Early this Saturday morning in the Florida Panhandle, in keeping with a schedule set in motion decades ago, a crowd will gather around a memorial for a solemn roll call – the names of a specialized group of American service members, 289 in all, who have died in the line of duty since 1942.  Each name belongs to a community within the military – explosive ordnance disposal, or E.O.D. — that has undergone a public and professional transformation in the last decade, a period when improvised bombs have become the primary weapon against the West and Western troops.  Insider sentiment and casualty statistics align on this point. As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq exposed a generation of troops to the particular perils associated with makeshift bombs, the E.O.D. techs who specialize in finding and destroying hidden bombs have become among the preeminent and most appreciated specialists in the military. Once seen primarily as support troops, they have become a multiservice corps of experts regarded by fellow service members as shouldering risks to keep others alive, and to keep a fearsome weapon often at bay.  They have paid for this place. The ceremony to be held at Eglin Air Force Base on Saturday, organized by the Navy’s E.O.D school with the help of the nonprofit E.O.D. Memorial Foundation, will mark another annual commemoration of fallen E.O.D techs, with a emphasis on those killed in the last year.  A message will be obvious as the roll call proceeds. During a year when one long war appeared to be winding down, with the end of American combat operations in Iraq, and the beginning of the Pentagon’s drawdown in Afghanistan, service in the field for E.O.D. techs remained as dangerous as ever. The list of the dead says as much. Of the 289 names that will be read on Saturday, 177 died from 1942 to 2001. In the 11 years since the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, 112 more E.O.D. techs have died – a pace exceeding the rate at which they were killed in prior decades.  And after the unveiling of bronze name plates on the wall Saturday morning, 18 of the names will be new. They form the largest group of American E.O.D. techs ever to die in a 12-month period, the foundation’s officials said, making them a stark indicator of the role that E.O.D. has assumed at the front of modern American war.  Even then the list is incomplete, and not just because it does not include the large number of those wounded. Since the list was finalized and the plaques were made for this weekend’s event, still more E.O.D. techs have been killed, including a Navy officer, Lt. Christopher E. Mosko, 28, who died on April 26 in Afghanistan, the victim of a hidden improvised bomb.  And so as hundreds of past and present E.O.D techs and their families gather in Florida this week, others are clustering in grief and remembrance for Lieutenant Mosko, whose remains arrived in Dover Air Force Base in Delaware this week, and who will be buried next week in San Diego.  Lieutenant Mosko died in Ghazni Province when the vehicle he was traveling in struck a bomb. Two other soldiers died with him.  His peers, mentors and friends recalled him as an archetype and a role model, the sort of young officer who always seemed to improve.  As a business and engineering student at Drexel University in Philadelphia, he enrolled at the Naval R.O.T.C. unit at the University of Pennsylvania. He had intended to be a fighter pilot. His direction changed, however, when he met John Ismay, a Navy explosive ordnance disposal officer who took a brief break from security duties at the United Nations to speak to the midshipmen at Penn. Midshipmen Mosko then shifted plans and began competing to be assigned to the explosive ordnance disposal field.  Sean M. Simmons, who was a Navy adviser at the Penn unit, said Midshipman Mosko was drawn to the field and worked intently to be selected. He had been a competitive swimmer, Mr. Simmons said, and soon was training as a triathlete and hoping to be chosen for work alongside Special Forces and SEALs, mixing a calm and methodical intelligence with physical drive. He was commissioned in 2007 and granted his wish. He began his climb in a field that Mr. Simmons said was his match.  “Navy E.O.D. guys are not the chest thumpers that some special ops guys are, because you can’t mad dog a piece of ordnance,” Mr. Simmons said. “It is a cerebral job, and it appealed to Chris’s engineering side.”  Lieutenant Mosko proceeded to live a storybook Navy life. He married a fellow member of the Penn R.O.T.C. unit, Amanda Turney Mosko, who was commissioned as an ensign and served a tour as an officer in the Navy nursing corps, until recently being honorably discharged. Lt. Mosko became a scuba supervisor and free-fall parachutist. By last year Lieutenant Mosko and his team had been assigned to work in the special operations community. Several months ago, after an intensive predeployment work-up, he departed for a tour in Afghanistan, where he ultimately joined a Special Forces team working with Afghan Local Police in Ghazni Province. Among his duties, his friends and peers said, was training Afghans to counter improvised bombs themselves. He was on a patrol when he died, too late to be listed in the ceremony on Saturday.  Dan Tompkins, a former Air Force ordnance officer who is the memorial foundation’s president, said Lieutenant Mosko would be added to the wall next year, and his family would be invited to attend the ceremony.  More immediately, he will be remembered in the days ahead in ceremonies in San Diego, where Lieutenant Mosko lived most recently. Lt. Andrew P. Petry, a former classmate of both Moskos, said by telephone from Annapolis that he was passing the hours now thinking about the eulogy he will deliver next week.  Families hold a central place in the E.O.D. Memorial Foundation’s ambitions. The foundation flies family members to Florida for the annual ceremony, and underwrites scholarships for the children and the spouses of techs killed on the job. Lieutenant Petry said he was thinking of eulogizing his friend from a similar point of view: that he was not just an officer and a specialist, but a much richer human being, a man who reflected the parents who raised him and the people with whom he chose to share his life and time.  “Chris was dependable, loyal and hard-working,” Lieutenant Petry said. But what he kept remembering, was “how happy he made all the people he was close with.”  “I think the best thing he ever did was meet and fall in love with Amanda,” he said. “That’s what I’m working on as I think about what to say.”  Lieutenant Mosko will be buried next Friday at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego. The memorial for the many other fallen E.O.D. techs, including the 18 who have died in the line of duty in the last year, will be held Saturday at 9 a.m. The service members who will be added to wall are listed below:  1. Staff Sgt. Chauncy R. Mays  2. Staff Sgt. Eric S. Trueblood  3. Spc. Christopher G. Stark  4. Staff Sgt. Mark C. Wells  5. Gunnery Sgt. Ralph E. Pate  6. Tech Sgt. Daniel L. Douville  7. Staff Sgt. Joseph J. Hamski  8. Staff Sgt. Michael J. Garcia  9. Staff Sgt. David P. Day  10. Staff Sgt. Kristoffer M. Solesbee  11. Staff Sgt. Stephen J. Dunning  12. Sgt. Daniel J. Patron  13. Staff Sgt. Nicholas A. Sprovtsoff  14. Chief Petty Officer Nicholas H. Null  15. Senior Chief Petty Officer Kraig M. Vickers  16. Petty Officer First Class Chad R. Regelin  17. Airman First Class Matthew R. Seidler  18. Tech Sgt. Matthew S. Schwartz  Follow C.J. Chivers on Facebook, on Twitter at @cjchivers or on his personal blog, cjchivers.com, where many posts from At War are supplemented with more photographs and further information.
In Florida, a tribute in bronze pays homage to explosive ordnance disposal technicians, a special group within the military that has lost 289 members since 1942.