Chapter Two

Chapter Two – Death in the Tropics

“Every major horror in history was created in the name of an altruistic motive.”
Ayn Rand

I spent 20 years in the US Army and I cannot recall a congressman or senator ever being killed in the line of duty. Presidents, yes, even one during my life time. Federal Judges have been assassinated, one in San Antonio, where I once lived. I believe this was the first congressman to be assassinated in office and it was a sad and scary time for America.


The fact that it happened in an avowed Marxist country in South America, Guyana, was disturbing to me. It was already known the poor backwater nation relied on Cubans to run its infrastructure. Doctors and other medical personnel from Cuba were assigned to its hospitals. I wondered if the Cubans had anything to do with this killing. No one I worked with or knew ever even heard of Jim Jones and his People’s Temple.


Congressman Leo J. Ryan was born in Lincoln, Nebraska on May 5, 1925. Before being elected to the United States Congress in 1973, Ryan had been a California state assemblyman for ten years and was mayor of San Francisco in 1962.


Ryan’s friends and enemies alike agreed he was brash and flamboyant. He was not afraid of a fight and spent much of his political life drawing attention to and trying to correct social abuses. After the Watts riots in 1965, Ryan, then a state legislator, went there and became a substitute teacher to investigate conditions in the black community. Because he wanted to be totally anonymous, he assumed a false identity.[1]


In 1970, Ryan again went undercover with a different name and had himself sent to Folsom Prison to discover what life there really was like. In 1978, Ryan planned to go undercover as a Postal Service employee during the Christmas season to investigate complaints of bad working conditions.[2] Ryan did not live to see Christmas 1978.


By late 1977, Congressman Ryan had received dozens of unbelievable reports from constituents concerning the bizarre behavior of Reverend Jim Jones and the strange goings-on in the People’s Temple. Unfavorable magazine articles had been published about Jones and he was in a custody battle over a six-year-old boy he claimed was his son.[3] Most members of the church’s congregation had moved to Jonestown, Guyana. By June 1977, Jones had left the United States for the refuge he hoped would be provided for him in the isolated commune his followers had built in the jungle.[4]


By the fall of 1978, defectors from the People’s Temple and Jones’ detractors were deluging Ryan with requests for action. Charges were made that Americans were being held against their will in Jonestown. Reports of terrible conditions abounded, making it impossible for Congressman Ryan to ignore the desperate pleas of his constituents.[5]


In November 1978, Ryan organized a trip to Guyana.[6] His entourage included a small group of journalists and a few concerned relatives of People’s Temple members who were living in Jonestown.


These were the enemies most hated by Jones and his faithful followers: the dissident family members who had maligned him and his organization, the evil American press that had so willingly spread the lies of the defectors, and the biggest evil of all, the United States government in the form of a cocky and self-important congressman who seemed to enjoy making headlines.[7]


At first, Jones steadfastly refused permission for the Congressman’s group to enter Jonestown. People’s Temple members living there had written to Ryan, begging him not to visit because they felt sure he was intent upon destroying their way of life. Ryan refused to back down or be dissuaded, and Jones very reluctantly finally agreed to a short visit.[8]


Congressman Ryan’s party arrived in Jonestown late in the afternoon on November 17, 1978. During several meetings, they heard most residents praising conditions in the commune and expressing their desire to remain there.[9] However, on the second day of the visit, some newsmen found living quarters that were full of senior citizens lying in beds set up two or three inches from one another.[10] The media representatives were denied access to the other cottages they asked to visit, instead being led to accommodations that had been prepared for their inspection prior to their arrival.


The discovery of the poor living conditions led to other revelations. Notes were slipped to the congressman and members of his party by residents of Jonestown who desired to be taken to the United States. November 18 was not a good day for Jim Jones. His dreams were turning into nightmares. Sixteen residents of Jonestown had expressed a desire to leave Guyana. More overcrowded conditions were discovered by nosy newsmen.


As the visit neared the end, NBC news reporter, Don Harris, upset Jones as he asked incessant questions about guns, mind control, physical punishment and controlling recalcitrant residents with drugs.[11] It must have been obvious to the embattled cult leader that some of the other residents of Jonestown were talking about things he did not want the world to know.


Tensions continued to mount. As the 16 dissident residents prepared to leave, one of Jones’ most trusted lieutenants, Don Sly, grabbed Congressman Ryan from the back and held a knife to his neck.[12]


“Goddamn it motherfucker, you are not going to…” Sly started to shout as he was tackled by Mark Lane and Charles Garry, lawyers for the Temple, and others. Ryan was slightly wounded during the incident, as was Sly.[13]


Despite the altercation, Ryan told Jones his report would be a positive one. He said he had not seen any coercion being used to keep people in Jonestown.[14] As the Ryan party left for the airstrip, a black pall hung over Jonestown. One woman could be heard screaming because her husband and children were among the 16 leaving.[15]


According to recently declassified FBI affidavits and witness statements, Larry Layton, a member of the People’s Temple who was very loyal to Jones, managed to convince Congressman Ryan’s assistant, Jackie Speier, that he desired to leave Jonestown.[16] Some of the defectors expressed concern that Layton was a plant and up to no good.[17]


Upon arrival at Port Kaitumba, a defector, Dale Parks, insisted Layton be searched for weapons. “He will get on the airplane and blow it up,” Parks said.


Jim Cobb, one of the Concerned Relatives Group that had journeyed from California to Guyana with Ryan to try to convince their loved ones to come back home, feared Layton was armed and insisted he be searched.[18]


Layton was searched for weapons and none were found. This eased the stress of some of the defectors, but others kept close watch on him while he shook hands with a group of spectators who had gathered at the airstrip. One defector claimed Layton had been handed a pistol while shaking hands. However, this was never proven.[19]


When the Ryan party of family members, defectors and media arrived at the Port Kaitumba airstrip, everyone jumped from the truck and their luggage was removed. Congressman Ryan met with the news media and explained the commotion that had taken place back in Jonestown When Don Sly attempted to assault him.


A small plane arrived at the strip and Larry Layton made a concerted effort to be on that aircraft. Speiers advised him that because he was not one of the original defectors, he must wait for the next plane. Layton then pled his case to the congressman himself, stating he would be the best source for information about Jonestown because he had been a member of Jones’ inner circle. Ryan concurred and Layton was scheduled to leave on the first aircraft.[20]


Before that airplane left, a second, larger one arrived. At the same time, some of the defectors noticed a trailer being towed by a tractor. On it were about half dozen armed men. Layton entered the smaller plane. He pulled a pistol and fired it inside the aircraft.[21] Parks wrestled the gun from him and Layton fled.


The defectors quickly sounded the alarm that assassins had come to gun them down. The trailer pulled by the tractor circled the aircraft as the men on board it fired on people waiting to get on the airplanes.


An unidentified female defector reported hearing bullets pierce both sides of the aircraft just after she boarded. Patty Parks, Dale Parks’ mother, was shot in the head and died instantly. The shooting lasted up to 10 minutes.[22]


After the shooting stopped, all able-bodied men from the group deplaned to attempt to assist the wounded. They were lying all around the two aircraft. Congressman Ryan and several journalists were found under one of the planes. They appeared dead.[23]


FBI documents indicate there were three or four Guyanese Army personnel located at the airstrip, camped out in a tent by the Guyanese Defense Force aircraft they were guarding. They assisted the survivors to hide out, providing them with three stretchers. While first aid was rendered to Jackie Speier and NBC soundman Steve Sung, Larry Layton approached the group and was told to leave.[24]


Killed in the airstrip assault were Congressman Leo J. Ryan; NBC correspondent Don Harris; NBC photographer Bob Brown; San Francisco Examiner photographer Greg Robinson; and People’s Temple defector, Patricia Parks.


Larry Layton served over 20 years in prison for the murders. The other assailants are all dead. They included Wesley Karl Breidenbach, Eddie Joe Crenshaw, Stanley Brian Gieg, Ronal DeVal James, Ernest Jones, Robert Edward Kice, Thomas David Kice, Ardell Touchette, Anthony Simon, Ronald Talley and Joseph Wilson. A last assailant was never located, making the total number of attackers, including Layton, 13.


Crenshaw drove the tractor that carried the attackers. Eye witnesses, who included defectors, identified Tom Kice, Albert Touchette and Joseph Wilson. They were armed with a .45 caliber pistol, rifle and shotgun respectively.[25]


Within an hour or so after the Ryan party left Jonestown for Port Kaitumba, an assailant,
possibly Layton, arrived back in Jonestown to report his attempt to stop the defectors by killing all members of the Ryan party along with the defectors was unsuccessful.


