BLOG: INDIRECT FIRE -- Controlled detonation

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Jacob Richmond
  • 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
JOINT BASE BALAD, Iraq --  Arrival here at Joint Base Balad has been hectic, but reassuring. I've been here about a week now. I'm part of an 11-person team assigned to provide journalism, photography, videography, broadcasting and external media support for the joint mission here. The work is plentiful - especially when you include all of the newcomer familiarization and inprocessing we have to do in the first couple of weeks - but it's already clear to everyone that we're lucky to have such a talented, dedicated group. So, during the rushed firestorm of on-the-job training we got with the folks we replaced, I still felt a certain calm that this mission would not be too much for this public affairs team.

The title of this entry also has a more literal connotation. Here in the combat zone, explosive ordnance disposal teams routinely find dangerous material that hasn't gone "bang" yet. True to their job title, they're charged with disposing of the ordnance - by exploding it. Of course, we get a courteous announcement right before it happens. That way, nobody worries that it's a real-world attack on the base. Well, nobody except people like me, who were paying too close attention to the inprocessing briefing to hear the heads-up.

When we heard the first BOOM!, about half of the people inside the briefing building instinctively hit the deck. Me? I was having a contemplative moment. As the explosion vibrated my chair and reverberated inside my torso, my thoughts were ...well, suffice it to say it was definitely a holy-crap-what-the-hell-was-that moment. Then, no more than two seconds later, the second BOOM! sounded, and only then did the voices around me start sounding louder than the chaotic uncertainty in my head. "Controlled det! Controlled det!" The people who had heard the announcement before the blasts were trying to reassure the dozens of people on the floor. I thought to myself, "Phew, I can get up now." Then, I realized I hadn't moved from chair at all; even while I thought that, I wasn't moving a single muscle.

Since I didn't know what was real in those few moments (maybe five seconds total), I wondered if that was an accurate representation of what it would be like to experience a real attack. It wasn't as simple as fear - it was a paralyzing combination of uncertainty, situational analysis, and, yeah, a healthy topping of trepidation. Only five seconds of that.

My next thought was about how many people, military and otherwise, have to endure those five (or 10 or 30 or 5000) seconds on a regular basis, knowing it's the real thing. God bless 'em.
Of course, a few seconds after the controlled detonations, we were all chuckling at ourselves. And, if anything, that little experience only reinforced what a relatively safe place this is. Good people have gone to great lengths to keep JBB personnel free from harm in order to keep the mission going. You can bet I appreciate that.

I can work hard for 12 hours, go back to a room I share with only one person, read a book for a while, and sleep soundly on a pillow outfitted with a photo-pillowcase featuring my wife and son puckering for a good-night kiss. I can wake up at 0430, see my boy on the webcam, and we can simultaneously eat one jellybean every day from our respective jars of 200. I can decide which ingredients I want in the fresh-made breakfast omelet I get every day at the dining facility. I can sit here and write about this from a huge, air-conditioned recreation tent with good WiFi connectivity. And I can feel good about how I'm contributing to the mission here in Iraq.

Yes. All of that, I can do. For only about 170 more days. 



Staff Sgt. Jacob Richmond is a member of the 355th Figther Wing Public Affairs office at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., deployed to Joint Base Balad, Iraq. He will be blogging throughout his deployment, and sharing his story with the Arizona Daily Star.