How do you stay calm whilst under the pressure of disposing a bomb?
You have a physiological reaction even if you are incredibly experienced and you feel very confident about the device. I still find that the adrenaline is coursing through my veins and the heart rate is going ten to the dozen and you sort of think, this is really, really full on. Your body is reacting one way, but your brain actually cuts out all the other nonsense and all you do is focus on the device, the approach and any other secondary and tertiary threats: snipers, bombs that are going to being placed on the roots. But all you're thinking about is neutralizing that bomb and wondering … working out how it's designed to function. Even before you go down there, ideally you've sent a robot down there and shot it first, but that's not always possible. But certainly before you go down there you've tended to sort of do almost a threat assessment, a detailed threat assessment in your mind and worked out whether it's time initiated, radio control or booby-trapped and then from there what kind of switching mechanism it might be within those three groups of device. And so when you physically get up to it you've got a pretty good idea what it is anyway and you've taken the right kinds of tools for the job, usually. And then you carry out whatever render safe procedure you've got to carry out once you're physically over the top of it. But it always makes the old heart flutter a bit when you're physically over the top of it. But it's a very, very sort of tunnel vision focus type of job when you're then at the business end certainly. But then as soon as you finish it all of the other nonsense comes flooding back again and you start thinking about all the normal stuff again.
