From Arlington to Iraq with Army Veteran Brett Jones

Announcer
World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and our other wars and conflicts. America’s fighting men and women strapped on their boots and picked up their guns to fight tyranny and stand for liberty. We must never forget them. Welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson.

These stories will touch your heart, inspire you, and give you courage. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Here’s Kim Monson.

Kim Monson
Welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure and check out our website. That is americasveteranstories.com. The show comes to you because of a trip that I took in 2016 with a group that accompanied four D-Day veterans back to Normandy, France for the 72nd anniversary of the D-Day landings during World War II.

Returned stateside realizing that we need to know these stories of our military and our veterans. We need to broadcast them and archive them. So hence, America’s Veterans Stories. I’m really pleased to have in studio with me, Robert Jones, and he goes by Brett.

Brett, welcome.

Robert Jones
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Kim Monson
So let’s start at the beginning. Where did you grow up?

Robert Jones
Colorado, third generation native.

Kim Monson
There’s not many of you around. No. And what part of Colorado?

Robert Jones
I was born in Salida, grew up in Leadville. My dad worked in the mining industry.

Kim Monson
OK.

Robert Jones
And then we moved down to Lakewood, so the Denver area for high school.

Kim Monson
For high school, OK. Well, how did you get into the military?

Robert Jones
My family has a number of connections to the military. Both my uncles on my mom’s side served in World War II. My mother served in the army for a couple of years. My dad was in the Navy during the Korean War.

I had cousins that served in Vietnam and that’s the most recent. I found heritage records that show the ancestors that served in the War of 1812.

Kim Monson
So a long tradition of standing for liberty, which is the responsible exercise of freedom. And I thank you and your family for my liberty. So when did you join the military? Tell us all about that.

Robert Jones
I joined the summer between my junior and senior year of high school. That was 1980. and went active duty July 1981 with the United States Army and served 26 years, retired 2007. That’s a long career.

I enjoyed it.

Kim Monson
Yeah. So you joined in 1980, active duty 1981. So what were your specialties? Tell us about boot camp, all those things.

Robert Jones
Well, when I first went in, I went in as military police, and I served three years military police active duty. I went through training at Fort McClellan, Alabama and that was for basic training and my school, they call it AIT, Advanced Individual Training. And after that I went to Germany, served 18 months in West Germany. That was when they were still divided.

And following that I was stationed at Fort Ord, California for the rest of my tour. And once I got out, I came back to the civilian world and got a job. And one of my co-workers was involved with the National Guard and recruited me to go into the National Guard shortly after. So I had the honor of serving with the 5th of the 19th Group Special Forces here in Colorado with the National Guard.

They taught me how to jump out of airplanes and survive and tried for my tab, my special forces tab and I wasn’t able to succeed at that but served with them for a while and then I transferred to the Reserves and I was with 3087th Infantry Division with the Army Reserves and served with them for a number of years until 1990 when I decided to go back on active duty and when I went back on active duty I had the opportunity to volunteer for service with the 3rd Infantry Regiment at Arlington National Cemetery. They’re the regiment that performs the guard of the Tomb

Speaker 1
of the

Robert Jones
Unknowns and also all ceremonial duties and funeral services in Arlington National Cemetery and the surrounding areas. During my time there that was when the desert storm occurred and So I was there during that time my primary duties There at Arlington was a funeral services. I was the 21 guns salute firing party for funerals and Did that until the end of the war? There was the big push to release the military to downsize So I came back to the reserves, to the infantry, and then the army decided to take all the combat arms, specialties, artillery, infantry, armor, any of those that actually fight, take them out of the reserves and put

them into National Guard. So my unit was just deactivated. And so I joined the National Guard again, tried Special Forces again, didn’t make it. So then I ended up in field artillery.

Kim Monson
Okay.

Robert Jones
And that’s where I stayed until I retired.

Kim Monson
Okay. What about the Special Forces thing? It must be super difficult, huh?

Robert Jones
It’s tough. It’s hard. And you have to really want it. It’s mental.

