Ordinary Heroes: Staff Sgt Jesse Mathieu, Explosive Ordnance Disposal

  • Published
  • By Mike Strickler
  • 95th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. --  It was a nasty looking rig as pressure plates go. The dark and heavy coiled springs cornering and connecting the wooden planks together belied the deadliness of the gadget, giving thoughts more to a pair of 1950s spring shoes from Wham-O. The camouflaged anti-personnel buttons protruding from the plank's top however brought a more sinister notion: this thing was meant to initiate a sequence that would ignite explosives below to kill whatever, or whoever, ran over it, and those in its vicinity.

The explosive ordnance disposal technician crouched behind a small one-story hovel in Logar Province, Afghanistan, that sweltering day in 2010, peering through the 25 dusty feet that separated him from the improvised explosive device. Two soldiers flanked him behind the hut as others fired and redeployed in all directions, a combat action team seeking the position of an enemy unseen and pressing the attack.

The technician wiped sweat and dust from his eyes, and reached for the rope. To it he tied a sturdy pair of vice grip pliers, not unlike those used to pull and pry gadgets from his darling 1971 Volkswagen back at Edwards Air Force Base. He gave a sharp tug on the knot - it held and he breathed in deep, taking in reedy wheat field and the pungent scent of the murky ditch water nearby, just right of the road bearing the pressure plate. He moved forward.

At that moment only three things permeated Staff Sgt. Jesse Mathieu's thoughts: first, get to the plank without getting hit in the crossfire; next, clamp the grips to the hard wooden board without setting off the bomb; and finally, try to forget about the sniper currently raining fire on him every time he so much as blinked.

"Oh yeah," he thought, "and don't die." Wham-O indeed.

In his nearly eight years of service Staff Sergeant Mathieu of the 95th Civil Engineer division has seen combat three times, twice in Iraq and once in Afghanistan. He enlisted from Citrus Heights, Calif., in 2002; nearly one year after the towers fell in New York.

"I worked at In-N-Out Burger before joining the Air Force and knew some basics about EOD but nothing specific," he said. An active sports enthusiast Sergeant Mathieu initially sought something along the lines of detective or police work but, after talking with his recruiter, found the idea of explosive ordnance disposal intriguing. "I had to wait for the job to open up and just took it day by day until it did," he said.

Sergeant Mathieu was in technical school at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., when President George W. Bush announced the onset of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. "We knew at that point we were into a pretty heavy workload," he said, "but by then I just loved the job, and I still do."

"There's something special about disarming explosives, something unique about knowing the science, feeling the fear and danger involved, and then defeating them - it's quite an adrenaline rush," he said, a genuine smile spreading on his face as he thought of it. "You put your game face on, develop a plan to defeat the threat, and then you go at it."

Going at it that day in Logar required a crouching sprint toward the plank still half buried in the earthen road, while gunfire filled the air around him. "I remember that the sound of the sniper fire flying past was incredibly loud, like little grenades exploding in the air," he said.

The soldiers moved forward with him, training automatic weapons fire on a concealed position betrayed only by bullets jabbing into the dirt road in front of them. They walked their fire back into the wheat field target as Sergeant Mathieu crouched over the bomb. "I remember the intensity of the gunfire slacking off once they had fixed the insurgent's position in the wheat field, and so I got to work on the plank," Sergeant Mathieu said.

He clamped the vice grips on to the board and retreated, sniper fire chasing he and the soldiers back behind the small building. The idea was to pull the plank free of the dirt by use of the rope and pliers, thereby exposing the firing mechanisms hidden beneath it. "In school they teach us to be innovative and think outside the box to diffuse the situation, and the rope and pliers' method provides a good way to further explore these pressure devices without exposing ourselves or others to danger," he said.

Sergeant Mathieu held tight to the rope and pulled taut from concealment, gently adding pressure as the soldiers began probing the surrounding area for the sniper. The plank began to give way from the road and he increased pressure on the rope. "These kind of improvised devices are often set off by something as small as a nine-volt battery, so if we can jar them loose the plate becomes inert, and that alleviates the immediate danger," he said.

As Sergeant Mathieu pulled harder on the rope three insurgents sprang from their concealed position in the wheat field, mounted dirt bikes and sped off as the combat team opened up on them. "One less threat," he thought and pulled the vice grips off the wooden plank. Sergeant Mathieu stared down at the slack rope in his hands; he would have to go back and reattach it, and the sniper was still at large.

"It was at that point we decided to call in air support," he said.

As the EOD technician moved again toward the partially exposed plank an F-15 Eagle screeched over the engagement zone and, within minutes, the sniper's day was done. Sergeant Mathieu affixed the pliers once more to the pressure plate and, from behind the hut, yanked the plank free of the road. Immediately three nine-volt batteries erupted from the bottom of the triggering device, killing it and exposing nearly 50 pounds of homemade explosives packed into an oversized water jug buried below. The IED was defeated.

"I remember the raw power of the explosion when we blew it up in an adjacent field," Sergeant Mathieu recalled, "watching the shock wave race toward us and smelling that clean, warm smell of detonation that chased all memory of the pungent water and wheat field away until today."

After three combat tours, a Combat Action Medal and more than 250 IEDs defeated, Staff Sergeant Mathieu still loves his job - bullets, bombs and all. "It's just a great feeling to know you've defeated that IED, defeated the thing the insurgents meant to use to kill or maim," he said. "It's great to know you're the guy who went down there and took it out of the ground."