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Monday, March 17, 2008

Military calls on Navy specialists to defeat roadside bombs

http://www.miamiherald.com/775/story/457003.html

CORRY STATION NAVY BASE, Fla. -- Navy Lt. Mark Dye hadn't seen combat before a helicopter dropped him at the deadliest forward operating base for roadside bomb attacks in northern Iraq.

Twenty-two soldiers from the 101st Airborne at Forward Operating Base McHenry had been killed by improvised explosive devices in the previous seven months. Other Army units were suffering similar casualties in May 2006 and it was getting worse. Troops were finding an average of 18 roadsides bombs a day.

Dye and 300 other shipboard electronics warfare specialists had an urgent task: teach troops how to defuse the bombs by jamming the electronic signals the insurgents used to detonate them.

"They called on a Wednesday and told me I was leaving (for Iraq) on Saturday," said Dye, 38, who had spent his career on ships. "It was the right decision. Electronic warfare was our background, what we did for a living."

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But the 78 soldiers and Marines from their bases who died in roadside bomb explosions during their deployments provide a grim statistic that proves the job is not done, the men said.

"I took every death very personally. There's a competitive nature in me and that's my job, to save them from IEDs. If an IED got through, I lost," Dye said.

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