AWESOME!!!
Read below pic before making judgment on 'The Finger' gesture and you'll
understand.....
Leading the fight is U S Marine 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 Marines.. 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 foot deep and 8 foot 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 fellow Marines 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 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.
E-mail rec'd 12/8/09