Mark Millican: ‘It made me a better man’

Published 9:00 am Thursday, December 21, 2023

John Jones grew up in Chattanooga’s Alton Park community and went to church as a boy. He believed what the Bible said about angels in the Christmas story and elsewhere, but never dreamed one might come to his aid — especially more than 8,000 miles from home in the Vietnam War.

A caveat here — I’ve never met John Jones personally, but was compelled to hear his story firsthand after visiting recently with Vietnam veteran David Rose and his lovely life, Shelia, at their home in north Whitfield County. David meets with some other ‘Nam vets in Chattanooga, and told me about what happened to John. I wanted to hear it straight from John himself, so David shared his number. We spoke on the phone two weeks before Christmas.

John’s “accident” was put into motion when he enlisted in the Marine Corps after graduating from Howard High School in 1966. Boot camp at Parris Island on the South Carolina coast was followed by brief stints at Camp Geiger and Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, then a final primer in warfare at Camp Pendleton in California before leaving for Vietnam.

While deployed as a combat engineer with the 1st Marine Division, he operated in Chu Lai and Quang Nam Provinces, and also took part in Operation Harvest Moon. Jones was “in country” around five months when a company-wide mission found him at the end of the column as they approached some rice paddies.

“We were walking along the paddy where it came together with another one,” he began. “When I stepped off into that rice paddy, I went straight down into an underground pool of water. Fortunately, my rifle got wedged between the two dikes and I was able to pull myself up.”

Still, it wasn’t easy. John said he had on full combat gear including a flak jacket, field pack and demolition kit with heavy explosives for taking down booby traps and “blowing stuff up.” He estimates his weight fully laden was around 275 pounds.

“I went down into the hole a second time and came back up, but the dike gave way and I went down again,” he said. “I had to push myself with my feet to come up and get on the dike, but every time the dike gave way because it wasn’t nothing but mud. I did that two times, and the last time I went into the water I said, ‘Well, Lord, this is the third time and if I don’t make it this time I guess I’ll be coming home.’”

Then the unthinkable happened.

“Somebody reached down — you know how a mama cat will grab a kitten by the neck? — and grabbed me and just lifted me up out of that water with one arm and set me down on that rice paddy,” John said. “I looked up and there was a big, big man. I couldn’t see his face because he was so tall … then he asked me, ‘Do you want that pack of cigarettes floating in the water?’ Because my cigarette pack came out of my flak jacket, and I told him ‘No.’ and when I looked up again, he was not there.”

John recalled the man had on fatigues but not like jungle fatigues the Marines were wearing.

“I thought ‘He don’t have on the right kind of fatigues, he don’t have no rifle, he don’t have no cartridge belt,’” he said. “Who in the world could it be? So I walked up on the Marine in front of me and asked him, ‘Hey, where’s that big Marine that was behind you?’ He said, ‘Man, ain’t nobody been behind me but you.’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘Ain’t nobody been behind me but you!’”

Stunned, he rejoined the column and walked until they reached a bivouac site to have chow.

“After I sat down and thought about it some more, I said to myself ‘Now that was an angel! It had to be!’” he shared. “It’s the absolute truth, and it was so amazing to me it changed my life — right there.”

In what way?

“It made me a better man and a stronger believer,” he replied. “I grew up going to church, but only got baptized before I went to Vietnam. I told my momma, ‘Before I go to war, I want to get baptized.’ and I did, before I went to Marine Corps boot camp. My mother would write me when I was in Vietnam and one time she said, ‘You got into a fire fight or some trouble, didn’t you?’ I said, ‘Yeah, Momma, something happened.’ She said, ‘I knew because the Lord told me you were in trouble, but that you were going to come out of it unhurt.’ She said things to me and I was amazed at how true they were.”

Truly it’s an amazing story, and one day Jones, 75, hopes to meet the “man” who saved his life.

Mark Millican is a former staff writer for the Dalton Daily Citizen.