Shortly after 12:20 p.m., a car driven by an unidentified Fort Hood soldier was traveling east in the 4000 block of West Stan Schlueter Loop at a high rate of speed when he lost control of his car, hitting a fire hydrant and shearing an electric powerline in half.

The car went airborne and crashed about 50 feet from the pole and began to smolder.

Frederick Jones, Cody Pelton and Ryan Frushour, all of whom were at the O’Reilly Auto Parts store across the street, saw the whole thing.

Jones and Pelton, who work at the store, were helping customers inside as Frushour, a Fort Hood soldier, worked to repair a windshield wiper motor on his pickup truck parked in the store parking lot.

All at once an otherwise normal day became something completely different.

“We were the first three to run across the street,” said Jones, a retired military police officer. “He kept calling for his wife. He said she was with him, so I looked around the field to see if she was slung out.”

The soldier’s wife was later found to be at home and unharmed.

Frushour, who’d grabbed a first aid kit from his pickup when he saw the crash, used some of his first aid knowledge to help the injured soldier.

“We put a tourniquet and a bandage on him to try and stop the bleeding,” Frushour said.

As Frushour and Jones worked to free the soldier and keep him alert, Pelton noticed the car was beginning to smoke and ran back to the store to grab a fire extinguisher.

The three men removed the soldier from the twisted remnants of his car, as the five-acre field around them ignited.

Paramedics took the injured soldier to Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center, where the unidentified soldier’s condition was undetermined.

Meanwhile, the fire that resulted from the crash began to burn the dry grass quickly and residents on nearby Gus Road evacuated their homes.

A layer of gray smoke settled over residents in the tiny close-knit neighborhood, as many of them stood in the street, still rattled by the possibility of losing their homes.

“The police were knocking on doors. I ran out and I saw nothing but smoke,” said Gus Road resident Felicia Foston.

She ran down the block and knocked on the door of a friend, Stacie Jackson, and told her about the fire.

Ronnie Fewel, whose home butts against the field, watched as gray smoke billowed from behind his home.

“I was in the house relaxing,” Fewel said. “I didn’t hear a thing. I didn’t even hear them when (the fire fighters) pulled up.”

His daughter, however, heard all of the commotion and told her father.

Soon, they joined the rest of their neighbors standing across the street, watching as smoke filled the sky.

Within two hours, the fire was out and those who’d stood terrified in the street were able to go back home, and three ordinary men who became heroes, returned to something normal.

Jones and Frushour were just glad they were able to help.

“He is one of our own,” Frushour said.