Our hero today is often called "Iron Mike", and with damn good reason. He's done 3 tours in Iraq, and he's become quite the legend in bomb disposal business. He's a recipient of the Bronze Star for singlehandedly disabling 64 IED, or Improvised Explosion Devices. These are the bombs made by insurgents that kill and maim the servicemen and women we read about every day. Additionally, "Gunny" Burghardt destroyed 1,548 individual devices during his 2nd tour alone.
On September 19th, 2005 things changed. Gunny Burghardt arrived at a rather confused and chaotic scene of an explosion that had taken the lives of 4 soldiers minutes before. In the crater left from the 1st explosion was what could clearly be seen to be a 2nd device. Eschewing the normal bomb disposal protective garments - "You can't move fast enough to avoid sniper fire in one of those" - Iron Mike made his way into the 5 x 8 foot crater. When he got to the device and probed the ground around the it, his foot kicked some dirt aside and he saw the unmistakable red wire of detonation chord. Realizing he had been sucked into a trap, he yelled at everyone outside the crater to get back - and hurry!!
At that exact moment an insurgent - properly stationed where he could view the entire scene - threw the switch on his remote device and sent Gunny up into the air in a violent wave of smoke, fire, and dust. "As I was in the air, I remember thinking, 'I don't believe they got me'. I was ticked off they were able to do it. Then I was on the ground and couldn't feel anything from the waist down".
His colleagues cut off his clothing, and were astonished all Iron Mike's vital parts were still intact. Gunny Mike's dad is a Vietnam Vet and is in a wheelchair. He remembers thinking, "I'm not going to go home and sit next to my dad in a wheelchair and let my dad see me like that". As they cut off his pants sharp pain ravaged his legs, but he was able to wiggle his toes, and he knew he "was in business". They bandaged him and brought him a stretcher to take him to the waiting helicopter, but he said "Screw that. None of my teammates are going to see me hauled off on the stretcher."
Iron Mike stood up on his own, burned severely on both legs, his backside, and "other places", and he looked towards the probable direction the insurgents were hiding when they triggered the bomb, and told them through sign language exactly how he felt about them. A reporter from an Omaha Nebraska newspaper was there and snapped the picture you see below, forever making Gunnery Sergeant Michael Burghardt the damnedest, toughest, and most red-white-and-blue-defiant American of this generation.
And we can all thank our God that guys like him exist.
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1 comment:
Yes...Thank God!
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