Every Day Heros

Here’s the thing about real heroes: they never think they’ve done anything heroic.

AL KISIK, Iraq — The camp was still on edge from a suicide bomb attack that morning.

The bomber had targeted an Iraqi army recruiting drive at the combined Iraqi and American forces base here in northwest Iraq. Although no U.S. soldiers were injured, soldiers from the 2nd, or “Gunners,” Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, out of Giessen, Germany, dealt with the aftermath.
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So it was with no small amount of suspicion that Staff Sgt. Martin Richburg observed an Iraqi civilian pacing nervously near the camp’s crowded Internet cafe that same evening.

It was around 9 p.m. on March 27, and Richburg was sitting behind the wheel of his “bongo” flatbed truck in the parking lot, talking to his wife on a cell phone.

“I saw this guy duckin’ and peepin’ outside the Internet [cafe],” said the 44-year-old Baltimore, native. “I said, ‘Let me keep an eye on this guy.’ ”

Unknown to Richburg at the time, the man was an insurgent who had managed to get a job at the camp’s Iraqi army noncommissioned officer academy. Part of a cell that had planned a series of attacks, the insurgent had constructed a bomb within the camp after smuggling components in piece by piece.

Richburg, a heavy-vehicle mechanic assigned to the 142nd Maintenance Company, grew increasingly suspicious as the man peered into the cafe window, walked away, and then returned with a plastic chair and a package.

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The package looked like something bulky wrapped in a blue plastic shopping bag. Richburg’s suspicion grew to alarm when the man stepped onto the chair, placed the bag on top of the window’s air conditioning unit and then took off running.

Throwing down his cell phone — his wife was still on the line — Richburg dashed after the man and brought him down with a swift kick to the back of his legs. By this time, Richburg had drawn his 9 mm pistol and, holding the man down, called for another Iraqi he knew to translate.

“I asked him if he knew who this guy was and he said, ‘No,’” Richburg said. “I told him I saw him put a package on the air conditioner and asked him to find out what was in it. Then I charged my weapon to scare him.”

The man answered back quickly. He said he had placed a bomb on the air conditioner. Richburg asked how much time they had before it exploded.