Gunny Berghardt...

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
flakjacket, he began what bomb disposal officers term
"the longestwalk", 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
7inch 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 is 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 Starand 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."

I'd been receiving email from folks in
the sandbox asking if the Gunny story
ever made it bigtime and if the liberal
media was making a fuss over it.
Yes,it happened over 2 years ago but
a lot of the "boots" are just hearing of it.

The link is to Snopes. The story is true.