http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/606586
I'm trying to picture a 13 ton vehicle being thrown 9 metres. It's a good thing they weren't in something smaller, like a Humvee.How one soldier cheated death
Petty Officer James Leith and his 13-tonne vehicle went airborne and landed with a 'sickening crumple'
Mar 23, 2009 04:30 AM
Allan Woods
OTTAWA BUREAU
OTTAWA – The sun was rising on the horizon and the birds were chirping on the morning that Petty Officer James Leith came face to face with his roadside bomb.
The navy clearance diver was at the turret of his Bison armoured vehicle, heading south along Route Comox, a dusty unpaved road in Pashmul, just west of Kandahar City.
"I remember thinking it was going to be a really good day. Little did I know," said Leith, a 41-year-old Brampton native now based at CFB Shearwater in Nova Scotia.
Moments later, the explosives expert and his two-man crew struck a roadside bomb, a deadly weapon the Canadian military had sent him to Afghanistan to defuse and destroy in a fight against a Taliban force that had increasingly turned to guerrilla tactics.
"There was a sensation of being airborne, that kind of suspended-in-midair feeling when you know you're not touching anything solid. Then there was that sickening crumple when we landed again," Leith said of his Sept. 28, 2006 encounter with the improvised explosive device.
Unlike the 63 other Canadians who have died from roadside bombs, Leith lived to tell his story – an experience for which he will be awarded with the Star of Courage.
The honour, announced last week, is bestowed on those who have shown "conspicuous courage in circumstances of great peril."
His 13-tonne Bison, significantly heavier with its extra armour and equipment, was thrown nine metres forward through the air. The explosion dropped Leith back into the hatch and his vehicle plunged into a dusty darkness as it returned to ground.
Its electrical system had failed, communications were down and everyone around – including a U.S. team working to clear the route of roadside bombs and the Blackhawk and Apache helicopter crews keeping watch overhead – feared for their comrades' lives.
His tale demonstrates both the great risk to soldiers on the ground and the results of hours of drills, training and preparation that allow troops to keep a clear head amid the chaos.
In the pitch-black aftermath of the explosion, Leith patted himself down, checking for wounds, missing limbs. There were none.
He called out to make sure his driver just ahead of him was okay. He was. Then they called back to Cpl. Jim Lightle, the combat engineer travelling in the rear with the robots, ropes, pulleys, X-ray equipment and other tools of the bomb disposal trade.
First there was silence, then a grunt. When they scrambled into the rear hatch, they found Lightle slumped and suffering from the blast, which had cut into the Bison's hull about 60 centimetres from where he'd been seated.
He was conscious and alert enough to know that the exposed bone from his shattered right leg signalled a serious injury. But five minutes after the blast he was on his way, via U.S. helicopter, back to Kandahar Airfield. Within 20 minutes, he was in his first of what would be several surgeries on the years-long road to recovery.
When the medical threat was dealt with and a follow-up enemy attack never materialized, Leith went to work on a post-blast investigation that revealed something even more serious than the ordeal his crew had just faced.
"I discovered an area of disturbed ground and I started to investigate it, I started to excavate a little bit. I knew right away when I started to uncover it that it appeared to be a large explosive," he said.
They say that bomb disposal experts are a different breed, and Leith proved that on this morning in Kandahar's Zhari district. After setting up a security cordon and pushing everyone else back a safe distance, he approached, positioning himself right over top of the double mine.
"I really had nothing left except your old standards: my wits, skills and my good old trusty bayonet that the engineers had given me," he said. "My remote means had been destroyed in my vehicle."
The hole in the ground was filled with two anti-tank mines and about 45 kilograms of explosives. The bombmaker had run a detonation cord from the mines to a large, highly flammable napalm mixture about half a metre away. To the side of the napalm was a pressure plate that would activate the deadly, though unsophisticated device.
"I was kind of laughing," he said. "I was like, `If this goes up ... I won't feel anything it'll be so quick.'"
With just the bayonet – a tool as foreign to the diver's usual kit as Afghanistan is to the depths of the Atlantic Ocean – Leith dismantled the power source, the pressure plate, and neutralized the IED.
"His courageous actions enabled the reopening of a vital route for coalition forces," his commendation reads.
But Leith feels overwhelmed by the recognition for something he says soldiers had dealt with before he arrived in Kandahar and will be dealing with as long as Canadian troops are deployed to Afghanistan.
"It's just part of the job. Unfortunately everybody's got a story, everybody's got an experience they can relate to."
PS. Disarming a roadside bomb with a bayonet? Are all EOD people this nuts?
