Hello everyone. My dad didn't talk much about his time in Vietnam. He died in 2005. I was just starting my military career at that time. Now that we would have had that shared experience to talk about, I have been looking for the next best thing which would be talking with people who served with him. I can start with giving some basic information and hopefully someone will be able to help me connect the dots. So..here goes:
Dad was in the Navy. His name was Charles Thomae Jones. He was more likely known as Tom or Tommy. He was from Lecompte, a small town in Louisiana. He married my mom, Gloria Jean Cofield while he was stationed in Virginia.
He attended boot camp in Great Lakes during the summer between his junior and senior year in high school and graduated highschool in 1955. From there I am not sure if he went to the Seabees first or BUDS/UDT in Little Creek, VA. I think it might have been Little Creek. I would especially be interested in his time with the teams.
I know he did two tours in Vietnam. I am not sure of the exact dates but I believe they were in the earlier part of the war, maybe pre-1965. He did boat patrols as well as missions in Cambodia. My mother said that is where he was exposed to Agent Orange, which ultimately gave him cancer. He was wounded twice. One was a gunshot wound to the leg and the other was a shrapnel wound to the back of his neck.
He also wintered over in Antarctica twice as part of Operation Deep Freeze and at one point held the record for the longest cold water immersion dive while there.
If anyone knew my dad, they knew he was a musician and loved playing the guitar. He brought back a Gibson Firebird from Vietnam that was given to him for playing a gig for a function at one of the bases there.
I know he was stationed at Turks Island in the British West Indies, Rhode Island, Maine, Bermuda and Alabama. In Alabama he worked at a Seabee compound at Redstone Arsenal Army Post. He was a Senior Chief there, one of the youngest in the Navy, and it was his last duty station. He retired in 1979/1980 and moved back to Louisiana.