He approached Jones, who was still sitting on his wooden throne in the pavilion, and carried on a short, whispered conversation with him.[26] One can only speculate on what Layton said to his leader, but by Jones’ reaction, obviously, the news was not good.


Layton returned to Port Kaitumba. There, Parks removed a handgun from him and attempted to shoot the Jones lieutenant whom he was convinced had led the attack. But the gun was empty. Parks detained Layton and turned him over to the Guyanese militia men saying, “This is one of the son-of-a-bitches that did the shooting. Please hold him. Put him in jail. I took his gun.”[27]


According to an essay by Frank Bell, one of Layton’s lead attorneys in his first trial in 1981, “…Larry was not guilty of the charges against him. He did not conspire to kill or attempt to kill Congressman Ryan or Richard Dwyer, the Chief of Mission, as the charges claim. His conviction was a miscarriage of justice. I was certain of this at the time and I remain certain of it now.”[28]


This is not to say Larry was blameless. He did some things that were wrong and that cannot be totally excused, even by his mental and emotional fatigue, or the brainwashing, or his mental status at the time. He admittedly posed as a defector and was determined to send a message to others in the Temple and elsewhere, and to prove his loyalty to Jim Jones and People’s Temple, by shooting the pilot of a small plane taking other defectors out of Guyana at the end of Ryan’s visit.


“His was to be a suicide mission in which the plane would take all of its occupants to their deaths. Yet Larry knew nothing of the plot, which was hatched by Jones and others at the same time, to kill Ryan and others at the airport where they were gathered to leave. When the small plane failed to take off at the airfield, Larry shot people in the plane before he was disarmed.[29]


Bell was involved in Layton’s initial parole hearings in 1991 and also was involved in a campaign asking President Clinton in his final days at the White House to grant him clemency. The noted California attorney also joined in Layton’s final parole petition in 2001. However, everyone involved in that campaign understands it was the testimony of Vern Gosney, one of Layton’s victims and now a police officer from Hawaii. He flew from the islands just days after September 11 to appear on Layton’s behalf. Larry Layton finally won his freedom, being released in April 2002, after 18 years in prison.

Immediately after being given the news of the assault at Port Kaitumba by Larry Layton,
Jones called for a White Night. He ordered the commune’s physician, Larry Schact,[30] and his nurses to prepared the deadly brew that soon would be used to kill most of the residents of Jonestown. Then the maniacal cult leader turned on his tape recorder and methodically began calling upon his congregation to assemble together for the final time.[31]


The chilling audiotape Jones made that November 18, 1978 as the final ritual of this religious group was enacted is shocking in its content; but it does give us some insight into why 913 Americans would, for the most part, follow the dictates of a madman and willingly take their own lives.


At the beginning of the tape, Jones is heard explaining why it is necessary to partake of the potion that will kill them all. He exhorts hid followers to participate willingly in a dignified manner.


He does receive some resistance, primarily from women. However, the scene becomes a bizarre exercise in democracy. Some members of the group balk at Jones’ solution, others agree with him, and all the while, the cult leader seemingly encourages the debate.


In the end, Jones wins out and the mothers of babies and toddlers are directed to begin forcing the cyanide-laced concoction down their throats using syringes without needles. Any mother who held out hope this was another rehearsal quickly and horribly realized it was not as they watched their babies begin to convulse and froth at the mouth violently.


Even the hopeless screams of the mothers could not stop the carnage. Hearing them loudly grieving, Jones told the mothers to follow their babies in death. It was the only merciful thing to do. As they and the older children and teens took the poison, some willingly, others forced, the young mothers joined them. After their cries were silenced by death, the senior citizens were assisted by the remaining able-bodied residents, to participate in this macabre communion.

Finally, with the children, mothers and seniors lying dead at their feet, the remaining adults were given small paper cups of a foaming purple liquid they would use to join friends, neighbors and relatives who preceded them in death.


The contrast of these 913 American lives in Guyana to the activities my family was participating in that November 18, 1978 is bizarre. While Congressman Ryan and his party of concerned family members, journalists and defectors were riding in a truck toward mayhem and death at a small airstrip at Port Kaitumba, Guyana, some five miles north of Jonestown, My family and I were driving the five miles or so from Kobe Beach to the Corozal Army Housing Area where we lived.


As the maniacal Reverend Jim Jones was prodding his flock to commit the final revolutionary act of mass suicide, my wife was feeding our three daughters their supper and I was on my way to pick up the babysitter who would safeguard them while my wife and I went to the casino at the Granada Hotel for our bimonthly gambling spree.


As mothers in Jonestown forced a deadly poison down the throats of their children and carefully laid them on the ground to die, the mother of my children was lovingly bathing them, putting on their pajamas and tucking them into their beds. I had no idea that by the next morning, I would be forever connected to this group of now-deceased Americans 1450 miles away in Guyana and that our activities the night before had contrasted so sharply.


We went to the casino that Saturday night just as we had twice monthly since my family joined me in Panama. We conducted our regular recreational ritual at the same time the residents of Jonestown were practicing a ritual they had been rehearsing for well over a year. They were conducting their ritual for the final time.


Life in Jonestown was better than death, but not by much. It was especially bad for those forced to work in the fields for long hours day after day under the hot tropical sun. They worked virtually seven days a week.


The children of the commune didn’t have it much better. While school attendance was less strenuous than the labor their parents performed, the disciplinary measures meted out to youth deemed in need of punishment was brutal and abusive.


Children like 11-year-old Nawab Lawrence were taken to a dry well. A rope was placed under their arms and tied. They were then thrown into the dark hole, while adults playing “monster” grabbed at their arms and legs.[32]


Other punishments imposed on children as young as 12-years-old included being put in a three feet by six feet plywood box and being kept there for weeks at a time with nothing but a can for a toilet. Children as young as six had to perform hard labor and were kept in Cottage #11, so crowded it was dubbed the “slave ship.” Beatings by the security force were commonplace.[33]


Is it any wonder many of the able-bodied people said they welcomed death and forced it upon their children. To some, including Deborah Layton Blakely, white nights brought the prospect of peace.


Odell Rhodes, one of the few survivors of the Jonestown Massacre, graphically described to reporters the horror he witnessed in Jonestown as Reverend Jim Jones summoned his faithful congregation to their final white night.[34]


“They started with the babies,” Rhodes told journalist Charles Krause. He told him that most of the adults who drank the cyanide-laced Flav-Or-Ade did so willingly.


Larry Schact, Jonetown’s doctor, and his nurses mixed the deadly potion. Rhodes said the mothers poisoned their own children before taking the drink themselves. Several who tried to escape the mass suicide ritual were herded back into the center of the pavilion where the poisonous brew was forced upon them. This was before the mass killings and suicides began.


Rhodes then reported, “It just got out of order. Babies were screaming and there was mass confusion.” He confirmed it took about five minutes for the victims to die from the cyanide.


Young and old, black and white, all grouped themselves near family members, often with their arms around one another, waiting for the cyanide to take affect, according to Rhodes. Despite the cocktail of other medications and drugs that were mixed with the cyanide, Rhodes reported those who partook of the poison would go into convulsions. Their eyes would roll up, they would gasp for breath and then they would be dead.[35]


Apparently Doctor Schact was not as knowledgeable of the effects of the psychotropic drugs he added to the evil brew as he was the poison he used to kill the residents of Jonestown. If the tranquilizers and sedatives were meant to stave off the horrible convulsions that mark a cyanide death, they didn’t do their job. While it would have taken 15 minutes, at a minimum for them to work, the cyanide killed in less than five.


Rhodes watched this final white night in horror. He was desperate to escape but knew if he panicked and fled, the poison would be forced down his throat as it had been to others. But when Schact said he needed a stethoscope, Rhodes saw his opportunity to get away from the center of the mass suicide/murder activity and he volunteered to accompany a nurse to the infirmary, about 300 feet away.[36]


The fortunate Rhodes told Krause the armed guards let him through with the nurse. He hid under a building when she went into the infirmary to collect the stethoscope.


By 7 PM, all sound had ceased in Jonestown. No one could be heard whimpering, no gasping for breath. Even the barking dogs had been silenced by their now-dead masters. The entire murder/suicide of over 900 people had taken place in less than two-and-one-half hours.


As the sun began to set, the eerie silence became disarming. The voice of Jim Jones, usually heard live for at least six hours a day over the loud speaker system and on tape during other times, was never to be heard in Jonestown again. Blessed silence had replaced the maddening sounds of crying children and wailing mothers. The dogs had all been shot, hence their silence.


