Dr. Preston Jones: Were you in the Army?
Ronald Taylor: I was in the Army, yes.
Jones: What year did you go into the Army?
Taylor: I joined the Army on October 12th, 1973.
Jones: What was your job in the army?
Taylor: I was a 67 Gulf, which was a U-21 airplane repairman and Crew Chief.
Jones: So airplane repair and Crew Chief. And so when we get to November 1978, where were you—where were you based?
Taylor: I was stationed at Corozal in the Canal Zone, Albrook Air Force Base.
Jones: Okay, so you were down there in Panama. How long had you been in Panama by November 78?
Taylor: A little more than a year, because I rotated out to come back stateside in April 1979.
Jones: Did you have any idea before November 18th, 1978, that there were more than 900 Americans living down in Guyana?
Taylor: Never heard of Guyana before that.
Jones: Never even heard of Guyana?
Taylor: No.
Jones: Had you ever heard of Jim Jones or Peoples Temple or any of that?
Taylor: No.
Jones: So the tragedy, of course, unfolds on November 18th, 1978. What is your very first memory of word getting to you that something had happened that you needed to be part of the response to?
Taylor: I want to say—it has been a while since I’ve talked or even talked about this. It was probably a Sunday after it happened, and the initial notification was about a congressman and his entourage being killed in Guyana. What I remember of it initially was that there was an urgency to get there. That was the first notification that I heard.
Jones: So a congressman had been killed. Some of the people with him had been killed at the beginning; that’s all you knew?
Taylor: That’s what we were told, yes.
Jones: So what was the first thing you did? Did you have to scramble to go? Or did you have some time, or what was the word to you?
Taylor: We were preparing to deploy. As I said earlier, I crewed a U-21, which is a small fixed-wing aircraft. So my initial job at that point was to prepare the airplane to proceed to Panama—excuse me, to Guyana, because I was the Crew Chief. I was responsible for making sure everything was prepared to go and fueled up and did inspections and that kind of thing. And being prepared to fly when we were told to leave Panama.
Jones: So you said it’s a U-21 fixed-wing aircraft?
Taylor: Yes.
Jones: What role would that plane play in the situation down in Guyana?
Taylor: We were part of the search and rescue mission initially. If I’m remembering this correctly, we’d departed Sunday, and a U-21 is, like I said, a small fixed-wing airplane, a twin-engine plane. So we had pretty good legs on us, meaning we could fly a long way. So our initial flight, we left Panama. We flew into Caracas, Venezuela. We remained overnight there, and then we arrived in Guyana the following Monday.
Jones: Did you know everyone on the plane? The reason I ask is because I’ve talked to other veterans who were on planes heading down to Guyana, and there were people on the plane they didn’t know who were in civilian clothing, and they later assessed that they were CIA or FBI or something like that. Did you see any of that yourself?
Taylor: I did. My response to you would be, when we left Panama, since we were going to stay overnight in Caracas, Venezuela, we were in civilian clothing because we were utilizing the civilian airfield. And we stored the plane at the airfield. Went to a civilian motel, spent the night, and the next morning we flew into Guyana, Georgetown.
Jones: Did you pick anybody up in Caracas?
Taylor: We did not.
Jones: So when you leave Panama, if I have it correctly, all you know at that point is that you’ve got a congressman and an entourage, and members of his entourage have been killed? There’s some kind of emergency in Guyana. By the time you leave Caracas, do you have more information?
Taylor: Everything we were getting at that point was pretty much—it was just a lot of chaos. It was very chaotic, with very little information. Much of it was—I didn’t get it from the briefing; it was word-of-mouth kind of stuff that I was getting in Panama. There was no CNN, no internet, or that kind of thing going on. So information was hard to come by.
Jones: Did you feel that you might be heading into some kind of combat situation?
Taylor: Absolutely, because we drew our weapons. We had ammunition and weapons on board with us, and I assumed it was a combat operation.
Jones: So you fly from Caracas into Georgetown. Is that right?
Taylor: Correct.
Jones: Let’s have the plane touch the ground in Georgetown. What happens next?
Taylor: Almost immediately, I’m not sure how or what or which networks these folks represented, but news people began to approach the airplane, asking us various questions: who we were and where we came from. Our airplane. It stood out because it’s red and white. It’s an U-21. So, it’s a search and rescue bird. We stood out like a sore thumb. These news people were coming from wherever, and I’m assuming they thought we’d already been to Jonestown at that point. We had not.
