World15THE PHNOM PENH POST may 27, 2011

Learning the hard way from IEDs Robert Davis

ImPROVISED Explosive Devices, or IEDs, have long been used in war-fare. During the war in

Iraq insurgents raised the bar with cheaply made and hard to detect IEDs.

much like the infamous “ti-ger pits” with sharpened bam-boo stakes used in Vietnam, so did the hidden IEDs have an effect psychologically, as well as physically. as I found out in afghanistan, many of the sol-diers were not afraid of dying as much as they were terrified of losing legs and becoming permanently disabled as a re-sult of an IED blasts.

Tactics and techniques for IED detection and disposal that are used in afghanistan today were learned the hard way in Iraq. In addition to modern defence technology like the new and improved ar-moured personnel carriers and other accessories, the military sought to encourage their best human resources to re-enlist or redeploy to afghanistan to help teach and train the new teams on the ground about the feared hidden bombs.

Every company has a bad ass, a soldier who has racked up loads of combat street cred where he has executed mission after mission under extremely hazardous conditions. His supe-riors praise him and an aura of mystique follows him from the barracks to the combat zone.

For the United States army’s 170th Infantry Brigade Combat Team 40th Engineers in afghani-stan, that man is Staff Sergeant ashley Johnson from Donaldson, Louisiana. If you wanted to make a movie about a veteran sapper, Sergeant Johnson is your man.

His file shows he has been

blown up 13 times. all of those coming during his three tours during Iraqi Freedom. No doubt, SSG Johnson is tough, with bull-like shoulders and working man arms, and he looks like he could play defensive back for a pro football team. But tough as he is, when he received the news that he was to be deployed to Iraq, he felt his knees buckle.

“I was scared,” SSG Johnson admits. “I was very afraid I was afraid of getting maimed. We all knew the risks involved. I thought about it a lot initially. Then the missions start and you get caught up in the day in and day out of operations and you sort of file it away in the back of your mind. But you never forget about what could happen.”

SSG Johnson certainly had reason to worry – to date more than 1,000 US soldiers are am-putees as a result of IEDs and land mines. That is something that those in Cambodia can certainly identify with.

Johnson was ambitious and hard nosed and war was what warriors did. In between his second and third deployments in Iraq, Johnson was entered by his brigade into inter-army competitions where he ex-celled. He also qualified for special forces and was put on the acceptance list.

For his service and courage he had racked up numerous awards and medals. Then his company was ordered back to Iraq and his dream of special forces service would have to wait until he returned. Over the course of three deploy-ments, Johnson was rocked hard and often and he man-aged to keep the fear in check.

as platoon leader he knew the men looked up to him for assurance. Each day and before every mission Johnson and his

team would kneel and pray.“as a leader you are over-

whelmed with all these emo-tions, but you have to show confidence,” Johnson said. “many times we would drive down a section of road and we would cringe up in prepa-ration because you knew it was coming. Sometimes it did and sometimes it didn’t. I told my guys that all 11 of us are deployed and all 11 of us are coming back from here.”

They were part of the Stryker Brigade at Five Hammer Iraq. The United States military had learned the hard way about improvised explosive devices and had adapted accordingly with the latest technology. Now the 40th Company of En-gineers rolled in m-RaPs, mine resistant vehicles built with v-shaped hulls to disperse the blast and other newly devel-oped add-ons.

On the night they were called for duty, one of SSG Johnson’s men and good friend Sergeant mcKale had his vehicle mal-function during the prepara-tion phase.

“We had to cross-load all equipment to another vehicle that was not blast proof,” SSG Johnson says. “That was the first omen. SSG Johnson ordered mcKale to follow last in the con-voy so to minimise the risk.

“as we made the turn to go into the area of operation, I had this chill go through my body,” Johnson recalls. “Noth-ing felt right about this mis-sion. I told my guys to keep looking for those indicators.”

