Dr. Preston Jones: You were with a relatively small but very important group of American military personnel that went to Guyana in November 1978 to respond to the Jonestown tragedy.
What was your particular job in Guyana?
Doug Cohee: Once we got on the ground in Guyana, the body that I was with unloaded our Communications Jeep, MRC-107, if I remember right. And we had met part of the Panama team that had just gotten there ahead of us. So Chief Huddleston was in charge.1
Some of the Panama team went up to Jonestown. A couple more people went to Matthews Ridge. And then I stayed at Timehri, Georgetown, with a guy named Leonard Witten. At that time, he and I set up our Communications Jeep so that we could do high-frequency communications with airways folks at [unintelligible] Airways—I’m trying to think, Puerto Rico. I can’t remember their call sign. Between all of us, we did a flight following with the helicopters and we did communications back to the United States through connecting through the HF to the telephone to keep command notified of what’s going on.
Jones: So it’s kind of a communication with aircraft? It sounds like it’s a general sort of communications—
Cohee: This particular operation was more built on communications, though we were air-traffic controllers by trade, at least for most of us. I only did a little bit of helicopter landing zones until
all the helicopter people got comfortable just coming and going out of Timehri and they didn’t really need any extra assistance. So then I was just reduced—not reduced—but communication wise, we were busy for a long time.
Jones: Sure. Did the communications—what sort of communications were you handling? I don’t know if any of this stuff is still secret but we’re not getting into that.
Cohee: No, there’s nothing secret about any of this. The passing of the number of bodies as they were collected so that people up at Dover could be ready for what they needed to meet each aircraft.
The army came in after us, but they had better communications. They had a really cool satellite setup that I’d never seen before. It was the first time I’d seen it but since technology, everybody’s got a satellite radio. The HF net was how we communicated back then for long distances but we would communicate, and they would hook up a modem with the telephone and we would just call whoever we needed to call.
Jones: So you mentioned one of the things, the bits of information coming through is the number of bodies from Jonestown and one of thethings that’s become clear is you watch news reports from the time and just listen to the folks who are there. Even four days after the fact, November 22nd for example, the numbers are something like 400. There wasn’t knowledge until maybe five or six days down the road that you’ve got bodies stacked on bodies.
Did you actually sort of see that yourself? Did you kind of see the numbers accumulating as time went on?
Cohee: We were keeping track of the numbers ourselves but I happened to be at the radio when the call from Jonestown came to us and said that they had found an extra 400-plus bodies in a low-lying ditch. And I had to go, okay, I went into the to the army and the ALCE commander in their tent and I said: hey, I got some bad news for you there’s there’s an additional 400 bodies because at that time, we were actually starting to gear down and remove everybody.
Jones: The likely anticipated number had been reached or something?
Cohee: They had already cleaned up all the bodies. But the odor was still so strong up there that they started hunting around—hey, where is this odor coming from? And then they uncovered the ditch from the bush and that kind of stuff on top of it. So when they undid the ditch, as it was explained to me, the people had died and been laid in the ditch like you were bailing hay. They’d put one across and then they’d put a sheet down and then they would turn the bodies 90 degrees and put them that way.
I’m a farm boy, so that’s how we do it with the bales of hay. So that’s what they did with the bodies but they put a sheet in between each layer and there obviously were several layers to to the pile.
Jones: So you went and told an officer nearby we need 400 body bags?
Cohee: I believe Lieutenant Colonel Wells was the Airlift Control Element leader.2 He happened to be sitting with the army leader at the time, and when I walked in, they were discussing how many flights we need to get everybody out. And then I had to interrupt them and said: hey, we still got a whole bunch of bodies and they had to redo their thinking.
Jones: So where did those extra—these are grim things to be talking about but it’s part
of the story—I mean, were there 400 additional body bags just in a truck somewhere or did they have to be brought?
