STUMP IS DEAD

Say goodbye to William "Stump" Jones, retired sergeant major, Mississippi Army National Guard, and decorated Vietnam veteran wounded in action as a combat Marine. Say it. Say goodbye to Stump, Civil War re-enactor, suspender-wearer, maker of rules to live by, mentor, beer drinker ("dietary beverages"), chili pepper connoisseur, folk artist, cartoonist, storyteller, picture framer, father, husband, friend.

Stump served as full-time senior noncommissioned officer for the State Public Affairs Office. His varied jobs: photographer, draughtsman, framer of awards and pictures, coordinator of ceremonies, author of the editorial cartoon "On My Command," and genuine bullshit artist. Day-to-day, he took "grip & grin" photos of retirements, promotions, and other military ceremonies, draughted hand-lettered posters for events, and assisted the State Public Affairs Officer in sundry ways.

Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2005, Building 109, Combat Readiness Training Center, Gulfport, Miss.--I had been called to state active duty for Hurricane Katrina relief and recovery operations and shared a room with Stump at the CRTC. Most military personnel slept in tents, but Stump the deal-maker had hustled us a room. It was hot those Katrina-wake days, sweltering, but our room was always frigid. I wrote in my journal:

"The room is cold because Stump likes the AC full blast. Our building is one of the few on base with electricity. We have running water, though the water pressure is so low that it dribbles from the shower head. I'm not bitching because at least 90% of the military and civilian personnel down here have no running water. They have to go to cummunity shower facilities and toilets."

I served in the 102nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment headquartered in Jackson. My job was to take pictures and write the stories of the Guard members serving on the coast.

I spent Sept. 6 with Soldiers of C Company, 890th Combat Engineer Battalion, as they cleared the rubble-strewn neighborhoods of Pass Christian. They established an operating base at Pineville Elementary School, and they used the classroom's whiteboard to tally the day's missions in blue, black, and red markers. For an eraser, they used a blue T-shirt printed with a flaming panther's head roaring the words "Pineville Panthers are on Fire." Hanging from the whiteboard frame was a colorful vinyl apron lined with four rows of pockets stuffed with markers, pencils, pens, and an overlooked eraser.

I took picures of the engineers chainsawing fallen timber and pushing debris from choked streets. Balancing on fifteen feet of wobbly rubble (bare carpentry lumber, splintered and torn and full of nails), I took shot after shot of a yellow dozer and scoop loader heaping the pile higher.

Later that day, I photographed the remains of the Long Beach Walmart, a sight I shall never forget. Situated on Hwy 90, across from the beach, the building survived the tidal wave only as a gutted frame. Katrina's surge blew-out the rear of the structure, purging the store's bowels of merchandise and people, spewing everything into the adjoining neighborhood. (Stump later told me a rumor that the store manager pressured minimum-wage staff to ride out the storm, and I don't know if it's true--but that's a story the press didn't explore.)

When I finally returned to our room at the CRTC after dark, bone weary and wayworn, Stump shoved a can of water in my hand. "Relax," he said. "Kick off your boots and just relax, LT." I began downloading and processing the day's digital pictures in Photoshop, writing cutlines (descriptions with the who-what-why-when-where-& how), but Stump badgered me to relax. "Kick off your boots, LT. You've got to pace yourself, or you won't be able to last at this pace."

I worked for an hour or so, but then I took off my mud-caked boots, and lay on the bed with my Katrina Journal, a standard-issue green notebook, cloth bound. Stump gave it to me. On the first day, he shoved it in my hands. "Use this to keep a hurricane journal. Record everything. Someday, you might write a book."

On the cover, in his distinctive lettering, he wrote:

2nd Lt. Shugars

Hurricane Katrina

28 August 05

Beneath that, he drew crossed rifles (because my branch is infantry). Toward the end of our six week deployment, Stump added a list of some of the cities I frequented during missions: Gulfport, Biloxi, Bay St. Louis, Long Beach, Pass Christian, Pearlington, Pasgagoula.

That night, as he pulled off his brown Army T-shirt, he paused, shirt wrinkled above his chest, and twisted his back to me. 

"See this?" Stump said, pointing to a wicked scar below his left shoulder blade, ragged, about three or four inches long. "This is what you get when a .30 caliber machine gun round hits you."

Then he said:

"February 14, 1967--it was a great day, a great day. I lived through it. That's why it was a great day. I thought I was a dead son-of-a-bitch. The bullet hit meat. That's why I made it. If a round hits meat, it doesn't hurt as much--the nerves get dull from the burn. But if you get shot in the bone, it shatters and causes a lot of pain.

I remember I was in the battalion aid station and seeing my buddies shot up. I said, Hey, man, you'll be all right. That's a little hole.

I was saying this and this corpsman comes up to me and says, Hey, man, you got to get out of here.

I said, I'm wounded. I'm in shock.

He said, To hell you are. Get the fuck out of my aid station.

I said, I'm not in shock? Look at this, you son-of-a-bitch. I leaned forward and lifted my flack-jacket, and you know what? That bastard fainted. He fell right over. As it turns out, he was a new guy. He'd only been in country for a week or so.

I don't know what he saw when I lifted my flack-jacket, but I knew it was bad. I thought, Oh, shit, I'm hurt worse than I thought.


The doctor in the aid station saw me across the room, and he said, Get that Marine prepped for surgery! The next thing I knew I was on an operating table.
You know, they put two bottles of novacain in my back, in the wound, you know. Not novacain, but the cheap stuff. I'm lying on that table, and they're cutting pieces of my flesh off--slicing it off and throwing it on the table next to the bed. I know because I'm watching it. I see these chunks of my own flesh get tossed on the bedside table.


Two hours after the operation, I'm lying in bed watching Bonanza on television and eating ice cream. I've just left combat, and I'm in clean sheets eating ice cream and watching TV, thinking, What the fuck just happened to me?"


As Stump talked, he puttered around the room putting things in order. Every night he performed the same domestic rituals. He draped clean skivvies for the morning, brown T-shirt and briefs, on the microwave. He filled the little Mr. Coffee with water and scooped the grounds into the filter. He went outside for the day's last gossipy cigarette, always striking up a conversation with someone out there in the dark. Returning, he bathed, shirtless, at the sink with a washcloth and bar of hotel soap, humming ditties from the Civil War. Then he slipped into bed.

"I'm getting old," he said. "It's time to let the young bucks take over. I'm tired. I'm worn out. I got flat feet and my stomach sags. I'm history. I'm going to retire in six months, and I'll be gone."

William "Stump" Jones retired from the Mississippi Army National Guard a week-and-a-half ago. He died at his home in Lena, Saturday, apparently of a heart attack.