Still Rhodes waited for several minutes before leaving his sanctuary. Were there other unseen enforcers wandering silently through the enclave seeking stragglers like himself who wanted to live? He listened intently for any sound of human origin. After 20 minutes or so of only normal jungle sounds, Rhodes slowly crept out from under the cottage that hid him.[37]


Suddenly a single gunshot penetrated the unnatural silence. Rhodes instinctively dove back under his cottage and waited, hoping he had not been discovered.


Within a short time, surely no more than two minutes, four more shots rang out, “BANG, BANG, BANG, BANG.” They seemed to be fired more out of frustration rather than at a target or enemy. Rhodes continued to wait it out.


A few minutes later, another shot rang out. This one was not as loud; in fact, it seemed to be muffled. It was the last of about six shots to be fired in about as many minutes.[38]


Rhodes slowly left his sanctuary for the final time, venturing out into the compounds. Death was everywhere he looked. Bodies, mostly lying in groups, could be seen in every direction.


He walked to Jim Jones’ cottage and found the charismatic leader lying face up, his black eyes staring intently at the dark tropical sky. A small hole from a gunshot wound could be seen at his temple. There was no firearm near his body.


Rhodes went into Jones’ cottage where he found registered nurse, Ann Moore, apparently dead from a gunshot wound to the mouth; the muffled shot. A pistol lay at her side.


Investigators and journalists who were told of this account by Odell Rhodes, surmise Jones, realizing the agonizing death cyanide causes, ordered Moore to shoot him. A devoted follower who would do Jones’ bidding without question, Moore complied.


Once she took the life of the man she worshipped, Moore held the pistol in the air and fired four consecutive shots in anger or frustration. We also know Ann Moore drank the cyanide-laced potion because it showed up in the autopsy performed on her remains in Delaware. She apparently had second thoughts of her own about dying from cyanide and decided a bullet was preferable.


Initially reported to have committed suicide by the U.S. government, the lack of powder burns on the gunshot wound to Jones’ temple make it extremely unlikely. I examined Jones on the 20th of November. There were no powder burns.


Rhodes walked wearily from Jonestown to Port Kaitumba where he alerted Guyanese authorities to the tragedy that befell his community and friends a few hours before. The next morning, a contingent of Guyana Defense Force troops was dispatched to Jonestown to verify Rhodes’ bizarre story.


News of the events that occurred in Jonestown on the afternoon and evening of November 18, 11978 took a very short time to filter out to the rest of the world. When it did, the United States government reacted with uncharacteristic speed. On November 19, military troops from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Fort Lee, Virginia, Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, Charleston Air Force Base, South Carolina, and the Panama Canal Zone, were put on alert for movement to Guyana.


We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. Speculation was unrestrained. Rumors of hostile cult members hiding in the jungle waiting to ambush us ran rampant. Why were these Americans living in Guyana and why did they choose to take their own lives? Was this mysterious crisis being perpetrated by the Russians or Cubans who were known to have close relations with Guyana?

The rumor mill ground out every possible scenario. All too soon we were to witness the aftermath of what grotesque carnage had been wrought against 913 souls by the twisted but persuasive mind of one Reverend James Warren Jones.


[1] John Peer Nugent, White Night, 90-95
[2] Ibid.
[3] Marshall Kilduff and Phil Tracy, New West Magazine, Inside the People’s Temple, July 1977.
[4] U.S. House of Representatives, The Assassination of Representative Leo J. Ryan and the Jonestown, Guyana Tragedy Report of a Staff Investigative Group to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, May 15, 1979.
[5] Ibid; Jonestown Audiotape Primary Project Transcripts, Tape Number Q736, Press Conference via ham radio from Jonestown to reporters in San Francisco, Spring 1978.
[6] FOIA Federal Bureau of Investigation RYMUR (Jonestown) 135.
[7] Jonestown Audiotape Primary Project Transcripts, Tape Number Q323, Ryan visit discussed, November 11, 1978; FOIA Federal Bureau of Investigation RYMUR (Jonestown) 135.
[8] Ibid, 260; Jonestown Audiotape Number Q050, Ryan visit discussed, November 14 or 15, 1978.
[9] Ibid, Jonestown Audiotape Number Q048, Ryan Speaks to Jonestown, November 17, 1978; FOIA Federal Bureau of Investigation RYMUR (Jonestown) 20-21.
[10]John Peer Nugent, White Nights, 190-191.
[11] Ibid, 192.
[12] Ibid; FOIA Federal Bureau of Investigation RYMUR (Jonestown) 261, 369-370
[13] Ibid; FOIA Federal Bureau of Investigation RYMUR (Jonestown), 66.
[14] John Peer Nugent, Ibid, 194
[15] Ethan Feinsod, Awake in a Nightmare, 181
[16] FOIA Federal Bureau of Investigation RYMUR (Jonestown), 67
[17] Ibid, 74.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid, 60-61, 214-215.
[20] FOIA Federal Bureau of Investigation RYMUR (Jonestown), 75
[21] Ibid, 95
[22] Ibid, 85
[23] Ibid, 73-75, 214-216.
[24] Ibid, 228-229, 247.
[25] FOIA Federal Bureau of Investigation RYMUR (Jonestown) B-1-F.
[26] Ethan Feinsod, 177; FOIA Federal Bureau of Investigation RYMUR (Jonestown) 191.
[27]Ibid, RYMUR (Jonestown) 383.
[28] Frank Bell, Larry Layton and the People’s Temple: Twenty-five Years Later, Alternative Considerations of the People’s Temple website. Retrieved June 25, 2004 from http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/About /Jonestown/Personal Reflections/bell.htm.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Ibid, FOIA Federal Bureau of Investigation RYMUR (Jonestown) 115.
[31] Jonestown Audiotape Number Q042, so-called Death Tape (see App III).
[32] Kenneth Wooden, The Children of Jonestown, (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1991) 7.
[33] Ibid
[34] Charles Krause, with Lawrence M. Stern, Richard Harwood and the staff of the Washington Post, Guyana Massacre: The Eyewitness Account, (New York, Berkely Publishing, 1978)
[35] Ibid.
[36] Ibid; Ethan Feinsod, Awake in a Nightmare, 202.
[37] Ibid, 204-205.
[38] Conversation with Jim Hougan regarding his interview with Odell Rhodes, August 1, 1978, New York City, NY.

Chapter One

Chapter One – Life in the Tropics

“Whatever you do you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Daddy, Daddy, we missed you,” screamed my oldest daughter Suzy, running and jumping on me as soon as I closed my car door.

Jennie, three, although less animated than Suzy, hugged her father, too. Debbie just cried.

I had just spent 10 days in the jungle. We played war games, getting attacked by the Opposing Forces (OPFOR), “guerillas” from the fictional Latin American country of Rio Bravo. I would never have admitted this to my wife, but I enjoyed the field: sleeping on a cot, trading shots with bad guys played by Green Beret soldiers, the best the Army had to offer, even, picking up stakes – day or night -and moving our unit three or four times during the training.

Despite all the training and hard work, life in Panama was idyllic for the American soldiers of the 193rd Infantry Brigade and their families in the late 1970s. A contentious and unpopular war in Southeast Asia ended a few years earlier, and the isthmus was a great place to recover from any psychic or physical trauma it caused. Unlike Vietnam, Panama had peaceful pristine beaches where we didn’t need to be armed to enjoy an hour of fun in the sun. Panama was the home of tranquil sports like fishing, a pastime that relieved the tension and stress of war. The notion of an assignment with family members in country accompanying the soldier was far better than the depressive isolation caused by an solo assignment in a combat zone.

The Canal Zone, 55 miles long, intersected the Isthmus of Panama at its narrowest points. Called the “Big Ditch” from the time its construction began in 1904 until it was completed 10 years later, this wonder of the world was bounded by lush green jungle most of the year, but from mid-November to February, the short dry season, the jungle turned brown and often caught fire.

Situated between Costa Rica, Central America’s oldest democracy, to its northwest and Columbia to its southeast, Panama was bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the northeast and the Pacific Ocean to its southwest. The land changes from tall and majestic volcanic mountains as you travel from Costa Rica to Panama’s capital, Panama City on the Pacific side of the canal, to the thick, nearly impenetrable jungle of the Darien if you headed toward Columbia.

