FALLUJAH, Iraq – Staff Sgt. Jeremy Anderson knows the doorbell only rings once.
The doorbell mechanism was connected by wire to a blasting cap and a small battery. The blasting cap was embedded in PE-4 plastic explosive, a substance with the consistency of Silly Putty, that was stuffed into a big artillery shell. Somewhere not far away was a wireless remote-control device that would activate the doorbell, completing a circuit and sending a charge from the battery to the blasting cap, igniting the PE-4. There would be no ding-dong, only a thunderous explosion sending chunks and shards of metal for hundreds of yards around.
The discovery was not out of the ordinary for Anderson, leader of a squad of roadside bomb hunters.
“You see the bomb and you see the doorbell. Right away, you’ve got to find the detonation point, but there’s no wire leading anywhere,” Anderson said. “You want to catch that guy with his finger on the button. The problem is, you’re looking for him, but is he watching you?”
Anderson leads the 1st Squad, 1st Platoon, C Company of the 307th Engineers Battalion. Since arriving here last summer, they have done little in the way of construction. Mostly they clear obstacles, blast, batter and break down doors on raids and, perhaps most crucially for the functioning of occupation troops, uncover roadside bombs. “We are the main countermeasure,” Anderson said.
Along with car bombs, the signature weapon of the Iraqi insurgency has been what the military calls an improvised explosive device, or IED. Car bombs have largely taken the lives of Iraqi civilians. IEDs have killed and wounded large numbers of U.S. troops. Hardly a day goes by in Iraq when a roadside bomb isn’t discovered. Few days pass without one exploding, damaging convoys that are the Army’s lifeblood. During the last week of January, eight American soldiers were killed in four bombings in the Sunni Triangle area west of Baghdad.
“IEDs are hard on morale,” said Capt. Miguel Torres, commander of the 760th Ordnance Company’s explosive ordnance disposal unit, the outfit that’s called in once squads such as Anderson’s have spotted a bomb.
“No one can think that just because they are mostly sitting at a desk looking into a computer that they can’t get hit,” Torres said. “Even a clerk who has to go out somewhere to get some paper is vulnerable. No one can say, ‘Hey, I’m OK, it’s the infantry that has to worry.’ IEDs strike fear in everyone.”
Torres’ unit gets rid of bombs, usually by blowing them up. “That thing of cutting the blue wire, then cutting the red wire, that’s out of the movies,” Torres said.
At least 382 IEDs have detonated at or near convoys in Iraq, Torres said. The count is undoubtedly low because it only includes cases in which disposal units were called in, Torres said. Sometimes, a military convoy that spots a bomb will just move on because soldiers fear an ambush or are in a hurry and don’t bother to call in the disposal unit. More than 2,500 roadside bombs have been discovered, according to the military.
American forces did not foresee extensive use of roadside bombs when they invaded Iraq, soldiers and officers say. In Afghanistan, Bosnia and Kosovo, U.S. troops rarely encountered them. “We were briefed on booby traps, like it was Vietnam. IEDs were hardly mentioned,” Torres said.
Units such as Anderson’s run interference for troops on roads around Fallujah, arguably the roadside-bomb capital of the country. Yet his unit received no special training to identify and clear IEDs before coming to Iraq. “We were never trained for this. We clear mines and booby traps,” Anderson said. “There’s no manual for IEDs.”
Finding the lethal devices can be hit or miss. On a recent Saturday, members of the 2nd Squad accompanied a unit sent to blow up a building from which snipers had fired on troops. Spec. David Lane, from Dexter, N.Y., was probing a roadside when the group came under fire. An infantryman to Lane’s left crouched to return fire. Lane noticed something yellow nearby. Then he saw an antenna coming out of a cement block.
“Buddy,” he said, “you might want to clear out of here. We’ve got a live one here.”
Both moved away. At 10 yards, “where I knew it wouldn’t kill me,” Lane radioed to a commander, who called in a disposal team to blow up the bomb.
Anderson was slated for a mission later that evening that would take him down the same road. “There are times we walk right over them, and then two or three hours later they blow up vehicles,” he said. Whoever is detonating them appears to be waiting for bigger prey. “Seems they’re mostly looking for something larger than individuals.”
It was near the site of a roadside bombing that killed two American soldiers in a convoy on Jan. 24.
It’s all been an eye-opener for the young enlisted troops in 1st Squad. “It’s pretty scary when you see one,” said Spec. Shane Thomson, from Walton, N.Y., a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. “Afghanistan was not a vehicle war. You fly in, walk, and fly out. I never even heard of an IED until I got to Iraq.”
Pfc. Shaun Cowan, from Ballinger, Texas, said the difficulty of distinguishing friend from foe in Iraq added to the case of nerves. “It’s bad when everyone gathers around to watch. You don’t know who is who,” he said.
“It scares the crap out of me every time. When we start, I think, ‘God, here we go again.’ Whenever I approach one, the family flashes in front of my eyes,” said Anderson, a father of three from Brainerd, Minn.
After a bomb is dealt with, the next step is to try to find the bomber. Anderson’s team has found only one, a 12-year-old boy with his finger on a detonator. Any accomplices had either escaped or were not even at the site when the bomb was discovered.
Staff writer Lois Raimondo contributed to this report.
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