Semi-OT - Amazing story

From: Graham Wooden (graham@g-rock.net)
Date: Thu Jun 29 2006 - 08:26:49 PDT

Interesting enough, my father also received a Bronze Star and three Purple
Hearts for his tour of duty in Vietnam for the MC and Navy. This is a good
story about a real hero.

-----

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 flak 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 inch 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 colleagues 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 Colonel 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 was 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.

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