bobdina
08-16-2010, 10:58 AM
A version of Hurt Locker
Texas Guard unit takes on risks of disabling roadside bombs
By LINDSAY WISE
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Aug. 15, 2010, 11:31PM
Steven Erb had only two weeks left in his six-month deployment to Afghanistan when a fuel truck reportedly rigged with explosives was discovered on a military base in Kandahar in July 2007.
Erb had to walk to the truck alone, sweating in a claustrophobic 90-pound bomb suit, to search the vehicle and, if necessary, disarm any booby traps. He knew if a bomb went off and ignited the fuel, his heavy protective suit would do little more than keep all his body parts in one place.
Erb's heart pounded and his vision tunneled as he approached the truck. Frantic thoughts flew through his head: "'Why am I here? What am I doing?' But you have to pull back and put those aside in the moment and do your job," he said.
The 37-year-old master sergeant with the Texas Air National Guard serves as one of five explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) technicians assigned to the 147th Reconnaissance Wing at Houston's Ellington Field. Trained to defuse anything from land mines to nuclear bombs, the Guardsmen regularly deploy overseas to combat the primary threat to U.S. troops at war: improvised explosive devices, or homemade bombs.
In Afghanistan, IEDs cause about 75 percent of casualties to NATO troops, according to the Defense Department's Joint IED Defeat Organization.
"IEDs are political weapons," said Staff Sgt. Hunter Sauls, a 27-year-old EOD tech with the 147th. "They strike at our political will to fight. If we can't move, we can't accomplish our objectives."
The Texas A&M University graduate enlisted in 2003, scored well on aptitude tests and decided to attend the military's elite EOD school straight out of basic training.
Last May, Sauls deployed to Afghanistan, where he served on one of two Air Force teams responsible for clearing convoy routes, disarming IEDs and responding to blast scenes in a mountainous province south of Kabul.
Sauls and his fellow Air Force EOD techs worked with a cavalry squadron from the Army's 10th Mountain Division.
"Traditionally the Army covers the battlefield, but because of the workload in our career field, they've had to call in everybody, the Navy, the Air Force, the National Guard," Sauls said.
"We were getting in firefights a lot, getting blown up a lot, and (insurgents are) targeting us because they want us out of the picture, because we are the ones who counter their chief weapon," he said. "I mean, the bad guys don't have MiGs (fighter jets), they don't have tanks."
Guerrilla tactics
Sauls' team encountered as many as five or six IEDs a day. The team would return to base after 13- or 14-hour patrols, toting bags of evidence to sort and examine.
"The part about the job I like is solving the mystery, figuring out if there's something really here and what it's doing," Sauls said. "And a lot times, you have to really have a sort of sinister respect when the bad guys think of something really twisted, really ingenious. And of course we adjust ourselves accordingly."
But Sauls said it's also the mysterious nature of IEDs that makes them such effective psychological weapons.
"There's a huge amount of fear there, the fear of the unknown, of this bogeyman out there," he said.
U.S. troops wouldn't mind a fair fight, Sauls said, but insurgents tend to plant IEDs in footpaths or roadsides and walk away.
"So the guy that's trying to kill you, he's not even here, and the worst part is that when it happens, guys are lying on the ground, and they're either really messed up or they're in a lot of pain," Sauls said. "The initial reaction is just rage at the whole world because you have nobody to retaliate against."
Bomb suit is last resort
He said an EOD tech lives on "the ragged edge of all your nerves," always working under the assumption that the invisible enemy is watching every move.
On his three-man team, Sauls operated a small robot to identify and disable IEDs from a safe distance. The team leader would put on the bomb suit only as a last resort.
"My job was to keep him out of it," said Sauls, who takes pride in the fact that his team leader had to get in the suit just once.
Erb donned the bomb suit a handful of times during his 2007 deployment, including that nerve-wracking July day on the base in Kandahar. As it turned out, the fuel truck wasn't actually wired to explode. False alarm. Erb walked away counting his blessings.
Every EOD tech knows friends or colleagues maimed or killed on the job. Earlier in the deployment, Erb had been 50 feet from a soldier who stepped on a land mine outside an Afghan village.
"It still impacts me today," he said. "I mean, I see the …" He trailed off. "It motivates me to do my job better when you see life taken from us right there, 50 feet away."
Erb will deploy again in about seven months. Earlier this year, he rented the Oscar-winning movie The Hurt Locker with his wife and stepson in the hope that it would help his family understand what he does for a living, but he was disappointed.
"It didn't do my job any justice," Erb said. "There's a lot of Hollywood and John Wayne."
The Hurt Locker portrayed EOD techs as crazy-genius adrenaline junkies, Erb said, but in reality, there's no place for loose cannons on an EOD team. "During the training they try to weed those people out," he said.
Tech praises part of film
The movie did get some things right, though, Erb said. Returning to civilian life after doing such a high-stakes job day in and day out can be rough. In the film, the main character, an EOD tech, decides to deploy again, despite the danger.
"It does kind of show what goes through people's heads," Erb said. "Even for me, when I came back, there was borderline depression and difficulty integrating with my family."
Sauls said he felt bored and restless after returning to the U.S. from Afghanistan in November.
"The biggest feeling you get back home is that you should be doing something because everything you do over there is important," he said. "When I got over there I realized that nothing I'd ever done in my life had really mattered because suddenly everything I did over there mattered. It was life and death."
