‘Death By a Thousand Cuts’

In a narrow alley in Afghanistan’s Ghazni Province, Army technician Jeffrey Truex worked cautiously to disarm an improvised explosive device, a pressure cooker packed with homemade explosives. 

Boxed in by concrete walls and wearing 80-pound suits, Truex and his three-person team, members of a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit, were soaked in sweat. Their job is methodical: First, they send in a robot to try to destroy the charge remotely. When the robot reaches the limit of its abilities, Truex and his fellow technicians move in to place charges to neutralize the device, carefully connecting wires and explosives. Every step is measured. Every breath, controlled.

Then they fall back to what they hope is a safe distance.

But on that day in 2009, the explosion was bigger than expected. The blast funneled through narrow passageways, amplifying its force. Debris and toxic dust ricocheted off the concrete walls, a surge strong enough that the team could feel it even within their armored truck about 100 meters away.

The metallic roar shook their bones, invading their skulls with a deafening ring.

“That blast wave just gets channeled right into you,” Truex said. “There’s things you can’t account for.”

While Truex’s team escaped without obvious signs of injury, that kind of blast can contribute to traumatic brain injuries, exposure to chemicals, and high levels of overall job stress. Many EOD techs believe those occupational hazards are contributing to high rates of behavioral health disorders and illnesses showing up among members of the military who work closely with explosives. 

There is growing evidence that these hazards raise suicide and mortality risk. From 2001 to 2024, Army EOD technicians died by suicide at a rate up to two times higher than other soldiers, and four times as high as the national population, according to data The Assembly obtained from the Department of Defense in response to a public records request.

The data shows EOD techs are dying of illnesses at a rate higher than all other jobs in the Army. And it’s not due to age: The average age of the deceased in the jobs compared was just under 28, at the prime of their lives. EOD techs weren’t much older, at 30–still within what should have been the peak of health.

The Assembly’s analysis appears to be the first detailed breakdown of the Army’s data. North Carolina is one of the military’s largest hubs for EOD units, home to the National Guard’s 430th EOD Company, Fort Bragg’s 192nd Ordnance Battalion, and Camp Lejeune Marine EOD. 

Truex, now in his 50s and living just outside Fort Bragg, believes these outcomes are avoidable. He can list the names of those lost off the top of his head: two explosive ordnance disposal technicians who were killed in the line of duty while disarming explosives and 19 more who came home, only to die by suicide or from chronic illnesses years later. Most of them were young.

Truex leads small gatherings of EOD veterans who now lay flowers on their graves and trade quiet stories about their lives. It’s a reminder of how heavy the work still weighs on them.

“The shitty thing is, we’re one of the smallest military communities as well,” he said. Even at its peak, the Army’s EOD personnel numbered less than its Special Forces. 

The symptoms his fellow veterans describe often take on a surreal edge. Some speak of seeing shadowy figures and ghostly children, or being unable to shake the feeling of being watched—threatened even—by something that isn’t there.

Others explain it in more physical terms: digestive issues, irregular heart rhythms, persistent pain no doctor can explain. They recount being overtaken by panic, feeling a crushing pressure on their chest, and waking up soaked in sweat. 

It feels like something monstrous is hunting them, a predator without a name or face that followed them home from foreign battlefields and training sites and is now stalking them from inside their own bodies. 

Truex wasn’t shocked to learn the Army’s data backs up his own experiences. But he feels there’s been little effort to do anything about it. Last year, a bill requiring the Pentagon to produce a report on suicide rates and brain injuries among EOD techs was introduced but died quietly. Political headwinds, generally, seem to be blowing against improving access to veteran care.  

Truex founded After the Long Walk, a support group of active-duty and veteran EOD technicians, in 2015. The group runs a 24/7, peer-led volunteer crisis line. 

He juggles leading the group with his day job as a facilities manager at Fort Bragg. His calendar is stacked with weekend retreats, local gatherings, and late-night calls that would exhaust most people. In addition to providing peer support, he engages with Army leadership and the broader defense community about the issues facing EOD personnel. 

But it never seems to wear him down. If anything, it sharpens his sense of purpose.

“The bottom line is that we want to stop EOD techs from killing themselves and build a network of EOD techs that can manage a crisis … before it becomes a crisis,” Truex said. “We provide an outlet and work with other organizations who are trying to help our community.”

Staffed entirely by volunteers, the crisis line has never missed a shift.

“Often, it’s just about reaching people at the right time,” Truex said. “We’ve lost some guys who called the hotline. At one point, the Army was afraid of us. … It was all about liability. But over time, some senior leaders came to see the value. Getting the word out is tough. Some people know about us—but not enough.”

A High-Stress Job

The training to become an EOD technician is relentless. In every new class of technicians, only one in four will make it to graduation. The unforgiving pace, the precision the work demands, and the constant reminders that a single mistake can be fatal are often enough to push trainees away.

