One of the more incredible and horrifying things that I’ve ever seen in my life is the unbelievable, destructive power and devastation that is caused by improvised explosive devices that we encountered in Iraq. We received minimal training about them since they were always changing and very unpredictable. We saw videos of them and the aftermath of what they could do but it is most certainly something that can’t be understood from seeing pictures. You really have to experience it to fully grasp it, and that is something we did a LOT! Putting aside the one IED that I was at the epicenter of, there was probably about fifteen other explosions that I was within 100 feet of or so, and probably six or seven that I was close enough to have had significant damage done to myself or those around me but somehow didn’t.

In my 15 months in Iraq we saw a number of different kinds of bombs. Some were designed to destroy armored vehicles, some were fragmentation bombs packed with scrap metal or ball bearings with the intention to maim, some were high powered shaped charges that could easily punch through the heaviest of armored vehicles, and some were packed with anything that would go boom and destroy everything nearby. I’ve heard people say that Iraq is a bit more primitive in nature than other places. I would say that that is only minimally accurate and primitive does not in any way indicate a lack of intelligence or craftiness. I have a very basic working knowledge of explosives but I don’t have the capability nor the intelligence (or lack thereof) to make a bomb that large and then carry it around with me and rig it to explode at the time I want it to.

For instance, the bomb that blew me up was determined to be four or five 155mm artillery shells that were wired to a battery and a cell phone and detonated by someone nearby with another cell phone to activate the bomb. All of the explosives were buried three feet under the road and out of sight or we would have simply made a U-turn and driven the other direction.

One of the other possibilities we faced every day was walking into a booby-trapped house, which my platoon did on three occasions. Fortunately for us none of these bombs exploded, but it was a very scary realization when you walked into a house that was rigged up to explode and kill as many people as possible. Other units were not as lucky as us as on a couple of different occasions while we were there a squad would walk into a house and be wiped out in large numbers from one bomb. Typically, these bombs were made of ammonium nitrate, the type used in the Oklahoma City bombing. Its purpose was to so thoroughly destroy an area that nobody in the immediate vicinity could survive, and they worked very well. Finding one of these bombs in the bedroom of an abandoned house was the only time I ever refused to carry out an order. Myself and one of my friends were told to stand at the top of the stairs of this house, just outside the door to the room that contained the massive bomb and make sure nobody went into the room. I responded with something like, “Hell no I’m not standing outside the door, I’ll make sure nobody goes up there from outside the front door but I’m not standing inside this house!”

As I stated earlier, it’s easy to see the way of life in Iraq and assume that it is a much more primitive culture with ‘uneducated’ people but this is far from reality. They have access to the same technologies and information as we do here. Unfortunately, it would seem that that technology and information is commonly used in a devious way. Our tactics for detecting and dealing with the many kinds of explosives was met with a new tactic to disguise them. I know it has certainly left an impression on me as I still find myself noticing things that just seem a little out of place or odd when I see them in my day to day life.