Indicators are what the army call signs that can tip off an ap-proaching convoy to an impro-vised explosive device. It could be anything from a plastic bag tied to a limb, to a small pile of rocks off the side of the road to

some discolouration of earth. Slowly they rolled, searching

for IEDs when kaboom! “my platoon sergeant said

‘Sergeant mcKale’s vehicle got hit and it’s on fire’.

“all stop! all stop!” Johnson shouted into the convoy com-munication system.

Fearing an ambush, imme-diately they went to battlefield stations. Prior to the operation, Johnson’s vehicle had been des-ignated as the rescue vehicle.

“as soon as we turn around, I can see Sergeant mcKale’s vehicle on fire, and I am beg-ging God to let all my soldiers be safe.”

Johnson saw the driver and gunner jump out of the vehicle on fire and he remembers rush-ing to Sergeant mcKale’s side of the vehicle. mcKale had been knocked out, his skull fractured from where he had smashed his head on the dashboard mount-ed computer system.

a landing zone was quickly prepared and mcKale was taken out.

Waiting back at the KOP was the battalion commander, chaplain and company com-mander. SSG mcKale had been flown to Bilac military hospital and was in a vegetated state. a Blackhawk helicopter flew the men to Bilac and they walked into SSG mcKale’s room just as he was being given a purple heart. Four days later his par-ents decided to take him off the life support system.

Johnson would accompany mcKale’s body back to montana and serve as one of the pallbear-ers at his funeral. Then he vis-ited mcKale’s high school, met his friends and saw the home where he grew up. Two weeks later he was back in Iraq. and then Johnson fainted. a cat-scan found he had a quarter-

sized contusion on his brain. Diagnosis TBI, or traumatic brain contusion, as a result from multiple IED blasts.

“It is his dedication to the engineering corps and the nation,” says Lt Colonel Erik Zetterstrom, Commanding Officer of Camp mike Spann in afghanistan. “Johnson has been blown up many times, and it would be very easy for him to say that is enough and get out. He wants to help oth-ers come home safely.”

Today armoured person-nel carriers are built with the sole purpose of surviving IED blasts. But the one thing they cannot do is to prevent the violent shockwaves that result from big mortar shells wrapped in Semtex and placed in canisters of gasoline.

The explosion alone can flip a tank in the air. according to an article in Neurophilosophy, the initial explosion is followed by a second shock caused from a “huge volume of displaced air that returns to the site of the explosion, also under extreme-ly high pressure”. Basically, that second blast can be just as potent, especially for brain in-juries where you literally have your brain rocked so strong that it can get dislodged.

Here in afghanistan the most common vehicle is the m-aTV, mRaP allTerain Vehi-cle. It is built to accommodate five soldiers and weighs about two tons. as reported by Frank Chadwick of greathistory.com, “80 percent of the time a Humvee is hit by a mine or IED, one or more passengers die. That happens only 15 percent of the time when an mRaP is hit”.

One of the latest additions to the mRaP is a defensive net-ting that is designed to catch an RPG, allowing it to explode outside the vehicle.

“The last thing you want is an RPG penetrating your vehi-cle,” says SSG Johnson. “That is some serious evil, man. It is like a fire stream of hot lava coming at you head-on.”

What SSG Johnson had, a closed head wound, is often dif-ficult to detect until the mood swings and depression be-come too obvious. SSG Johnson would also be diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

He is no longer bitter about the injury that cut his career in the special forces short. Nor does he get caught up in the politics of why he was in Iraq or afghanistan.

Johnson has one mission now.

“all I want is to see my men go home safely and with all their limbs,” Johnson said. “Regardless of your ideology on the war here, you got to re-spect that those soldiers who go outside the wire are putting their lives on the line.”

After months of applying and planning, journalist Robert Davis was finally given the all-clear to join US troops on duty in Afghanistan. In an exclusive weekly series from the front line, he will give an insight into what it’s like to be embedded with soldiers fighting the Taliban.

Understanding alliances in Afghanistan has been a constant source of trouble for ISAF forces. ROBERT DAVIS

Staff Seargent Johnson. ROBERT DAVIS