In 2007, Ray Lane was having trouble sleeping in his quarters in Afghanistan. It wasn’t the dry Kabul heat keeping the Irish officer awake but rather the seemingly relentless beeping from the device in the corner of his room.
The Dubliner was used to sleeping in uncomfortable conditions. Tours of service in places like Bosnia and Lebanon weren’t exactly luxury postings. But the beeping was different. Lane knew each one meant a life lost or changed forever.
The device issued an alert every time a solider with the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan was injured or killed by an explosive device. It was in Lane’s room because he had just been appointed the chief operations officer of the Counter Improvised Explosive Device Branch.
Lane recalls that in his first two weeks in command, the international force lost 17 personnel to Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). At that point 57 per cent of all causalities resulted from IEDs.
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Source: The Irish Times