Class Anchorman to Commander: CDR Bobby Reshad Jones

Ken Harbaugh:

I’m Ken Harbaugh, host of Warriors In Their Own Words. In partnership with the Honor Project, we’ve brought this podcast back at a time when our nation needs these stories more than ever.

Warriors in Their Own Words is our attempt to present an unvarnished, unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this nation. Thank you for listening, and by doing so, honoring those who have served.

Today, we’ll hear from Commander Bobby Reshad Jones. Jones made headlines for accidentally picking up President George W. Bush at his graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy, and went on to serve all over the world, including the Pacific, Africa, and the middle east. He eventually worked his way up to commander, serving as Executive Officer to Coastal Riverine Squadron FOUR (CRS-4).

CDR Bobby Rashad Jones:

My name is Bobby Rashad Jones, Commander of United States Navy retired. I was a 22-year surface warfare officer that eventually gained command of Coastal Riverine Squadron Four, now known as Maritime Expeditionary Security Squadron Four. I retired in October of 2023.

My real first exposure about Annapolis, I had seen little bits and pieces of it, but it was really when I was in high school. By that point, I was lucky enough to get a financial scholarship to one of the best schools in America here in Atlanta, the Westminster Schools. I was in the library one day, and back then they had a college room where they had all the college catalogs from all over the country that were spewed about. Someone left a United States Naval Academy catalog out, and on the cover, there were five midshipmen in their dress blues and their swords. There was one from every background, it seemed like, and it just looked so cool. Then I started looking into it. I opened it and I saw what the graduates have done and how they literally had shaped American history. I was like, "Wow, that's intense." I was maybe in ninth grade at that point.

Fast forward to my junior year, I started playing football. I was pretty good at it. I was getting recruited by almost 100 schools, but I didn't get anything from the Naval Academy. It ticked me off because I was a pretty good student, a great school. Finally, I happened to run into one of the football coaches that was recruiting our quarterback, and it was Paul Johnson who went on to be the head coach at Navy. I asked him, "Hey, how come I haven't gotten anything from you guys?" He was like, "Wait, you actually would consider the Naval Academy?" I'm like, "Sure, sure."

But I tell you what really sold me when I took my official visits to other schools, and I saw how all that they cared about... We're talking some big time football schools in the SEC and the ACC, they only cared about okay playing football and possibly going pro. I never really saw a classroom. They had a pretty girl show you around. When I was visiting Annapolis, not even close. I didn't stay in a five-star hotel. I stayed in Bancroft Hall. I got a military wool blanket and a cot while I was there, but I'll tell you what really swung it for me. When I went to Navy Marine Corps Memorial Stadium for the first time, and for people who don't know, that stadium was built after World War II on the donations of sailors and marines that won that war. I remember walking into UGA, University of Georgia Sanford Stadium, saw the 1980 National Championship, the SEC Championships. When you walk into the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, you see every battle the Navy and the Marine Corps has fought since World War I, starting at Belleau Wood all the way now to Afghanistan and Iraq. It's just a different animal. It's just different.

That's when Clint Bruce, who I call the Godfather of Navy football, he was the guy showing me around on my visit. He basically said, "We don't beg people to come to this place. Either you hear the call or you don't. If you do, understand it's never going to be about you. It's never going to be about you. I don't care how talented you are, how brilliant you are, it's not about you."

So I sat there for 30 minutes in that stadium trying to figure out if I wanted to do this. I went through my 18-year-old mental checklist of dos and don'ts and what I want in a college. I visited North Carolina with a girl, the guy ratios four to one, completely opposite of Annapolis. That's a down check, all of these things. But I couldn't stop asking myself, what if I don't go here? What if I don't finish pursuing my appointment here? Would I regret it the rest of my life? That was just too much for me. So I decided that, "Hey, I'm going to try this." I checked in July 1st, 1997, wanted to go home July 2nd, 1997, but made it through by the skin of my teeth, graduated dead last in my class.

