Rosewood man gets US medal honour

Warrant Officer Paul Dowdle inspects seized weapons in Iraq. His bomb disposal work has earned him the US Army’s Bronze Medal for valour.

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ENGLISH-born, Rosewood-raised, Warrant Officer Paul Dowdle has received one of the highest honours from the US military.

He was awarded a Bronze Star Medal for working with US troops in Baghdad defusing improvised explosive devices (IED).

The number of US troops killed each year by IEDs steadily escalated from 0 in 2001 to 275 last year.

The citation accompanying Warrant Officer Dowdle’s Bronze Star reads in part: “For exceptionally meritorious performance while serving as the senior non-commissioned officer in charge, counter-improvised explosive device (C-IED) intelligence fusion cell, combined joint task force Troy based at Camp Victory in Baghdad, Iraq.

“Warrant Officer Paul Dowdle’s leadership, technical acumen, position attitude and unwavering devotion to duty in support of the C-IED mission were indispensable.

“His invaluable contributions advanced C-IED capability within the corps, ultimately saving countless coalition forces and Iraqi lives.”

Told he must have done something special to get such an award, his answer was typically Australian.

“I don’t know; the Americans obviously thought so,” he said with a self-effacing grin.

“I was an EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) expert in a group of intelligence people and it was my job to make sure they understood the threat.

“I was embedded with an American unit called Taskforce Troy and on top of the hundreds of people who went out and dealt with the IEDs and other explosive hazards, we collected intelligence and informed people through Iraq and also back to Australia and America.

“Here I am, just a dude from Rosewood, writing things that are going back to the States and helping them work out whether they should buy new armoured vehicles or upgrade the ones they have or change their tactics and this kind of stuff.

“I wouldn’t be able to do this without the support from my family. My wife Margaret has copped a lot of deployments and will have to cop a lot more.”

WO Dowdle was born in the UK but his family came to Australia when he was quite young.

Along with twin brother Chris, the family moved to Rosewood where some of the family including he and his wife and his parents still live.

“We lived in the main street and went to Rosewood High School. I joined the Air Force from there,” he said.

“It’s funny, Chris applied to join the Air Force first and he didn’t get through the exams. He was pretty upset about that, so I thought I’d have a go and I got in. I joined in 1979.

“I always wanted to be an armourer, so I got an apprenticeship as armament fitter.”

After working his way up to Sergeant he decided to get into explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) or bomb disposal as it used to be called.

“It covers everything from we call conventional munitions through to improvised explosive devices (IED) and even chemical munitions,” he said.

“We mainly deal with the conventional stuff, but in this day and age we’re tied in with the IED pretty heavily as well.

“When you deal with something conventional that hasn’t worked like an unexploded ordnance, it’s not like it’s safe or easy, but it’s more of a known quantity. Because we’ve got all the data, a lot of the decisions are already made.

“With the IED you don’t know really what you’re up against. You have to try and work out what you’ve got in front of you and you can never be absolutely sure. You might think it’s a pressure plate – something someone’s got to step on or drive over to set it off – but it might have some sort of back-up and you have to account for all those possibilities.

“Defence has spent a lot of money on robots and electronic spotters, but someone has to go down and have a look and find out what’s gone on.

“When it gets to that stage it’s still quite dangerous because there might be something you haven’t found yet. We’ve seen that in Iraq and Afghanistan where there are secondary devices.

“You’ve got a bunch of techniques that allow us to achieve the same outcome without cutting wires. If that’s the only option you have to decide if it’s better to just blow the thing up.

“If someone is putting their life on the line, you would rather blow the thing away than have them there at extreme risk. What our guys are doing in Afghanistan at the moment, I take my hat off to them. It’s probably the most hazardous work you’ll do in this job.”

He said because there was only a small number of EOD techs they were constantly shuttling back and forth from Australia to Iraq or Afghanistan.

“Everyone is just flat-out,” he said. “I was meant to go back this year but it might be next year now. But it’s all up in the air. It could be as late as next August or as early as this August.”

He said relatively little was known about the small group “taking the fight to the bad guys”.

“To think that a group of people from Army, Navy and Air Force – clearance divers in the Navy and engineers in the Army and RAAF EOD techs – have all been involved in this bomb disposal piece.

“Somebody will write a book about it one day.”

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A true blue hero