And I just was not prepared. I was not prepared to try as hard as I needed to. And so it beat me. It got me.

And it was my own fault. It was my own fault.

Kim Monson
But don’t you think, Brett, that we learn from these things in our lives? I was talking with someone just yesterday, a young guy, that kind of looking back at choices that he made at that time, and it’s like, ah, if I would have been focused. But I think we learn from that.

Robert Jones
We do. Special Forces is one of my greatest regrets for the military. I have two regrets. I didn’t try hard enough.

I should have tried harder. But two specific incidents. When I was first sent over to Germany, we processed into Germany in Rhein-Main Air Base. and kind of a reception station for all incoming soldiers.

And that’s where you get your duty assignments and all that, where you’re going to go. And when we first got over there, the first day we were sitting in reception, a sergeant came walking in and asked for all the MPs to raise their hands, you know, find out how many there were. Once he realized how many there were, he’s like, who wants to be a general’s guard? Basically a bodyguard for a general.

And fantastic opportunity. I didn’t take it.

Kim Monson
You know, Brett, That happens sometimes, but for us to look inward, and we take responsibility instead of looking outward and trying to blame somebody, I think that that’s a real character builder.

Robert Jones
I was the one that put myself out there. I can’t blame anyone else. I told them I wanted to do it. I went.

I tried. And I was being held to the same standard as anybody else. So if I didn’t make it, it was because I was not prepared. I look at all the things I did accomplish.

I accomplished a lot.

Kim Monson
Let’s talk about those. Okay, so let’s talk about the things that you accomplished during that time. We all have regrets in life. I wish, whenever I start a sentence with I wish, it’s like, oh, wait a minute.

I think I’ll rephrase that to myself. But in this career, and actually, I want to back up because I’m not sure that civilians understand National Guard, Reserves, just those responsibilities, what that looks like. So please explain that.

Robert Jones
Let me just start off with, you know, the military is a very different world. Civilians find it very confusing. We have our own language. We have our own time.

You know, everybody uses military time and date systems and all that stuff. But as far as the different services, the army is broken up into the active duty army, regular army. the Army Reserves and the National Guard. And the National Guard is basically the state’s, falls under the state.

The governor is the commander-in-chief, primary commander-in-chief of the National Guard. And then, you know, he has the option of giving the federal government control over it if they need him, if they need to activate him. But the governor of the state is over the National Guard. The Army Reserves are federal.

Speaker 10
Okay,

Robert Jones
so if they need to be called up they are under direct command of the federal government Okay, and but they are just like the National Guard. It’s a week in a month two weeks a year Unless you have special missions or

Kim Monson
anything

Robert Jones
like that that you called up for

Kim Monson
Mm hmm. And in the two weekends and the one week in a month,

Robert Jones
one week in a month, two weeks during the year. Usually the two weeks are spent special training. When I was in the reserves in the infantry, we went down to Panama and went through jungle warfare training in Panama. Two years.

That was a fantastic opportunity, you know, to experience that, you know, being out in the jungle in dealing with that environment was so educational.

Kim Monson
I’m sure it was. So here you go for is it two weeks at a time? Yes. OK, so two weeks in Panama.

Do you come back and life’s the same? People are going to the grocery store and they have no idea what what you’ve just been through.

Robert Jones
You know, that situation was amazing. Yes, you know, it’s you change so fast. Let me push forward to deploying to Iraq. We’re in Iraq, we finished our mission, we’re coming home, get on a plane in Iraq.

And that day, we left Iraq in the morning, and we were back at Fort Carson that evening.

Kim Monson
That’s unbelievable. Because of

Robert Jones
the time changes and all that. And so we leave a war zone.

Kim Monson
So you leave a war zone and you come back and people have no idea what you’ve just gone through, right? You know what? Let’s go to break. Before we do that, though, I wanted to mention the Center for American Values, which is located in Pueblo on the beautiful Riverwalk.