Cohee: That was that was part of our communication to make sure we called Dover and got the appropriate number of equipment that they needed. They were putting smaller children, two and three, in a bag after a while. And so that was an issue. The pair of rescue guys that had come down with their helicopters were traveling back and forth with them. Then we, the Air Force, would put them on a C-141 and take them back to Dover.
Jones: When you say putting two or three children in a body bag was an issue, do you just mean in terms of body count or what do you mean by that?
Cohee: I’m not sure how they did it. I guess they determined that it would be better for the body bag itself than if they tried to fill it up with more than just a small baby. I mean, we’re talking small children here. A lot, right?
Jones: So for lack of a better way of putting it, just to make sure we have enough body bags, then let’s not use a big body bag for just small body; let’s fill the thing up.
Cohee: I got that impression. But though I couldn’t really tell you, hopefully somebody from
the Army Graves Registration team—if you ever get ahold of any of them—can you give yourself a better idea of that answer.
Jones: Do you have—I’m asking this question just because of something I read yesterday and you may not have an answer. I’m just wondering if you do. One of the questions that arose is why weren’t the bodies—why were the bodies flown to Dover or why aren’t they flown to a base in Northern California, a base relatively close to the Bay Area, where most of those folks were from? I was just reading something from a family member written about a decade after the event and they’re asking this question: why were these bodies flown to the other side of the continent when most of these folks were actually from the California Bay Area? They could have flown them to a base in California.
Do you have any sense of that?
Cohee: Dover Air Force Base is the processing center for bodies. That’s where they go. Dover is the one who gets them; they have the capability of handling the dead people. Virtually everybody comes to Dover. I mean the Afghanistan people, Iraqi, whoever dies overseas gets processed at Dover.
Jones: Which I think makes perfect sense. I know that it had been not too long
before Jonestown, there’d been a plane crash with over 200 casualties that came through Dover. There were some folks on the ground there with experience.
Cohee: Both President Obama and Trump have gone to Dover to welcome back bodies and have seen the families. That’s not uncommon. That’s the key lookout.
Jones: That’s just where it’s done? So where were you based stateside in November 1978?
Cohee: Charleston Air Force.
Jones: Had you ever heard of Peoples Temple before November 19th or November 20th, 1978?
Cohee: I’m a news person; I keep up with the news. They had been on the news prior to this.
Jones: So you knew about it?
Cohee: I knew about them.
Jones: Did you know that a lot of them had gone to Guyana?
Cohee: Not really sure how many people—I just knew that their people had left something.
Jones: You had heard of Peoples Temple; you had some sense that some part of Peoples
Temple was in Guyana—do you remember what that first step was of getting you down to Guyana? How did the ball get rolling for you—getting you from your base in the States down to a country you probably had never been to before?
Cohee: My boss called me and he told me to get ahold of Rick Wilson, and then they gave us our marching orders on what to bring down and we had weapons and communications gear, which is our function when we go into a possible combat environment.3
The whole purpose of combat control is that we’re first in, and we do communications that is more lightweight. Then if you’re doing something more than just going into the woods, then we’ll take a Jeep, which is a Communications Jeep, with us so we have a Communications Jeep where we can talk on AM/FM HF and it’s all encrypted capability in case we need to do its encryption.
So, we got on the airplane and we were the third C-141 out of there. The bosses are going in number one and two. But by the time we got there, they had already turned around with Congressman Ryan and had left. And just before we landed, the Panama team had got there and Chief Huddleston was left in charge. Then Chief Huddleston gave us our assignments on what we were going to do.
Jones: Do you remember if this was November 19th? Do you remember what day you got into Guyana? Was that the 19th or 20th?
Cohee: The very first day, I believe, was the 19th. But then Rick Wilson and I, since we had a Jeep, actually took the ALCE Commander into the Consulate in Georgetown proper, which is where, on the way in, I saw the Banks Beer Brewery, which brought me to thinking, I know what kind of souvenir I want on this one.
But we spent a day and a half at the American Consulate before we went back out to the airport to get things started for the actual recovery of the bodies.
