(Note: This story by reporter Soren Anderson will appear in this Sunday’s SoundLife section.)

Filmmaker Michael Slee was in the back seat of an Army Humvee, camera running, when an anti-tank mine reduced the vehicle to a shattered hulk on the streets of Mosul in northern Iraq. The date was Nov. 18, 2007.

A freelance filmmaker who grew up in Lakewood, Slee was in Iraq to make a documentary about front-line troops patrolling one of the most dangerous cities in the country. He wound up embedded with the soldiers of Alpha Company of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment out of Fort Bliss, Texas. He lived with them, went on missions with them and got to know them very well. And on that November day, he came close to dying with them. Twice.

Slee and his camera emerged unscathed from the explosion, its bright orange flash etched dramatically on his videotape. But the Humvee driver, Pvt. Russell Ladwig, was badly wounded in both legs. (He has since recovered, Slee said.)

Ears ringing from the concussion, Slee resumed filming as Ladwig’s fellow soldiers dragged him from the wreckage, tended to his wounds and loaded him into a truck. After about 20 minutes, the patrol was ready to move out. As Slee climbed into the lead Humvee, he had a premonition. “I just went cold,” he said, “because I knew we were about to hit a second IED (improvised explosive device).”

Sure enough. The Humvee rolled barely 5 feet before a second mine “blew off its back end.”

Slee’s luck held. He escaped injury again. But the unit’s Iraqi interpreter, a man named Paul who was sitting right next to him, lost his right arm in the blast.

A frightening day in the war zone. But it was hardly the only one during the months Slee spent in Iraq.

“I was knee-deep in hands-and-knees combat on quite a few occasions,” he said. “We got blown up and shot up and torn up quite a bit.”

But Slee expected that. “I’ve made my living by being in the wrong place at the right time,” he said.

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