And the center is founded by Drew Dix, Medal of Honor recipient for actions he took during the Vietnam War and Brad Padula, who is an Emmy Award winning documentary maker. and the center does several things first of all honors our Medal of Honor recipients with their fabulous portraits of valor and quotes by each of them would highly recommend that you have their the Medal of Honor quote book on your table at home and then also these educational programs to continue to instill in us and our children http://www.americanvaluescenter.org

Speaker 3
REMAX Realtor Karen Levine helps bring to life the individual stories of our servicemen and women. With her sponsorship of America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson, Karen honors the sacrifices of our military and is grateful for our freedom. As a member of the National Association of Realtors Board of Directors, Karen works to protect private property rights for all of us. Karen has a heart for our active duty military and veterans and is honored to help you buy or sell your home.

Call Karen Levine at 303-877-7516 to help you navigate buying or selling your home. That’s 303-877-7516.

Speaker 6
All of Kim’s sponsors are an inclusive partnership with Kim and are not affiliated with or in partnership with KLZ or Crawford Broadcasting. If you would like to support the work of the Kim Monson Show and grow your business, contact Kim at her website, kimmunson.com. That’s Kim Monson, M-O-N-S-O-N dot com.

Kim Monson
And welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure and check out our website. That is americasveteranstories.com. And I’m talking with Robert Jones.

He goes by Brett. And Brett, you joined the military in 1980, went active duty in 1981. You served for 26 years in between active duty, National Guard, and reserves, right? Am I getting

Speaker 1
all

Kim Monson
that right? Okay. And so we were addressing this, that I think just people don’t understand. First of all, we’re blessed.

We have blessed lives. And it is because that there are those that have gone before us, those here that are willing to put their lives on the line for our, our liberty, which a good friend of mine said, liberty is the responsible exercise of freedom. and we need to remember as civilians just what an amazing gift this is. Brett, in interviewing, so I’ve interviewed 250 plus World War II veterans, and we were talking about you being in a war zone, and with the time zones, you were in a war zone in the morning, and you were back in Colorado in the evening.

People are going around, soccer practice, grocery store, having no idea what this is. And I think it’s got to be really difficult. And so with the World War Two guys, and the other thing I’ve learned over the years, is that nobody understands combat unless you’ve gone through it. But there is a bond between those that have gone through combat and The guys World War II, for example, they when they returned home, they returned home via ship.

So that meant that they had days to talk about this with other combat veterans. And there was certainly PTSD, they didn’t call it that back then. But I think there’s a real healing of being able to maybe have that long trip home versus being on an airplane. And next thing you know, you’re back into Civilian life and nobody even knows what you’ve gone through.

Robert Jones
I agree, I agree. The trip back is so quick and then it’s, especially being in the National Guard, it was, we returned home, we out-processed from active duty anytime we were activated. There’s a process of paperwork and turning in equipment and gear that we drew out and then we’re released back to our families and our civilian jobs and it’s, go back to life as normal.

Kim Monson
And I think sometimes people think might have been on a vacation. So you were gone for a year. Is that right?

Robert Jones
We were actually activated for 18 months. OK. That included the activation process. We went to Fort Sill, Oklahoma to train up and prepare to go over to Iraq.

And then we deployed. And we were actually in country approximately a year, roughly about a year. And then we came back.

Kim Monson
So you’re away from your family for all that time?

Robert Jones
Yes.

Kim Monson
Okay, this is another question that I have to ask then, because the other thing that I’ve learned is that it’s not just the military person, it’s the family.

Robert Jones
Oh, yeah,

Kim Monson
back home. And so for your spouse to keep things, the home fires burning, if you will.

Robert Jones
Absolutely.

Kim Monson
That’s a pretty big deal.

Robert Jones
It is, it is. And, you know, my family was blessed. We were involved with a good church and there was a men’s group that would help my wife while I was gone. But there’s so many that don’t have that, you know, support that it can definitely be a benefit and a blessing for them while their spouse is gone.

The civilian side, they do pay. They pay a

Kim Monson
lot. The

Robert Jones
kids, the spouses, you know.