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/military/7154918.html
Texas Guard unit takes on risks of disabling roadside bombs
By LINDSAY WISE
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Aug. 15, 2010, 11:31PM
Steven Erb had only two weeks left in his six-month deployment to Afghanistan when a fuel truck reportedly rigged with explosives was discovered on a military base in Kandahar in July 2007.
Erb had to walk to the truck alone, sweating in a claustrophobic 90-pound bomb suit, to search the vehicle and, if necessary, disarm any booby traps. He knew if a bomb went off and ignited the fuel, his heavy protective suit would do little more than keep all his body parts in one place.
Erb's heart pounded and his vision tunneled as he approached the truck. Frantic thoughts flew through his head: "'Why am I here? What am I doing?' But you have to pull back and put those aside in the moment and do your job," he said.
The 37-year-old master sergeant with the Texas Air National Guard serves as one of five explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) technicians assigned to the 147th Reconnaissance Wing at Houston's Ellington Field. Trained to defuse anything from land mines to nuclear bombs, the Guardsmen regularly deploy overseas to combat the primary threat to U.S. troops at war: improvised explosive devices, or homemade bombs.
In Afghanistan, IEDs cause about 75 percent of casualties to NATO troops, according to the Defense Department's Joint IED Defeat Organization.
"IEDs are political weapons," said Staff Sgt. Hunter Sauls, a 27-year-old EOD tech with the 147th. "They strike at our political will to fight. If we can't move, we can't accomplish our objectives."
The Texas A&M University graduate enlisted in 2003, scored well on aptitude tests and decided to attend the military's elite EOD school straight out of basic training.
Last May, Sauls deployed to Afghanistan, where he served on one of two Air Force teams responsible for clearing convoy routes, disarming IEDs and responding to blast scenes in a mountainous province south of Kabul.
Sauls and his fellow Air Force EOD techs worked with a cavalry squadron from the Army's 10th Mountain Division.
"Traditionally the Army covers the battlefield, but because of the workload in our career field, they've had to call in everybody, the Navy, the Air Force, the National Guard," Sauls said.
"We were getting in firefights a lot, getting blown up a lot, and (insurgents are) targeting us because they want us out of the picture, because we are the ones who counter their chief weapon," he said. "I mean, the bad guys don't have MiGs (fighter jets), they don't have tanks."
Guerrilla tactics
Sauls' team encountered as many as five or six IEDs a day. The team would return to base after 13- or 14-hour patrols, toting bags of evidence to sort and examine.
"The part about the job I like is solving the mystery, figuring out if there's something really here and what it's doing," Sauls said. "And a lot times, you have to really have a sort of sinister respect when the bad guys think of something really twisted, really ingenious. And of course we adjust ourselves accordingly."
But Sauls said it's also the mysterious nature of IEDs that makes them such effective psychological weapons.
"There's a huge amount of fear there, the fear of the unknown, of this bogeyman out there," he said.
U.S. troops wouldn't mind a fair fight, Sauls said, but insurgents tend to plant IEDs in footpaths or roadsides and walk away.
"So the guy that's trying to kill you, he's not even here, and the worst part is that when it happens, guys are lying on the ground, and they're either really messed up or they're in a lot of pain," Sauls said. "The initial reaction is just rage at the whole world because you have nobody to retaliate against."
Bomb suit is last resort
He said an EOD tech lives on "the ragged edge of all your nerves," always working under the assumption that the invisible enemy is watching every move.
On his three-man team, Sauls operated a small robot to identify and disable IEDs from a safe distance. The team leader would put on the bomb suit only as a last resort.
"My job was to keep him out of it," said Sauls, who takes pride in the fact that his team leader had to get in the suit just once.
Erb donned the bomb suit a handful of times during his 2007 deployment, including that nerve-wracking July day on the base in Kandahar. As it turned out, the fuel truck wasn't actually wired to explode. False alarm. Erb walked away counting his blessings.
Every EOD tech knows friends or colleagues maimed or killed on the job. Earlier in the deployment, Erb had been 50 feet from a soldier who stepped on a land mine outside an Afghan village.
"It still impacts me today," he said. "I mean, I see the …" He trailed off. "It motivates me to do my job better when you see life taken from us right there, 50 feet away."
Erb will deploy again in about seven months. Earlier this year, he rented the Oscar-winning movie The Hurt Locker with his wife and stepson in the hope that it would help his family understand what he does for a living, but he was disappointed.
"It didn't do my job any justice," Erb said. "There's a lot of Hollywood and John Wayne."
The Hurt Locker portrayed EOD techs as crazy-genius adrenaline junkies, Erb said, but in reality, there's no place for loose cannons on an EOD team. "During the training they try to weed those people out," he said.
Tech praises part of film
The movie did get some things right, though, Erb said. Returning to civilian life after doing such a high-stakes job day in and day out can be rough. In the film, the main character, an EOD tech, decides to deploy again, despite the danger.
"It does kind of show what goes through people's heads," Erb said. "Even for me, when I came back, there was borderline depression and difficulty integrating with my family."
Sauls said he felt bored and restless after returning to the U.S. from Afghanistan in November.
"The biggest feeling you get back home is that you should be doing something because everything you do over there is important," he said. "When I got over there I realized that nothing I'd ever done in my life had really mattered because suddenly everything I did over there mattered. It was life and death."
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/military/7154918.html