By Bob Holeman
I was working on a story recently that caused me to go back to a box of keepsakes from my original 2011-12 series on World War II veterans. There is found some binders of student essays plus my notes from an interview with Roy Jones. He was not a WWII vet and I believe I’d planned to use his story later. But a tape recorder malfunction caused me to lose several interviews and Roy’s was among them. I’d forgotten that I had this handwritten copy from early 2012. I was particularly interested because like Paul Green, Jones was involved with early tests of the atomic bomb.
He was Judge Eroy Jones. “Judge” was not a title. It was a name chosen by his grandmother on his birth certificate and again on his honorable discharge papers. Born in Winn, delivered by Dr. Bryant, his twin sister, Mary Elaine, died at birth. Jones died June 10, 2016, at the age of 86.
“We grew up on a 40-acre farm. Daddy worked in the logging woods while Mother and six kids had to survive on what we made. We raised about everything we ate including hogs and cows. Maybe that’s why I like to raise gardens now.”
While Jones did not serve in WWII, his brother W.S. Jones did. He’d been in the invasion across the English Channel and went to Germany as part of the same unit with J.W. Kennedy. The younger brother was 12 or 13 at the time and recalled how it was living back on the home front.
“It was about two miles from our house to the mailbox on Hwy 84. Mamma sent me every day for mail from him. Sometimes I’d walk, sometimes ride a horse. Once we got a telegram and we feared it was a notice of his death but he was just saying that he was OK.
“We survived by raising our own food. Everything was rationed: gasoline, sugar, coffee, things we couldn’t grow ourselves. But because Dad had a truck with the farm, we got T-rations, more that city folks got. The first time I got to Winnfield, I was 5 and we went on a wagon with a bale of cotton to the gin. Dad gave me a quarter to spend.”
Jones graduated from Winnfield High School in 1948. He was 21 in 1951 and “got an invitation on March 18 to join Uncle Sam.” Physicals and training took his to Alexandria, Shreveport, Fort Chaffey, St. Paul “then back on a train west through the Rockies to Portland and on to Fort Lewis in Tacoma, WA.”
Then things got historically interesting. In September 1951, he was shipped to Camp Desert Rock, NV, about 65 miles southwest of Las Vegas with A-Company Combat Engineers. The full battalion went down. “We were sent into the atomic testing area and spent three months building emplacements for them to drop atomic bombs. We were only seven miles away and the first one I observed was set off on a tower. The next four were dropped by planes on the emplacements built by the Army and civilians.”
“The sun was hot, it was about 120 degrees, but when that bomb dropped it was even brighter, like a welding torch. We never went back to the site because of radiation. But scientists did. They went on to hydrogen bombs. I saw some of those tested.” The soldiers then went back to the state of Washington. Of the 132 men in the company, only five did not go on to serve in Korea. Jones was among that handful.
“After I got out of the service, I got tons of letters from the Atomic Energy Commission asking about effects from radiation. I finally got a letter saying they’d cover any cost of treatment at the VA for certain cancers. I never felt the need.”
After his discharge, Jones went to work for South Central Bell’s Minden office “but Tremont Lumber kept calling.” He’d worked at Tremont after his high school graduation, before being called into service. He went to work for Tremont and remained there until retiring at the end of 1988, having seen the company name go from Tremont to Crown Zellerbach to Manville/Riverwood.”
At the time of his interview, Jones quipped that he’d been “retired for 23 years and haven’t missed a meal yet. I still like to garden.”