Kim Monson
They do. And so when you first were deployed, we don’t have the cell phones and FaceTime and all that that we have now. So how often were you able to stay in touch with the family?

Robert Jones
Actually, technology being what it is, that was 2004, 2005, 2006, and we’re in a war zone But it’s not the image that you have. There was units that were remote that had very little amenities. But the base I was on, I was in Tikrit. And the base I was on was called Cobb Spiker.

And it was a fairly large base. We had a landing strip there that I believe very well established presence there. We had PX. We had a couple of dining facilities.

We weren’t living in tents when I got over there. They had just stopped living in the tents, but they had small housing units that we lived in. It was it was well established. We had Burger King Pizza Hut.

Yeah They had their own little coffee shop kind of like Starbucks.

Speaker 9
Okay,

Robert Jones
but it was the green bean.

Speaker 9
Okay,

Robert Jones
and So it we had some amenities that made a big difference over there, but we had for communication with our families we had computer labs that were set up where you could FaceTime okay, you could go in and you send emails or if you could do FaceTime you could FaceTime your family, talk to them on the computer for a while. So we had those available to us. And of course, there’s still the letter writing and so forth.

But you know, we weren’t totally shut off.

Kim Monson
Okay. It was considered a combat tour?

Robert Jones
Yes.

Kim Monson
Okay, so explain that to our listeners.

Robert Jones
I personally don’t know the exact definition of a combat, but we were in a combat zone. There was active combat taking place over there. There was the threat, and we were considered in a combat zone when we landed in Kuwait, which was under our control. But once we landed in Kuwait, we were in a combat zone, and then while we were in Iraq, While I was there, I mean, we were actively engaging enemy forces, the insurgents.

My unit, fortunately, never directly engaged them, but we were close to contacts. There were IEDs, improvised explosive devices, along the roads. There were ambushes that would take place. They would fire rockets into our compounds.

So, you know, there was constant threat.

Kim Monson
Doesn’t that do something to constantly be on the lookout? What about that?

Robert Jones
When I came back, when I deployed, I was employed by the Colorado Department of Transportation, and I still am. But at the time I was working in maintenance. and we would patrol the roads in maintenance and repair guardrail, potholes, things like that. Following my deployment to Iraq when I came back and I would go out with the crew and we’d be driving down the road.

If there was a tire tread laying alongside the road in Iraq, that was a potential IED. The guardrail in Iraq, we had removed all the guardrail because it would plant explosives behind the guardrail to ambush our convoys. Overpasses, if you drove under an overpass, the insurgents would drop grenades on our vehicles. They would try and drop explosives onto our vehicles.

on coming back and seeing that here and just it’s like over there that’s a threat over here it’s trash it’s something that just needs to be picked up and gotten rid of over there you called out the combat engineers they would come out and they would blow it up They didn’t mess with it. The insurgents were removing curb and gutter, concrete curb and gutter. During the night, they would remove it, put in explosives, and then re-pour concrete to where it looked the same as it was before, but there’s an explosive.

So every little thing, you start becoming suspicious of every little thing. One group that I gained a great deal of respect for was when they would set off an IED and would cause a crater in a road or something like that. on the highway system And then they had to sit there and guard it until the concrete was set so the insurgents couldn’t come back and implant more explosives into it. So they would basically go out and then just sit in one spot, which is the worst thing you want to do in a combat zone, is just sit.

But they had to sit there until that concrete was set up before they could leave and come back into the compounds.

Kim Monson
So did you guys go out of the compound very often?

Robert Jones
My unit, our mission was, they had high resolution cameras along the primary transportation routes and they would use those to observe for insurgent activity and Our mission was to take repair personnel, civilian repair personnel, and take them out to these locations if they had problems so they could fix the cameras, repair, update them, whatever they needed to do. So we were leaving, going outside the wire as we called it. We’d go outside the wire just about daily.

There was a couple of our unit and another unit that would switch off. But yeah, we were taking them out just about daily.

