Eight lives down : the story of a counter-terrorist bomb-disposal operator's tour in Iraq

'If fate is against me and I'm killed, so be it, but make it quick and painless.

If I'm wounded, don't let me be crippled. But above all don't let me fuck up the task' So goes the bomb technician's prayer before every bomb he defuses.

For Chris Hunter, it is a prayer he says many times over his four month tour of Iraq.

His is the most dangerous job in the world in the most dangerous place in the world - to make safe the British sector in Iraq against some of the most hardened and technically advanced terrorists in the world.

It is a 24/7 job - his team defuse over 45 bombs in the first two months alone. And the people they're up against don't play by the Geneva Convention.

For them, there are no rules, only results. Bombs, rockets, grenades, ambushes, booby traps - death by any means necessary.

Welcome to the real Wild West. The job of Bomb Disposal Officer in Iraq is a lonely one.

You are alone with the sound of your own breathing and the drumming of your heart in a protective suit in forty plus degrees of heat.

The drawbridge has been pulled up behind you as you advance on your goal.

Playtime is over. It's just you and the bomb. But for Chris Hunter, just when life couldn't get any more dangerous, the stakes are raised again.

Halfway through his tour, he is told the following: 'They want you dead, Chris.

You and your team have captured their weaponry, you've fingered them with forensics, you've neutralised a shedload of their IEDs, and basically you're making Behadli and his lot look like cunts.

They're out to kill the golden-haired bomb man in Basra...'