One Finger Salute- A True Story

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AWESOME!!! Read below picture before making judgment on "
The Finger" gesture and you'll understand.. .

SEMPER FI !


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 w ire leading from it. He cut the wire and
used his 7in 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 hi s 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 r ound 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.

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True Story One Finger Salute

http://www.snopes. com/photos/ military/ burghardt. asp