By Tom Davidson

SPECIAL TO THE MEADVILLE TRIBUNE

GREENVILLE, Mercer County — He’s frosty.

Calm, cool, collected: Spc. Chris Marks, 21, of Greenville, is one of the soldiers who served in the U.S. Army’s 767th Explosive Ordnance Division. They’re the brave soldiers who risk life and limb regularly to disarm and dispose of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that have been a signature of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A team of these soldiers is portrayed in the Oscar-winning film “The Hurt Locker,” directed by Kathryn Bigelow.

For Marks it’s more than a movie. He’s spent the last year in eastern Afghanistan and was one of the first to see the film, which he said is as accurate as a Hollywood movie could be.

“They dramatized some of the stuff,” Marks said. “But then again, that’s just making a movie.”

In real life it’s an unpredictable job filled by highly trained soldiers. Marks spent a year in intense training to identify and dispose of the ever-evolving types of IEDs. “That fight changes daily,” Marks said of how those making the IEDs keep trying different things so the devices can’t be disarmed.

“Our job is to go out there and make sure it doesn’t go boom,” he said.

He describes it as “tap-dancing on IEDs.”

He couldn’t go into detail about exactly what that entails, but said the portrayals in “The Hurt Locker” were pretty accurate.

“Strange enough, it’s not like all the panic,” he said. “The first couple times, it was ‘I hope I don’t mess this up.’ It’s actually fun to me,” Marks said, adding that getting the job done was a greater adrenaline rush than skydiving.

He worked with “great older guys” who were “great teachers about what we do.”

In Afghanistan, he worked in teams of two or three people — they rotated and didn’t work with the same people each time — but “we always seemed to work well together,” he said.

Those who train to do the job volunteer. “It’s not something you can force someone to do,” Marks said.

Marks’ tour in Afghanistan began on Valentine’s Day 2009 and he got back Feb. 23.

He served mainly in the Paktika area of Afghanistan and estimates he worked to disarm or destroy about 100 IEDs during that time.

“It was slower in winter,” he said, but when the weather was warmer they could get a half-dozen calls a day.

On his busiest day he responded to eight calls.

There were times when he questioned whether he would make it out alive, but said it wasn’t really a feeling of fear.

“A couple times, it (went) through my mind. It’s like OK, this is happening. I hope I got all my paperwork filled out.”

Support staff are there to help soldiers who have trouble coping, Marks said.

“You can leave at any time, say ‘I’m done, I don’t want to do this anymore.’”

But for Marks, the experience is something he’s enjoyed.

“Some people handle it differently,” he said. “Everybody gets used to the explosions and stuff.”

The worst part of it was the frustration of dealing with a “bad day” but those were more like everyday job annoyances, he said.

He also thinks about the person who made the IED and how he’s “just sitting out there laughing at you somewhere.”

“It’s not like it doesn’t bother me, but it’s definitely something (I enjoyed),” he said. “It’s not a situation that everyone want to be in, so be it, but it’s going to be hard to replace it.”

He “lost some good friends” during his tour and said that many times the job requires luck in addition to the skill acquired through continual training.

“Some days it’s luck, some days it’s skill,” he said.

He enlisted in the Army because he didn’t think he was ready for college when he graduated from Reynolds High in 2006.

Now he’s ready to give college life a try. He has an apartment in Greenville and will attend Thiel College in the fall, studying to be a pharmacist, something he admits is going to be a drastic change of pace.

To liven things up, he plans to skydive this summer, he said.

“I think college is going to get so much easier for me now,” he said.

Serving in the Army helped him mature, he said.

“Being in life and death experiences hopefully that changed me a bit.”

For Marks’ mom, Kathryn Dailey, it’s great to have her son home.

While he was overseas, the “worry never (went) away,” Dailey said.

“Chris has always been a person who looks for excitement, so it didn’t surprise me,” she said of his decision to join the Explosive Ordnance Division. “He’s pretty reassuring with his confidence,” she said.

She couldn’t watch some parts of “The Hurt Locker” and has trouble looking at some of the pictures and movies her son brought back.

“It’s nice to have him back,” she said. “He’s the type of person I thought I would always be — to be brave enough to say ‘This is what I’m going to do.’ And do it.”



Davidson is a reporter with The (Sharon) Herald, which, like The Meadville Tribune, is owned by Newspaper Holdings Inc.