boys let the air out of the boat, it refused to sink, so they had to roll the bomb over into the water instead.”

The operation came just a day after the unsuccessful attempt to neutralise another 1,000 bomb on the Type 21 Frigate H.M.S. Antelope. Bruen and his diving team had arrived in darkness in San Carlos Water that night, “the only light being the burning H.M.S. Antelope”.

Antelope had been hit by two unexploded bombs and had moved to more sheltered waters so that they could be defused. One bomb was inaccessible, while the other was damaged and particularly unstable. Three attempts to defuse the bomb remotely failed, and so Staff Sergeant James Prescott and Warrant Officer John Phillips moved in to tackle it directly using a small explosive charge.

Tragically the charge detonated the bomb, killing Prescott instantly and severely injuring Phillips, who lost his left arm.

On the same day that the Sir Galahad was hit, Bruen also assisted with another 1,000 lb. UXB in the R.F.A. Sir Lancelot, a nerve-wracking 22-hour-long operation in which he cleared away asbestos from inside the bomb’s fuse with a toothpick purloined from the ship’s dental surgery.

As it transpired, Bruen would once again find himself aboard the Sir Galahad, when he and his team were first to reboard the stricken ship at Bluff Cove, together with her consort Sir Tristram: “We put out the fires in Sir Tristram and explosively opened the stern loading door so that her cargo of much needed ammunition could be removed. We were not able to do a great deal on board Galahad as she was still exploding, but we managed to salvage some of her gear. So we did prove useful…”

In the interim, he and his team had been put shore at the hospital area in Ajax Bay, “where we were immediately bombed. We dealt with these devices too, and in daylight hours dived on the Antelope in order to reduce the height of the wreck.”

Then there was the case of the ‘buoyant chemical-horn mine’ which was swept by a mine clearance ship on 25 June 1982. As The Western Morning News reported:

“During the operation he was faced with the deadly dilemma of not knowing which way to turn the detonator so that it could be freed. In the end he decided to treat it ‘Like a lightbulb’ and twisted the device anti-clockwise. ‘Fortunately, it was the right way,’ he said.”

By 1984, Bruen was Explosive Ordnance Disposal Officer to the Flag Officer Portsmouth, making him responsible for dealing in anything explosive, ‘from Second World War sea mines to hand grenades found in back gardens and terrorist bombs’.

Given the command of his old ship, H.M.S. Gavinton, he set off to clear mines in the Gulf of Suez.

“For three months we hunted and at the end we could give a positive assurance that there were no mines in our area. We, the R.N., had found two and we, Gavinton, had been the ship responsible in both cases. One was a beautifully preserved and still lethal Second World War German magnetic mine, which we blew up with delight. The other was an unknown type of Russian ground mine, only the second known enemy mine to be found and defused since Korea. The man who defused it, Warrant Officer Diver Terry Seatle, received the Queen’s Gallantry Medal.”

Following this operation, Bruen was awarded his M.B.E.

Later, he returned to the Falklands to wind up the Fleet Clearance Diving operations before taking up his final appointment, in the Naval Diving Branch, when he was invited to establish a special team of divers.

After early retirement, Bruen joined the Sultan of Oman’s Navy in 1988 as Ratings Training Officer and was given command of the sail training ship Shabab Oman. He remained in the Sultan’s Navy until 1996.

His autobiography, Keep Your Head Down, relates how he found time to play his beloved violin and was nicknamed the ‘Falklands Fiddle’ for his performances during ‘raids, funerals and parties’. He was, in fact, according to one of his old ratings, ‘mad as a box of frogs but a good bloke’.

Nigel Arthur ‘Bernie’ Bruen was born in Haverfordwest, Dyfed, on 20 November 1946, the son of Commander John Martin Bruen, D.S.O., D.S.C., R.N. Educated at Wellington College and the Birmingham School of Dramatic Art, ‘Bernie’ worked as a stage manager and lighting engineer, “a splendid period of my life that I still look upon with fondness and pride”.

Initial naval training as a helicopter pilot proved that he was not cut out for flying, but he did qualify as a naval diver, and successfully undertook the gruelling Long Clearance Diving Course at H.M.S. Vernon – “perhaps the most complete diving and mine warfare course in the world”.

Bruen’s group of ten is being sold with a signed copy of Keep Your Head Down; assorted newspapers and cuttings, mostly Falklands related; and a VHS tape of his ‘News at Ten’ interview with Brian Hanrahan and Michael Nicholson during the Falklands conflict, a 5-minute feature that was broadcast after hostilities were terminated.