It was not unusual during the periods of fire in the jungle near our house, to wake up, step outside and discover all sorts of incompatible fauna lying on the lawn in exhaustion after fleeing the flames in the jungle. Various snakes, coatimundi, three-toed sloths, white-faced capuchins, iguanas and other indigenous beasts rested in the grass, still green and moist from its nightly watering.

Among old Canal Zone hands, Panama was known as the best kept secret in the Army. Military duty was the same the world over, but the environment in which a soldier works and plays makes all the difference. The temperature was always balmy. In November 1978, the long rainy season was waning and Canal Zone residents were eagerly waiting Thanksgiving and Christmas. The two holidays were also anticipated because they signaled the commencement of the short, but enjoyable dry season.

Field duty in Panama was always an adventure. The jungle was full of dangers to man and pet, from the fer de lance, coral and bushmaster snakes that kill several Panamanians a year to urticating caterpillars, scorpions and poisonous toads that can be detrimental to the curious dog. It teemed with other animals like toucans, howler monkeys, green iguana, and spider monkeys that could only be viewed in zoos at home. The Poinsettia plant, so familiar at Christmas in North America, grew tall as a tree in Panama. Mango trees and banana plants were as plentiful as apple trees in Oregon and the exotic black palm tree protected its sweet fruit with two inch long spines in its trunk.

Many soldiers took time during field exercises to participate in hobbies, some of which were pastimes that could be performed in very few duty stations around the world. Photography was popular and shooting the creatures that lived in the jungle, like the large variety of parrots, the rarely seen tapir and the elusive jaguar, with a long lens on a 35 mm camera may have been a common hobby but the subjects were most uncommon to us.

I collected the fragile and rare orchids that grew high in the trees of the rain forest. No, I didn’t climb these trees, I would look for one that had fallen and carefully harvest the flowers.
When I left Panama in 1980, my patio looked like an orchid shop. My favorite was the ada orchid, with its spidery-like yellow orange flowers and exotic fragrance. I also had the rare brassia and some clowesia. All in all, I left more than two dozen specimens on my patio for the next occupants to enjoy.

My wife collected the butterflies that either were indigenous to Panama or migrated through every year. Big blue morphos, the diminutive eurema daira, the orange/black Erato Heliconian, and the blue/black two barred flasher were just four of the hundreds of species Mai captured. She would carefully dry and preserve them, then mount them in a glass frame.

When the weekend arrived, there were a variety of recreational activities for soldiers and their families to participate in. The Army ran boat rental facilities on Gatun Lake, a body of water formed by the Madden Dam to create the waterway that ships travel through to get from the canal locks on the Atlantic side to the locks on the Pacific end of the canal. It was a rare weekend when there were boats left to rent by those who enjoyed fishing for the plentiful, pretty and delicious peacock bass.

Others would seek out smaller species of fish, the beautiful tropicals that inhabited the streams and lagoons of Panama. I kept three aquariums, all with fish obtained in the wild: convict and pastel cichlids, banded tetra, spotted hatchet fish, and a live bearer known as the merry widow were among my collection.

The Pacific Ocean provided incredibly intricate and fragile shells. Several members of the 601st Medical Company and their families were hooked on collecting live specimens. During extremely low tides, called minus tides, that usually occurred at night, shellers would walk out to places normally covered by many feet of water and gather up specimens seldom seen closer to shore. Once caught, the meat was carefully picked out and the shell was cleaned and coated with oil. Some of these shells were very valuable.

The beaches were plentiful and majestic. Americans could be found in droves on both the Atlantic and Pacific sides of the isthmus, enjoying the surfing that some were famous for, seeking lobster in the rocky reefs near some of the beaches, or just tanning in the sun or swimming in the sea.

Not only was Panama known for its abundant free time activities, the living quarters, for the most part, were superior to Army housing in other parts of the world. They were spacious. Most were air conditioned, and the yards in the housing areas were like gardens with Majesty Palms lining the streets.

Often between houses, one would find huge, colorful poinsettias and bougainvilleas or smaller palm trees like the spacious areca. Elephant ears were common plants along the houses. Intermingled with flowering bromeliads in the beds and another species of bromeliad, the staghorn fern, in the trees.

Our neighborhood, Corozal, was next to Albrook Air Force Base and just south of Fort Clayton. Centrally located on the west bank of the Canal Zone, Corozal was very convenient to schools, shopping and the shuttle bus that would take family members without transportation anywhere they needed to go. The commissary where we purchased most of our groceries was just down the hill, making it easy for my wife to shop, since she didn’t have a driver’s license. The edge of the jungle came up to my yard, allowing my three daughters to watch the animals that would come out of the wild in the evening to feed on the mango tree in our yard.

Kinkajous, small primates that resemble teddy bears, dined in our tree every night. Coatimundi, cousins to the American raccoon, would brazenly approach children eating snacks and brazenly take the food from them if they refused to share their treats.

The youngsters of the neighborhood shared the mango tree’s bounty with these animals. Exotic tropical fruits also were eaten with delight when soldier-parents brought them home from the jungle or when they were purchased in the local market. Other foods were plentiful and reasonably priced, especially for the more daring who shopped in Panama’s Central Market. Although they were not inspected as well as meats in America and were not maintained in wrapped packages in refrigerated displays, steaks could be had for about 38 cents a pound. Fish was even less expensive and more abundant.

My three girls, thrived during the years they lived in the Canal Zone. After having wintered at Fort Dix, New Jersey, before joining me, they appreciated the freedom of being able to go outside and play without having to bundle up in several layers of clothing. The children, who often experienced colds, sore throats and earaches when we lived in the United States, In Panama they were virtually illness-free during our four year tour. The country literally seemed like an elixir for them.

Life in Panama that November was good. On the 18th, it was particularly good. My daughters were ages 7, 3 and 2. Their names, respectively, were Suzanne, Jennifer and Deborah. I didn’t know it at the time, but that day was going to be the most significant one in my life.

It took me five years and several sessions with an Army psychologist to get the events of that day out of my mind. They would return to literally haunt my dreams around Thanksgiving and stay with me for two weeks or so.

In the meantime, I became obsessed with the evil side of religion. The world is full of religious cults, some of them healthy, the vast majority that are benign and some that are very dangerous. The identification and study of this last group of cults became a daily activity for me. I joined the appropriate organizations and subscribed to the pertinent magazines. I was an active member of the Cult Awareness Network until it was infiltrated and taken over by adherents to an organization that, while admittedly is a cult, I believe fits into the benign category.

Who would believe a day in the life of a complete stranger, whom I never met or even heard of, would have such a profound affect on me? A man mind you, who was almost 1500 miles from me and who was spending his final day on earth; a man who was having probably the worst day of his life, while mine was looking bright and sunny. It was Saturday and my family and I were going to the beach.

While I was packing my family into the car for the short ride to Kobe Beach, a man in black three countries away was trying to keep what he considered his family from falling apart. We sang children’s songs as we made our way to the beach in the black 1965 Peugot 504 I purchased for $500 four months earlier at the lot in the Canal Zone the government allowed us to buy, sell and trade. Thanksgiving was a week away, the turkey was in the freezer and all the fixings were in the pantry and refrigerator.

The man in black had been trying for two days to show his family in its best light. Persecuted and misunderstood, he was quickly reaching the end of his rope as he listened to the visitor he reluctantly allowed to enter his home, knowing full well it was his downfall the ominous visitor sought.

Arriving at the clean white sandy beach at Fort Kobe, the girls rushed to play with their friends while their mother and I brought the beverages and foods to the picnic table already staked out by one of her friends. High fives and greetings all around were the first order of the day, as about a dozen other soldiers who were married to Vietnamese war brides greeted me. The only time we all got together was these almost bimonthly outings. Other than that, we were each in different units on different posts, some as far as Fort Sherman, on the Atlantic Side.

At about the time we were gathering together, the man in black was calling his people to a meeting. Minutes before, less than 20 of his brothers and sisters and some of their children had been taken out of the family compound by the visitor from the United States government. There was a crisis in the family, one the man in black was certain would doom it forever.

Meanwhile, at the beach, the delicious aroma of various ethnic dishes intermingled with the smell of barbecue that Command Sergeant Major Sargent was sweating over. The children were playing volleyball and getting wet at the ocean’s edge, under the watchful eyes of several lifeguards. The adults were getting set to play cards, Spades for the men and Bai Tu Sac for the women.

Where the man in black was, the odor was one of fear and no one was playing. Crowded into the communal pavilion, the family members weren’t hungry, they were scared. There was a drink being prepared for every member of the family, one that some would partake of voluntarily, others with final relief, but most with reluctance and trepidation, spurred on by men with guns. You see, there was no playing with the man in black. This was a bizarre last communion that would soon mark the end of this very large family.

