The Hill: Follow-Up

My last morning on that FOB, I packed up all my gear and met the mortar team out by their trucks. They were convoying back to KAF that morning in order to pick up supplies, shower and do laundry so I hitched a ride with them.

I was manifested in the back of an MRAP with an Air Force Staff Sergeant from Minnesota. When I've seen Air Force guys out here they're either communication folks or combat camera. I asked him which one he was, and he surprised me by saying he was an EOD tech--Explosive Ordinance Disposal.

These guys are the tip of the spear in this war as this war is all about mines, IEDs and booby traps. Of course I took the opportunity to ask him what he thought of The Hurt Locker, which is about an EOD team in Iraq. Apparently it's unrealistic on a lot of fronts, but he was still able to enjoy it. He felt that the cowboy team-leader would have gotten his ass kicked, or possibly fragged by his team because of the risks he took, but a lot of it was reasonable. Especially the number of calls they get in a deployment, literally hundreds of devices.

I also asked him about what we saw from the Observation Post, the guys working under the bridge. This happened a few days before a major operation in that village, so I figured he might have been involved. He knew what I was talking about, and he was dispatched to that bridge to see what those guys were almost killed over.

Nothing. There was nothing under the bridge. Maybe they put something there and took it away later; maybe they were storing something under there and removing it; but there definitely wasn't a bomb. And they almost got vaporized.