AWESOME!!! Read below pic before making judgment on "The Finger" gesture and
you'll understand...
SEMPER FI !
Leading the fight is Gunnery Sgt. Michael Burghardt, known as "Iron Mike" or
just "Gunny". He is on his third tour in Iraq. He had become a legend in the
bomb disposal world after winning the Bronze Star for disabling 64 IEDs and
destroying 1,548 pieces of ordnance during his
second tour. Then, on September 19, he got blown up. He had arrived at a
chaotic scene after a bomb had killed four US soldiers. He chose not to wear
the bulky bomb protection suit.
"You can't react to any sniper fire and you get tunnel vision," he explains.
So, protected by just a helmet and standard issue fla k jacket, he began what
bomb disposal officers term "the longest walk", stepping gingerly into a 5 ft
deep and 8 ft wide crater.
The earth shifted slightly and he saw a Senao base station with a wire leading
from it. He cut the wire and used his 7 in knife to probe the ground. "I?found
a piece of red detonating cord between my legs," he says. "That's when I knew I
was screwed."
Realizing he had been sucked into a trap, Sgt. Burghardt, 35, yelled at
everyone to stay back. At that moment, an insurgent, probably watching through
binoculars, pressed a button on his mobile phone to detonate the secondary
device below the sergeant's feet "A chill went up the back of my neck and then
the bomb exploded," he recalls. "As I was in the air I remember thinking, 'I
don't believe they got me.' I was just ticked off they were able to do it. Then
I was lying on the road, not able to feel anything from the waist down."
His colleagu es cut off his trousers to see how badly he was hurt. None could
believe his legs were still there. "My dad's a Vietnam vet who's paralyzed from
the waist down," says Sgt. Burghardt. "I was lying there thinking I didn't want
to be in a wheelchair next to my dad and for him to see me like that. They
started to cut away my pants and I felt a real sharp pain and blood trickling
down. Then I wiggled my toes and I thought, 'Good, I'm in business.' "As a
stretcher was brought over, adrenaline and anger kicked in. "I decided to walk
to the helicopter. I wasn't going to let my team-mates see me being carried
away on a stretcher." He stood and gave the insurgents who had blown him up a
one-fingered salute. "I flipped them one. It was like, 'OK, I lost that round
but I'll be back next week'."
Copies of a photograph depicting his defiance, taken by Jeff Bundy for the
Omaha World-Herald, adorn the walls of homes across America and that of Col.
John Gronski, the brigade commander in Ramadi, who has hailed the image as an
exemplar of the warrior spirit. Sgt. Burghardt's injuries - burns and wounds to
his legs and buttocks - kept him off duty for nearly a month and could have
earned him a ticket home. But, like his father - who w as awarded a Bronze Star
and three Purple Hearts for being wounded in action in Vietnam - he stayed in
Ramadi to engage in the battle against insurgents who are forever coming up
with more ingenious ways of killing Americans.
Gary Kropf
'59 Bugeye
aka Thicko 'Grenade' - Trying not to go off in '06
Life's Journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body,
but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting..Holy Shit!! What a
Ride!!"
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