Customer Reviews

Eight Lives Down: The Most Dangerous Job in the World in the Most Dangerous Place in the World

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In "Eight Lives Down" Chris Hunter does his part to shed light on the EOD operations in Iraq from his first hand experience as a Royal Logistic Corps Ammunition Technical Officer (ATO) serving in Basra. Hunter's counter-IED efforts were so successful that he was personally targeted by the Mahdi Army, a dubious honor previously reserved for ATOs operating in Northern Ireland.
It is enough that Hunter chronicles his team performing multiple hair-raising render safe procedures, but the impact on the reader is amplified by valuable insight tied together with strong writing. In "Eight Lives Down," military enthusiasts and historians will appreciate Hunter's reflective points about the challenges of counter-insurgency. Those new to the world of bomb disposal will find themselves suitably educated into its procedures and associated dangers. Any fan of non-fiction will empathize with the inclusions of Hunter's personal touch, describing the difficulty in maintaining family life from a war zone. Finally, those who served in Iraq will undoubtedly be transported back to their service there through these pages. I predict that in years hence, when queried about their service, EOD Technicians who served in Iraq will point to a copy of Eight Lives Down and say, "Read this first." Hooya, Major Hunter.

Also recommended: A Special Kind of Courage: 321 EOD Squadron Battling the Bombers,The Longest Walk: The World of Bomb Disposal, BOMB SQUAD: A YEAR INSIDE THE NATION'S MOST EXCLUSIVE POLICE UNIT, America's First Frogman: The Draper Kauffman Story

As an American Navy EOD operator, I've had the opportunity to rub shoulders with Chris's mates in the same theater of operations, and it doesn't get realer than EIGHT LIVES DOWN. From the numbing boredom and anxiety while waiting for "the call", to the controlled terror of "the long walk", Chris has done a spot on job of revealing the persona typical of the joes who go in first to save lives and property, without going so far as to reveal the techniques and secrets that allow most of us to come home with all of our fingers. This is the reason that, while you'll find scads of books about other special operations units (SEALS, SAS, Green beret's, etc.), you'll find very little written about these publicity shy operators. By far the best insight into military tactical bomb disposal I have ever encountered. Great job Chris...I trust you're enjoying Nine.

Mr. Hunter spent 17.5 years in the British army, 10 of which were in bomb disposal. Eight lives down focuses on 4 months of his tour in Iraq, with the first two as his last stint as an ATO (ammunition technical officer). He and his team were so successful in diffusing bombs that insurgents took a disliking to him with a price on his head. His next two months were spent as a weapons intelligence officer, a position he reluctantly accepted but grew to like.

Major Hunter was married with two kids when he deployed to Iraq, despite one more empty promise in a string of broken promises not to spend time away from his wife on dangerous missions. Iraq would become his longest mission away from home, during which he became borderline paranoid about his wife divorcing him. It's a wonder why a married man with two small kids would prefer the rush of adrenaline from diffusing bombs to spending time with his family. "I've never taken drugs," he said, "but I don't believe there's anything that will ever equal the exhilaration of that tour," referring to Iraq.

Chris Hunter wrote this book under an alias for security reasons. His intent was to share his experience of what it was like to be terrified, how his family coped with his time away and the ever present danger of losing him, and how soldiers like him react to the pressures of the day to day grind in battle.

In this action packed book, Mr. Hunter compiled the most exciting events of his tour in Iraq sure to satisfy the appetite of even casual military and combat enthusiasts.

Chris Hunter must have trouble finding affordable life insurance.

The job in question that he portrays in this book is that of a British Army specialist whose forte is disarming IED's - improvised explosive devices in Iraq. His tale - remarkably well written - is a gripping account of the job. You feel you are there, wearing 70 lbs. of body armor, sweating in triple-digit heat and loaded with another 80 lbs. of gear.

Tom Clancy couldn't write anything more absorbing. An undercurrent theme of "Eight Lives Down" is the huge emotional and marital toll that the job takes on Hunter and his unraveling relationship with his wife, Lucy. There are observations on the Yanks in Iraq, the nature of the Iraqi people, the job of winning hearts and minds and some touching vignettes of tenderness among ragamuffin street urchins.

"Eight Lives Down" is one of those books that you may find hard to put down!

