Jones, Sam

Corporal Sam Jones was drafted into the United States (U.S.) Army Air Corps. After completing Air Corps basic training in Florida, he was assigned to Hammer Field, California to await space at radio school. Jones was unable to attend advanced radio school, and was instead assigned to the 324th Signal Company. He volunteered for and was admitted to the Aviation Cadet Program. When he was half-way through his primary flight training in El Reno, Oklahoma, his program was cancelled on 1 July 1944. Jones and the other aviation cadets were sent to Fort Jackson, South Carolina for training with the 87th Infantry Division. He entered combat in November 1944 with the 2nd Platoon, L Company, 345th Infantry Regiment. Jones participated in the Battle for the Rhineland and in the Battle of the Bulge. He was critically wounded on 4 January 1945 by an artillery shell. At the field hospital, Jones was mistaken for dead. He was found in the morgue by a Catholic priest, and was sent to the hospital for treatment. Jones spent the next year and a half in U.S. Army hospitals in England and the U.S. He was discharged from the hospital and from the U.S. Army in May 1946. On 7 January 1947, he started work with the Civil Aviation Administration in Cincinnati, Ohio.