FAIRBANKS -- A Fairbanks engineer saw firsthand last fall how Afghanistan is a dangerous assignment whether for a soldier or a civilian.
While working on a new road in an Afghan village John J. Keys was hit by an 80-pound roadside bomb. Keys, another Army civilian and a translator survived, but two military men they had been working with for months were killed instantly.
Perhaps thankless is the best word for the engineering assignment. Keys found out later that the villagers for whom they were building the road likely saw the bomb- layers digging for several days to install the bomb.
Yet no one bothered to warn them.
Keys, 52, is no stranger to war zones. In his recent career he was been a civil engineer at Fort Wainwright, where he helped design some the post's barracks. But before coming to Fairbanks in 1994 he served in the Air National Guard during Operation Desert Storm and later on drug interdiction assignments in Central and South America.
As a civilian engineer, Keys said he has good protection from the military with a close aerial presence and an escort of soldiers. But he never forgot he was in a war. "You're always careful," he said. "You're looking for signs of (explosive devices), hand trails where they bury the wires ... You're always aware that anything could happen at any time."
On Oct. 19, Keys was inspecting a two-lane gravel road through the village of Yahya Khel in Eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. He was on (and now directs) a provisional reconstruction team, a combined military and civilian crew that was going to convert a gravel road to cobblestones at the request of the village. As a member of the team, Keys wore full combat gear minus the weapons and was traveling with a convoy of heavy mine-resistant vehicles. Instead of an assault rifle he carried a camera to document the road conditions.
A photograph he took a few minutes before the blast shows a relatively innocuous scene: a dusty road flanked by earthen walls.
A group of men in white robes sit and stand in a doorway talking to soldiers.
The blast went off about 100 meters from where the photograph was taken. The explosion killed Navy Chief Petty Officer Raymond J. Border, 31, of West Lafayette, Ohio, and Army Staff Sgt. Jorge M. Oliveira, 33, of Newark, N.J. Keys was blown of his feet and knocked 20 feet into a gully, according to an account of the explosion recorded in a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers news release.
"I don't know how to describe it," Keys said. "I was in full-body pain and I wasn't where I started."
The other Army civilian, Jacob A. West, 30, of Fayetteville, N.C., remembered only a smell of burning dirt, chemical and plastic from the moments after the blast, according to the Army news release. His first clear memory was sitting in the armored vehicle where he saw Keys return to the site of the blast to look for the two military men.
"He (Keys) did all that without being asked," West said according to the release. "He did all that on his own without any regard for his personal safety. He was part of that team. I think that was significant. People should know that."
This week, Keys and West were both presented the Defense of Freedom Medal, the equivalent of the military Purple Heart for Department of Defense civilians.
"People don't want these awards," said Maj. Gen. Kendall P. Cox while presenting the award in Kabul, according to the Army news release. "You shouldn't go out there seeking something that identifies you as either being shot or blown up. It's not a nice thing to have, but it's important to recognize these two gentlemen for their service."
Keys is scheduled to return to Fairbanks in June, but along with West he chose remain in Afghanistan and went back to work on similar assignments within a week of the blast. The job continues to be dangerous. On one of his fist assignments back at work Keys was inspecting the conditions of another road when an explosive sniffing dog kept him from stepping on another roadside bomb.
By SAM FRIEDMAN
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner