Posts Tagged ‘IEDs’

In 2008, Master Corporal Mike Trauner, deployed with the 3rd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment (3 RCR), was on foot patrol in the Zhari District west of Kandahar, Afghanistan, when a remotely controlled IED (improvised explosive device) was detonated under his feet. The blast blew off his legs and propelled him in a high arc six metres through the air. In 2010, on a road in the Panjwai District, a LAV III (light armoured vehicle) drove over a buried IED, setting off an explosion. The blast sent the 16,950-kilogram vehicle as much as a metre in the air and blew a hole in the bottom of the vehicle, breaking the bones in M.Cpl. Owen Kolasky’s feet and injuring his spine. In earlier wars, both likely would have died; today both soldiers hope to continue their Canadian Forces careers following rehabilitation.

The feeling has been described by survivors as falling. Also as soaring. There’s a flash and a shrieking darkness and then the weightless moments of maximum kinetic terror when the detonation blasts you beyond gravity. After the boom there is just distorted wreckage, and dust and pain and shouting, for the survivors at least. All the armour in the world and it just doesn’t really matter. The vehicles get tougher but the blasts get bigger. There is simply no good way to keep Canadian soldiers safe once they get caught in the boom of the roadside bombs, the suicide bombs, the [...]