Jones: So I want to come back to the Consulate in a second, but you indicated that the early thinking was that you might be heading into a combat situation. Did that hold all the way through landing in Guyana, that you might be heading into some sort of combat situation here?
Cohee: Yes. With the weapons fired at the airport, it could have been somewhere else on we’re talking Jonestown Airport for the congressman—but the thought might be that we needed weapons. So Rick Wilson and I were on board another Medivac C-141, and the nurses came up to us and said they’re really glad that we’re on the airplane. I just didn’t have the heart to tell him that I can’t do anything for you until I get off the plane.
We had a lot of weapons. We could do just about anything.
Jones: How long were you in Guyana before you realized that there wasn’t going to be a firefight?
Cohee: Just shortly after we landed and the back of the C-141 opened, [unintelligible] met us at the back of the plane and he said, “we’re good on weapons; you can put everything away.” So we put most everything away except for our .38, which we needed to protect the weapons.
We kept them mostly hidden while driving from the airport in Georgetown.
Jones: Then you said you spent over a day at the consulate, the American Consulate?
Cohee: Yeah, we spent the night at the consulate. In fact, I slept on the floor of the Consulate General’s office.
Jones: What was the atmosphere in the consulate like?
Cohee: We didn’t see very many people there. We were kind of kept apart from the rest of the crowd. That’s kind of the reason why they’d put us in the Consulate General’s office. That was a good place to hide us. So we were just there and we spent the night. And then most of the day—the next day—but not all of it, and then we went back to the airport and that’s where we started to set up.
Jones: You set up operations there.
Did you have much interaction with the Guyanese while you were there?
Cohee: There were a few of the locals that would come out to the airfield and see that we were there, because it was easy enough to—there wasn’t a fence around the airport that I remember. So we were at one end of the runway, but the trees and open areas were so that people could walk up. So yeah, we had some contact with them, not much.
Jones: But nothing like any conversations with locals about Jonestown or anything like that?
Cohee: No. None whatsoever.
Jones: How long were you on the ground in Guyana, Georgetown?
Cohee: I think we were there a total of 10 days.
Jones: So when you think about those 10 days, what are the memories that stand out the most in your own mind?
Cohee: When the helicopters first started going back and forth, when I was not working, and when it was my turn to work the radios, I would help try to help the engineers clean out their helicopters, but they were kind of protective of their helicopters—“no I got it,” and I said, “okay, that’s fine.” But probably, I saw Jim Jones’s body bag so that was kind of a semi-highlight of what we were doing; we were there for him.
Jones: The body bag, not the body?
Cohee: The body bag. He was tagged separately.
Jones: Just a pause here for a second—was it coincidental that you happened to see that? Or was that kind of a hey, come check this out, thing?
Cohee: My buddy said, “hey, Doug, come on over here and check this out. This is him.” We’re going, okay? See, the problem with some of the news media was because we weren’t allowed to talk to anybody. Basically, the Army kept any news people away from us for the most part. But I would read a thousand-word article in a newspaper and go, “well there’s only one piece of information that’s partially right.” That’s when you start having a little bit of distrust towards newspaper reporting, in particular. They just made this big old article about nothing; it really didn’t tell anybody anything else. That was kind of an eye-opener for me—I always relied on newspapers being pretty accurate in their information, but over the years, you go, “they didn’t
quite get that right.”
Jones: So you’re reading articles about what’s happening in Guyana while you’re experiencing what’s happening there and there’s kind of a disconnect?
Cohee: Trust me, there’s a definite disconnect.
Jones: Does an example come to mind of the disconnect?
Cohee: I think they were trying to gauge the number of bodies, particularly the body count. That was always off. They never got good timely information on that, so every report—since Vietnam is all about body counts—they kind of latched on to that pretty quick, and that was always off. It wasn’t ever accurate.
I knew exactly how many were coming and going.
Jones: So you mentioned that you know the memory of seeing Jim Jones’s body bag, the memory of hearing the body count come through, and the communications needing to tell your officer that we need 400 more body bags, are there other memories that you know really stand out when you think about those 10 days in Guyana?