This is a non-fiction account of the tour of duty of a British bomb disposal operator in Iraq in 2004. The title is a reference to the fact that the bomb disposal squad in Northern Ireland were called "Felix" (meaning that they have nine lives, like a cat). It's an amazing story, so packed with action and danger that it would seem unbelievable if it were fiction. The first half in particular is so tense, so fast-paced that you find yourself longing for the occasional brief interludes of downtime just so that you can catch a breath! The book was very reminiscent for me of the Jamie Foxx/Jennifer Garner movie "The Kingdom" - and it made me realize that the film was more realistic than I had previously thought.

Chris Hunter is a very likeable narrator who is also extremely brave and passionate about what he does. He doesn't just bring the action scenes alive, but also manages to convey what it is that soldiers love about what they do, even when it puts them in extreme danger. He also talks a lot about his family back in the UK and the strains that his army career put on his marriage. This fleshes his character out and makes it a far more interesting book than if it were just about the action on the ground.

I did feel that parts of this book got a little hard to follow due to the military jargon, but that probably more a reflection on the fact that this is an unusual choice of book for me rather than on the book itself. I was engrossed in Eight Lives Down and I highly recommend it.

Chris Hunter's Eight Lives Down: The World's Most Dangerous Job in the World's Most Dangerous Place is a compelling account of his tour in Iraq in 2004 when the country was going all to hell and IED's (Improvised Explosive Devices, i.e. bombs) were becoming the insurgents' weapon of choice against military and civilians alike. Chris Hunter was, when he started this particular tour, a Captain in the British Royal Logistics Corps, and his job was ATO (Ammunition Technical Officer) of an EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) team. Or to put it in more understandable terms, he and his team were a counter-insurgency bomb disposal unit, the guys who got called whenever a suspected IED was spotted. Which, in Basra in 2004, was just about every day and sometimes multiple times in a day.

Most of Eight Lives Down is written in the present tense, as if being narrated as things happen on a particular day, giving the reader a feeling of total immersion in Hunter's experiences and an immediacy to the events as they happen. Hunter is limited for security reasons from going into too much detail about some of the technical specifics of the work he did, but for the most part one gets a very clear picture of what he and his team had to go through when confronted with an IED:

"I decide I'm not going to wear the protective bomb suit. The cumbersome armour is made up of layers of Kevlar and weighs 80lbs. It's 40C (104F) in the shade today and if I wear it I'll probably die from heat exhaustion before I get anywhere near the bomb. And besides, if the device explodes when I'm on top of it, the shock-wave will tear the limbs from my torso and kill me instantly whatever I've got on. I choose the lighter, general-issue combat body armour and Kevlar helmet instead, but frankly, I might as well be wearing a T-shirt and shorts.
--Dan hands over my equipment and I prepare to take the long walk. Two hundred and fifty metres. It doesn't sound far, but I am carrying 90lbs of equipment, the sun is already starting to fry my brain, and the ground is difficult and uneven underfoot. Each footstep is laboured. Sweat pours off me as I shuffle under the fearsome midday sun. It feels like 250 miles.
--RAF Regiment troops have taken up fire positions at each end of this barren wasteland, ready to retaliate should a sniper be lying in wait. Apart from the village behind me and Divisional Headquarters on the horizon to my front, there is nothing but featureless terrain as far as the eye can see.
--I try to regulate my breathing. To get my pulse down. I inhale deeply through my nose and exhale slowly through my mouth. But my heart is racing. This is taking forever. I've only travelled 100 metres and I am physically drained; and however much I try to convince myself that I am not in danger, I know I can't take anything for granted. I'm saturated with sweat and mentally fried, and I'm not even halfway to the device."

Hunter also gives a good picture of what life was like for him and his men in Basra, and of the kinds of things that people in the military have had to deal with since time immemorial. I particularly liked this section and the quote with which he preceded it:

