Charles Hughes

Husband, father, grandfather, Professor Emeritus, gardener and yard man. Charles Hughes Biographical Sketch When the first wounded Marines arrived from Korea in the fall of 1950, Charles Hughes was a Navy hospital corpsman working on the wards at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. He was gripped by the stories those young men told. Too young for World War II and having missed that opportunity, Hughes now discovered in himself a strong desire to escape routine ward duties and travel to the country whose existence he had just recently learned about and find out what combat is really like. He and his friend Ollie Langston decided to volunteer for the Fleet Marine Force. Just days after they submitted their request they found themselves undergoing combat training at Camp Pendleton, the Marine base at Oceanside, California. Their desire to see what combat was like was more than satisfied in the months that followed. Born and raised in Dallas, Texas, Hughes dropped out of high school at the age of seventeen and joined the U.S Navy in 1948 and served for four years. Today he is professor emeritus of English at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. He graduated with a BA in political science from the University of Texas at Austin in 1957 and for the next nine years worked in communication intelligence for the National Security Agency at Ft. Meade, Maryland, and later the Air Force Security Service as a cryptanalyst (Russian), instructor of cryptanalysis, technical writer (cryptanalysis), technical editor, and finally as the Chief of the Editing and Publications Branch of the USAFSS School at Goodfellow AFB, San Angelo, Texas. Hughes left that position in 1966 to attend graduate school at Texas Tech University at Lubbock where he received an MA (1968) and a PhD (1971) in literature and linguistics after which he was hired by Henderson State where he taught up to and after his retirement in 1996, serving for five of those years as Chairman of the English and Foreign Languages Department. Since his retirement Hughes has devoted his time to his family, to reading, gardening, and travel, and also to writing. At a time when North Korea dramatically burst into the news once more as a belligerent nuclear power Hughes published a historical memoir of his experiences as a hospital corpsman in a Marine rifle company during the Korean War. Accordion War: Korea 1951-Life and Death in a Marine Rifle Company is a detailed personal account of combat in the Korean War during its most violent “blitzkrieg” phase, the first third of the three-year war. While the descriptions of battles are up close and graphic, the conflict is also viewed from the perspective of the 21st century, from a keen awareness of the wars since—Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and the war on terror. Interwoven into the narrative is a meditation on life, death and war—on the question of why men spend so much treasure and blood fighting one another. Hughes’ experiences came six years after those of another corpsman, Jack “Doc” Bradley, whose story was depicted recently in a best-selling book and popular movie, Flags of Our Fathers, which tell the story of the five Marines and one corpsman who were immortalized in Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photograph of the flag raising on Mount Suribachi during the battle for Iwo Jima. But the men in Korea who fought in what the historian Clay Blair called a war, “often surpassing the toughest battles of any war in American history,” would not be so remembered. Theirs was a conflict destined to be known as “The Forgotten War.” Hughes’ most recent book is A Fortune Teller’s Blessing—The Story of John Allen Adams. During the depths of the Great Depression a handsome and gifted seventeen-year-old high school athlete saw his future shattered when his neck was broken in a football game. Few at the time thought the honor student, Eagle Scout, editor of his school paper, and president of his class every year since the seventh grade would survive. But John Allen Adams, son of a carnival fortune teller, did survive and was able to adapt to his severe handicap and go on to lead a remarkably successful life. Though left a quadriplegic, he proved to be a man of extraordinary inner resources, one who found freedom while bound to a wheelchair and independence while almost totally dependent on those around him. Woven from important strands of Arkansas and American history, his story reaches far beyond his small hometown, but his family’s dramatic and distinguished past cannot account for the strength and amazing spiritual gifts of the man who inspired love from so many people. John Allen Adams was a skilled poet and a courageous worker for world peace, a man who triumphed over tragedy by finding within himself the resources to build a life that made a difference, a difference reflected in the testimonies and memories of those whose lives he touched. You can learn more about Hughes and his books at www.dochughesbooks.com ___