Why Marines kick ass.....

This is an awesome account of the bravery of the men in uniform.


Read the story. You'll understand the gesture
Look at the newspaper picture below closely before reading the story. It's a good story about a real hero.


The Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant in the picture is Michael Burghard, part of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Team that is supporting 2nd Brigade 28th Infantry Division (Pennsylvania Army National Guard) in Iraq.
The story:

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.








Just thought I'd pass this on for anyone who hadn't seen it. Guys like this are what being a Marine is all about. He is one tough (and lucky) s.o.b. Mike

http://www.snopes.com/photos/military/burghardt.asp
true, and snopes has the picture

87manche said:

http://www.snopes.com/photos/military/burghardt.asp
true, and snopes has the picture

Click to expand...

Yeah, I just realized that the picture did not make it. Someone help me on this one?
Post it for me, I still can't figure out how to get the damn picture to show up.

atriot:

Mambeu said:

atriot:

Click to expand...

Thanks for the assist Mambeu.

Outstanding! The press won't cover the troops so I'll send this to all my friends. So they can see too. Thanks for sharing.

Mambeu said:

atriot:

Click to expand...

What the hell is this crap?!? This is not the picture included in the story. Whichever one of you assholes changed it should be shot!

f**kin moto!

Thanks for sharing!

Found a link to the picture:
http://cofreedom.blogspot.com/2006/01/thank-god-for-united-states-marine.html

GreenbeltXJ said:

f**kin moto!

Click to expand...

OooRaah!!!

Oorah Gunny!

He was lucky, VERY lucky.

But then again, only in the Marines will you be praised for disregarding the regulation and SOP.

Kudos to him for living, but damn, that's Jackass-tastic.

Semper Fi!!!!!

GI-John said:

He was lucky, VERY lucky.

But then again, only in the Marines will you be praised for disregarding the regulation and SOP.

Kudos to him for living, but damn, that's Jackass-tastic.

Click to expand...

Luck does not describe it.
Boy, aint that the truth, he shoulda bought a lottery ticket.
My question is, why are they even wasting time disarming the things for, a .50 or a round from a bigger gun and just blow it in place.. it's a freaking war zone, so what if you make a few more holes in the landscape..
If the iraqies who want this done and over with had any balls they'd be popping those sob's with the family AK while they were planting them.. it's not like digging a hole alongside the road is a 'gee, wonder what he/they are doing' kind of thing.. theres only two possible answers, either digging a cat hole to take a dump or planting an IED and if the sucker don't squat then BANG, give em a third eye...

That is amazing! MARINES!!!!!!!!!

atriot:

RichP said:

Luck does not describe it.
Boy, aint that the truth, he shoulda bought a lottery ticket.
My question is, why are they even wasting time disarming the things for, a .50 or a round from a bigger gun and just blow it in place.. it's a freaking war zone, so what if you make a few more holes in the landscape..
If the iraqies who want this done and over with had any balls they'd be popping those sob's with the family AK while they were planting them.. it's not like digging a hole alongside the road is a 'gee, wonder what he/they are doing' kind of thing.. theres only two possible answers, either digging a cat hole to take a dump or planting an IED and if the sucker don't squat then BANG, give em a third eye...

Click to expand...

Concur. Fully.

Considering Iraq is, as I recall, a country where pretty much everyone is armed, having the indigs help out can only accelerate the withdrawal of the United States forces there (or is it "UN Coalition?" I just don't recall right now - and I only really care about US personnel anyhow...)

Failing that, just take all this arty and ordnance we aren't using (and just why not?) and set up killzones around known insurgent nests. Then, like RichP said, start pasting the area flat, shoot anyone that runs out, and make sure there's a good deal of information on EXACTLY WHY we're doing it!

I can't see spending personnel when bombs are rather cheaper and readily available. As far as civilian casualties go: 1) It's wartime. War is not surgery, it's not precision, and it's messy. 2) Technically, the insurgents are also civilians, unless and until a warring power claims them as their own (which just ain't gonna happen.) Therefore, all "legitimate" kills are going to be civilians, and any prisoners taken will have NO protections under the Geneva Convention or the Law of Land Warfare - again, unless and until a belligerent power claims them as their own (and therefore declares a state of war with the United States, and we can bomb them right back into the Stone Age as well.)

I'd like to see them take live Rockeyes hostage - THAT would make for some good news footage, y'ask me. Put A-10's to work doing "Special Delivery" and use 105m/m and 155m/m for "short range" work - anything under, say, five miles or so.

While soldiers are trained to fight, fighting is not first on the list. There's no reason to risk lives when it's easier to send in special "care packages" to do the job - and I see no reason why we don't do so. Public Opinion be damned - war is messy, and should be prosecuted as violently, bloodily, and viciously as possible, in order to get it over with more quickly. Make anyone wanting to go after us understand that declaring war on us is little more than a one-way ticket to Hell, and you'll see it drop, I think.

No reason we can't paste to Beka'a valley and locale while we're about it, which should see to all those "Islamic Jihad" groups. Good testing ground for "dirty" neutron bombs, I think. Full kill potential with minimal lingering radiation.

5-90

"Never send a Marine where you can send a bullet" someone once said.

Forgot to ask - does anyone have a copy of the pic? Snopes has, naturally, censored theirs, and I'd like to keep a copy alongside "The Last Great Act of Defiance" (a mouse flipping off a stooping hawk...)

5-90

http://cofreedom.blogspot.com/2006/01/thank-god-for-united-states-marine.html

I think we all know the answer to that one. Politics. In order to win hearts and minds, you don't flatten areas with artillery and shoot everyone who runs out.

I think that for the most part our guys detonate bombs in place. Whether or not they send in an EOD guy depends on where the bomb is located.