About William Jeremiah Jones CHAPTER THREE
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ABOUT WILLIAM JEREMIAH JONES
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For only Og king of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaim. Behold, his bedstead was an iron bedstead; it is in Rabbah of the sons of Ammon. Its length was nine cubits and its width four cubits by ordinary cubit. - Book of Numbers
For only Og king of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaim. Behold, his bedstead was an iron bedstead; it is in Rabbah of the sons of Ammon. Its length was nine cubits and its width four cubits by ordinary cubit. - Book of Numbers
When William Jeremiah Jones made his appearance and gravitated towards Trump I knew that he would play an important part in the events to come.
Although not quite as big as King Og he's a big and commanding presence. I have never seen anybody whose complexion was quite so deep and dark .
I put my intern Olga to work digging up everything that we could find out about him. This is a summary of her findings.
As a kid William Jeremiah Jones could not sit still in a classroom.
He earned a high school equivalency diploma at the age of 16. He scored highest on the GED in the entire state.He enrolled as a non matriculated student at Jefferson State Community College taking courses in automotive mechanics.
At the age of 17 Jones signed up for a 4 year enlistment in the United States Army. Trained as an Army mechanic, Military Occupational Specialty 91B- Wheeled Vehicle Mechanic. Jones found himself assigned as an Army mechanic attached a Marine Corps unit at Đông Hà Combat Base (also known as Camp Spillman or simply Đông Hà.)
On February 26, 1968 during the Tet Offensive 400 North Vietnamese artillery shells and mortars rained down on the base. NVA infantry overran it killing two hundred Marines and ten Army soldiers also doing a lot of damage including damage to Sp4 William Jeremiah Jones who luckily was hidden under bodies of soldiers who fell on top of him.
Jones, along with 20 other soldiers and marines was evacuated out of what remained of Camp Spillman by helicopter. Spinal surgery was done at the US Army 3rd Surgical Hospital at Binh Thuy. Jones spent the rest of his one year Vietnam deployment at the 8th Convalescent Hospital in Nha Trang.
Jones was able to reenlist and get training as a Personnel Records Specialist MOS 75B at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana, as he was not able to do the heavy work of a mechanic.
“This is happening. Just close your eyes and accept it.” - E-4 Mafia motto.
Jones got a dream assignment at Fort Wadsworth Staten Island New York City where he enlisted into the Clerks' Mafia, also called the E-4 Mafia.
Olga dug up these little tidbits regarding Jones and his assignment at Fort Wadsworth under its then commander Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas de Maria.
An investigation conducted by the Office of The Inspector General of The United States Army was precipitated when Private John McLaughlin reported for duty with the 41st Field Artillery Brigade, in Grafenwöhr, West Germany.
Private McLaughlin had two years of military service, zero rank on his sleeve (ordinarily he would have attained pay grade E-4) and yet no disciplinary action documented in the 201 File that he carried with him under his arm. Strangely enough he also arrived a full ten days after his rotation out of Vietnam with orders to report to Grafenwöhr. Inspection of his orders to report for assignment at US Army Europe United States Army Europe (USAREUR) showed that he had received written orders for some unknown reasons signed by some unknown lieutenant in Vietnam to report to Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island, New York.
Under questioning Private McLaughlin stated that he had arrived at Fort Wadsworth Staten Island and that a Spec 4 clerk there had offered him an option of spending eight days in New York City and receiving his pay even though he had been docked for a month in a Command Article 15 proceeding and was demoted from the pay grade E-4 to E-1.
Soon Jones was caught up in the investigation. Second Lieutenant Vic Morrow, temporarily stationed at Wadsworth, testified under questioning by military intelligence that Jones was the only soldier at Fort Wadsworth who had been trained and awarded Military Occupational Specialty of Personnel Records Specialist (75-B) and that under these circumstances Jones had great leeway and informally he held a virtual command function.
Lieutenant Morrow stated that previous to an IG Inspection he had participated with Jones and others in the destruction of US Army records. In the run-up to the IG Inspection Lieutenant Colonel deMaria had discovered numerous files in the office occupied by Jones that Jones could neither account for nor explain. All of these predated Jones' arrival. The colonel directed Jones to quote "do something about this."
Lieutenant Morrow and Spec 4 Baum assisted Jones in the destruction by fire of numerous files on the beach at Fort Wadsworth.
It seems that previous to Jones' assignment to Fort Wadsworth a couple of hundred GI's who went home for their first two week leave following completion of their Basic Combat Training courses each got letters containing orders not to report to their next duty station but to await further written orders. The source of these very strange letter orders was Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island and the recipients were various (random? I doubt that) residents of Brooklyn and Staten Island, all draftees. These further orders never arrived and at the termination of their various active duty obligations these guys started showing up demanding back pay and honorable separations, which they got after litigation as the story goes.
So, you see, Fort Wadsworth was a jovial sort of place under the regime of Lieutenant Colonel deMaria. Jones spent eight months there and had an interesting time.
Miscellaneous soldiers inhabited Fort Wadsworth in those days. William Jeremiah Jones was unique in that this place was meant to hold soldiers who were in some sort of bureaucratic limbo.
The commander, Lieutenant Colonel deMaria, was known to berate African American personnel of rank in front of low ranking white soldiers. There were also three staff sergeants stationed permanently at Wadsworth. Neither of these three guys had more than two years in the army and had never been stationed overseas. That they were staff sergeants was a very odd thing indeed.
The Army did have at that time an "Instant NCO Academy" that took big burly smart (but not all that smart) new recruits out of Advanced Infantry Training and put them through a "shake and bake" training where they'd come out a few months later as shake and bake staff sergeants. For many theirs were grisly fates.
