DOBBINS AIR RESERVE BASE, Ga. -- Maj. Gen. Melissa A. Coburn, 22nd Air Force Commander, presented the Distinguished Flying Cross award for extraordinary aerial achievement in combat conditions to Maj. Adam M. Haas, now a Training Flight Commander with the 94th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, in a ceremony at Dobbins on Dec. 7.
Haas, who was a flight nurse attached to the 405th Expeditionary Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, earned the esteemed honor for his actions as a Medical Crew Director responding to a mass casualty evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 27, 2021. His team’s efforts culminated in the single largest aeromedical evacuation airlift in Kabul Coalition Hospital’s history.
Haas explained that while deployed to Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait, he and fellow crew members were sitting in the dining facility watching television when they saw the news of a bombing in Kabul. Soon after, Haas got the call to lead mission management and planning for the aeromedical evacuation and critical care air transport teams. He had few additional details other than to expect multiple dangers and unsecured areas.
“We knew that there was an explosion at the airport, multiple casualties included,” he told the audience that included many of his fellow aeromedical evacuation team members. “Oftentimes that's all we get, because that's that mission. We're there for the people, for the patients.”
Upon arriving on the scene in Kabul, the team worked without the benefit of an interpreter, pointing and using gestures to communicate with wounded individuals. Many of the patients were children with shrapnel, burns, lacerations and blast injuries, and the Airmen had to work to earn the trust of hesitant family members who accompanied the youngest patients. The team quickly set about treating and moving wounded individuals. Haas’ team transported service members and foreign nationals alike to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, and, according to the citation accompanying Haas’s award, his leadership was pivotal to their safe transportation.
Coburn said presenting the medal to Haas was an honor and privilege unlike anything she has ever done.
“In those chaotic moments and days that unfolded, when the need for care was overwhelming and the situation was, to say the least, uncertain, Adam showed what it means to put others first. While many would have understandably hesitated in the face of such adversity, Adam did not,” Coburn told the hundreds of Airmen, community leaders and elected officials’ representatives at the award ceremony. “He put his patients -- American citizens, Afghan allies, men, women and children -- in his care, offering them not only medical expertise, but compassion, hope and comfort in those darkest times.”
Haas, who became a registered nurse in 2009 and joined the Air Force Reserve in 2013, acknowledges that he is more at ease on a mission than he is on a stage receiving a standing ovation. Rather than focus on himself, he highlighted the readiness and resiliency of his fellow Airmen. “We’re on alert throughout the world as I speak today, waiting to transport the sick and injured patients from anywhere in the world, back home to safety,” Haas told the audience. “And this mission was no different.”
The Distinguished Flying Cross is awarded to U.S. military members for heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flights. It was authorized by an Act of Congress in 1926 and was first awarded to Capt. Charles Lindberg of the U.S. Army Corps Reserve for his solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927.
Haas’s medal carries the additional significance of being earned while he was personally exposed to hostile action or under significant risk of hostile action.