Jones: By that point, had you even heard of Jonestown? Had you heard that word?
Taylor: I had not.
Jones: So you’re in Georgetown, you’ve arrived in Georgetown, and you’ve got these journalists. Was it from the journalists? Was it the journalists who first used that word?
Taylor: That was the first time I heard the word Jonestown.
Jones: How long were you in Georgetown?
Taylor: I want to say we stayed—we refueled in Georgetown, and the following morning, we inserted a Special Forces team into Jonestown.
Jones: Did you do that by Helicopter?
Taylor: Negative. We did that in the U-21. We landed on the airfield that was adjacent to Jonestown.
Jones: Was it the same airfield where the congressman was shot?
Taylor: Yes, I think so, because to my knowledge, there were only two airfields. Matthews Ridge and the airfield that was adjacent to where the congressman was shot at and shot and killed. And we used both of those at one point or another.
Jones: Of course, when you see photographs of that airstrip where the congressman and the others are killed. You’ve got those planes there. There was a plane that some people were sitting on when they were killed. Did you remember seeing those planes sitting there on the airstrip?
Taylor: I think I remember the Cessna more so than the Guyanese. Airliner. Yeah. For whatever reason, that stands out to me. But I do remember the Cessna; it was a smaller airplane.
Jones: You got these Special Ops guys on this plane. Were these Air Force Special Ops guys?
Taylor: Negative. These were Green Berets, Army Special Forces, and Army Special Ops.
Jones: What do you remember about the Special Ops guys on the plane? What did it feel like on the plane? I’ve talked with Special Ops guys and I’ve asked them the same question I asked you: did you assume you were going into a firefight kind of situation? I’m guessing that’s what these guys are thinking, that they might be heading into a fight.
Taylor: They were equipped for a firefight. They had their basic load, their M4s and M16s, and, yes, they were prepared for a firefight.
Jones: What do you remember about that flight? Do you have any memories? Are they talking, or are they silent? Is it tense?
Taylor: I think it’s more—I’d say anxious and tense, since we don’t know a lot. There’s not a lot of information to go on. And, I remember, I think the final approach into Jonestown stands out to me more than anything else because then we were able to, we began to see the bodies, and there were just a lot of people on the ground, wearing different colored clothing.
Even now when I fly and I’m flying to an airport and I’m flying with a large parking lot, those different colors just kind of jump out at me now. And that’s what my initial impression of it was like: damn, what happened? Lots of people and they were all dead.
Jones: So you’re on the airstrip, and this is where the Special Ops guys get out? This is where the Green Berets get out at the airstrip?
Taylor: Correct.
Jones: And then they’re going to make their way into Jonestown, and then the plane takes off again?
Taylor: There’s the Air Force guys who were on the ground, and I’ll call them ALO because this is what I know—Air Force Liaison. They got AN/PRC–77 and things, and I’m talking to these guys about what and when. Of course, everybody is trying to figure out what the hell happened. And so those were the conversations we were having at that point. And we departed not long after that because the Special Forces guys didn’t go back with us at that point.
Jones: What did the Air Force guys tell you?
Taylor: Don’t recall exactly what was said. We talked about what happened, as in, in terms of what exactly was said? My guess is we were saying what I’m saying to you right now, what happened? What do you know? And I don’t know that they had a lot of information at that point.
Jones: Your U-21 then takes off and from that point, it then flies over Jonestown?
Taylor: We head out over Jonestown again en route to Georgetown. Because at that point there was no fuel or anything at Jonestown, we used JP for jet fuel. So any fueling or anything like that would have to be done at a place called the Jet Ramp, back in Georgetown. It was an old fire station and that’s where we parked and did our maintenance and took on fuel and that kind of thing and secured our aircraft.
Jones: So you did get a glimpse of Jonestown, as you were heading back to Georgetown?
Taylor: I had a glimpse going in and going out. There’s no way you could not see it.
Jones: First of all, how big would you say Jonestown was? Now I know you’re in the air, so it’s hard to judge, but like, maybe using football fields as a comparison, because some people think of a sort of tiny kind of camp, but it was a pretty big, pretty big place.
Taylor: I think football fields will be too small in terms of scale. My best guess is maybe 7 or 10 acres. There was, like, an inner ring of large buildings that made up the center part of the camp. And then around the fringe of it were, I guess, living quarters, similar to what a small military camp looks like.