Kim Monson
Were you scared? I

Robert Jones
honestly was at the beginning but it became just a regular routine and I think since we hadn’t actually been hit it allowed me to relax a little bit. If anything happened out of the ordinary, of course, you know, that would get you hyped up, get you get you more observant. But as far as being really scared, I can’t say that I really was. And I can’t explain why I didn’t have that fear.

could be some of the background that I had, being airborne qualified. Jumping out of planes takes a lot of fear out of you. I was air assault qualified, which is repelling out of helicopters. I had worked underground in mines.

I’d worked around explosives. I’d been a firefighter. It just didn’t seem to me to affect me. There were guys I served with that it did bother.

But, you know, and it’s not like I’m any special or anything like that, but I just I never really felt scared.

Kim Monson
in

Robert Jones
When I was going through airborne training, lots of stress, high stress. The trainers, we call them black hats, black hats were always yelling at you. They were all, you’re never moving fast enough. You’re never doing anything right.

And I remember as we were getting close to the end of our ground training before we actually did the jumps, We were doing some training in this one black hat. He was yelling and he was yelling and he’s like, you think this is stress? You think this is stress? Wait till you jump out of that plane and that parachute doesn’t open.

That’s stress. And if you can’t handle this here, you’re not going to be able to handle it there. And so that always kind of stayed with me. It’s like, you know, yeah, you know, the training, the stress.

The Army has a saying, you train the way you fight, you fight the way you train. And so if you train hard, stressfully, then you’ll fight that way. If you don’t push yourself.

Kim Monson
Gosh, there’s so many things that we as civilians can learn from the military. I’m talking with Brett Jones, and we’re going to go to break and we’ll be right back.

Speaker 5
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Speaker 11
love

Kim Monson
And welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure and check out our website. That is americasveteranstories.com. And as you all know, another organization that I totally support is the USMC Memorial Foundation.

The Marine Memorial is right here in Colorado in gold and at 6th and Colfax. It was dedicated in 1977 and it’s time for a facelift and a remodel and Paula Sarles and her team are working diligently on that. Paula is a Marine Veteran, a Gold Star Wife, and the President of the Foundation, and she and Mary and all those over there at the Foundation are working hard to make that happen. So be sure and check out USMCMemorialFoundation.org and make a contribution to support them.

So honored to be talking with Robert Jones. He goes by Brett. Brett, we were talking about training in the military. You train The way you train is the way you’ll fight, right?

Is that kind of what you said? Yes. Yeah. And I think that that’s really true for life.

And during the break, we were talking about our military, and particularly in the 60s, military was looked down upon. And it’s only now, after all these years, that I think many of our Vietnam veterans, people are finally saying thank you. for serving our country well. The politicians do things but our military, our men and women have stepped forward to serve and it’s a pretty amazing thing and it’s a long history beginning with that first shot heard around the world.

Robert Jones
It is, it is. Unfortunately, it’s like nowadays you have the people that are serving but the military is really hurting on recruitment. The services are not able to get the numbers that they need to sustain the missions that we have. There’s a lot of People have a lot of personal reasons for not joining, not serving.

As for myself, when I was a kid, I grew up watching John Wayne movies, the war movies and all that stuff. World War II was still very fresh. It was the 60s, 70s. And I had family members, as we’d mentioned, that had served.

And so I was brought up in a military household and a lot of patriotism, a lot of love of country. And ever since I was a little kid, I used to dream of joining the military. I always wanted to be a soldier. One of the interesting things was my background when I actually got the chance to serve with special forces when I was a child up in Leadville.

First time I ever saw actual soldiers was Special Forces went up to Leadville and built a track for the high school. If you might recall the Ballad of the Green Berets by Barry Sadler, the Sadler family was from Leadville.

Kim Monson
I did not know that.

Robert Jones
And at least that’s the story they were saying. And the Sadlers are up in Leadville. Well, Special Forces shows up and builds a track.

Kim Monson
Oh, I just got chills on that.