Those who endure become part of a small, tight-knit community. Whether it’s disarming a roadside bomb in combat, securing a stadium for a visiting dignitary, or responding to reports of explosive devices at home, EOD techs stand at the intersection of courage and calculation.

But despite the reputation for high-stakes action in movies like The Hurt Locker, EOD work is often quieter, more grueling, and emotionally exhausting.

The Army’s peak of more than 2,000 technicians in the 2010s was barely enough to meet demand, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report. Today, there are just over half that, and the demand for their specialized skills is pushing many techs beyond their limits.

“Our competency is our greatest detriment,” said an EOD technician in North Carolina with nearly a decade of service in the field who asked to remain anonymous for fear of career repercussions. “We’re stretched beyond our replenishment capability, leading to extreme burnout, lack of basic proficiency, and fractured families.”

In 2019, the GAO released a report confirming what techs had been saying for years: Their units were overtasked and understaffed.

The Pentagon failed to account for mission requirements when deciding how many EOD personnel were needed, the report stated, reaching a crisis point by 2016, when the man-hours spent on missions increased dramatically. “The U.S. Army as a whole lacks the forethought to plan EOD manning before or after any crisis,” the technician said. “Only when something goes wrong and catastrophe strikes.”

From 2017 to 2021, the deaths of EOD techs in the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Army began to stack up quietly, then relentlessly, according to The Assembly’s data, which doesn’t include the Navy. 

Causes of death are listed in cold, clinical terms: “Contact range gunshot wound through head.” “Hanging. Strangulation. Suffocation.” Sixteen suicides in four years among active-duty EOD techs—an increase even as the total number of techs was decreasing.

Research from 2021 found that EOD techs have higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and insomnia than other military jobs. Many techs stay silent about the impacts of the job out of fear that asking for help could lead to losing their clearance. 

Joshua Jenkins, who was an Army EOD tech for seven years, knows that pressure intimately.

“It was always said … ‘If you go to behavioral health, you’re going to be sidelined,’” Jenkins said. “You’re basically scaring the shit out of people.”

Suicides and Rare Cancers

Jenkins now works as a registered nurse in hospitals and clinics in the Fayetteville area. The Assembly’s data confirms something he’s quietly observed for years but feels few are willing to confront: an unusually high rate of unexplained illnesses among EOD personnel, alongside a suicide crisis.

“What happens when the healthiest people you know—who ate clean, trained hard, never smoked—start getting lung cancer, brain cancer, thyroid disorders?” Jenkins asked. “Rare and obscure diseases that I heard about in nursing school? These are people who shouldn’t have more than slightly elevated blood pressure. But that’s not what we’re seeing. And it’s not a coincidence.”

The Assembly’s data analysis found that from 2011-2024, EOD techs on active duty died from cancers, heart attacks, and other illnesses at a rate higher than all other jobs in the Army: 29 per 100,000, compared with 11 per 100,000 in non-blast-exposed roles. 

Similar patterns are emerging among other blast-exposed roles: artillery personnel, mortar personnel, and tank crews. Like EOD techs, the rates of suicide and illnesses are significantly higher rates than for peers in non-blast-exposed jobs.

“We’re wearing bomb suits for hours and taking multiple X-rays of suspicious devices, irradiating ourselves in the process,” Jenkins said. “Then, going straight into blast craters to collect evidence. When something explodes and releases unknown compounds, we’re the ones standing in the middle of it, breathing it all in. It’s death by a thousand cuts.”

Jenkins’ father was an Air Force EOD technician. As his father aged, Jenkins watched him deteriorate, developing mysterious health issues no one else in the family had. He struggled for years to prove to the VA that his illnesses were connected to his service.

“When you really stop and think about cumulative exposure, it’s terrifying,” Jenkins said.

Now Jenkins sees the cycle is repeating itself with his friends. “So if someone was more likely to develop chronic illness with high rates of pain,” asked Jenkins, “wouldn’t it increase the odds of them committing suicide beyond the risk factors already associated with the job?” 

Truex, and a growing number of experts, believes exposure to blast overpressure—the force that shook his bones back in 2009 in Afghanistan—plays a role, too. Research published in the journal Military Medicine in 2023 showed EOD personnel exposed to blasts reported worse mental health symptoms. 

“There’s enough headaches and migraines,” Truex said. “I can personally speak to the irritability, and that can cause a lot of downstream effects.” 

There are also the unexplained deaths, like Robert Latham, a 32-year-old EOD captain at Fort Bragg who, despite appearing to be perfectly healthy, died suddenly of a heart attack during a run in 2021. 