So if you graduate last in your class, Order of Merit and I did, I think I was like 902 and 902, you're called the class anchorman. So when I was in Virginia, I actually had this on a license plate, anchorman, because it's unique to each class. What's supposed to happen is you're supposed to get a dollar from every one of your classmates that graduated ahead of you. I got about $888. I didn't get all of the money because the guys I played football with, the senior football players, they said, "No, we're not giving you a dollar." As matter of fact, they think that they helped contribute to my academic delinquency. So they refused. So I got the money. They announced it at graduation rehearsal. The problem with that was, and I defend myself to this day, I had to collect the money then and take it and deposit it in the bank. That's when they went over the dos and don'ts when dealing with the President of the United States. So I didn't get the brief. When my name was announced, I lost my mind because I had to work very hard to get back on track to graduate on time. I was just done playing football, didn't realize how light the President was, gave him a hug, didn't realize I had picked him up. The Secret Service was like, "What is he doing?" I put him down and the President said, "Man, you're happy." I go, "Yes, sir, I am." I'll never forget what he said to me. He goes, "Look, man, no one cares about where you graduated." He goes, "I made C's at Yale and I'm President of the United States." So I was like, "That's a valid point." The good thing about it is I've been able to be a pen pal to him over the years. He congratulated me on getting command when I got command. He mentioned me in the speech to the class of 2005, four years into the global war on terrorism. He had absolute faith in me and all of the guys that I graduated with that we would get the job done once things changed. So having that tied to a commander-in-chief at some point in your life is pretty special, a personal connection, but more importantly, being able to know that that commander-in-chief has faith in you to do what's necessary to protect the country is even cooler. I knew it firsthand.

The institution itself, United States Naval Academy, I've never had more intense feelings about one place in my entire life, passionate feeling. At first, it was hatred, and now it's like undying love because I understood now in my older years why they have you go through everything and what the last 20 some odd years of my life, almost 30 years of my life was about. I'm thankful that they allowed me to graduate. So yeah, my Annapolis experience has been quite intense and I'm thankful for it.

The experience was tough, but it was the most rewarding thing I ever did. I met my wife there. She's class of '03. But most importantly, everything that we went through at Annapolis prepared us for what happened 109 days later, which was 9/11.

So 9/11 happened, I want to say, 109 days after graduation. I was in Newport Rhode Island at Surface Warfare Officer School. So if you go slow, as we say, in the Navy, back then, they send you to Newport first before you went to your ship. So you get some basic training for about six months. So we had actually just got through taking the physical readiness test, and I was rooming with four other new incidents from various ROTC locations. We were sent home to shower. I'll never forget it. On the ride home, I'm listening to Howard Stern, he said a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center and they thought it was an accident. I was like, "Man, that's terrible." I remember stepping out of the shower, putting on my khakis, and I'm turning on the TV just to see the World Trade, the first tower smoking. I watched live as the second tower gets hit. I said, "Holy crap." I grabbed my roommates like, "We got to go, we got to go, we got to go." They're like, "What's happening?" It was a lot of confusion and I threw everybody in my car and I drove directly to base of Newport. The reason I did that is because I'm a big history buff, and I remember when Pearl Harbor happened, all active duty military personnel had to report to their base. I knew that. So I used that historical reference.

I'm driving onto base at Newport, naval station of Newport. Gates were closing. They were going to complete delta force protection level. Not knowing that while we were running on base and trying to get back into our classrooms, that the Pentagon had been hit. No clue. Why that mattered was because I guess the side of the Pentagon, if I recall correctly, that got hit was a lot of the Navy operational side. So Newport Rhode Island is also the home of the Naval War College, which is our big maritime strategic thought think tank, right? So they were scrambling later in that day.

The thing that jumps out at me that I remember was the commanding officer of Surface Warfare Officer School Captain Brinkley, Ron Brinkley walked in and all of us were all huddled around a little TV trying to keep up with what's happening and getting the information. He said, "The United States has been attacked. You will do your duty. Your orders will probably be changed. This is why you were commissioned to handle this." He left. A few days later, we got our briefing on what people believed had happened, and that's the first time I remember hearing the words Al-Qaeda. I want to say it was their second in command. They showed us a quote where he was like, "Why go after all of the lions when there are so many lambs to be slaughtered?", referring to how they were going to target civilian soft targets and not go after the American military. I have never been as angry before or since hearing that. I had to get up, walk out the room, and collect myself because I was fuming, because they purposely targeted innocent people. It's one thing if they target us that chose to put on the uniform, took an oath and said, "We'll be those people. We'll be that dude." It's another thing when you're saying, "Hey, we want to go after women, children, families, churches, synagogues, mosques. We want to go after the softest people in their most vulnerable environments." It's cowardly to me. It's cowardly to me, but that's what they chose to do.

