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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 5ft deep and 8ft 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
acrossAmerica 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 inVietnam - he stayed in
Ramadi to engage in the battle against insurgents who
are forever coming up with more ingenious ways of
killing Americans.
