Air Force colonel has harrowing tales from expeditionary force
By Chad Owens / Special to The Patriot
Thursday, December 4, 2008 11:07 AM CST
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| Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott III, left, and Brig. Gen. Rowayne A. Schatz Jr. unfurl the unit flag of the newly activated 19th Air Mobility Command. The 19th Air Mobility Wing becomes the primary unit at Little Rock Air Force Base, changing the base priorities from training to operational readiness. At right, Col. Charles Hyde took command of the 314th Airlift Wing at the ceremonies on Oct. 1. Hyde spoke at the Jacksonville Museum of Military History about his combat experiences (Ed Galucki). |
The soldier was on a plane headed to southwest Afghanistan. His mission, once the plane reached its target, was to parachute to the ground below. The plane’s back door was open, and the soldier was preparing to jump.
While approaching the target, the plane encountered enemy fire. The pilot dodged the missile, but the maneuver caused the soldier to fall down. As he stood up, his reserve parachute popped open. The chute caught hold of the wind, and suddenly the soldier found himself pulled toward the open door.
A quick-thinking loadmaster pounced on the parachute and tugged it in. The soldier unhooked himself from the open chute, but by that time the plane had overshot its target.
The pilot turned the plane around and headed back toward the drop zone. When the plane reached its target, the paratroopers jumped. Among them was the soldier. Undaunted, he jumped without a reserve parachute.
This story was one of many told by Air Force Col. Charles K. Hyde at the Jacksonville Museum of Military History. Hyde focused his lecture on stories about heroic deeds he witnessed during his time in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“I enjoy talking about our young airmen,” Hyde said, “because I truly believe that when I do, I’m talking about the greatest generation of Americans.”
Hyde is Commander of the 314th Airlift Wing at the Little Rock Air Force Base. Before coming to Little Rock, Hyde was Commander of the 320th Expeditionary Operations Group in Afghanistan and Vice Commander of the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing in Iraq.
Hyde’s speech was part of the museum’s War Stories Lecture Series. He showed videos and a slide show of photographs. Twenty people attended.
In addition to telling war stories, Hyde praised the soldiers currently serving in the Air Force.
“A lot of things have changed [about the Air Force],” Hyde said. “The technology has changed. The appearance of the force has changed. But the mission remains the same. And more importantly, I can tell you, the character and the fighting spirit of the kids … remain unchanged.”
“Today’s airmen — kids who listen to much different music than I do — think I’m a conservative old man,” Hyde said. “They’re different from us in many ways, but they still conduct the fight with integrity and honor.”
During his lecture, Hyde called Sept. 11 “a day which … was as important for this generation as Pearl Harbor was for the generation that fought World War II.”
Hyde also talked about what he called “some of the operations that don’t get enough attention, things that I don’t think our media focuses quite enough on.”
One of these operations was Air Medical Evacuation.
“Yes, we’ve suffered a good number of casualties over the years in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Hyde said, “but untold thousands of other Americans don’t have their names on that list because of the efforts of the entire team, especially [those] who provide life-saving medical evacuation.”
Another overlooked operation, according to Hyde, was the Humanitarian Support provided by American troops.
“You know, we like to talk about, ‘Oh, the media doesn’t talk about all the schools we’re building,’ and that is true, we do build schools, we do a lot of reconstruction projects,” Hyde said. “But you know, that’s not the most important thing we do. Our combat medics, everywhere they go in Iraq, they work with people who don’t have access to what you and I take for granted.”
He argued against “the myth that we went in alone” by showing photos of South Korean and Japanese allies.
“Most Americans don’t know that we have these types of allies,” Hyde said. “They’re great warriors who do a great job for the coalition.”
He also talked about the strange weather in the Middle East, and he showed a photo of hailstones covering the ground in Kuwait.
“It’s hard to imagine that when Moses told the Pharaoh to ‘Let my people go out of Egypt’, one of the things that happened was a big hailstorm,” Hyde said, referring to the seventh plague of Egypt as described in Exodus. “Well, I’ve got proof that it does happen in the Middle East.”
Not long after the hailstorm, Hyde continued, he experienced a locust invasion.
“The sky was almost black,” Hyde said, “and locusts, they were everywhere. They covered the ground, they were on the tents, they were in the dining facility. I don’t know what they were doing there because there wasn’t anything to eat; it was all sand.”
Shortly after the locust invasion, Hyde described hearing an odd sound, “like popcorn.”
It was an invasion of frogs.
“I got back from that mission,” Hyde said, “and I told my boss, ‘Tim, we’ve had hail, we’ve had locusts, and now we’ve had a plague of frogs. If I turn on the water faucet and blood comes out, I’m out of here.”