Of course, you realize the man in black and the awful creator of my horrendous annual November nightmares was Jim Jones and his family was called the People’s Temple. On that November 18 in 1978, while my family enjoyed the bounty and beauty of the tropics, Jones’ family finally attained peace, a peace that was long in coming, but a peace nonetheless.

My children and their friends anxiously anticipated the Thanksgiving holiday which was only a few days away. The poinsettia tree that towered over the side wall of our house was bursting with beautiful red blooms and the pleasant dry season was just beginning. Everyone’s spirit was merry.

This was my family’s third November in Panama and this pre-Thanksgiving outing to Kobe Beach had become a minor tradition to the families with American dads and Vietnamese moms. While our children played volleyball or swam, their parents sat at picnic tables playing cards.

The wives played a Vietnamese game that had red, blue, yellow and green cards with Chinese symbols on them. Bai Tu Sac, or Chinese Checkers, was a Vietnamese card game played with 112 little cards with orange backs. Often played whenever Vietnamese Army wives got together, the game was a social activity for most but an obsession for many, who played marathon games on a weekly basis. The husbands played the perennial favorite of all soldiers in the field, Spades.

Some of the more politically-minded of the dads were engaged in animated discussions about the “Panama Canal Giveaway” that was in the news. The expatriates who had come to “The Zone” to make a new life were furious at President Carter for threatening their way of life by proposing to turn the Canal Zone over to the Panamanians.

The issue didn’t matter much to me and my military friends. As soldiers and the family members who follow them on assignments around the world, this was just one more duty station in a career of new places to get used to.

While life in Panama was as good as it gets, and even though the duty was more desirable than in most other places, it wasn’t all fun and games. A soldier’s mission in peace time is to prepare for war, and that takes a lot of hard work.

As the medical unit that supported virtually every American infantry unit and school in the Canal Zone, the 601st Medical Company spent much of its time in the field and away from their families. If the unit’s field hospital was not actually set up providing emergency medical treatment to the sick and injured, its field ambulances were providing medical evacuation support.

By 1978, we were part of an all-volunteer force and the Army was becoming more soldier-oriented. It was an army that cared about the health, welfare and comfort of the troops and their families. This concern for those of us residing in the Canal Zone and serving our country was in sharp contrast to the lives of some of the 1000 or so other American citizens who had journeyed to an alleged tropical paradise beginning in December 1973.[1] Jonestown was approximately 1450 miles[2] from Panama, but it may as well have been a million light years away.

James Warren Jones, who became known as the Reverend Jim Jones, was born in Lynn, Indiana on May 13, 1931.[3] In the 1950s and 60s in Indianapolis, Jones gained a reputation as a charismatic preacher and clergyman.[4] By 1963, he had his own religious congregation, The People’s Temple Full Gospel Church. This incredibly dynamic orator, led his interracial congregation with amazing feats of faith healing[5], awesome visions and miraculous advice he said came from extraterrestrials.

Jones moved his congregation from Indianapolis to rural Ukiah, California, in the early 1960s after reading that this region of the United States would be relatively safe from nuclear attack.[6] He was convinced that Indianapolis would be a major target of the Soviets when the inevitable nuclear war between the USA and USSR occurred. He convinced most of his simple parishioners to share his fear.

Indianapolis was home to Fort Benjamin Harrison at the time. The Army post trained journalists, photographers and finance specialists. Although now closed, the US Army’s Finance Center is still located there.

The move to Ukiah, where Jones formed the People’s Temple, soon was followed by another move, this time to San Francisco.[7] He became a major social and political force, establishing a free clinic and drug rehabilitation program. Jones was appointed chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority in 1976.[8]

Rev. Jones was the darling of liberal politicians. He attended functions for and supported Democratic Party candidates from the local level all the way to presidential candidate Jimmy Carter. He had his photo taken with Rosalyn Carter on at least one occasion.[9]

But soon Jones was being attacked by former members of his church.[10] The charges could not be ignored and his political cronies and connections could not support the besieged cult leader. He was accused of child abuse, misappropriation of the property of some church members and even the stealing of the children of some members.[11]

Deborah Layton Blakely, a former Jones confidant, in an affidavit to the US Justice Department taken on June 15, 1978, reported the reaction he had to these accusations. Blakely belonged to the People’s Temple from August 1971 until May 13, 1978. She was financial secretary of the church until she went to Guyana in December 1977.[12]

“During the years I was a member of the People’s Temple, I watched the organization depart with increasing frequency from its professional dedication for social change and participatory democracy. The Rev. Jim Jones gradually assumed a tyrannical hold over the lives of temple members,” wrote Blakely.[13]

Jones regarded any disagreement with his dictates to be “treason.” According to Blakely, he labeled any person who left the church a “traitor” and “fair game.” He is said to have maintained that punishment for defection from the organization was death. Severe corporal punishment was frequently meted out to temple members, giving the death threats a frightening air of reality.[14]

Jim Jones began seeing himself as the victim of a conspiracy. His identity of the conspiracy would change frequently, depending upon whatever vision of the world he had on a particular day. He told members of his congregation that because he was their leader and he was a victim of a conspiracy, they too were targets.

He told black temple members that if they did not follow him to Guyana, they would be put in concentration camps and killed. According to Blakely, “White temple members were instilled with the belief that their names appeared on a secret list of enemies of the state that was kept by the CIA. They believed they would be tracked down, tortured, imprisoned and subsequently killed if they did not flee to Guyana.”[15]

By 1978, more than 1000 Americans who believed strongly in Jim Jones had left their homeland and journeyed to the supposed sanctuary of Jonestown. People who hear of this emigration for the first time wonder how apparently normal and intelligent adults could be taken in by such delusional thinking.

Jones was a master of deception and control. At temple meetings, he would talk nonstop for hours, his charismatic and forceful voice carried over a loud speaker system in the auditorium of the church building. His lieutenants would walk through the room waking up any members of the congregation who dared fall asleep during these marathon orations.[16]

The egomaniacal Jones claimed to be the reincarnation of Moses, Lenin and even Jesus. He claimed he had divine powers and could heal the sick, that he had extrasensory perception and could tell what people were thinking. Jones even made the outrageous claim that he had powerful connections all over the world with the likes of the Mafia, the Soviet government and Idi Amin.[17]

The Blakely affidavit states, “When I first joined the temple, Reverend Jones seemed to make clear distinctions between fantasy and reality. I believed that most of the time when he said irrational things, he was aware that they were irrational, but they served as a tool of his leadership. His theory was that the end justifies the means. At other times he appeared to be deluded by a paranoid vision of the world. He would not sleep for days at a time and talk compulsively about conspiracies against him. However, as time went on, he appeared to be genuinely irrational.”[18]

Life for the transplanted Americans living in Jonestown, 1450 miles from where I lived and worked in Panama, was very different from that which my family and I enjoyed. The vast majority of Jonestown residents worked in the fields from 7 AM to 6 PM, six days a week and on Sunday from 7 AM to 2 PM.

Blakely reported, “We were allowed one hour for lunch. Most of this hour was spent walking back to lunch and standing in line for our food. Taking any other breaks during the workday was severely frowned upon.”[19]

While food in Panama was plentiful and inexpensive, in Jonestown, meals were extremely basic and not very nutritious for most residents. According to Blakely’s affidavit, “The food was woefully inadequate. There was rice for breakfast, rice water soup for lunch and rice and beans for dinner. On Sunday, we each received an egg and a cookie. Two or three times a week we had vegetables. Some very weak and elderly members would receive one egg per day.”[20]

Jim Jones enjoyed a much better diet than the members of his flock. Claiming he had problems with his blood sugar, he dined separately and ate meat regularly. Jones had his own refrigerator, well stocked with food.

The two women who lived with Jones, Maria Katsaris and Carolyn Layton and the two small boys who shared his quarters with him, Kimo Prokes and John Stoen, dined with other members of the cult. Blakely does report that these four individuals were in better health than the other residents because they were allowed to eat from Jones’ refrigerator.

“In February 1978, conditions had become so bad that half of Jonestown was ill with severe diarrhea and high fevers. I was seriously ill for two weeks. Like most of the other sick people, I was not given any nourishing food to help recover. I was given water and tea to drink until I was well enough to return to the basic rice and bean diet,”[21] reported Blakely.