Robert Jones
It kind of motivated me to be interested in doing that. And so I always wanted to be a soldier. But anymore, there’s so many distractions, so many different directions that people want to go. The military is not easy.

The military is hard. I have a lot of very good memories, a lot of fond memories. There’s memories of sleeping in a water-filled hole in the jungle in Panama, you know. in dealing with it, being cold in Germany, being cold up at Camp Williams, long road marches.

cold mornings out there doing physical training, you know, hard times, hard times. But the comradeship, the experiences, to go to Panama, during the time I was in, I went to Panama, I went to Korea, I went to Germany, I went to Iraq, did a quick trip down into Paris, France. And this was all, you know, except for the trip to Paris where I paid to go. Everything was my job.

I was getting paid to do that. Excitement. I got paid to jump out of airplanes. I didn’t pay to do it.

I got paid to jump out of airplanes. Flying in helicopters. I got paid to do it. People will go out and there’s places where you can go out and rent machine guns and all that stuff and shoot them and see what it’s like.

I got paid to do that. I got paid to blow things up. And so the military gave me so many opportunities and experiences that in the civilian world, you can watch movies, you can go broke paying to go do it. But I got to do it and I enjoyed it.

And so I served 26 years. Wow.

Kim Monson
The military at this particular point in time, as you mentioned, is having some real challenges regarding recruitment. And part of this, and we talked about this before we started to record, is that people are out of shape here in America these days. And I think we need to each take personal responsibility and try to turn that around,

Robert Jones
Brett. Our society is personal opinion. I have no background in any of this, but it’s just my opinion. Everything has become so technologically based.

Our entertainment, our work, our travel. The real is a society are not as physical as we used to be. Growing up, I can remember, you know, our time was spent riding bicycles and running and walking with our friends and all that stuff. And anymore, so many people, they socialize and they play games alone in their homes, in their bedrooms, you know, sitting on their bed or whatever.

They don’t have to get up and get out and be active. Our youth, Enjoy the benefits of all this technology, which is fine, but they are missing out on such opportunities to grow and grow personally, you know You can push yourself as hard as you want to but if you go into the military You will have the opportunities to find out what you’re capable of. You will be pushed beyond anything you think possible.

One of the interesting things that I’ve heard a number of times, and I’m sure other people have heard it too, is you get into the special… Everybody labels them as special forces, but special forces is a unit unto its own. But the special operations community, the SEALs, the Rangers, special forces, Delta Force, the special operations community, you talk to any of those guys and the biggest obstacle to being successful is their mind.

Kim Monson
Is that interesting?

Robert Jones
And it’s your mind will give up before your body does. I found that out myself. That’s what defeated me, was my mind. But so many of those guys, you have to push past your mind.

And the special operations community, any of those groups, will push you to places you never thought you were able to go. Just the regular military My daughter has joined the National Guard and she had the first real weekend extremely physical and She has been sore for a number of days afterwards because she has never been pushed to that level so, you know the military will will challenge you in so many ways and

Kim Monson
And then you are able to take those things that you’ve learned and apply them to civilian life, everyday life, yes?

Robert Jones
Not always. Okay. I think that’s one of the big challenges for veterans is the military. In the military, you go into service, everybody goes through boot camp, basic training.

Everybody starts off level playing field. Everybody has to learn the same The same subjects the same capabilities same skills and Then you go to your jobs and everybody in that field is taught the same way learn the same skills same standards and so in the military you go to a unit and You walk in the door, they’re like, okay, this is your job. You’re expected to be able to perform that job at a set standard.

So when you get out of the military and go into the civilian world, you go into businesses and you have people with different levels of experience, different levels of education, different levels of skills. You have people that have different desires to perform, to do their jobs, and those that are just there for a paycheck. And it becomes difficult for military because they’re so used to a regimented, standardized set of expectations of everyone. Then they get into the civilian world and it’s just kind of like, well, you do.

Kim Monson
It’s

Robert Jones
all over

Kim Monson
the board, isn’t

Robert Jones
it? It is. It is. And it can be very challenging to interact and to function in a civilian

Kim Monson
company. I haven’t thought about that. But I bet that’s true. So I’ve headed up some different volunteer things over the years.

