'It's a chess match, back and forth'

He was only a couple of feet from a roadside bomb.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Devon P. Bryan had arrived on the scene to take care of a roadside bomb in Baghdad when a soldier told him he had found what looked like another bomb.

Bryan said he asked the soldier to walk him over to the secondary bomb, but by the time the soldier finally pointed it out, the two were right on top of it.

“Your butt puckers, and you take off running,” said Bryan, 26, of Greenville, Mich.

The bomb was eventually taken care of, and Bryan earned the Bronze Star with “V” device along with the rest of his outfit, EOD Mobile Unit 2, Detachment 2, for their work from January to July 2005.

EOD is not a job for people who have a problem handling stressful situations, Bryan said.

In one incident, Bryan had to hand-carry unexploded mortar shells about a quarter-mile from outside the wire back to base, he said.

On the way back, he and other troops got shot at, he said.

Once they got back to base, insurgents started lobbing mortars at them right as Bryan was ready to detonate the unexploded shells, he said.

Before he could take cover, another servicemember jumped into a nearby Humvee and locked the door, leaving Bryan stuck outside, he said.

You have to have a sense of calm to work with things that go bang, Bryan said.

When he’s working, Bryan concentrates on other people’s safety.

“My personal safety is one of the last things I think about,” he said.

Bryan said he has been in the EOD community for more than three years and he intends to re-enlist.

He said he got into EOD because he liked the other sailors in the community and he found the job intriguing.

“This is more of a direct way of helping,” he said.

Bryan said he takes satisfaction in knowing that he is saving lives by taking roadside bombs off the street.

U.S. troops who have been to Iraq appreciate what EOD technicians do, although they have varying reactions when the EOD technicians show up, Bryan said.

“They’re pissed sometimes [that] it takes us a while to get there,” he said.

Defeating roadside bombs is a constant struggle to try to stay ahead of the enemy.

“It’s a chess match, back and forth,” Bryan said.

He said he returned to Iraq in March 2006 and was “pretty amazed” at how much progress the bad guys had made adapting to coalition procedures and finding new ways to deploy roadside bombs.

The back-and-forth between the coalition and bombmakers shows no signs of abating, Bryan said.

“It’s not going to end until we leave.”