I don't know if you remember, they basically implied that America does not have the population or the desire to endure this type of warfare for very long. I think that's when I made up in my mind, I'm like, "I'm going to serve as long as it takes to get these sons of bitches." That's where it switched for me because the assumption that America had grown so soft and so weak and there weren't enough of us that were willing to do what is necessary, that still bothers me to this day because I know that's not true. I know that's not true. They may not be publicized. Those type of people may not talk about it, but we have a warrior class in this country. We do. We do, but the assumption that was made by our enemies was that we don't. So I eventually got to my ship in Japan after that and got to deal with the 31st MEU and go after terrorists in the Philippines.

But I was angry, not necessarily because we got attacked. I know this sounds weird. I was angry at how we were attacked and how cowardly the attack was. Then later I was pissed about how we didn't put that together when we had signs that could have prevented something like that. So I was mad about everything but the rawness of the attack. I was just mad about the type of attack and how cowardly it was.

My ship had me go do some additional training, which actually turned out to pay off. So I didn't get to my ship until the end of 2001. I was on USS Germantown LSD 42, which is an amphibious assault ship. So Marines ride it, and then we launched them to hit the beach in amphibious warfare. So that's a whole expeditionary type mindset. So I get to my ship, I get to my crew, and I'm the deck division officer, which means I'm doing a lot of the manual labor required. My people are doing that to land Marines in hostile environments, AAVs, cricks, all sorts of assault craft. My captain calls me while I'm driving on the bridge. I'm conning the ship and he says, "I need you to come down to the warden for a brief." This is right after we embarked elements of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit out of Okinawa. I come down there and they give us a brief and they tell us how in the southern islands of the Philippines, there was a terrorist group called Abu Sayyaf. They had ran rampant. They had kidnapped an American missionary couple. They were killing basically Catholics down there, and we're not going to Afghanistan like everybody else. We're going there. So we got permission via Colin Powell who was Secretary of State at the time to go and land forces there. The Marines did what Marines do. They went after terrorists. I was the well-decked control officer and basically the acting beach master. I helped land them in a very hostile environment.

We went from there dealing with those terrorists to East Timor, which is one of the newest nations in the world at the time. East Timor was in a middle-level war because you had Muslim extremists that were there, bombing churches, targeting orphanages. We landed there to provide some assistance. The United Nations had asked for help there. So we were, for lack of a better term, island-hopping like the Marines and the Navy did back in World War II, but it was completely different enemy, completely different stakes, and much more complex because you're having to deal with local populations that don't even know what's going on themselves. How do you find an enemy that can hide within, et cetera, et cetera? It was not conventional warfare.

So it really got me thinking about, "How do you fight an enemy? What makes someone an enemy?" But most importantly, and this is the key thing, what does victory look like when you're dealing with a war that is so ideologically based? How do you fight a group of people? This is what we had to do at the end of World War II when the Battle of Okinawa and stuff. How do you deal with the fanatical enemy that's willing to kill itself to kill you? And then what does victory look like? A question that many can argue was never answered in the global war on terrorism, but it was interesting. I was 22 at the time, and having to think these thoughts as a young junior officer.

One of the things that I've said to many people about this whole 20-year war was the young people that started fighting this war that became senior officers by the end of the war have possibly the most unique experience in American history because they fought the longest war in American history. You didn't have a defined nation state that you were fighting. Because of the circumstances of that asymmetric warfare, you had a 25-year-old first lieutenant walking in Afghanistan who's not only that platoon leader, he's also the ambassador representing the United States. He's also dealing with chieftains. He has to be diplomatic. He has to be militaristic. He has to be social. We asked those officers, junior officers, senior enlisted, to do so much with so little training in those expertise areas. I mean, when the State Department refused to deploy, they refused to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan because they said it was dangerous. Well, to quote Sean Connery in The Untouchables, that's the job. That's the job. I mean, it's not about you being in the State Department having wine gatherings and dealing with social parties. No, your job is to help come up with diplomatic solutions to avoid war.

Meanwhile, during the global war on terrorism, you had the war fighters acting like fake State Department in a lot of respects. When I was in East Timor talking to local people, when I was in Liberia as a United Nations peacekeeper, one of only 30 America had out of 230,000. I'm dealing with local area people and local problems that to be honest with you, they give you cultural indoctrination, but until you do it, you don't know how to do it. No one has really told the story of the American military during the global war on terrorism era. We fought the longest war in American history, but America was not at war. America's military was at war. That disconnection, that was purposely done in my humble opinion by politicians so people would not focus on the war like Vietnam, left a lot of us hanging and out to dry. A lot of Americans not even remotely aware of the sacrifices that America's military made. I mean the same families dealing with the same deployments again and again and again and again, and most people don't even know it outside of military towns. It's fascinating, fascinating. So to be young enough to do some of the manual labor on the ground but at the same time have enough wherewithal as poli scie major out of Annapolis and then go to the war colleges, having enough understanding globally of what's happening and now looking back on it, it's fascinating to me and I cannot wait for someone to actually try to tell that story.

