CONTINGENCY OPERATING BASE ADDER, Iraq- Boom! Dirt, sand, dust and smoke fly into the air as the policeman hits the ground.
Lying there disoriented, he cannot move; with massive trauma inflicted on his ears he has no ability to balance and cannot stand on his own.
The footsteps grow louder and faster as four men come to his rescue.
The team of four quickly goes through each step of assessing a casualty as if they have done it for years.
They check for responsiveness; they make sure he’s still breathing.
After they determine there is no bleeding or broken bones, they litter-carry the man to the back of their police truck.
The man hit is the lieutenant for the Nasiriyah Police department’s bomb squad, but instead of driving the lieutenant to the nearest medical facility, the team resets and waits for feedback because this is the final exercise and graduation for 17 policemen from Dhi Qar province attending an Explosive Ordnance Disposal training class.
The training was conducted by Soldiers of Company E, 1st Battalion, 77th Armor Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division and Airmen assigned to the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Team for Muthanna and Dhi Qar provinces.
The six-week course covered the required material to certify the students in levels one through four of EOD.
“We want them to demonstrate basic knowledge of properly identifying ordnance, demolition safety and current tools and techniques,” said Staff Sgt. Lee Fulp, a native of Adel, Ga. and EOD team leader at Convoy Support Center Cedar.
For their final test, the men were divided into three teams and completed a series of culmination exercises to test their knowledge of skills learned throughout the course.
The first exercise was improvised explosive device identification and medical evacuation procedures while wearing a bomb suit.
“It’s real important for the team to watch their leader because any time a bomb goes off there is going to be damage. They have to hurry to save a life. Well done, they did a great job,” Fulp said after the first team successfully completed the first exercise.
The second exercise was manually disarming IEDs with various initiators.
In this exercise, students placed a water bottle charge next to a device designed to clear the area around an IED. If water bottle charge failed, they then hooked a rope to the device and moved beyond the projected blast radius of the IED, where they pulled the rope to detonate or move the bomb to check for a secondary device.
“They have to do things this way because they don’t have the remote controlled robots like we do,” said Senior Airman Devin Long, a La Grange, Ky. native and EOD team member. “You just have to be very careful when you do it this way, and they were. They did a very good job.”
The third and final exercise consisted of clearing a house-borne IED and encountering a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest.
“The training took place on an average of three days a week for about five hours a day,” said Roseville, Calif. native Capt. Rolland Johnson, commander, Co. E, 1st Bn., 77th Armor Regt.
“This course taught them everything they need to know, including combat life saving skills, how to properly identify IEDs, how to properly neutralize IEDs and how to properly use the correct equipment for the job,” said Johnson.
Coalition forces have trained Iraqi counterparts for more than six years; however, the genesis of this course was a request from the Iraqi Police.
“We are the same Army, but since June 30 the IP have to tell us what they want to train on. That way we have a better understanding of what they need, which helps strengthen our partnership,” said Johnson.
That ever-growing partnership is just one of the reasons the class was so successful.
“You have to treat them as part of your team,” said Fulp. “Sometimes it takes a while to break the ice but the more frequently we train together the stronger the relationships and even friendships build, resulting in better training.”
Unlike basic classes the Iraqis receive, this course was more in-depth.
“Because this was an EOD class we had to be pretty rigorous with them,” said Fulp. “We gave them structured classes and had to cover some basic things like troop leading procedures and buddy-carrying to our stress test, which involves doing things in the bomb suit like picking up and carrying a 160mm round that weighs 60 pounds. They have adapted and that shows because they love learning how to use the new equipment and excel at it.”
