In October 2009, a battalion of soldiers from Britain’s Coldstream Guards was deployed to the Helmand Province of Afghanistan to launch an offensive with U.S. and NATO forces against the Taliban. Among them was Private Glenn Hockton, an 18-year-old from the Essex region northeast of London. He was responsible for loading shells into mortars. Private Hockton, Afghanistan mine field and the Rosary Afghanistan was, of course, a war zone, which meant that its soil was peppered with land mines. At the time that Hockton was on his tour of duty, the British military could have used any number of techniques to sniff out and destroy mines before its soldiers came across them. Some armies used heavy-duty remote-controlled bulldozers, others used helicopters with high-tech rakes, while still others experimented with spraying a special bacteria on the ground that lights up when it comes in contact with TNT. Any of these techniques might have prevented Hockton from trudging across a mine-infested Afghan field one day with five fellow soldiers. But he had no such luck. As Private Hockton walked through this field that day, he had a sensation on his back and instantly felt something that had been around his neck fall to the ground. When he stopped to pick it up, he realized he’d just stepped on an improvised explosive device; if he stepped off it, he’d be blown to bits. He called to his comrades, who rushed back and—over the course of the next 45 minutes—worked to disarm the mine as Hockton just stood there. It worked. To the battalion’s relief, Hockton was freed without...
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