EOD Airmen reflect on six-month tour in Iraq

  • Published
  • By Maj. John Hutcheson
  • 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq (AFPN) --  Improvised Explosive Devices’ prevalence in Iraq has placed increased demands on Air Force Explosive Ordnance Disposal specialists, and the members of the 332nd Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron EOD flight are on the leading edge of the effort to combat these IEDs.

Explosive ordnance disposal specialists from the 332nd, spread across Balad and six other forward operating bases, perform a dangerous mission every day to make the country safer for coalition forces and Iraqi civilians.

Some of the busiest Airmen are assigned to FOB O’Ryan, located south of Balad. As a new wave of EOD Airmen arrived in Iraq last week, O’Ryan’s four-man team prepared to return to Moody Air Force Base, Ga., following a six-month rotation. They were led by detachment NCOIC Tech. Sgt. Heath Tempel. The other team members were Staff Sgt. David Williams, and Senior Airmen Justin Voorhees and David Besse.

The team focused on three primary missions: responding to and disposing of unexploded ordnance, disarming or destroying IEDs and conducting post-blast analysis.

“IEDs are the biggest threat over here, and we’re the answer,” Sergeant Tempel said. “We get a lot of satisfaction from that.”

Senior Airman Voorhees agreed, “It’s a good feeling when you dispose of these IEDs that the insurgents are placing to try and kill other Soldiers.”

As satisfying as the job was, it was also a demanding one with little room for error.

“The biggest challenge was just being on call 24 hours a day and having to be ready to go out all the time,” Sergeant Williams said.

Responding to IEDs takes a lot of preparation and planning -- making sure vehicles, communications and personal gear are ready as well as coordinating security with ground forces. This last vital task makes the EOD mission in Iraq a model of joint cooperation, with Army quick reaction forces often providing the security necessary for Airmen to complete their missions.

“Working with the Army was great,” Airman Voorhees said. “They did their job well, and we did ours well; we were kind of protecting each other if you think about it.”

Once the planning and preparation are done and the team travels to the IED site, the team must decide if it’s feasible to disarm the device or destroy it.

“Our primary goal when we encounter an IED is to disarm it and recover its components,” Sergeant Tempel said.”

If an EOD team can disarm an IED, then investigators can study its components and learn more about how it was made. If disarming the IED doesn’t work, then detonation in a controlled manner is the next best option.

“If we detonate it, we want to get it off the road, so we don’t produce a crater where an insurgent can place another IED,” Sergeant Tempel said.

The sergeant credited seven weeks of pre-deployment training as a key to the team’s success.

“This deployment has been quite a bit different from training,” Airman Voorhees said. “It’s a lot different when you’re dealing with real IEDs and the threat of someone of shooting at you while you’re working is always there.”

During the deployment, the EOD team completed 224 missions, destroying or disarming 85 IEDs and destroying more than 10 tons (net explosive weight) of captured enemy weapons and ordnance in controlled demolition operations. As proud as he is of the numbers though, Sergeant Tempel is more proud of the members of the team.

“I can’t emphasize enough how important our two senior airmen are to our operations,” he said. “Sergeant Williams and I place our lives in their hands every time we conduct a mission, and they’ve performed flawlessly. It’s hard to capture in words how incredibly proud of them I am.”

When the Airmen return to Moody, Sergeant Tempel says one of their duties will be to pass on the lessons they learned and help prepare the next wave of Airmen to face the IED threat.