No matter how many times he watches it, Lary Trowbridge can’t help but shake his head in amazement.

“It’s crazy,” Trowbridge said.

The video stored on his computer shows a column of four military Humvees moving down a rural road in Iraq. Birds are chirping in the background and you can faintly hear someone talking in Arabic. Arabic words are printed at the bottom of the screen.

Then there is the explosion.

What appears to have been a roadside bomb goes off near the second Humvee. Trowbridge’s son, Tyler Trowbridge, of Lawrence, is driving the fourth Humvee in line.

“Every time you watch it you know it’s coming, but it’s still mind-boggling,” Lary Trowbridge said.

It was about two weeks ago when Tyler Trowbridge told his father in a phone call from Iraq about the bomb. He said nobody was hurt, including the soldiers in the closest Humvee. His son talked about it in a casual manner, “like he was going to the Dairy Queen,” Lary Trowbridge said.

Tyler Trowbridge is serving with Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 137th Infantry of the Kansas National Guard, a unit based in Lawrence and stationed in Baghdad.

A few days after the phone call, Lary Trowbridge received an e-mail from his son with the video attached to it. His son wrote that the video had been posted by insurgents on the Internet. A military psychological operations team took the video and sent it to Tyler Trowbridge’s unit. Military examiners think the bomb was a converted 155 mm artillery shell.

Trowbridge isn’t sure what he will do with the video – perhaps save it for grandchildren to watch one day, he said.

It is also unnerving to him to know that his son won’t be through with his deployment in Iraq until late this year. In August his son is scheduled to return home for a short leave.

“I’m hoping he can come back in one piece,” Lary Trowbridge said.