Home » Archives » ""If this thing goes off, I'd rather go off with it""

"If this thing goes off, I'd rather go off with it"

Dec-23-2005 » Filed Under: 1/25 SBCT

Link to Full Article
By Alex Fryer, Seattle Times

For soldiers in Iraq, three letters translate into terror: IED, shorthand for improvised explosive device, the homemade bombs that have taken hundreds of American lives.

During an intense firefight in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, Staff Sgt. Wesley Holt faced this fear. Touched it. Straddled it, in fact.

The encounter took place on a section of blacktop leading to an apartment building occupied by U.S. forces called Camp Outpost Tampa.

On Dec. 29 last year, with their video cameras rolling, about 50 insurgents hit the outpost with automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades and the biggest suicide truck bomb ever seen by soldiers from the 1st Stryker Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, a Fort Lewis-based combat team.

The insurgents' goal, say Army unit commanders, was to overrun the position and videotape the celebration, airing the images across the Middle East as a symbol of U.S. defeat.

To keep reinforcements from the beleaguered fort, the enemy spread IEDs — artillery shells connected by detonation cord — across a major roadway.

Holt, 28, was told to clear the road by putting plastic explosives on each live round, by hand, under fire, and then blowing them up. [...]


Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by a site administrator before your comment will appear. We appreciate your patience.)

Advertisements