Bomb disposal unit at Whidbey Island Navy base pays high price

WHIDBEY ISLAND NAVAL AIR STATION — Six brass plaques with the names of six fallen sailors face visitors entering the headquarters building.

They are unusual in the way they were created: A thin sheet of explosive was detonated over a plastic template, imprinting the names and design on the brass. The only sailors who make them are explosive ordnance technicians.

This is the headquarters of the Navy’s Explosive Ordnance Detachment Mobile Unit 11, more simply called the EOD. The six were fellow bomb disposers, all killed in Iraq.

This highly select, perpetually tested band of 160 sailors are known for their cool under pressure. Their training never seems to end: underwater diving, parachuting and practicing ground warfare. They test themselves constantly to outthink bomb makers.

What attracted many to undertake the work was the chance to save lives and bring peace to people’s sense of safety and sanity by neutralizing bombs.

“What drew me toward EOD is that it’s a defensive tool. We are protecting our troops, coalition forces and the civilian population. … I wanted to do more to help America by protecting troops; someone has to watch their back,” says Lt. Nicholas Parker, 27, from Alexandria, Va., who served from October to April with EODMU 11 in Iraq.

Since the war’s inception, Whidbey’s unit has been rotating platoons in six-month deployments to Iraq. Their main job has been to hunt and remove safely the leading killer of U.S.-led forces troops as well as Iraqi civilians: the bombs planted in cars, houses or beside the road known officially as “IEDs,” or “improvised explosive devices.”

The EOD techs of Whidbey Island have paid a high price.

Navy Chief Petty Officer Gregory J. Billiter, 36, of Villa Hills, Ky.; Petty Officer 2nd Class Curtis R. Hall, 24, of Burley, Idaho; and Petty Officer 1st Class Joseph A. McSween, 26, of Valdosta, Ga., were killed April 6, 2007, when their convey was attacked.

Two more members died on July 17, Chief Petty Officer Patrick L. Wade, 38, of Key West, Fla., and Petty Officer Jeffrey L. Chaney, 35, of Omaha, Neb., in combat. On Nov. 5, Petty Officer 2nd Class Kevin R. Bewley, 27, of Hector, Ark, was killed when an IED exploded.

While bombs like IEDs were used in Vietnam, they have become the weapon of choice for insurgents in Iraq.

“It’s an indiscriminate killer; they (insurgents) don’t care who is in a truck or who they are,” aiming the weapons at troops and civilians, adults and kids, says Petty Officer 1st Class Karl Krahn, 28, a 10-year EOD veteran from nearby Edmonds.

The EOD techs such as those on Whidbey have become the dismantlers of choice for U.S. forces. Troops covet them, and insurgents spy on them.

Their popularity became a major issue for them in Iraq. Every unit heading out tried to rope the sailors into their own missions, especially for side missions. Finding an explosive booby trap on a road, house or bridge could freeze a mission, extending time exposed to the enemy. But so many demands could fragment and exhaust the bomb disposers.

“We have to support everybody; you have to share us,” was a constant mantra, recalls Parker, a five-year veteran.

The most common public misconception of their methodical work comes from Hollywood, Krahn says.

“Cutting the blue wire,” he says. “They think it’s like the TV show … where people take apart bombs in their hands. It’s a little more complicated than that.”

Parker says the procedures and techniques of the IED “are generally pretty simple, but the thought process, the understanding of what you are looking at, and understanding what you need to do and ordering (someone) to do it, that’s the hard part we train for.”

“Because you watch us do something on one mission doesn’t mean it will be the same on the next,” he says.

Overall, the goal is “to make a device a nonexplosive hazard as safely as possible, to protect life and property,” Parker says. “At some time if it is too dangerous or too much is unknown, it will be detonated.”

And, says Krahn, there’s a time to reach for the pliers. “If there is a bomb in a building with people inside who can’t get out, then you cut the blue wire.”