Cohee: Having been the recipient of all the bodies coming down from Jonestown, you kind of felt bad for the Graves Registration folks that were doing all the work, because that’s a sideline job for the army people. I mean, they have other jobs, but they also do this. They’ve been trained to do this—picking up the bodies.
So I happened to call Puerto Rico—Roosevelt “Rosy” Roads—and I said, “hey I could use a bag of ice?” And they said, “okay, we’ll get you some ice.” So about 24 hours later, this friend of mine that was driving a forklift said, “hey Doug, I got you your ice.” I said, “okay,” and I started to climb into the cab of the truck. He said, “no, it’s right there on the front. And I looked, and there was that somebody told me was a torpedo case full of frozen water. I had a 400 pound ice cube. And so I said, “okay, don’t tell anybody.” And I had them put it right next to the Jeep. I was afraid of a run on the ice happening before we could figure out what to do with a 400 pound block of ice.
Then a couple guys said, “hey, I got some sodas; can I put them in the tube? I said, “yeah, that’s a good idea.” And then a little while later I said to some other guys, “we got to figure out something to do; let’s do something for the graves registration people.” So we went to the Army guys and said, “hey, I’ve got a 400 pound block of ice; let’s throw a party for the graves registration people when they get back. That’s what we did with the ice. We just kept everything cold like a refrigerator, and when they got the Graves Registration folk—they had to burn all their clothes and big fire truck hosed him off—but they had the beer and sodas and odds and ends that we probably weren’t supposed to have.
Jones: So the ice was related to the heat and the humidity that I’ve heard about?
Cohee: Oh god, it never rained the whole time we were there, but it was hot and muggy.
Jones: There’s a fellow named Jeff Brailey, who unfortunately has passed away, who wrote a memoir.4 He was with the crew from Panama and he wrote about this. He said when they came back from Jonestown, there was a big party. He said what you guys said, that these folks had to burn their clothes because of the stench. I guess it was just kind of a way to just relieve the pressure or decompress right after several days in this intense heat and humidity, dealing with this horrific situation in Jonestown.
Cohee: They deserve all the credit they can possibly get.
Jones: Because we’re talking about bodies that have been there, what? Three or four days?
Cohee: That’s just at the start. And then there were more bodies found as the operation went on that had been there for almost a week.
Jones: I’m sure you’ve experienced some of that as well—just the powerful smell.
Cohee: Yeah. I have to say to anybody that if you ever get the unfortunate opportunity to smell a dead, rotten body, you will never forget the odor. Never.
Jones: How did you guys in Georgetown—I’m just interested in just the way folks deal with these situations. The memoirist wrote about when the graves registration folks and the others were at work in Jonestown; it was just very stoic and very businesslike. But then there would be moments of dark humor. Then he mentions a party, where folks just kind of blow off steam and decompress. In your own case, what was your own method of processing what was going on?
Cohee: I didn’t have that much difficulty with the issue there because of being detached from the actual bodies themselves. But still helping out. I mean, body bags still leak; they smelled.
They needed to clean out the helicopters and so it wasn’t a perfect situation, but it wasn’t—it was more of a learning situation for me. I’m still a young man. I was 25 at the time. So that was just a learning environment for me, and one of those life situations that you come across.
Since I didn’t have to do the other stuff, it didn’t affect me.
Jones: I mean, not quite abstract, because, as you say, you’ve got the right body bags, but it’s certainly not as direct as what the folks did—
Cohee: With the little distance, it was okay. I didn’t have any real mental issues about it.
Jones: What was your perception of the people in the body bags? If anything, what did you assume about these 900 Americans who you guys were now in the process of cleaning out of Guyana? That topic must have come up. What was it all about?
Cohee: It was really the newspapers that kind of filled us in on the background of what Jonestown was and what had happened to it in regard to Jim Jones starting that. Basically you just comes down to why do people think like that or want to be in that situation? What is it that made them want to get into that situation? And you just kind of think about it and you can’t come up with an answer why people think the way they think.
