Some people advocate a total U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan on the false claim that we’ve done no good there.
One of the many ways we’ve made Afghanistan a better place is in our destruction of tons of unexploded ordnance and landmines. As a combat engineer, I worked on a few of these missions. I thank God they went smoothly. For one of my engineer friends, Sgt. Jacob Pries, one mission looked like it would end in total disaster, but thankfully didn’t.
Pries was often attached to an Explosives Ordnance Disposal, or EOD, team whose military specialty was rigging bombs, munitions, and improvised explosive devices for controlled destruction. Disposal is a difficult job requiring patience, knowledge, and attention to detail. The price of failure can be catastrophic.
In 2004, this eastern Afghanistan disposal team was called to respond to a very dangerous incident. A construction crew had been expanding the runway at Jalalabad airfield. Working with a bulldozer, they accidentally unearthed a 150-pound Soviet bomb that had buried itself instead of exploding when it was dropped in the ’80s.
It was a small miracle the thing hadn’t exploded years earlier when it first hit the ground, and it was a major stroke of good luck that it didn’t go off when the bulldozer hit it. Pries and the team arrived either to defuse and detonate it on sight or else to defuse it, transport it away, and detonate elsewhere. The leader, Staff Sgt. Caruthers, decided the latter option was the best this time.
Unfortunately for Pries, the only transportation available for the elderly Soviet bomb was in the back of his Humvee. Armored Humvees came late to Jalalabad, and Pries didn’t have one. His was a thin-hulled vehicle, on which the doors are more decorative than useful in a firefight. So the team had taken the doors off and run an open-air version with a cagelike rack around the exterior.
That morning, Caruthers argued against commander Lt. Col. Bennet’s desire for the disposal team to keep all its explosives and vehicles in the regular ammo-holding area and motor pool. He said it made more sense for the disposal team to keep dangerous equipment and vehicles in its own area.
Pries was ordered to take the bomb back to his base and park the vehicle not in the disposal section of the compound, but with the rest of the trucks, right outside the commander’s office.
Driving very slowly and carefully to dodge the largest bumps in the road to avoid disturbing the bomb, Pries made his way back to the base. He parked the Humvee and pried his fingers off the steering wheel with a sigh of relief. The disposal guys could take care of it from there.
Caruthers then asked Pries for help getting the bomb off the back of the Humvee. The two men worked carefully in the blazing heat.
“What on earth is that?” asked Bennet, seeing the bomb.
Before they could answer, one of them slipped.
“No! No! No! Wait!” Pries shouted.
The aged Soviet bomb with its 150-pound charge scraped off the vehicle and hit the concrete with a loud clang.
Everyone screamed and scrambled for cover, including Bennet, who attempted to dive through his window into his office. Unfortunately, his large belly hooked on the window sill, and he fell back down, landing on his butt.
Silence.
Everyone took a moment to make sure they were still alive, and the bomb that had already been tested by being dropped from a plane, and then again by being run over by a bulldozer, failed to explode again.
The commander stared at the bomb on the ground a few feet from him. He let out a long breath. “Staff Sgt. Caruthers, you can — ” He licked his lips. “You can keep your vehicles and explosives over there in your EOD area after all.”
It was a scary incident, but Afghanistan got a little save not just for its people, but for a U.S. military base, too.
Trent Reedy served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
