Gerry Jones was born in September 1926 in Logansport, Indiana. His family was badly affected by the Great Depression. They lost their farm because they could not afford to pay the taxes. Jones had to take a night job at a bakery when he was 11 years old to help support his family. He would travel around small-town Indiana with his dad to paint churches. He worked so much he just slept through school. At age 13, Jones left home permanently by hitchhiking and ended up finding various work in the Southeast of the United States. He ended up in Julian, California by the time he was 15 years old. When he joined the Marines, the physical part came very easy for him, because of all the hard labor had had done already. He trained in San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California]. He volunteered for the Scouts and Sniper Company.

Gerry Jones trained with the United States Marines, joining the Scout and Sniper Company at Camp Elliott [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California]. He was qualified to shoot a 1000 yard shot, which required good physicality and practice. He was sent overseas near the end of the Battle of Guadalcanal [Annotator's Notes: Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands]. The division [Annotator's Note: 1st Marine Division] moved to New Britain, stopping in Australia first. Jones remarked that the terrain was thick foliage and the weather was very wet. The scouts had to work in teams to get through the terrain. Jones remarked that every scout he knew but one was either injured or killed during the war. Jones thinks that the Japanese weapons were very good, except for their grenades. On many occasions they were duds.

Gerry Jones was painting radio towers in California when he heard the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He was only 15 years old when he decided to join the Marine Corps because he thought it was an elite force. He added five years to his age and because he was big and strong, as well as more mature than most 18 year olds at the time, no one questioned him. Because he made himself five years older, he was given a lot of senior jobs, for example, becoming a squad leader after only two weeks of boot camp. He kept his age a secret throughout the war. Jones only had an elementary education and left home when he was 13 years old. His family suffered greatly from the Great Depression. He worked physical labor up to when he joined the Marines. Jones excelled in the Marine Corps and advanced quickly. He believed that because he was already physically fit, he could focus on other aspects of the training that others could not. He also thought he was placed well by being in the scouts because he was a loner, and he could have some control about his decisions.

Gerry Jones had joined the Marine Scout and Sniper Company, which was different than the Marine Raiders as he explains. The Scout and Snipers were attached to the headquarters [Annotator's Note: division headquarters]. They received all their orders from headquarters by radio. Jones remarks that the foliage was very thick on New Britain [Annotator's Note: New Britain, Papua New Guinea], so aerial photography could not help. The scouts were ordered to go out and find targets. They would converse with locals or merchants that knew the area to gather information. He carried white phosphorus [Annotator's Note: white phosphorus grenades] if he needed a way to escape. Jones remarked how the natives on Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan] feared the Marines and would jump off cliffs to their deaths.

Gerry Jones' first mission was on Cape Gloucester [Annotator's Note: Cape Gloucester, New Britain, Papua New Guinea]. He was working as a point scout to find a particular area and he had to climb up hill to gain height. He came upon a Japanese solider setting up a machine gun and killed him with a Browning Automatic Rifle or BAR. He was able to successfully complete his first mission. Jones states that after the war, he worked with the Japanese when he worked with the World Olympics to add Judo as a sport.

Gerry Jones feels that the Japanese soldiers were very tough men. He was able to track Japanese soldiers easily by the shoes they wore. In one instance, he thought was tracking a Japanese soldier and found out he was tracking his partner because he had put on the Japanese shoes. Jones recalls Pavuvu [Annotator's Note: Pavuvu, Russell Islands] as a swamp with rats and land crabs. He describes it as a "hell hole." The Marines would throw the land crabs in metal drums of fire and the smell was horrible. Jones remembers when Eleanor Roosevelt came to visit the South Pacific to assess the well being of the Marines.

Gerry Jones discusses Eleanor Roosevelt's visit the South Pacific to assess the well being of the 1st Marine Division. He goes on to relate a famous story in the Marine Corps of Roosevelt commenting on the sanitary conditions of food preparations with a dispassionate cook.