So you just go and move on.
Jones: It’s hard—I mean, it’s hard to imagine many people went to Guyana assuming that it would end the way it did. It’s just nuts how that worked out.
Cohee: Well, a lot of my friends that want to retire from the FAA, go, “ hey I’m going to Montana.” They just want to get away from everything and be in a more open area. Maybe people down—I’ll never know—but bunch of them—
Jones: I think there’s something to that. I think there was kind of, “let’s escape to paradise” kind of thing.
Is the topic of Jonestown and Peoples Temple of enduring interest to you given your involvement? Several months ago, the State Department finally released the documents of their investigation—of how the State Department handled the situation itself down in Jonestown. So I read through all those documents of what was happening before-the-scenes, as it were. Those documents were rather revealing. There were definitely some mistakes made by the State Department personnel, and consequently, you got a bunch of Americans who died.
Jones: Certainly, there’d been a lot of warnings. Defectors from the group had said there’s a pretty dangerous situation down there. There are questions about the US Embassy. I’d the reason I asked you the question about the atmosphere at the consulate is because I was wondering if there’s a sense of panic or something like, “we’ve dropped the ball or should have known” or something like that.
Cohee: Through the documents you would certainly think that happened. But again, Rick and I were isolated for the most part, away from everybody.
Jones: So you didn’t see that. Have you—as the years have gone by and documentaries have come out—had an interest in seeing them? Or if you saw a new biography of Jim Jones, would you be particularly drawn to it? Or is it a kind of topic—it sounds like you’re kind of interested in the government’s reaction.
Cohee: I watch all that and read all of it because you’re there. But when you only have one portion, you don’t know the whole story. There are only so many people that get to know the whole story behind everything. I’ve even gone to Google Earth and searched Jonestown to see what Google Earth has to show you of where Jonestown proper used to be. And then you see the old strip, and if you look at the maps of how Jonestown was built—where everything was—now all you see is basic brush with basic jungle.
Jones: I appreciate your willingness to share your stories. Each participant has his or her own view, but you can put them all together and get something comprehensive. This is a topic—there’s no book on the military response to Jonestown, other than a published memoir. So it’s a topic that I think we need to make sure doesn’t get lost. As many folks have participated, even in indirect ways that may seem inconsequential; all of that’s important. Pull it all together and you have a comprehensive story.
I think that for me one of the tragic things was Jim Jones telling the people that we have to all take ourselves out and take the babies with us, etc., because the US Government is basically going to declare war on us. But the tragedy, of course, is the US Government. I mean, you indicated the State Department kind of dropped the ball beforehand. But you indicated when you guys went down that you thought you might be heading into a combat situation. I’m assuming part of that had to do with not only fighting whoever might want to fight but also with rescuing people. Do you remember if that was part of it as well? That not only might there be people to fight, but there are probably some people to rescue as well? Was that part of your thinking?
Cohee: We first thought that there were possibly weapons fired on the airplane, so we would have to get off to try to protect the airplane. After that it would be just a fluid situation for whatever we encountered.
I do appreciate you taking the time to share your stories with us. If you happen to know other vets who participate in any way, we’d love to hear from them.
Cohee: If you know Christopher Knight, he has a list of people that I gave him.
Jones: Yes, I’m hoping to get all that information and make all the contacts that we can make
Cohee: Sounds good.
Jones: I really appreciate it. Thank you.
Cohee: You’re welcome. Have a good day.
Contextual Notes
- Senior Master Sergeant Alvin S. Huddleston died in 2016. ↩︎
- Lieutenant Colonel Robert M. Wells. ↩︎
- Staff Sergeant Richard E. Wilson. ↩︎
- Jeff Brailey was a Senior Army Medic who published The Ghosts of November, the first book written by a member of the USAF who participated in the Joint Humanitarian Task Force. Brailey died in 2014. ↩︎