A study published in October in Military Medicine also tied repeated blast exposure to significant gut and digestive issues. Across the Atlantic, researchers at King’s College London this year found EOD techs there have a five times higher rate of developing bladder cancer compared with the general population.

A 2022 VA analysis of data from more than 2.5 million post-9/11 service members found that veterans with traumatic brain injuries faced significantly higher mortality rates, including a higher risk of dying from cancer, cardiovascular disease, and even accidents.

Stephen Xenakis, a retired brigadier general, psychiatrist, and senior adviser to the Pentagon on neurobehavioral conditions, has long suspected that blasts were doing more than just rattling the brain. He believes they disrupt the body’s command center: the autonomic nervous system, which quietly regulates vital functions like heart rate, digestion, and immune responses.

A disrupted nervous system could lead to a variety of physical health problems in previously healthy individuals, a potential outcome that has led Congress to introduce a bill in December that would call on the VA and DOD to do more research into the subject.

“Blasts affect the entire body,” Xenakis said. “The brain regulates essential systems, including the immune system.”

He also believes more research must be done. “The DOD and VA must systematically collect data on these service members,” he said. “Saying ‘We don’t know’ isn’t acceptable.”

Institutional Delays and Grassroots Research

Navy EOD veteran Bryan Walton’s own exposures run the gamut—blasts, shrapnel, radiation, and chemical weapons.

While he doesn’t wear the uniform anymore, he’s still in the fight as a member of the advisory committee for the VA’s Complex Exposure Threats Center of Excellence, focusing specifically on the unique risks EOD techs face.

“EOD veterans are taking care of each other, which makes me both proud and sad,” Walton said. “The only help we can get is from the guy who had our back in uniform. When techs reach out for help, the VA has no idea what they went through.”

The Assembly’s data analysis for this story includes only active-duty troops; the VA doesn’t track suicide rates by the job a veteran performed during their service. And neither the Army nor the VA appears to track rates of specific illnesses by job category.

The Army did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the data and our analysis.  

Last year, the bipartisan Congressional EOD Caucus introduced a bill requiring the DOD to report on suicide rates and TBIs among EOD personnel, but the bill stalled and never made it into the annual National Defense Authorization Act. 

However, in the committee report for the bill, the DOD was asked to produce the report no later than April 2025. They missed the deadline, but in September, after The Assembly reached out about its data, they produced a report looking at the last five years of suicide data among EOD personnel.

They found no heightened risk of suicide among EOD techs, the report stated, and that the EOD techs who died of suicide on active duty in all four branches had no reported cases of PTSD or TBI. 

The Pentagon did not look at longer term trends like The Assembly’s analysis or a 2024 DOD report that pointed to higher-than-average rates of suicide among military EOD personnel from 2011-2022.  

Richard Hudson, who represents North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, which includes Fayetteville and Fort Bragg, is part of the caucus. Emerging research “only reinforces the urgent need for clear, timely data, and decisive action” to help EOD technicians, he told The Assembly via email.

For veterans like Walton, it was another disappointment. He pointed to the VA’s acknowledgement last year that troops in Iraq had been exposed to chemical warfare and an announcement that it was launching a study. 

Walton was among those troops exposed to mustard agents in Iraq that left him with painful blisters over almost a quarter of his body. But the VA, he said, has provided little information to those who are potentially affected. “From the many hard questions I have personally asked during VA town halls, there’s no answer, because we don’t know how to test for it,” he said.

Even though the center for which he serves on the advisory board is part of the VA, the department “barely knows it exists,” he said. “Even though the referral process is on the VA’s website, providers often deny EOD techs access to these programs.” 

EOD technicians have explored treatments for brain injuries with varying support from the VA and DOD, he said, including neurofeedback, which uses auditory or visual signals to help regulate brain activity; psychedelic-assisted therapy for depression and PTSD; and hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which was authorized for N.C. veterans in 2019 by the North Carolina General Assembly.

But there’s still no definitive treatment protocol for EOD techs and the illnesses they develop. Walton believes the path forward will likely mirror other toxic exposure cases: slow and bureaucratic, but possible. 

The center has made tremendous progress, he said. “But it’s not fast enough. For those of us who beat the clock on every deployment, our clock is still ticking.”

Truex also feels that urgency. It has led him to commission independent studies with EOD veterans and their families. One, done in partnership with Brigham Young University, surveyed 698 EOD techs for validated suicidal risk factors. Respondents who reported feeling like a burden to others, reported moral injury, or had diminished need for self-preservation had significantly increased suicide risk, the study found.

And for those for whom the risk has grown too great, the hotline is still available.

“It’s both hard and easy to know how effective we are. Our wins are generally very private,” Truex said. “But when we have a guy call our hotline 15 times in a year and eventually he is able to volunteer to take those calls, we know we’re winning. We only have to save one guy to make it worthwhile.”

Morgan Casey contributed reporting.