I remember we’d done a big fundraiser and I realized that people came to that for different reasons and different expertise and different commitments and it was difficult to try to get to the end goal because I saw the goal here but others had different things going on here and I had never thought about that. With the military, the goal is out there and everybody pretty well understands it, yes? Yeah.

Robert Jones
And another thing that I had run into that I’ve observed is in the military, you have a set rank structure. And you have your commanders, and then the chain of command goes down to the lowest enlisted man. And so you know who’s in charge. And everybody knows their position.

In the civilian world, so many times you go into a job and a position and somebody that has just come in off the street, they think they’re leading the crew. They think they know more than everybody. They think they are in charge. And it’s like, well, who are you?

What gives you credentials? Right. And in the civilian world, you see, I’ve observed a number of times that People want to be the chief. They want to take charge.

And they’re not qualified. They have no position being in that slot. But they are going to be running the show one way or another. We’re in the military.

You can’t do that.

Kim Monson
That is, you’re making me think of the term leadership. And so I think we’ll go to break and come back. I’d like to talk about that. But another great sponsor of the show is Hooters Restaurants.

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We will be right back and continue the discussion with Brett Jones.

Speaker 2
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Speaker 7
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Kim Monson
And welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Monson. Be sure and check out our website. That is americasveteranstories.com. And I’m talking with Robert Jones, goes by Brett.

Brett, first of all, this has been super fascinating. I’ve just loved it because I’ve had the great honor of interviewing so many World War II veterans. And I consider you guys all the younger guys. And so it’s really been fascinating to learn about this.

First of all, leadership. You mentioned that. And what I’ve also learned is in the military, you’ll have what you might call good leaders and some not so great leaders. Yes.

And another thing that at the little elementary school in my neighborhood, they’ve put up a sign that says leadership begins here. And I’ve always been a bit disconcerted about that because I’m not sure that leadership is something A. to aspire to, B. that we teach.

It’s like everybody wants to be a leader, but yet we’ve got to have people that do the job. I’ve just found that an interesting observation. So your thoughts on leadership?

Robert Jones
plenty of training opportunities for people to learn how to be a leader. They have manuals on how to be a leader. But like you said, there are good leaders and there are bad leaders, poor leaders, let’s say poor

Kim Monson
leaders, poor

Robert Jones
leaders. Some people are It seems like they’re born with it. They know how to talk to people. They know how to motivate people.

They know how to listen. My personal experience, there are those that aspire to be leaders for their own personal gain, be it financially or be it accolades, you know, fame. But then there are those that they become leaders through their abilities and their skills. I personally feel one of the great examples of that would be Audie Murphy in World

Kim Monson
War

Robert Jones
Two. He

Kim Monson
was not a big man at all.

Robert Jones
He was not a big man. He joined the Army Basically to just try and provide for his family. They were a very poor family in Texas. And he ended up being the provider for the family, joined the army, and he had to fight to get into the army.

He was so small in light that they wouldn’t take him. and finally he convinced them to allow him to join. And during his time in the army in Europe during World War II, he was promoted up to a leadership position, not because he aspired to do that, but because he was capable. One of the great generals in the army, General John J.

Pershing, He, his family pretty much lost everything at the end of the Civil War. And he wanted to go to college, but he wanted to be a lawyer, if I remember correctly, but they had no money. And he heard that West Point was conducting testing and it was a free education. So he tested for West Point, was accepted in, ended up making the Army a career.

and was promoted up to the highest ranks of the United States Army. Dwight D. Eisenhower, same story. He never planned on joining the military.

He had no desire to be a great leader, and not only did he rise to the highest ranks in the Army, he also became the President of the United States. So there are some people that have the ability to lead, and then there are those that will for

Kim Monson
Some of the things that they’ve said about him is he was perfect for that job as far as maybe communication skills. You can imagine all the personalities trying to plan for D-Day.

