 Joshua M. Hyland U.S. Army 1st Lieutenant 1974-2005 Missoula |
Missoula soldier dies in Afganistan attack
The Associated Press and Tribune Staff
MISSOULA — A Missoula soldier who enlisted in ROTC at the University of Montana on Sept. 12, 2001, was one of four Americans killed in Afghanistan when a bomb detonated underneath a wooden bridge they were passing over.
He is the 11th Montanan to lose his life in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Army 1st Lt. Josh Hyland, a 1992 graduate of Loyola Sacred Heart High School, died in the attack Sunday, five months after being deployed to Afghanistan.
Hyland, 31, had served four years in the Army and was pursuing a master’s degree at UM when the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks helped him decide to enroll in ROTC, his family said.
“He really wanted to make a difference in the world and felt he was,” said his mother, Lynda Hyland. “And he was excited about it.”
Josh Hyland regularly e-mailed his brother, Rick, about the life and culture of Afghanistan so Rick could share it with his history students in Nampa, Idaho.
“He wanted every country to enjoy the freedom he knew,” Rick Hyland said.
Marty Hyland, who served in Vietnam from 1969 to 1971, said his son told him “he was either going to do his four years in the Army and then get his degree, enter the corporate world and fight his way to the top, or he was going to stay in and become a general.”
“And I have no doubt he’d have made it,” Marty Hyland said.
Josh Hyland was riding in a convoy of armored Humvees when the bomb exploded under the small bridge.
“It was an enormous remote-controlled bomb,” Bashir Ahmad Khan, the government chief in Zabul province’s Daychopan district, told The Associated Press. “The American vehicle was tossed into the air and off the bridge. It’s totally destroyed, as is the bridge.”
Also killed in the attack were: Army Spc. Blake Hall of East Prairie, Mo.; Sgt. Michael Lehmiller, 23, of Anderson, S.C. and Pvt. Christopher Palmer, 22, of Sacramento, Calif. The soldiers were assigned to the Second Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade in Italy.
Three more American soldiers were wounded by shrapnel from secondary explosions as they tried to pull the four soldiers out of the burning Humvee, according to a military statement.
Hyland had been stationed in Italy before being deployed to Afghanistan at the end of March.
He most recently was in charge of his own platoon as well as a platoon of Afghan soldiers and 50 Afghan police officers.
Like his father, who was pictured in Life magazine during the Vietnam War, Josh made the front page of the New York Times in June. He was quoted in a story about the war and pictured talking with Afghan elders.
In addition to his parents and brother, Hyland is survived by his wife, Lanie, and their son, Dylan, 13.
“He died fighting for the rights of a country that he thought deserved the same rights that he had,” Lanie wrote in her personal Web log before departing Italy for Missoula. “He is my love. He is my life. He is a husband. He is a father. He is a son. He is a grandson. He is a nephew and cousin. He is a soldier. And he is an American hero.”