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thedrifter
08-23-09, 08:47 AM
BEA grad part of Marine bomb squad
Chris Rosenblum

Nobody crowds Staff Sgt. Aaron Irvin while he works.

Staff Sgt. Aaron Irvin is one of the few tasked with defusing bombs in Afghanistan, where the terrain doesn’t allow for robots to assist. “You’re trying to figure out the problem. ... When you’re doing that, it kind of takes your mind off of (thinking), ‘Wow, I’m sitting on top of 100 pounds of explosive,’ ” he said.


Before him could be a rigged artillery shell, or farming chemicals wired to a battery and blasting cap.

Either way, he’s not fazed by the live bomb staring at him.

“What’s making that go off is what we worry about,” he said.

In his corner of southern Afghanistan, it might happen several times a day. Maybe it’s going on right now. Marine patrols find an improvised explosive device, an IED, buried under a road or path. They clear the area.

Then the call goes out for a 24- year-old with glacial nerves and steady hands.

A Bald Eagle Area High School graduate, Irvin serves with the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines, as an explosive ordnance disposal technician — one of a select few trained to defuse lethal bundles.

“It’s like a puzzle,” he said from Helmand province, a remote area of heavy fighting where Marine Sgt. Bill Cahir, a State College native, recently died.

“You’re trying to figure out the problem. ... When you’re doing that, it kind of takes your mind off of (thinking), ‘Wow, I’m sitting on top of 100 pounds of explosive.’ ”

Day in, day out, he and his partner make the right decisions, saving Marines, coalition soldiers and civilians. They also live to disable another bomb. Lately, Irvin said, IEDs have become the weapon of choice for Taliban forces trying to disrupt national elections.

Each bomb he confronts up close, without the robots used often by EOD teams in Iraq.

“Here the terrain makes it virtually impossible to do that,” Irvin said. “Everything is done by hand. That’s the least preferable.”

This is the third combat tour for the former class president, football player and star sprinter and pole vaulter.

His first came in 2005 in Iraq, but with artillery. By the time he returned to Iraq for a second tour last year, he belonged to an EOD company after completing rigorous training.

An artillery section chief who had made the switch encouraged Irvin to do the same. Irvin took his friend’s advice, drawn by the camaraderie and professionalism of elite bomb squads. He estimated the Marines have about 500 EOD technicians.

“We’re an extremely small unit,” he said. “Next to the sniper community, we’re the second smallest community in the Marine Corps.”

He practices his craft these days in verdant farmland near the Helmand River, amidst wide-open desert. Locals grow watermelons, corn, various vegetables and hemp, though opium crops predominate.

Some also plant bombs. Since May, Irvin has lived his own version of “The Hurt Locker,” a recent film about an Army EOD team’s travails in Iraq.

Irvin and his buddies saw it. They weren’t impressed.

“It’s just like any movie,” he said. “It’s exaggerated a lot.”

The real risks are dramatic enough.

An IED killed his old artillery leader in 2006. Others have fallen around him in the past months as Marines battled across the Taliban stronghold.

“I’ve lost very close friends since we’ve been out here,” Irvin said. “We’ve lost a lot of Marines. We know how to deal with this. We’re used to it. For them, we keep pushing on.”

All he can do is study his next job, do his best in the glaring heat to stay cool. No mistakes, and the bomb will provide evidence for forensic labs. Fingerprints and DNA from an IED may be of little use in a far-flung, chaotic country, but the bomb can be compared to others, providing clues about enemy identities and movements.

Every bit of intelligence helps the first coalition force to be based in the region. Irvin sees progress from the time the Marines arrived earlier this year with little more than what they carried. Afghan army soldiers are improving rapidly, he said, and locals are warming to the coalition forces.

“The whole goal is push the Taliban influence out of the area and make this a safe place for these people to live,” Irvin said.

His part comes down to disarming a salvaged Soviet round, or a volatile cocktail of chemicals. Whatever lurks in the soil, he’ll face it.

“We’re not dying for nothing,” he said. “We’re helping these people set up a government and live a free life.”

Chris Rosenblum can be reached at 231-4620.

Ellie