Danger UXB

Danger UXB: The Heroic Story of the WWII Bomb Disposal Teams, by James Owen, Little, Brown RRP£20, 364 pages

Bomb disposal teams are on the frontline of the war in Afghanistan - tackling the improvised explosive devices that are killing so many young soldiers. The nerve-jangling business of dismantling often booby-trapped explosives has been the subject of an Oscar-winning film, The Hurt Locker (2008). In James Owen's Danger UXB, we go back to the earliest days of tackling unexploded bombs - and it is a tale of surprisingly hit-and-miss amateurishness as military men deal with a new kind of warfare.

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In the summer of 1940 as the Battle of Britain gave way to the Blitz, prime minister Winston Churchill issued a memo in which he accepted it was the responsibility of the War Office to deal with delayed-action bombs dropped by the German Luftwaffe. "This may become a feature of the enemy attack," he predicted. "It seems to me that an energetic effort should be made to provide sufficient squads to deal with this form of attack in large centres. The service, which is highly dangerous, must be considered particularly honourable."

Owen skilfully tells the story of these new squads through the lives of four pioneering bomb disposal officers. The most extraordinary was "Wild Jack" Howard, Earl of Suffolk. Exemplifying the talented but reckless aristocrat doing his "bit" for the war effort, he first impressed the War Office by smuggling nuclear scientists out of France just before the Germans invaded.

Fearless and utterly charming, the 34-year-old had more than a dash of the Scarlet Pimpernel about him. Having studied pharmacology at Edinburgh University, he was determined to bring his scientific knowledge to bear in the new challenge of deactivating bombs. His buccaneering spirit, combined with an eccentric taste for wearing cowboy hats, did not endear him to more methodical military officers. Neither did his experimental methods of blowing fuses out of bombs. Needless to say, it all ended badly.

Owen's talent is to bring alive these personal stories while also explaining the science of what these brave men were trying to do. Their task was made all the more difficult by the Germans devising booby-traps for those defusing their bombs.

One of the most nail-biting UXB stories is how Bob Davies had the task of saving St Paul's Cathedral from a massive bomb that had plunged into the pavement outside its south-west tower. As Davies and his team dug around it, they suffered burns from igniting leaking gas. With the bomb ticking, they had a maximum of 80 hours to get it away from St Paul's. With the time nearly up, Davies and his comrades hauled the one-ton monster out of the hole and whisked it away to Hackney Marshes where it blasted a crater 100ft wide. It was one of many heroic moments that brought the work of bomb disposal teams to the attention of a grateful nation - and this detailed and dramatic book more than does justice to their memory.

Tim Newark is the author of 'Highlander: The History of the Legendary Highland Soldier' (Constable)

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