'S 'Scared d all the time' Vietnam experience stuck with Rangers' Triple-A manager Oklahoma RANGERS RedHawks manager Bobby Jones doesn't have to watch TV to know what war is like. He's been there. By JIM REEVES STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER SURPRISE, Ariz. - The photo is more than 30 years old and if Bobby Jones knows where it is today, he's not saying. In the picture, a lean, wellmuscled young man sits shirtless atop a bunker on a nameless hill in the middle of nowhere in South Vietnam. There's a smile on his face, but it's the eyes that draw attention. The eyes are haunted. "Fear," Jones said as he drew deeply on a cigarette in a stairwell at the Rangers' spring-training complex at Surprise Stadium this week. "That's what you saw. Fear." Jones, manager of the Rangers' Triple- Oklahoma team, has felt that fear flicker again over the past week as he watches the images of war on his television set. He sees the faces of the young soldiers thousands of miles away in Iraq, their eyes big and round, and sees himself back on that hill near the Laotian border in 1969. "It's hard to explain if you haven't been there," Jones said. "You see all the stuff on television - in this war, the cameras are right there with the units but if you haven't been there, you really have no idea what war is like." The 14 months Jones spent at Fire Support Base Siberia changed him in a multitude of ways, physically and emotionally. More than three decades later, he remembers them vividly. Jones was a 19-year-old outfielder, languishing in the Washington Senators' low minors, when Uncle Sam knocked on his door in July 1969. The induction notice told him to report for his physical. There was basic training at Fort Bragg, N.C., and artillery training at Fort Sill, Okla. The Army gave him a 29- day leave to go home and tell his family and friends goodbye, then loaded him on a plane out of Oakland for Southeast Asia. Bobby Jones, a former Rangers er at Triple-A Oklahoma, says after nam, "My outlook changed completely." He spent the next 14 months - less six days for R&R in Hawaii after the first nine months - on top of that hill at Firebase Siberia. "You're scared all the time, but somehow you learn to live with it," Jones said. "My theory was, if you're going to get killed, then it's because it's your time to go. "We had guys get killed with three weeks to go incountry. I was one of the lucky ones. I never got a scratch the whole time I was over there." Which is not to say he came home unscathed. As an artilleryman on a 105 mm howitzer crew, the constant pounding of nightly fire missions gradually cost Jones partial hearing in both ears, especially the left. He wears two hearing aids today. Jones learned what life at Firebase Siberia would be like on his first night. Viet Cong sappers, carrying satchel bombs, attacked the hill in force. "They came through the wire and tried to overrun the hill," Jones said. "It was pitch black. They carried these homemade bombs called satchel charges and when they came across the hill, they'd start throwing them. They want to get you disoriented and start shooting at anything that moves. They'd come through one side, throw their GETTY IMAGES/RONALD MARTINEZ third-base coach and now managreturning from the war in Viet- T charges and then go out the other side. "If we were lucky, we caught 'em beforehand, in the wire. We killed 14 of them there." With the hill virtually surrounded by the enemy in the encroaching jungle, Jones said the six U.S. howitzers on the hilltop were basically aimed straight up in the air, in an effort to lob shells at the base of the hill. The Viet Cong, supported by regular troops, would counter with mortar and rocket fire. "We'd shoot a couple of rounds, then they'd send the mortars in and we'd hit the deck," Jones said. "When they stopped, we'd scramble up and start firing again." The U.S. troops. would roll the bodies of the dead enemy back down the hill. Some were picked up and carried away. Others lay there for months, rotting away. The helicopters would come periodically to bring in fresh troops and supplies and to carry away the body bags. "All the guys were close. It's like being with a baseball club," Jones said. "You live with these guys for 14 months. There were only about 40 of us on the hill in the artillery unit. Then we had infantry around us. We had six guns. I was on the No. 2 gun, but you knew all the guys on all the guns." Each day they survived was a victory. Each night brought terror. "At one point we got hit for 45 days straight," Jones said. "We'd get hit with mortars and rockets during the day, then the sappers would come at night. "Every day you're thinking, 'They're going to do it again, they're going to do it again.' It's with you all the time. But you have a job to do, and you just do it. I feel sorry for those guys over there [in Iraq]. I know what they're going through." Thursday, during a meeting with players before batting practice, manager Buck Showalter told the Rangers a little about Jones' experiences in Vietnam. "I just wanted these guys to know who this is and remind them what he has been through," Showalter said. Jones didn't come back bitter, but he came back changed. The life and death experience in Vietnam made him appreciate his opportunities more. Carrying heavy artillery shells and swinging a 12-pound sledgehammer for exercise had put 25 pounds on his frame. "If I hadn't gone to Vietnam, I'm convinced I would never have played in the big leagues," Jones said. "My outlook changed completely. When I came back, my thinking was that I was going to give it all I had to make the big leagues, but if I don't, I've got both arms and legs, I'm alive. I'll find a job. I can do something else. "I tell these kids today, it's a game; it's not life or death. Give it all you've got. I tell my players, I can stand getting beat 15-0. I can't stand you not running hard to first base. You have to be able to look in the mirror and ask yourself, 'Did I give it all I had, every single night?" Life, Jones said, every day of it, is so precious. "I tell these guys, look at the sunrise when you get up," he said. "Look at the clouds in the sky. They say, 'What the hell you lookin' at clouds for?' I tell 'em, because they're beautiful and because I'm alive." Jim Reeves, (817) 390-7760 revo@star-