The entire reason the program existed was because Viet Cong and North Vietnamese snipers were picking off sergeants and lieutenants, sparing the rank and file relatively speaking. Saluting of officers in the field was abolished. Rank insignia which had been bright orange or silver were exchanged for olive drab. A Vietcong sniper hiding up in a tree had limited time to fire his shot and get out of there fast before the artillery and helicopters would go after him. The goal of the enemy was to decapitate as many US infantry patrol units at the platoon or company level as possible. But I digress.
Let's call these Fort Wadsworth staff sergeants (not to be confused with the unfortunate shake and bakes of Vietnam) sergeants DiNapoli, DiSicily end DiMedici, not their real names but you might be getting the drift of things. DiNapoli had a part time civilian job on base, buffing the floors of the headquarters which was something that the others did as well, though not in the guise of hired civilian contractors. DiNapoli got paid out of the unit fund, a fund meant to provide the troops with little extras. Get the drift?
For a long while Billy's sergeant was a refrigerator repair specialist, and his sergeant was a radio repair specialist. Over him was Master Sergeant Dunham of Logistics and not a nice guy. He was caught pimping his Asian Pacific Islander wife off in the transient barracks and for this indiscretion he was shipped off to Camp Churchill, Manitoba. At this time in history the discipline and order of the US Army was fraying in alarming ways, especially in Vietnam.
Upon his death General Dwight David Eisenhower merited a twenty-one gun salute at New York City Harbor. Performance of that honor fell to the soldiers of Fort Wadsworth. Oh and Colonel deMaria seemingly did not like Black people.
When Fort Wadsworth was assigned to mount the twenty-one gun salute for General Eisenhower there was one artilleryman on the post, a Black Master Sergeant. There were some Howitzers stored on the base for ceremonies such as this as well as blank training shells made of wax. They brought the big guns down to the harbor, almost directly under the Verrazano Narrows bridge. In three days under this Master Sergeant's guidance the men became adequate gunners who would mount New York's sendoff to Ike.
As Jones told the Investigatory Panel under oath:
"Colonel deMaria attended the final rehearsal which he supervised over the artillery sergeant. The Colonel would drop a coin and a howitzer would be fired, in time to his inner rhythmic clock. At the end of the rehearsal there were twenty-one coins on the ground, We soldiers were standing there, probably at attention, I'm not that clear on this but that would be protocol, when the Colonel yelled at the Master Sergeant, in front of us low ranking troops words to the effect of "well, pick them up!" in full eye glare at the Master Sergeant and pointing to the coins. This was the second time I had been witness to the Colonel dressing down and humiliating a Black soldier of some rank in front of white low ranking troops. There was a Black Captain stationed at the base. I'd see him from time to time and I never knew what his job was at the fort. One day as I came into my office area from morning formation I saw deMaria shouting and gesticulating wildly at this Captain with some of the transients standing there too.
"As the Colonel was dressing down the sergeant over the coins Specialist 4th Class Eugene Weixel, a transient Jones hung out with and who was in some kind of legal hassle he had gotten into while he was on leave, broke ranks and started to pick the coins up. No one ever said a word as he gathered the coins in his palms and presented them to deMaria.
"There was other shit too. Weixel told me that he was assigned to fill up the mess hall guest ledger on the days he pulled KP duty, which were Mondays through Saturdays. Weixel used to tell me and used to laugh about it how he had a blue pen, a black pen and a red pen and how he forged names like Andrew Dean Stapp, Ho Chi Minh, Leon Trotsky, Enver Hoxha, Mao Tse Tung and Joseph Stalin onto the ledgers. He also assisted in loading Army chow into private automobiles owned by non commissioned officers and civilian employees on the base.
Jones had been doing these redaction services, abrogating the results of military justice for transients who arrived for reasons unknown at his desk while they were supposed to be at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey transiting to the Black Forest.
He shacked up with a pretty young Black Nationalist / Maoist who lived near the base. Jones started spending his off-duty time running in those circles. Pretty soon he was found out by Military Intelligence.
Military Intelligence spent a lot of money following him and his comrades but this grouplet was more bark than bite. Then came the 201 File investigation. The group eventually split into five factions all of which dissolved into nothing within less than 2 years.
After the DD 201 File investigation. Jones was given a general discharge for the convenience of the service.
Jones was out of the Army in April 1971 and awarded a monthly 50% veterans disability pension that amounted to $605 by the year 2006.
Jones never went back to school and was unable to actually work as a mechanic due to his back troubles and peripheral neuropathy.
He's been living in various rented rooms in New York City ever since, working as a taxi driver. As is common in his trade he has been employed at various garages occasionally engaged at more than one garage at the same time.
He has a few arrests. Nothing really serious. Funny though he had no police record in Alabama but he started getting into scrapes with cops in New York City. He got arrested with some of his Maoist friends protesting against George Wallace who was having a kickoff rally in Madison Square Garden. The charges were pretty heavy but the grand jury threw out all the felonies. He got convicted of disorderly conduct and that was thrown out on appeal.
He's been picked up for loitering for immoral purposes, (actually for Walking In The Wrong Part Of Staten Island) and suspected grand larceny (auto) after being stopped while walking from a deli to his parked taxi. These frivolous charges were all dismissed.
Jones was quite a ladies man in these radical circles. He never married although he did over time have a couple of live-in relationships.
Maybe I ought have Olga do a workup on Weixel and some of the others. I'm not really certain how useful this information is to my investigation but she's working for free and she's clearly capable of doing more than fixing me coffee.
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