Blakely also stated in her affidavit, that as financial secretary, she knew the temple received over $65,000 in Social Security checks each month. “It made me angry that only a fraction of the income of the senior citizens in the care of the temple was being used for their benefit,”[22] she wrote.

Jonestown had a very sophisticated state-of-the-art loudspeaker system that Jones used for up to six hours a day to broadcast his thoughts, threats and orders to every corner of the commune.[23] When he was particularly agitated, he would rant and rave for longer periods without stopping. He could be heard in some of the oppressively hot fields where the residents of Jonestown toiled during the day. At night, his loud voice would prevent his tired congregation from sleeping. Often after work, there were also meetings at the pavilion that lasted up to six hours. Jones seemed to be infatuated with his own voice and prophetic message.

Jones’ paranoia caused his daily harangues and nightly meetings to be frightening affairs indeed. He was obsessed that his place in history had been irreparably ruined by the media. He felt their ridicule had caused him to lose an honored position in world affairs. He often complained that he was lost.[24]

Blakely reported, “There was constant talk of death. In the early days of the People’s Temple, general rhetoric about dying for principles was sometimes heard. In Jonestown, the concept of mass suicide for socialism arose. Because our lives were so wretched anyway and because we were so afraid to contradict Reverend Jones, the concept was not challenged.”[25]

Mike Prokes, a dissatisfied follower of Jones and one of his enforcers, kept a diary. He was a survivor of the mass suicide/murder. Prokes notes were part of a collection of records that were sealed after the massacre at Jonestown. The contents of the records were opened in September 1988.

“I don’t know how much longer I can take it,” wrote Prokes. “I mean the witchcraft. I feel like I am being programmed. I enjoy the violence when I do it, but sometimes, like right now, I feel sorry that I did it.”

“I think I am going to end it all with my .38; I only wish I could see my brains blow out.”[26]

Ironically, Mike Prokes died a few months after the Jonestown Massacre. During a news conference, he pulled out his .38 and shot himself in the head.[27]

Jones would declare a “White Night” or state of emergency as often as once a week. This was ushered in by the blaring of the loudspeaker system that would awaken the entire population of Jonestown. Jones’ trusted lieutenants would move from cottage to cottage and make sure everyone was responding. All the residents would gather in the pavilion for a mass meeting where they would be informed by Jones of some new crisis.[28]

In her affidavit of June 15,1978, almost five months prior to the mass suicide/murders, Blakely wrote, “During one ‘white night,’ we were informed that our situation had become hopeless and that the only course of action open to us was a mass suicide for the glory of socialism. We were told that we would be tortured by mercenaries if we were taken alive. Everyone, including the children, was (sic) told to line up. As we passed through the line, we were given a small glass of red liquid to drink. We were told that the liquid contained poison and that we would die within 45 minutes.

“We all did as we were told. When the time came when we should have dropped dead, Reverend Jones explained that the poison was not real and that we had just been through a loyalty test. He warned us that the time was not far off when it would become necessary for us to die by our own hands. Life in Jonestown was so miserable and the physical pain of exhaustion was so great that this event was not traumatic for me. I had become indifferent as to whether I lived or died.

“We would be told that the jungle was swarming with mercenaries and that death could be expected any minute,” reported Blakely.

These “White Nights” were bizarre rehearsals for the real moment when Jones would have his doctor and nurses dispense a potion of cyanide combined with strong anticonvulsants, sedatives, hypnotics, tranquilizers, and muscle relaxants mixed, not with grape Kool-Ade from the United States as popularly reported, but with Flav-Or-Ade, a powdered drink mix manufactured in the United Kingdom.

Two very different groups of Americans were living in the tropics that November. Less than 1500 miles from each other, one group lived in a place called the best kept secret in the US Army. The second group of nearly 1000 was living in a better kept secret, Jonestown, Guyana. One group was enjoying life in a tropical paradise, the other group living lives that could only be described as hell on earth.

Events that occurred on the 18th of November 1978, would inexorably connect members of these two groups. As traumatic as what occurred in Jonestown was to its American expatriate residents, the trauma ended that evening for most of them. For those of us who were ordered to report to Guyana from military posts around the western hemisphere, the trauma was yet to begin.

[1] Ethan Feinsod, ibid, 100; FOIA Federal Bureau of Investigation RYMUR (Jonestown), 151-152
[2] Bali and Indonesia on the Net, How Far is IT?. Retrieved June 23, 2004 from http://www.indo.com/distance.
[3] David Chidester, Salvation and Suicide: Jim Jones, The People’s Temple and Jonestown, (Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 2003, I.
[4] John Peer Nugent, Ibid, 10-19.
[5] John R. Hall, Gone from the Promised Land: Jonestown in American Cultural History, (New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Publishers, 2001) 41-45.
[6] FOIA Federal Bureau of Investigation RYMUR (Jonestown), ibid, 50; David Chidester, ibid, 6.
[7] John R. Hall, Ibid, 69.
[8] Ibid, 169-170
[9] Ibid, 168; Jonestown Audiotape Primary Project: Transcripts, Tape Number Q799, Tape Number Q622; Deboral Layton, Seductive Poison, (New York, Doubleday, 1998) 65.
[10] Jeannie Mills, Six Years with God, (New York, A&W Publishers, Inc, 1979)
[11] Jeannie Mills, Ibid.
[12] Deborah Layton, Ibid.
[13] Deborah Layton Blakely, Affidavit of Deborah Layton Blakely Re the Threat and Possibilities of Mass Suicide by Members of the People’s Temple, June 15, 1978. This affidavit was written within four weeks after Deborah Layton’s escape from Jonestown and became front page news across the country. Six months later and just four days before the tragedy, Deborah was giving testimony before State Department officials, requesting help for the 900 held against their will in Jonestown, Guyana.
[14] ibid
[15] Ibid
[16] Ibid
[17] Ibid
[18] Ibid
[19] Ibid
[20] Ibid
[21] Ibid
[22] Ibid
[23] Ethan Feinsod, ibid, 188; Deborah Layton, ibid, 178.
[24] Deborah Layton Blakely, ibid.
[25] Ibid.
[26] U.P.I., Jonestown ‘diary of the dead’ resurfaces, September 18, 1988.
[27] Ibid
[28] Deborah Layton Blakely, Ibid.

Prologue

Prologue

“Shotgun,” shouted Suzy as my wife, Mai opened the passenger door of my black 1965 Peugeot 504.

“Your mom has shotgun,” I reminded my 7-year-old, the oldest of my three daughters, as she reluctantly climbed in the back seat.

There was nothing in the air that would make me feel Saturday, November 18, 1978 was anything but a typical autumn weekend day.

I spent the morning packing the little French car with beach balls, towels, blankets and all the other paraphernalia that were requisite for a fun day at the beach on the Pacific Coast. Mai put the finishing touches on a carrot cake she baked the night before.

“Don’t forget the chau ya,” I said, my mouth watering just thinking of my wife’s Vietnamese spring rolls. “How many did you make?”

“I make hunert fifty, like you say,” she replied in her pidgin English. A naturalized U.S. citizen seven years out of Vietnam, she still didn’t speak her second language very well.

Our bimonthly outings were for the express purpose of socializing and spending quality time with other families in which the spouses were Vietnamese married to American servicemen.

This not only gave our wives friends who have a common culture, but who could act as a support group during the frequent extended absences of their husbands.

Several hours after our picnic, I led the Brailey clan in song as my 13-year-old sedan carried us over the Thatcher Ferry Bridge back to our house in the Corozal Army Housing Area.

“B-I-N-G-O and Bingo was his name-oh,” were words even my youngest daughter, Debbie, age two could recite. As the sun set over the Pacific Ocean, and my kids sang at the top of their lungs, I was reminded how perfect our day at the beach had been.

An hour later, Mai tucked our two youngest daughters snugly into the bed they shared. I was on my way to pick up Tanisha, my first sergeant’s daughter, who had agreed to baby-sit that night. Suzy, who was a little older than Jennie and Debbie, was allowed to stay up an extra hour to play Chutes and Ladders with her 15-year-old sitter, whom she considered her dear friend.

Twice a month, on the first Saturday following our bimonthly payday, my wife and I hit the casinos of Panama City, Panama, where I was stationed as an Army nurse. Each of us, armed with $20, invaded a popular gambling house in one of the city’s hotels and played until the money ran out or we became too tired to play. We rarely retreated in fewer than three hours and sometimes left victorious, with quite a bit more cash than with which we arrived.

