LOCAL HERO | BRYAN KUTTER
Original publish date: March-April 2014
BRYAN KUTTER
Sniper Cuts Military Career Short WRITTEN BY: SOO ASHEIM
www.yumpu.com/user/ thegoodlife
Where is he now? MN National Guard Staff Sergeant Bryan Kutter’s story first ran in the MarchApril 2014 edition of The Good Life. Since then, Kutter has transitioned roles to Director of Construction at Designer Homes where he manages field operations and home building projects. Kutter has continued to stay active with the Wounded Warrior Project through which he and his family were invited to attend a St. Cloud State University / University of North Dakota hockey game where he was honored as Veteran of the Game. Other highlights over the past six years include lots of family time. Most notable were several family cruises with his family to Alaska, the Caribbean, and Mexico. With both of their kids heavily involved in hockey, Kutter and his wife spend much of their time traveling to games and practices as well as attending as many Fargo Force, UND Fighting Hawks, and MN Wild hockey games as possible. 10 / THE GOOD LIFE
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PHOTOS SUBMITTED BY: BRYAN KUTTER
In 1996 Bryan Kutter was still in high school when he made the career decision that ten years later placed him in the sites of a sniper. One bullet changed Staff Sergeant Bryan Kutter physically for the remainder of his life and ultimately determined the end of a long planned and hoped for twenty-year career. With a waiver approved and signed by his parents, Bryan joined the Minnesota Army National Guard when he was going into his senior year of high school. Joining his company for weekend training and drills, Bryan graduated from Fergus Falls High in 1997 and for the next several years between continuous training with the Army National Guard and deployments to Bosnia and Kosovo in 2002-2003 he worked for Menards, where he met a pretty co-worker named Amanda who became his wife in 2005, three weeks prior to shipping out for a sixmonth training in Mississippi
followed by what he expected to be a sixteen-month deployment to Iraq. As a gunner on a Bradly Vehicle, Staff Sergeant Kutter was with his battalion in Iraq only seventyfive days into their mission of clearing areas of IED’s and securing a village from insurgents when he was taking the place of Commander Eric Marts seat up-top, purveying the area behind what the military refers to as the “Pope Glass.” Call it bad timing or just bad luck, but as he stood behind the Pope Glass with his arms folded, watching the action and movement below he heard and recognized the sound as the sniper’s bullet rang out from inside a Mosque hitting SSG Kutter in the left elbow, traveled up and through his arm into his neck and finally exiting inside the collar of his body armour. Suddenly the excruciating agony of being hit combined with the gush of blood bursting from his arm hit within nanoseconds.
