JONES, ROBERT CAMPBELL
Name: Robert Campbell Jones
Rank/Branch: O2/United States Air Force
Unit: 435th TFS
Date of Birth:
Home City of Record: Madison NJ
Date of Loss: 18 January 1968
Country of Loss: North Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 211800 North  1061200 East
Status (in 1973): Returnee
Category:
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: F4D
Missions: 58
Other Personnel in Incident: Robert Hinckley, returnee, pilot
Source: Compiled by P.O.W. NETWORK from one or more of the following: raw
data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA
families, published sources, interviews.
REMARKS: 730314 RELEASED BY DRV
SOURCE: WE CAME HOME  copyright 1977
Captain and Mrs. Frederic A Wyatt (USNR Ret), Barbara Powers Wyatt, Editor
P.O.W. Publications, 10250 Moorpark St., Toluca Lake, CA 91602
Text is reproduced as found in the original publication (including date and
spelling errors).
UPDATE - 09/95 by the P.O.W. NETWORK, Skidmore, MO
ROBERT C. JONES
Captain - United States Air Force
Shot Down: January 18, 1968
Released: March 14, 1973
When I think back now over the last six years, I sometimes get an odd
feeling that it was all just a bad dream. That far away land on the other
side of the world is just a figment of my imagination, and the people there
and the events that took place are a strange fantasy. But I guess it is
human nature to shroud, in the mind's eye, unpleasantness, discomfort, pain,
and to push forward the more positive aspects arising out of our captivity.
There are some that are fairly obvious - nearness  to God, love of country,
life-long friendships, and hopefully, a building and strengthening of our
characters through our experience. There are others that might not be so
readily apparent. One of these is what some may call "Yankee ingenuity." I
was amazed and upon thinking back now, am continually amazed at what
Americans, after being placed in an extremely restricted environment, can
contrive. Any small stick, piece of paper, rock, nail, or bone was made into
something useful. We made playing cards from cigarette wrappers or toilet
paper, dice and poker chips from hardened bread dough, ink from cigarette
ashes and sugar, sewing needles from nails or bone, a chess set from
hardened polished mud, writing pens from toothbrush handles or bamboo, and
note books from anything we could find to write on. At Christmas and
shoot-down anniversaries, gifts were usually exchanged, normally of the gag
variety. On a few occasions, someone miraculously, even came up with a cake!
We had plays, skits, musicals, speeches, movies, puppet shows, and choral
performances, complete with costumes, sets, sound effects, curtain, and
stage.
The list could go on and on about the efforts we made to keep our minds
active, to learn, entertain ourselves, pay tribute, or just pass the time.
Possibly the most amazing of all though, was that for the vast majority of
our captivity, all or most of these games, gifts, shows, etc., were illegal,
and therefore had to be constructed and carried out covertly. Of course,
sometimes we were caught and punished but this seldom dampened our efforts
for long. Perhaps the most meaningful items we constructed, which were
always considered contraband by our captors, were the American Flags we made
from handkerchiefs, bits of cloth, paper, anything we could use. It was
surprising the proudness we felt viewing these poor replicas of "Old Glory."
Today I think back on these seemingly distant years in the past. I remember
the men - old friendships, our happiness, our trials, and our miseries.
Recalling harder, I can see the prisons, the cells, the guards, and the
filth. But most of all, I remember those rough, ragged homemade flags and I
puff my chest up, hold my head high, and know I live in the finest country
in the world, and that I am an American.


Robert Jones and his wife Freya reside in Florida.
=======================================
Woman puts voice with name on bracelet
5-23-05
News & Record

