MISSION STATEMENT:
Combat Radio Network is an Internet based radio show dedicated to all Military Personel.
CRN brings News of our Troops and thier good deeds all around the world.
We are here for the Veteran, the family and friends of Veterans.
Also, Organizatons that support the Troops, and all Veterans,
Our goal is to bring News stories of Positive Actions.
CRN is not primarily political. However, if needed we will report on Actions that adversely effect any Veteran active or inactive.
CRN is also a source for terrorist updates, Survival tips, and Military Humor.
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 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 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 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.
MODERN DAY ACTION HERO
MODERN
DAY
ACTION HERO
Working class hero
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By Daily Messenger file photoFred Schutz is shown in the 1990s behind the bar he has operated for some 20 years on Phoenix Street in Canandaigua. Schutz, proud veteran and tireless advocate for those with calloused hands and blue collars, turns 80 today.
By Julie Sherwood, staff writer
Daily Messenger
Mon Apr 28, 2008, 11:19 AM EDT
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Canandaigua, N.Y. -
The “Sergeant Major” — Fred Schutz — has always maintained it is the working class men and women, not those in the limelight, who deserve the credit. Through the years, it has been his fellow military veterans and those living on “the other side of the tracks” — Canandaigua’s south side — who have captured his attention and gained his affection.
“They all love him here,” said Richie Egan, a veteran who has worked for Schutz for years at the bar Schutz owns on Phoenix Street.
“Homeless people, people from all walks of life” who need a boost, those are the ones Schutz helps, said Linda Tiffany, another longtime employee.
Whether it is money to pay a heating bill or assistance in connecting with staff at the Canandaigua VA Medical Center, Schutz has “always been there to help,” said Egan.
“Fred is a wonderful person, a giving person,” added friend Lynn Wood.
John Barkley, a Vietnam veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, said Schutz has given him and many others facing struggles “a lot of support.”
“He is the father of our community,” said Barkley.
Yesterday those who know and love Schutz packed his tavern, Canandaigua Brew Company at 14 Phoenix St., to honor the man who today reaches a milestone — his 80th birthday.
The birthday is bittersweet. Schutz is under hospice care at the Canandaigua VA after a long battle with cancer. But the date is nonetheless an appropriate time to recall the accomplishments and celebrate the philosophy of the Buffalo native who moved to Canandaigua as a kid and chose the Chosen Spot as home.
Answering a calling
Years before Schutz became a military man himself, he became involved in the lives of those who have served their country. As a youngster living in Grand View Park, a neighborhood near the Canandaigua VA on Fort Hill Avenue, Schutz was among the those who hauled drinking water to the bricklayers of the massive structure, which opened its doors to patients on Feb. 6, 1933. Schutz recalled veterans in those early years arriving in Canandaigua by train and “marching up East Street at dusk” to the VA.
“It was like it was yesterday,” Schutz recalled last fall during an interview in which he also stressed the importance of crediting ordinary people with bringing the VA to Canandaigua. People should know that it was members of the American Legion, local business owners like Timothy Lynch, and others who convinced congressmen and those with similar clout to build a VA in Canandaigua, he said.
In 2003, when the Canandaigua VA was threatened with closure, Schutz joined others in a massive campaign that resulted in convincing power-holders in Washington to keep the facility open.
Barkley said that a few years earlier, in 1999, Schutz was also instrumental in bringing the replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, or moving wall, to Canandaigua.
“What can I say? He was a super guy to veterans,” said Barkley.
The moving wall was one of the greatest things ever to take place in Canandaigua for veterans, said Barkley. Some 15,000 visited the wall during the three days it was at the American Legion on Route 332. One veteran left his own ribbon and medal of honor at the wall in honor of the fallen soldiers, said Barkley. The ribbon and medal have become part of a Vietnam war exhibit in Washington, D.C., he said.
‘Stubby pencils and a lot of erasers’
As for his own experience in the military, Schutz is the first to admit he wasn’t a war hero. He never stormed a position or took a hill on his tour of duty during the Korean War. Schutz was part of the “combat support” stationed near Tokyo, serving as a company clerk.
Schutz landed at Johnson Air Force Base in Japan on Memorial Day, 1948. The base had been a training ground for Japanese pilots during World War II.
In 2000, Schutz talked about his war experience for a Messenger report commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Korean conflict. A self-described “clerk of the works” during his tour, Schutz had the task of keeping track of material with “stubby pencils and a lot of erasers.” Many planes on the base still used propellers to get around. “Props were conventional,” Schutz said. The U.S. Air Force was still relatively new, he said, as the new service branch broke off from the U.S. Army in 1947.
Another sign of the times: “It was the first war we fought with an integrated service,” said Schutz. President Harry Truman had decreed minorities should be allowed to serve their country alongside white soldiers.
Among other memories Schutz has: Lucky Strike cigarettes and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.
In all, Schutz spent 11 years on active duty in the U.S. Army, after beginning his military career in the U.S. Naval Reserve and then serving in the U.S. Air Force Security Service in the Far East and, later, in Europe. At age 54, Schutz earned the rank of sergeant major while serving in the Army Reserve.
On the homefront
In 1994, the Sergeant Major told the Messenger he planned to commission a history book about the other side of the tracks — Canandaigua’s south side. He wanted people to know about the men and women who built the foundation of the community with their hands and sweat, he said. They were the working class men and women lived on streets like Phoenix, Bemis and Niagara. They worked swing shifts in the factories like G.W. Lisk and Garlock.
Linda Tiffany, a longtime friend of Schutz who has worked for him for some 18 years, said she doesn’t recall the book ever coming to fruition. But she remembers the many stories Schutz told — “about his veteran days (and) his fireman days” as a volunteer firefighter in Canandaigua.
Schutz said he became interested in his neighborhood’s history when he began wondering about the heritage of his Phoenix Street bar. Talking with patrons and others, he learned some interesting tidbits. For instance, the place had once been a speak-easy, the horseshoe-shaped bar is made from Honduran mahogany and Larry Cardella poured the bar’s first draft beer back the in the 1930s.
Schutz first went into the bar business in 1988 with John “Big John” Haight, opening Big John’s and Sergeant Major’s Bar and Grill. Haight, a fellow volunteer firefighter, was declared in 1981 “world champion doughnut eater” by Guinness Superlatives Ltd. — the company that publishes the Guinness Book of World Records.
But it wasn’t Big John’s doughnut eating — consuming 52 ounces of Bavarian cream doughnuts in 361.5 seconds — that fueled his bond with the Sergeant Major. Tiffany said friends many times recounted the story of how Big John had saved the Sergeant Major from falling through a burning floor as the two helped put out a blaze years ago at another pub — The Farmers Inn in the city. Big John had pulled his lighter-weight counterpart out of danger with just one arm, so the story goes.
The pair remained close until Big John died in 1994. After that, Schutz changed the name of the bar to the Phoenix Street Tavern. A few years ago, he revised the name again, to the Canandaigua Brew Company.
Why the latest name?
“He just wanted to change it,” said Tiffany. “You’d never know what he was thinking or what he was up to.”
Schutz is spontaneous. That is one of the things people like about him, she said, recalling the time she spotted a tiffany mirror in a shop on Main Street and mentioned it in front of the Sergeant Major. Next thing she knew, he headed down Main Street, came back with it and hung it in the bar’s ladies’ room.
“He’s quite a guy,” she said.
Julie Sherwood can be reached at (585) 394-0770, Ext. 263, or at jsherwood@mpnewspapers.com
Sergeant Major - Fred Shutz