"'We tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress, while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization' - Gaius Petronius, AD 66"
...
Mark, one of the brigade's staff officers, wanders into the Det before I take any more leaps of imagination. He's a pleasant enough bloke, and his heart is in the right place, but professionally I've never really rated him.
--Despite having no experience in counter-terrorist bomb disposal, he's been given the job of coordinating all EOD operations in theatre. His lack of specialist knowledge can be frustrating at the best of times, but lately he's really been winding me up.
--'I've been chatting to Colonel Sanderson,' he tells me brightly, 'and we've decided it would be a good idea to rotate the teams.'
--'Rotate the teams? You mean us swapping with Abbs's boys up in al-Amarah? Mark, are you [expletive] insane? What can you possibly hope to achieve by us rotating?'
--'Well, for a start, you both need a rest, and you know what they say about a change being as good as...'
--He tails off, seeing the look on my face. He's convincing nobody.
--'Have you really thought this through? Have you honestly considered the full implications of taking us both out of our own back yards? Places we know like the back of our hands? For a start, we're both starting to get closer to the bombers in our respective areas. We're getting more of a grip on their MOs and bomb-making signatures with every passing day. We're within a gnat's whisker of making a breakthrough. And you want to rock the applecart now? Abbs is happy where he is, I'm happy where I am. If you move us, all that work is going to be wasted and more lives will be lost. It's sheer lunacy.'
--'I hear what you're saying,' Mark mutters, 'but the decision's been made. Trust me, it's for your own good.'
--For my own good? That's a joke. I'm not giving up that easily.
--'Have you spoken to Abbs about this?'
--'Well...' He looks mildly sheepish. 'Not as such.'
--'Not as such? What the [expletive] does that mean? You either have or you haven't. Which is it?'
--His mobile rings. He holds up his hand, motioning me to shut up -- which just makes me want to rip it off.
--'You've got a task,' he says, relieved. 'And when you get back from it, you'll need to start preparing for your road move to al-Amarah. You're leaving tomorrow morning.'"

Another thing that Hunter does well is to convey the toll that deployments take on the families and marriages of those deployed and how the stress goes both ways. The exchanges he shares that went on between him and his wife before and during his deployment truly show the strains that go on that don't get talked about much: wives wondering if they're going to get the dreaded visit from a base officer to tell them their husband has been killed or maimed, and having to raise the kids on their own, and husbands feeling the guilt of the stresses they know their wives are undergoing, and wondering if this tour will be the one that finally rips their marraige asunder.

The book does have one or two short-comings. Hunter uses a lot of British slang and references, most of which a US-reader will not be familiar with. The book does have a glossary at the back that is helpful with most of the military terms and acronyms, and with a few bits of slang, but a more thorough glossary would have been highly appreciated. Also, there was no index at the end (at least not in the edition I read) which would have been helpful as well.

All in all though, Eight Lives Down is an excellent read and will give the reader a much better understanding - not to mention appreciation - for the guys who have to put their lives on the line time and time again, disarming devices that are specifically meant to kill and maim them and everyone around them. Highly recommended.

Eight Lives Down is a riveting, edge-of-your-seat first person account of a British Bomb Disposal Officer in Iraq in 2004. I originally thought this tale would be about the deaths of 8 of his men, but halfway through I realized instead what reference he was using.

EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, and Captain (at the time) Hunter's specialty was IED Disposal, the Improvised Explosive Device, that has become such a hallmark of the war in Iraq. Primarily set off by something so simple as the average car remote for unlocking your door, Hunter gives you the "you are there" perspective as he recovers these devices or scans the debris for clues to the manufacturer if it's already gone off.

Then there are the secondary explosives set to kill the people like him who respond to bomb attacks, plus snipers and ambushes along the road to the scene. A true hero in this world, he and his men put themselves in harm's way to protect people they don't even know.

A must-read book for everyone, plus it gives us Yanks some insight into common British phraseology. :)

Too many emotions to even catalog in reading this book. What leads people to do this? What people plant bombs? What has happened to the sanity in this world? Who would pick this assignment?

Yes, I was a volunteer firefighter, but this pales to the horror that these men seek out. It is beyond my comprehension at the self- sacrifice and the damned determination of these men. It is the headlong rush into danger, disregarding all instincts of survival. As various nations wave their bloody banners of nationalism or fanaticism, these operatives are unknown and working day and night so that we may slumber comfortably in our homes ignorant of what goes on around us.

We may have to take stock of our values and actions causing the necessity of having such troops.

This book is a brilliant look into the lives of an EOD/BD/IEDD unit (different names by different countries) in Iraq. The names may change, and the locations, but much of what he experienced we all did back in the time frame he was "in country". In reading the book, it brought back a lot of memories for me, some good, some not. One day I will point my children to this book for a more eloquent version of my experiences than I could ever give them. It's that good.

E. Moritz, EOD Team Leader, USAF

Wow, I simply could not put this book down.

Chris pulls you in quickly and doesn't let you escape the world of an explosives expert in the land of improvised explosives. From the tension to deactivating a bomb while trying to ignore the reality this bomb was planted so the bad guys could snipe Chris, to the despair over fallen comrades and the impact to his marriage.

Not just an incredible story, but well written with humour and sadness. I hope Chris continues to write, as I'll buy anything he produces.