: Ray Lane
: Only a Soldier Knows
: Gill Books
: 9781804580578
: 1
: CHF 15.10
:
: Biographien, Autobiographien
: English
: 256
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
On a gloomy Sunday afternoon at the height of the Troubles, rookie bomb disposal officer Ray Lane was called to the Border to defuse a 1,000kg bomb planted by the IRA. This was the beginning of an extraordinary career. From 10 beer kegs filled to the brim with explosives, to fiendish homemade devices designed to maim and murder, Ray's job was the very definition of hazardous. Developing unparalleled skills in wartime diplomacy, he went on to spend perilous stints on the front line of conflicts in Bosnia, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Ukraine. He witnessed the horrors of war up close and was left with deep personal scars. From the darkest depths of humanity to the pinnacle of bravery, this gripping memoir explores the nature of warfare, duty and the courage and mental strength it takes to be the person who overrides every natural human instinct and walks towards a 1,000kg bomb. 'A truly amazing story told with strength and courage' Ray Goggins 'A compelling story of outstanding courage' Ivan Yates

Ray Lane is a former commanding officer of the Irish Defence Force Ordnance School. On his retirement, he had been a member of the Irish Defence Forces for 45 years. He has served overseas in many missions with the UN, EU and NATO in Lebanon, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Somalia. He has served as an expert witness on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (1993), the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (2009) and the Callanan Review (2011). Today he is an advisor for UNOPS Ukraine - tasked with freeing up land from landmines and devising a strategy for the developing improvised explosive device situation. He also works for a start-up company at the University of Galway that is looking at developing natural capabilities in dealing with wound care and other military capability deficiencies in the field of chemical and biological agents. He lives in Naas, Co. Kildare.

PROLOGUE


Whenever I tell people that I’m a retired bomb-disposal officer, they always mentionThe Hurt Locker. I don’t blame them: the images of guys sweating in their bomb suits with only seconds to spare before they get blown up are pretty exciting. The reality is a little bit different. We don’t just pitch up to a bomb and go about dismantling it: as a result of intensive training, there’s a process involved that is there to keep us and the public safe. And the rules, such as the mandatory 30-minute break between each manual approach to the device, would not make for an exciting action movie. However, bomb disposal is dangerous. Of course it is. If you are dealing with 10 beer kegs filled to the brim with explosives on the border, a fiendish homemade device in Lebanon, or a crude wooden improvised explosive device (IED) in Afghanistan that still might cause many casualties – that’s the very definition of hazardous. But if I was ever to think about that, I wouldn’t be able to do my job. The process and the training we’ve undertaken are what keeps me and my colleagues safe.

The first rule of bomb disposal is that you never take unnecessary risks. As you can imagine in a job where a mistake can end in a fatality, it pays to do it properly. That’s why I can remember my very first callout as if it were yesterday. It was 1978 and I was only recently qualified as a bomb-disposal officer in the Defence Forces Ordnance School, so I was still pretty much a rookie. This was during the depths of the Troubles, so, as you can imagine, we were busy. It was a gloomy Sunday evening when I was called out to Bawnboy, Co. Cavan, to defuse a 1,000kg bomb, planted by the IRA. It had been hidden in a ditch, ready to be moved to the attack site, and a warning had been phoned in to the Gardaí. In spite of the sheer size of the bomb, I was confident that I knew what I was doing. I’d had my training, both in the Irish and British armies, dealing with hypothetical scenarios from a bomb on a train filled with fuel to a truck filled with mortar bombs, and I was ready for it. Or so I thought.

I hopped in the helicopter (our usual method of transport to distant callouts) that would take me from Finner Camp in Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal, to Bawnboy to see what I was dealing with. I could see the pocket-sized fields and hedgerows of the Border as we flew along, wondering what was down there, hiding in farmyards and small villages. The pilot landed the helicopter on the local GAA pitch, where I was greeted by the Gardaí and taken to the scene. I looked from a distance at the 10 beer kegs full to the brim with homemade explosives, and even though my heart began to race with a mixture of fear and excitement, my training came into play and my brain began to turn over potential scenarios to defuse it.

In our business, we try to do as much as we can from a distance, for obvious reasons. This means sending in a robot, which you control remotely, to look at the device. Here, however, the device was totally inaccessible, so no robot was going to tell me how to tackle it. I was going to have to take a manual approach to it. This is the last resort for anyone in my line of work, so as I donned my bomb