More 1,450 miles away in the jungles of Guyana, the Rev. Jim Jones, founder of The Peoples Temple, dealt with unwelcome visitors who were finishing a two-day stay at Jonestown, the agricultural collective named for him. A tense and extremely contentious exit briefing was conducted between the cult leader and Leo Ryan, a congressman representing the Oakland area of California. Ryan was in Jonestown on behalf of concerned family who complained that relatives who were members of the cult were prevented from leaving.

After the congressman left the commune, Jones gathered his flock at the town’s pavilion for yet another “White Night,” a reaction to the catastrophe the official visit had become. The day probably was the worst of Jones’ life. It certainly would be his last.

While my children were cared for and nurtured, Jones ordered the mothers of his Peoples Temple to kill their children. The systematic annihilation of more 900 people took place as my wife and I prepared to spend an evening out a local casino. My life never would be the same.

I sometimes still get a chill when I think about the parallels between my life and that of Jim Jones: where we were born and raised, our spiritual paths and our roles as leaders.
I was born and raised in the small village of Niantic near New London in southeastern Connecticut. Jones was born and raised in the rural town of Lynn near Richmond in the east central Indiana.

Religion was a strong influence during our childhoods. I attended a Christian College, Barrington in Rhode Island, with the intention of becoming a clergyman. Jones became an ordained minister in the Disciples of Christ religion.

Each of us sought religious truth, particularly when we were younger. My journey took me from the Baptist Church to the Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Methodists, Assemblies of God, back to the Baptists and even some non-Christian beliefs such as Buddhism and Ba’hai to Deism. Jones’ journey began in mainstream churches like the Church of God and Methodists and ended tragically after he formed his own alternative religion.

We each became leaders. I reached the rank of master sergeant in the Army, leading young men and women who chose to serve their country as medics in the US Army. Jones led his own church and his own brand of radical socialistic communism in which he was the god.

While I was in college, I volunteered in black drop-in centers in Providence, Rhode Island and Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood. I now live in Indianapolis where Jones began his ministry, founding a church that was uniquely, for its time, multiracial. He was a champion of the poor and particularly of blacks.

Drugs played a significant role in both our lives and for about the same reason. I took Ritalin in Vietnam as a way to increase my alertness and stamina during the many times we had to work up to 30 consecutive hours during mass casualty situations. Jim Jones abused “uppers” so he could muster enough energy to conduct marathon sermons and hour upon hour verbal tirades against his flock.

Unlike Jones, my abuse of Ritalin lasted less than six months, and I didn’t consume sedatives to counteract the effects of the speed and allow me to sleep. Jones’ as proven by autopsy, took many pills that affected and changed his mental status and may have caused him some degree of paranoia. Enough Phenobarbital was found in his body to kill someone who was not addicted and accustomed to that amount of the drug in his system.

I was stationed in Panama from 1976 to 1980. My unit was the 601st Medical Company. It was actually a “clearing company,” the closest medical facility to the front lines in combat. We had the capability to perform surgery and the ability to house sick and wounded soldiers until they could be evacuated to a larger, more secure hospital or recovered and were sent back to duty.

The main mission of the 601st Medical Company in 1978 was to support the 193rd Infantry Brigade. This primarily involved setting up field treatment facilities during the jungle exercises in which the brigade’s three infantry battalions regularly participated. There also were other U.S. Army assets in Panama, including a Special Forces battalion and the Southern Command’s School of the Americas at Fort Gulick and the U.S. Army Jungle Operation Training Center at Fort Sherman for which the 601st frequently provided support. The medical company spent a great deal of time in the jungles of Panama.

A couple of times a year, soldiers from the 601st Medical Company were given the opportunity to help the civilian population. This frequently involved trips to the far reaches of Panama’s most sparsely populated regions like the San Blas Islands, home of the Kuna Indians, to bring medical and dental services to the indigenous population. The Panama Defense Force provided us with jungle survival training and accompanied us to the local villages.

This practically was a holiday to medics tired of the same routine day after day – physical training in the morning, followed either by maintenance of supplies and equipment or formal classes and training in common soldier tasks or topics on the specifics of their particular job.

The islands were in the pristine Caribbean Sea. Their beaches were white, tropical fruits like mangos, bananas and coconuts grew prolifically, and there were no PT or work formations. What more could a soldier want?

During the Vietnam War, these missions to civilian communities were called MEDCAPS (Medical Civic Action Program). The soldiers of the 601st enjoyed going on MEDCAPs. The missions gave them something to do out of the ordinary, to help and interact with the local population and to simply get away from the everyday routine of soldiering. They also made the medics feel worthwhile because they were doing what they were trained to do, instead of playing war games. MEDCAPs were useful and rewarding. They were for me until November 18, 1978.

That evening started out typically for most of the residents of Jonestown, Guyana. Jones shouted “White Night, White Night, White Night” into the microphone that carried his charismatic forceful voice throughout the enclave of freshly painted cottages the group of American expatriates built in the jungle of Guyana.[1] The residents responded to the call of their pseudo-messiah as they had dozens of times in the past.

The mentally imbalanced leader originally left the United States to avoid legal troubles caused by a group of dissident former members known as the Committee of Concerned Relatives and the United States government, which was investigating Jones and the People’s Temple on many fronts. Jones also perceived the media as his enemy. Their relentless pursuit of the preacher perhaps represented the immediate catalyst that caused Jones to attempt to escape scrutiny by fleeing to Guyana.[2]

The first White Night took place on September 9, 1977, about 14 months before the final one.[3] Jones shouted “White Night, White Night, White Night,” into the microphone that broadcast his ominous voice throughout the enclave. Workers in fields outside the range of the loudspeakers were alerted by three gunshots.[4]

The entire population of Jonestown made their way quickly to the pavilion whenever these mandatory emergency meetings were called. The members knew Jones would inform them of some new, potentially deadly plot or some impending assault against Jonestown and would tell them what to do.

Jones had time and again warned his flock that the day would come when the American CIA would invade the sanctuary they had fashioned far from their homeland. Sometimes several times a month, the residents of Jonestown responded to their leader’s call to practice a form of ritual mass suicide he seemed to promise would result in their reincarnation.[5] He also said when they returned, these martyrs would live in a better world. Jones’ devout followers obeyed outrageous dictates as if they were in a hypnotic trance.

Occasionally, when Jones’ followers partook of the fruity tasting brew intended to take their lives, they slept for a while but did not die. A sedative sometimes was used during the rehearsals in place of the deadly cyanide Jones had standing by for use in the real show.

But November 18, 1978 was not just another dress rehearsal. Instead, it represented the final act of Jones’ bizarre play. It was the sole performance, played out by many unwilling, but mostly cooperative, members of his huge cast. The play was destined to open and close this night, the lives of the actors ended by the ingestion of deadly poison rather than the benign sedative used during rehearsals. The play was to be remembered though, painfully by those who knew and loved the cast and would miss them. It was to be curiously remembered by those who became intrigued, puzzled and shocked when they learned of the tragedy. It was to be hauntingly remembered by those who cleaned up the theater after the actors were gone, following the final act. I was one of them.

[1] Ethan Feinsod, Awake in a Nightmare: Jonestown, the Only Eyewitness Account, (New York, WW Norton & Co, 1981), 120; FOIA Federal Bureau of Investigation RYMUR (Jonestown), 364 pp., BQ 89-495, p191, p242, p290.
[2] John Peer Nugent, White Night: The Untold Story of What Happened Before and Beyond Jonestown (New York, Rawson, Wade, Publishers, Inc. 1979), 44-45
[3] FOIA Federal Bureau of Investigation RYMUR (Jonestown), p 242
[4] Ethan Feinsod, ibid.
[5] Mary McCormick Maaga, Hearing the Voices of Jonestown, (Syracuse,, NY, Syracuse University Press, 1998) 8, 9, 51

The Ghosts of November

Memoirs of an Outsider Who Witnessed the Carnage at Jonestown, Guyana

by

Jeff Brailey

Copyright 2008

All Rights Reserved

This is the first installment of my revision to the book that was published in 1998. I will add chapters at least once a week.

Introduction

Sometimes it doesn’t pay to pick up the phone, but my new wife was on call and it had to be answered.

Ann, my new bride and I were enjoying a breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast with strawberry preserves, bacon and sausages, freshly squeezed orange juice for her and copious amounts of steaming hot coffee for me. I prepared it, of course, and it would have been breakfast in bed had the morning not been so beautiful.

The sun was shining and it was my second favorite time of the year in San Antonio: Winter, which is much more like Spring in New England, where I was born. We also lived in a rich old neighborhood, a guarded and gated community, one of the first in San Antonio. Many called it the original Dominion of the Alamo City, referring to by far the ritziest neighborhood in South Texas.

