On a gloomy Sunday afternoon at the height of the Troubles, rookie bomb disposal officer Ray Lane was called to the Border to defuse a 1,000kg bomb planted by the IRA. This was the beginning of an extraordinary career.

From 10 beer kegs filled to the brim with explosives, to fiendish homemade devices designed to maim and murder, Ray’s job was the very definition of hazardous.

Developing unparalleled skills in wartime diplomacy, he went on to spend perilous stints on the front line of conflicts in Bosnia, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Ukraine. He witnessed the horrors of war up close and was left with deep personal scars.

From the darkest depths of humanity to the pinnacle of bravery, this gripping memoir explores the nature of warfare, duty and the courage and mental strength it takes to be the person who overrides every natural human instinct and walks towards a 1,000kg bomb.

Ray Lane is a former commanding officer of the Irish Defence Force Ordnance School. On his retirement in 2018, he had been a member of the Irish Defence Forces for 45 years. He has served overseas in many missions with the UN, EU and NATO in Lebanon, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Somalia. He served as an expert witness on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (1993), the United Nations Factfinding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (2009) and the Callanan Review (2011). More recently, he has been working with UNOPS (The United Nations Office for Project Services) in Ukraine advising on demining land to allow agriculture to return. He also works for a start-up company in UCG, Aquila Bioscience, which, by utilising revolutionary decontamination technology, creates products that protect individuals against harmful pathogens and biotoxins. He lives in Naas, Co. Kildare.