Robert Jones
Diplomacy. He had to work with the French, the British, the Americans. And there’s tons of books that you can read about all the inner workings that went behind there and the egos that had to be dealt with and so forth to make things happen. The stress level.

Was he perfect? No, he wasn’t perfect. None of us are perfect, but he did an amazing job at what he did. John J.

Pershing was in charge of the Allied forces in World War I in Europe. And when we first started sending troops over there, the French and the British had this plan that they were just going to use our soldiers to supplement their losses. we would fill in the slots. And John J.

Pershing got over there and he said, no, the American Army is going to fight as the American Army. It’s not going to be broken up to supplement your units. And so excellent leadership. You know, he wasn’t afraid to take a stand and accomplish great things.

You know, fantastic things. His his his life story is amazing. I mean, he he fought Indians. He was involved with going after Pancho Villa in Mexico, and then he fights World War I, and he was almost involved with World War II, but he retired prior to that.

Some of the histories of our leaders that fought in so many things. Vietnam, there are so many veterans of Vietnam that fought in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Unbelievable backgrounds and experiences. But leadership is such a key part to anything in life and unfortunately some people have it and some people don’t.

And we need to promote up those that have it and encourage them to blossom and to pursue

Kim Monson
One of the speaking of leaders and during the break we talked a bit about Pat and you said when you were in Germany that you were in the area where he was pushing the Third Army and I’ve heard from some of the veterans that he was moving so fast that it was difficult for the supply lines to stay up with him. But he was an interesting person for sure, but my understanding is he didn’t ask his men to do things that he wouldn’t do himself.

Robert Jones
Patton was well known for leading from the front. Patton was with his troops. He was never known to be in the rear, staying where it was nice and safe. And he abhorred those that did.

he one of the greatest we were talking about egos during that Eisenhower had to deal with was there was a constant contest between Patton and the British commander Montgomery Montgomery and there was a number of times that Patton’s supplies were reduced to provide more supplies to Montgomery because the British were pushing for more opportunities to advance and for Montgomery to accomplish. And so there was a lot of that going on with Patton. But Patton was an amazing, I remember reading, I believe it was Patton was an aide to General Korean War.

Oh, MacArthur? MacArthur. General MacArthur. Patton was an aide to MacArthur in World War I.

And they were near the front and fighting was going on. And every time a round would pass near, Patton would duck. And MacArthur stood ramrod stiff out in the open. And after a couple of times, MacArthur looked at Patton and said, you’ll never hear the one that hit you.

So stop ducking. If you hear it, it missed. And those were the leaders that we had at that time. The graduating class back in 1918 from West Point, I believe it was 1918, was the class the stars fell on because they became all the generals in World

Kim Monson
War

Robert Jones
II. So just amazing history.

Kim Monson
Well, and we need to know our history. Brett Jones, we are just about out of time. We’ve got just a couple of minutes left. How would you like to wrap this up?

This has been so fascinating and a family of service to our country. And I thank you for that. And how would you like to wrap this up?

Robert Jones
There’s not many veterans out there. I’ve heard the statistic that right now it’s about 1% of the population has served. The military has a fantastic history. If you don’t know anybody that served in your family, your friends, or anything like that, there are museums, fantastic museums, here in the Denver area, in Colorado, in surrounding states, for you to go and learn about the history and the military and its involvement with our nation and

our society. So, I just encourage people to reach out and to learn and to grow.

Kim Monson
Well, definitely, and I would mention the Center for American Values. They’re doing great work on that. Brett Jones, this has been absolutely fascinating. I’m so honored to get to do this interview, and I thank you.

I thank you and your family for my liberty, and I really appreciate it.

Robert Jones
It has been my pleasure.

Kim Monson
Okay. And indeed, my friends, we do stand on the shoulders of giants. So God bless you. And God bless America.

Announcer
Thank you for listening to America’s veteran stories with Kim Monson. Be sure to tune in again next Sunday, three to 4pm here on KLZ 560 and KLZ 100.7.

Speaker 1
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