Wed in early February 1998, at a private ceremony at home, where we wore traditional African outfits, my bride and I usually ate at least one meal a day on our patio, weather permitting. The portable telephone was on the table. Ann owned a skilled home health agency and usually took call at least once a week.

The phone rang and I answered it on the second ring. An unfamiliar male voice came on the line.

“Hi, my name is Jim Hougan and I am trying to find Jeff Brailey,” a voice on the other end declared.

“Well, you found him,” I replied.

“The Jeff Brailey who was Jonestown, Guyana?” he asked.

I had not talked about my experiences in Jonestown in years. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I wanted to hang up the phone. Catching my breath, I felt the past ten years of relative peace from the post-traumatic-stress-disorder that had plagued me almost annually since 1979 disappear.

“Yes, how did you find me,” I wanted to know.

“Your name is on the list of soldiers who were on the task force,” he replied.

Hougan and I spent 20 minutes on the phone. He asked a dozen questions about what I saw and did in Jonestown. At no time during the conversation did I mention the names ‘Jonestown’ or ‘Jim Jones,’ but I did graphically describe the horror I witnessed for nine days in November 1978. My new wife looked on with an incredulous look on her face.

By the time Jim and I finished talking, I agreed to participate in his documentary film project. He told me he would be in touch to discuss a time and place for me to be interviewed. Signing off, I put the telephone down, drank the dregs of my now cold coffee, sat back and sighed.

“What was that bizarre conversation all about?” my wife asked, her eyes as large as quarters.

“Some film producer asked me to appear in his documentary about Jonestown,” I answered.

“You were in the cult?” she cried out, a look of fear on her face.

“No, I was one of the soldiers sent to Guyana to recover and return the remains of the Americans who died in Jonestown,” I explained.

My bewildered new spouse shrugged her shoulders and asked why I never told her I was

there when we were dating. I told her that I felt Jonestown was not an appropriate topic of discussion while I was courting her. Besides, I thought I successfully put that small but extremely emotional traumatic event in my life behind me.

That night, we retired to bed as usual. Within a couple of hours, I was awakened by my wife’s vigorous shaking of my shoulder. I asked why she woke me up and she answered that I was screaming in my sleep like a banshee.

They’re back.” I stated quietly.

“Who are back?” she asked.

“The ghosts, the ghosts of Jonestown. They used to plague me every November. Now they re back and it’s only February,” I replied.

Fearing the return of the PTSD symptoms I told her had been under control for nearly 15 years, my wife suggested I write a book about my experiences with the Joint Humanitarian Task Forces. With that seed of an idea, The Ghosts of November was conceived and by October of 1998, the eve of the 20th anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre, the first edition of this book was published.

This second marriage was short-lived. I would like to think the Jonestown experience had nothing to do with my ability to remain in a healthy wholesome marital relationship, but I may be wrong.

Ann did everything she could to help me conform to her expectations, we traveled extensively, ate often at the best restaurants and made the social scene. She even financed the publishing of this book the first time I wrote it.

For a time, following Jonestown, I hated God. Then I came to disbelieve he even existed. Ann attempted to get me right again with the church, but after seeing the death and destruction wrought in the name of religion that Jim Jones orchestrated, I sincerely had nothing but hatred for the Christian God, no matter how many times they tried to explain how this loving, supposedly omnipotent being could not or would not intervene. This caused a big rift between

Ann, a hardshell Baptist and myself.

Eventually, my behavior became so obnoxious and unacceptable, she decided the only logical thing for her to do at time was divorce me. I really couldn’t argue with her logic. My second marriage lasted less than a year.

My first marriage, to a beautiful Vietnamese girl I met in 1970 while serving in Vietnam, lasted 24 years. We raised three daughters together, got them out of the house and on their own, then grew tired of each other and decided to expand our own horizons. She started seeing a boyfriend who was Vietnamese and younger than me. No skin off my nose, at least as far as I was concerned. But she went kind of bonkers when I started dating Ann, Oh well, as they say.

My first wife, Mai, was of simple peasant stock. She never went past the third grade in school for two main reasons – she was a girl and in her culture, girls had to work; and, she really didn’t care for school anyway. When I met Mai, she was the house girl for her “aunt and uncle” in Hue. With a petite and curvaceous body and skin as soft as a feather, she reminded me of a porcelain doll.

Mai spoke little English and my Vietnamese lexicon consisted of a few phrases and terms. Rather than making our relationship more tenuous, this lack of a common language cemented it. You see, her uncle, the electrician of the evacuation hospital I was assigned to in Phu Bai, 12 miles down Highway One from Hue, had tired of teaching me Vietnamese during my lunch hours and breaks. He pawned his house girl on me as tutor. I’m afraid Mai taught me Vietnamese better than I taught her English.

We had a wonderful eight years or so together. Married in 1971 and divorced in 1995, that unfortunately means we both made each other fairly miserable for 16 years. But that’s a story that will be told in another book.

My second wife was as different from my first as is humanly possible. While Mai was a simple country girl who never rode an elevator until I met her, Ann was an articulate, intelligent, tall and sophisticated black woman. We met in 1996. She was seeking someone to assist her with her business and after we met, I was seeking a more intimate relationship with her.

Ann owned a few businesses, a home health agency and a women’s health boutique and clinic in San Antonio, and a adult assisted living home in Little Rock. She also received a quarterly check from the remaining partners in her dead husband’s medical clinic in New York City. That business alone would have kept her financially comfortable, however, Ann was very ambitious and knew how to make money. In fact, it was almost a hobby of hers.

Bankrolled by my second wife and written originally as an act of catharsis, another major reason this project became important to me was the realization that a whole generation of young people have never heard of the People’s Temple, Jim Jones, or the massacre. This became apparent when three college students who attended a talk I was giving at a book store asked if it was a true story.

The act of ritual murder/suicide in which 914 Americans took their lives in a jungle enclave called Jonestown, Guyana on November 18, 1978, represented the largest such event in modern times. It has been compared in scope to the mass suicides of fanatical Jews on Masada in Israel some two thousand years earlier.[1]

Many cult experts felt the Jonestown Massacre, as it came to be known, was a precursor to similar ritual suicides that would occur leading up to the new millennium. We do know there were a few groups that committed mass suicide subsequent to this tragedy, and there also were some ritualistic mass murders in Africa that exceeded the number killed in Jonestown by some four-fold.[2]

There continues to be a great deal of interest in the Jonestown Massacre almost 30 years later. With all that in mind and considering first edition copies of this book are in great demand, I decided to write a revised edition.

Although the basic facts of the book remain the same, there are a few major theories and discoveries that have been uncovered. As far as I know, I continue to be the only member of the Joint Humanitarian Task Force sent to Guyana to remove the bodies of the American members of the People’s Temple killed there who has written about it. This book then, represents the only account of event that occurred in Jonestown during the nine days following the massacre.

Although the names of some of the soldiers have been changed, the events reported in this book all occurred as stated. The reader must remember that when I first wrote The Ghosts of November, I was relying on 20 year old memories that had been repressed in the recesses of my mind as a defense mechanism to protect myself from the trauma I witnessed.

My original purpose in writing this book was as a cathartic exercise. I experienced a form of post-traumatic-stress-disorder known as “anniversary syndrome” for several years following my participation in the Joint Humanitarian Task Force. The nightmares that would herald the return of this annual November event began prematurely one February night in 1998 after I had discussed participating in a documentary project.[3]

This is a true story that must be told so our children and theirs understand that such evil does exist in the world. For like the words of Jorge Santayana that hung over Reverend Jim Jones’ throne in the pavilion in Jonestown, I agree, “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.”

In this revision of the book that was originally published in 1998, I have used the true names of most of the characters. The one exception is Lieutenant Canasta, whose identity is kept secret for reasons that will be obvious to the reader. With that exception, every word of this story is true.

Jeffrey Brailey
Indianapolis, Indiana
November 18, 2006

Word Count: 1920

[1] Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, XVIII, 55-59, in H. St. J. Thackeray, trans. Josephus, 9 vols. (Cambridge, MA, 1968), IX:45
[2] Internet Crime Archives, Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments, Retrieved June 21, 2004 from http://www.mayhem.net/Crime/uganda.html
[3] Arts & Entertainment, Jonestown: Mystery of a Massacre (Investigative Reports), Saturday, November 14, 1998, 3:00 to 4:00 PM, ES