The United States Navy and the Naval Service to include the Marine Corps is psychologically one of the most demanding jobs in American society. Why do I say that? The Army, they have their deployments. The Air Force, my brothers is an Air Force Academy grad. They have their rotations, but only the Naval Service does this consistent long six to nine-month deployment cycle of its people when they're on sea duty. What does that mean? That means depending on the type ship you're on, you could be on a ship that's 300 feet to 500 feet to 1,500 feet, whatever, and you see the same people every day. You have an important job. Every job is important because they wouldn't put you on the ship and pay for that billet if it wasn't, either mission oriented or just for the ship to operate. You also have to deal with the mentality of not allowing yourself to be lulled to sleep because international waters are the most dangerous areas on the planet. People don't understand that. That's where piracy happens, human trafficking happens. All of these things happen in a completely, for the lack of better term, lawless environment. By you being in the United States Navy, you literally self-identify as one of the few sheriffs in that Wild, Wild West atmosphere. So by definition, you're a target.

I explained it to my brother, the Air Force pilot like this. He was like, "Why are you going to firefighter school?" I go, "Because every sailor has to be a firefighter." He's like, "What are you talking about?" I go, "If a fire breaks out, where can we run?" He stopped and started about it for a second. He's like, "That's a good point. What do you all do?" I go, "We have to put the fire out, idiot. That's what we have to do." So all of us have to be firefighters, every last one from the captain all the way down. I go, "That mentality of everybody has to do their job... It's not nice to do your job. Everybody has to do their job. ... brings a level of performance pressure that the average American citizen does not understand." Then to be away from your loved ones, the missed holidays, the missed birthdays, all of these things that you miss. You're missing it because you're providing security that the average American does not realize you're providing. They don't understand the domino effect of you showing up off the coast of this country quite possibly stops an attack on your country or an attack on you and your neighborhood, this and that. They don't understand that because they don't think in those terms. But the older you get in the branch of service, you realize, "Hey, my presence here deters their action back home." Unfortunately, it's a trade-off that all of us have to make at some point.

When I was still in the service and the more senior I got, I tried to make it a point to explain to my guys why we were deploying. Because those days become long. There are days where you may not get any sleep, you may not eat, and then if you do eat, the food is going to probably be terrible. It could be old, this, that. I mean, it takes a certain mindset that you have to adopt in order to do what you do, especially in the Navy. It really does.

I think the command selection process and command structure in the Navy is definitely unique compared to all the other branches. Number one, when you are selected for command in the Navy, you are basically God at that command. If you say, "I want that wall painted a different color," it's going to happen. You have that authority. This harkens back to the days of wooden sail where when you left over the horizon, that commanding officer of that ship can't call back home, can't send a raven to go do this. He had to make those decisions right there for the entire crew. He could be the only person, the only American some foreign country interacts with. Now, all of a sudden, what he says is American policy. So the standard for command, it had to be high because anytime a ship left our shores, it was the United States and people sometimes forget about that historical foundation.

So now even today, the United States Navy has a very high standard, like you said, the peers, the intangibles, the written words, things that you can't put in a box. They try to analyze based on the writings and this, that, and the other and the experience, but also we, unlike the other branches of service, when we fire somebody, we make it public. It is a public execution of when you fire. I've had many friends and family ask, "Why does the Navy do that?" It goes back to what I said earlier, because when you get command in the Navy, it is different than in the Army and all these other branches. You are God because of the nature of the job being away, being the only representative of the United States when you pull that ship into port. It's serious business. So if there is any doubt in you doing that or having the ability to do that, then it was like, "We're not going to even waste time. Bye. See you."