The phone rang last Christmas Eve at Doris Cole Wooddell's home in
Greensboro, and a voice said, "Well, Doris, this is Capt. Robert C. Jones."
"I almost dropped the phone," she said. The call turned out to be "the best
Christmas present I ever had in my life."
Yet, Jones was a stranger. The two had never met, never exchanged letters,
never talked until then.
She knew little about Jones other than his full name and a date: 1-18-68.
The name and date were on the bracelet she bought 35 years ago as a
patriotic gesture to the prisoners of war held by the North Vietnamese
during the Vietnam War.
Lots of Americans bought POW bracelets, but Wooddell said she never saw
anyone else wearing one. The idea was to keep the bracelet on until the POW
came home. It was akin to tying a yellow ribbon around an oak tree.
"I just thought that it was a great idea," she said.
Bracelet buyers usually didn't ask for a certain POW and accepted whatever
name came on the bracelet.
Wooddell wore the bracelet until 1973, when the North Vietnamese released
American POWs. She remembers watching on television the tearful reunions of
the men with their families. She remembered one was Capt. Norman McDaniel, a
former Air Force ROTC instructor at N.C. A&T before he went to Vietnam as a
fighter pilot.
But Wooddell doesn't recall seeing or hearing Jones' name during the POW
release.
She had no idea whether he was still alive, and she wouldn't know until that
phone call came years later.
Wooddell put the bracelet in her jewelry box after the release. She had
become sentimentally attached to it, and, "I felt like I knew the man
because I wore it so long."
Actually, she knew little about him. She had learned only that Jones
graduated from West Point and became an Air Force fighter pilot. His F-4
aircraft was shot down on the date inscribed on the bracelet.
As the years passed, each time she opened the jewelry box, her eyes were
drawn to the bracelet.
"I wondered what happened to the man," she said. "Did he get home or not?"
She was busy working and raising a family and didn't have the time or the
means to do any searching.
But because her eyes kept fixating on the bracelet, she wondered if it was a
sign she should seek Jones and give the bracelet to him.
In the weeks before Christmas, her son, Bill Cole, a sportswriter for the
Winston-Salem Journal, was visiting his mother's Dulaire Road home near Four
Seasons Town Centre. Knowing he wrote his sports stories on a computer, she
asked if a computer search might turn up Jones' whereabouts if alive.
"I'll try," Cole pledged.
About four days later, he called to tell his mother, "I think I found your
man."
Cole had discovered a Web site called POW Network in Skidmore, Mo. It
included Robert Jones' name and a town where he apparently lived: Santa Rosa
Beach, Fla.
The date of his capture matched that on his mother's bracelet.
The Web site informed visitors wanting to send POW bracelets to former
captives they should do so through the network, and the network would try to
reach the person.
Taking no chances, Wooddell sent the bracelet and a note to Jones by
certified mail. The note included her address and phone number and that she
had worn the bracelet during the war.
Two weeks later, there was nothing, not even a return receipt from the U.S.
Postal Service. She called the post office.
Wooddell read the postal tracking number she had received when she mailed
the bracelet. The woman at the postal service said she would get back to
her.
Wooddell wasn't sure if the woman would, but 30 minutes later she called
back. She said postal carriers had tried to deliver the package, but no one
was there to accept it. Another attempt would be made the next day.
If no one was there, the woman promised, the bracelet would be returned to
Wooddell.
That was on a Wednesday or Thursday, Wooddell said.
That Friday -- Christmas Eve morning -- Robert Jones called.
He told her he had just sent her a letter but felt that he also should call
to say thanks. He said that while prisoner, he had no idea people back home
wore bracelets bearing POW names.
He told her he had left the Air Force three years after his release in 1973
and joined American Airlines, where he was a pilot for 27 years. He was
retired but "dabbled" in real estate, was married and had four children
ranging in age from 7 to 28. The oldest had followed his father to West
Point and was now an Air Force pilot in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Jones thanked her for wearing the bracelet, saying he believed her action
had helped him get home.
She asked him if he had been hurt when shot down.
"No, not much," he said, not elaborating.
How had he been treated?
"Well, as good as could be expected," he said, again without elaboration.
A few days later his letter arrived, along with a photo taken of him, his
wife, his youngest son and the family dog on the beach behind his house.
"It's hard to believe I've been home now for over 30 years and all the
things that have taken place during that time. ... Again let me thank you
for your thoughts, concern and love for a captured pilot so many years ago,"
Jones wrote.
Contacted by phone, Jones said he'll keep the bracelet forever "because
she's such a special lady." He said people gave him bracelets when he was
released, "but we're talking a long time ago, 32 years. I never thought one
would come out of the blue like this."
Jones was 24 and a junior officer when captured. He was tortured and spent a
few months in solitary confinement, but senior officers were treated worse,
he said.
Completing his second year of retirement, he's enjoying life, and said, "I
can wake up each morning and see the sun without looking through bars."
Wooddell, retired from the accounting department at the News & Record,
remains overjoyed that she found Jones, and that he turned out to be
gracious and thankful for what she had done.
"So much that was sad and ugly came out of Vietnam," she said, "but this was
a happy ending. I'm just so glad he's alive."

Contact Jim Schlosser at 373-7081 or jschlosser@news-record.com