Gerry Jones recalls when they [Annotator's Note: the 1st Marine Division] went to Peleliu [Annotator's Note: Peleliu, Palau], there was no need for scouts, so his company fought in the front lines with the rest of the Marines. Jones explaines how after the Navy bombarded the island, the Marines had a difficult time advancing through the terrain. They also discovered that the naval bombardment did not have any affect on the Japanese fortifications. Jones remembers the difficulty of getting onto the beaches and the mass casualties. He shares two "stories of fate" while fighting in the Pacific. The first story was about a man in his unit who was shot by a Japanese sniper and the bullet entered the side of his head and went out the other side. The Navy corpsmen dropped him a couple of times as they brought him down the mountain, but somehow he survived. The second story was about a cook who was sleeping in his tent four miles from the front lines who was killed by a stray bullet from a Marine.

Gerry Jones recalls that the Japanese would push the Okinawan [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan] natives through the Marine's trip lines killing them and then the Japanese could advance through the barrier with ease. Jones thought the Japanese soldier did not think. He needed an officer to tell him what to do. When they felt trapped, the Japanese soldiers would just kill themselves with hand grenades. Suicide was a common practice for the Japanese during the war and was considered honorable.

While on Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan], Gerry Jones was called over the radio to search for some Japanese that snuck through the Marine lines one night. When Jones, his partner, and a Marine with a dog assessed the rice patties near the artillery, they found some Japanese tracks. The dog was going crazy and the group concluded that the Japanese soldiers were hiding under the rice patties. When Jones jumped in, he was surrounded by seven Japanese soldiers that rose from the water. Jones killed three of them with his Thompson submachine gun while his partner, Mack [Annotator's Note: unable to verify identy], killed the other four. They drug the bodies up from the water to search them and take all their personal items, which Jones hated doing. Jones and his group knew that there were more Japanese soldiers hiding in the rice patties. Jones jumped in the water again and waded through it until four more Japanese rose out of the water. Mack shot them all. They pulled them out of the water, searched them, and turned in all the personal items of the Japanese to their superiors. Jones discovered that the Japanese had small tin tubes they use to breathe under water. He remarked that it must of taken a lot of courage to lay under those rice patties for hours behind enemy lines.

Gerry Jones completed several missions with his partner, Mack [Annotator's Note: unable to verify identity], throughout the war in the Pacific. At the end of the Battle of Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan], Jones and Mack were two of the few Scouts remaining in their company. Jones was wounded three times during his time in World War 2, but never too severely that he was relieved and sent home. Jones and Mack were utilized more during the end of the war because they had so much experience in the field. Jones remarks that he has many stories that he has not shared with anyone because of his distaste of the outcomes. Some of the experiences he had do not sit well with him.

Gerry Jones and his scout partner, Mack [Annotator's Note: unable to verify identity], were out on a patrol mission on Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan] to find information about a Japanese mine. They would advance at night and hide during the day. One night, they came upon a Japanese observation post and decided to camp out the next day to collect some intel [Annotator's Note: military intelligence]. The following night, they got closer to the post, but were soon discovered and had to escape, killing many of the Japanese. Two or three weeks later, they were ordered to bring a group of Marines into the same area. When Jones and Mack completed their mission, they left the area to return to base and again were caught in another firefight, killing several more Japanese. Days later, they were ordered to go back to the same area to meet a Marine officer, which Jones did not care for very much. The officer ordered them to take him to where Jones and Mack killed the last group of Japanese. During daylight, which was very dangerous, they traced their steps back to the sight of their last encounter with some Japanese. When they came up on the location of the dead Japanese, the officer went ahead of Jones and Mack and shot each Japanese in the head. Jones was appalled and taken back by the actions of the officer. The group soon left the scene in haste to avoid being caught by Japanese nearby who could have heard the officer's shots. To this day, Jones is greatly affected by this fool's errand.

At war's end, Gerry Jones was on Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan] preparing to invade mainland Japan. They heard the news of the atomic bombs and Japan had surrendered. In September 1945, Jones and the 1st Marine Division were sent to North China to disarm and repatriate 1.2 million Japanese from Manchuria, North China, and along the coast. Jones was in and out of the hospital due to injuries he received in battle. He befriended a couple of Chinese martial arts students while he was stationed there and met three masters in martial arts. Jones planned to stay in China and train with them. He was discharged from the Marine Corps in China. He stayed in China until right before Mao [Annotator's Note: Mao Zedong, or Chairman Mao, was the founder of the People's Republic of China] took over the country. When he returned to the United States, he worked with the Marines teaching recruits martial arts. Jones learned of his brother's death when he returned home. His family did not know Jones was in the military.