So I was second in command of a cruiser, and then when I got command, I was command of a riverine squadron that deployed to six different time zones. At the same time, I'm jumping on planes flying to and fro because of the missions that we have to deal with and the dangerous waterways of the world that's squirting our ships through. That is serious because here's the other piece too that I think people don't understand about the Navy compared to other branch service. When we mess up in the Navy, by the nature of it being a ship and that ship being US sovereign territory, if something happens to that ship, if that ship messes up, it's instantly international news instantly. The USS Ticonderoga incident in the Middle East of the '80s or when USS Cole got hit in the '90s, I mean the world stops and points at that Navy ship and says, "What the hell just happened here?" We can't hide our mistakes. So unfortunately, we strive to be perfect in an imperfect world. The personalities of the captains and this, that, and other, all of it's amplified because of that command structure, which is why the Navy is very, very selective and they highly scrutinize their candidates. They have to. They have no choice because we are America when we leave.

I was a young junior officer on USS Normandy, and the captain was from New England. So we went up to Boston, took the ship up from Norfolk to Boston. We got the pass by Bunker Hill, actually Breeds Hill. You realize, "Oh, my God. That's where all this started." Then you see the USS Constitution while you're up there too, the oldest commission worship in the world. Oh, my gosh. You get to visit that. To me, the USS Constitution in particular is just something that's unbelievable special to me because of when it was built, why it was built, and then even the missions that it had. I mean, it literally stopped the slave trade in the Atlantic.

To someone who is African-American, I know for a fact that there were slaves that they rescued and brought back to Africa on the same decks that I'm walking, right? So when I was EXO on Anzio and we're crossing the Atlantic to go on our deployment, I thought to myself, in the same light, "I'm an American of African descent that is passing over the same passageway my ancestors came to the United States." I wonder if they knew what their descendant would become, how would they feel? I know that's weird. It's probably not something you hear often, but it was not lost on me. We took the initial path that came in where my ancestors were brought in.

And then the other moment where I had to pause, I was in command. I was head of a task force 56.7, task force. I'm in the Persian Gulf. I'm on one of my small boats and I see some fishermen, Middle Eastern fishermen. They saw the American flag. They literally came alongside and just waved and said, "Thank you," and just drove off and went back to doing their fishing. It was unexpected because of where we were and the heightened tensions that are always there, but they saw us and they saw the American flag. It represented to them not just freedom and all that stuff. In their minds, it represented security. It allowed them to continue their lifestyle of being fishermen. It allowed them to literally be able to go about their daily business without having to worry about something that is way out of their control.

That made me pause because by that point, I'd spent years away from the family on deployments. The wife was in the Navy. She did the same for a while. You're like, "What is it all for?" It's for that wave. It's for that person saying, "Hey", saying thank you. That's the thing, we don't pause to think about that often because we're so busy focused on the mission, focused on the mission, focused on the mission.

I'll be honest, I got out of the Navy October of last year, and I'm just now starting to reconcile all this stuff that I was able to help do in my career. It's pretty heavy compared to my peers that I went to high school with. Of course, it's heavy. The stuff that they complain about and the stuff I complain about are completely different levels, but it also helps me remember that one of the things that's unique about our service, Department of Defense, we're volunteers. We chose that lifestyle. We chose to do this. Whether our peers recognize what it is or not, we understand the importance of it. Most importantly, we understand the purpose of finding our own relief. We have to find that in the next generation. You can't just assume it's going to be there. We got to go. If that kid shows up for clear relief to do it, hey, they may only do it four years. That's high. We need to go find that kid and help encourage them and give them the support they need to do what we did.

I'm a very blessed man. I have a family. We've had military history. My grandfather was a Korean War vet. My wife's grandfather was a Tuskegee Airman in World War II. The first thing I would tell people, patriotism is not some little trait or some little accessory to have as a citizen. There's a difference between being a good citizen and being a patriot. To me, the number one difference between a good citizen and a patriot is sacrifice. Sacrifice. If you go and vote and you clean up your local park and you go to school, you go to church, you do what you're supposed to, congratulations, you're a good citizen. But when you give up something, time away from your family, a much more lucrative lifestyle, risk life and limb, possibly your own life forfeited because of it, those are patriots. Those that raise their hands and say they're willing to beat that dude and it's not just the military. We have people that go into burning buildings on purpose, on purpose and get paid peanuts for it. We have law enforcement officers that are vilified, but at the same time, when things go sideways, they're the first person you call and you expect them to be there and they have to figure out that balance. We have people who literally could make more money in the medical profession but choose to go where they are called because that's what matters to them. That's patriotism. Patriotism is putting everybody else before yourself and you're sacrificing in order to do it. It's that simple.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was CDR Bobby Reshad Jones

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Warriors In Their Own Words is a production of Evergreen Podcasts, in partnership with The Honor Project.

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