Jones: Just right in the middle of the jungle?
Taylor: Yeah, just out in the middle of nowhere. There’s nothing close to it. What I remember, the flight over there was just a lot of jungle, very much like Panama in that regard. Just a lot of jungle.
Jones: You described seeing the bodies and the colors of the clothing. And that’s often what you hear when people say, “I saw a lot of colors and I thought maybe they had hung out their laundry or something like that. And then I realized what it was.” Did you know immediately what all those colors were?
Taylor: I didn’t think it was laundry. Certainly it wasn’t laundry and I recognized right away that these were people.
Jones: At that first moment, did you assume that they were all dead, or did you feel like, what are they doing?
Taylor: My initial impression was that maybe they were not dead; at the very least, a lot of people were hurt. A lot of people were dead. There was something; there was no movement. Know what I mean?
There was no movement. As I said earlier, here’s this red and white airplane with a US Army stamp on it. And if these folks were looking for help or if anybody had been alive, I think somebody would’ve tried to signal to us that they were alive. There was no movement at all. The other odd thing about it was I’ve been in the jungle before. I’ve never heard the jungle that quiet. There was absolutely no sound, which struck me as super odd. There was no sound. Jungles are always noisy, but this particular day, and every time that I went there, I never saw or heard any noise or saw any movement or anything like that.
But my initial impression was that these people were dead or they were hurt very badly, because we had no idea they had poisoned themselves at that point. I never heard that until we were, maybe, a day or two into it and we started to hear those stories coming out.
Jones: Now you said you heard the jungle; was that when you were on the airstrip?
Taylor: Yes.
Jones: And it was just. I mean, would the right word be like an eerie quiet or—is it almost like that thing where the quiet is so loud?
Taylor: No, it is that kind of quiet, that kind of eerie, and the only noise that I hear at that point is the voice of us talking to each other, the aircrew talking to the ALOs, the Air Force guys that are on the ground. That’s the only sound we heard.
Jones: I mean, at this point you’re a young adult and when new things happen to us, usually what we do is we try to link it to something else or some other experience. You go to a new place to say, “oh, this reminds me a little bit of something else I saw.” What were you doing with these first impressions? You’re seeing all these bodies and at the very least, they’re hurt. I mean, what is the initial impact on you?
Taylor: I’m going to say it’s hard to describe—confused. The confusion is running through my mind. What happened is running through my mind. Who did it? It’s running through my mind because now you, as I said earlier, up to that point, we considered that there were still hostile people running around with weapons down there.
I had no idea whether or not these folks were injured or killed up until that point. So that fear factor comes into play as well. Are these folks actively moving in or around this airfield that we’re starting to land and flying and out of? So my famous word is oh shit.
Jones: How many times did you fly in and out? A minute ago you used the phrase “every time we went in there.” How many times did you go back and forth?
Taylor: Several. Multiple times, if not directly into the adjacent airfield, we went in and out of Matthews Ridge. We were doing log work; stuff needed to go out and people needed to go out, that kind of thing.
Jones: You mentioned Matthews Ridge and then we’ve got the airstrip there. Did you have any interactions at all with—of course there aren’t very many Jonestown people left, but there are some in Georgetown. Did you have any interaction at all with any of the Peoples Temple people?
Taylor: No. Never saw any. The only folk I saw at either site were American military guys.
Jones: Did you ever get into Jonestown itself?
Taylor: I did not.
Jones: So you’re there at the airstrip. So how long are you in Guyana altogether?
Taylor: We arrived that Monday and I think we left either the day after Thanksgiving, which would’ve been a Friday or a Saturday, somewhere in that timeline. So like seven days.
Jones: Roughly a week. So just describe that week in general. The beginning of the story we’ve described. Then you got the middle. And then I’m interested in talking about, now we’re flying out of Guyana, but so take us to—now we’re in day two. Now, presumably you’re hearing, “okay, we got a lot of people who are dead,” and of course, here in the States, we’re getting news reports: 200, 300, 500. You got bodies on bodies. Now we’re up over 900, right? What is that week like? How do you describe sort of that whole week from day two through the end of it?
Taylor: It was really hectic. We were constantly working. We were constantly flying. We didn’t have the—we lived in a, and again, I keep referring to it as the old fire station. It has another name. The Jet Ramp comes to mind for whatever reason. But we stayed there. So when we weren’t physically flying and going in and out, we were pretty beat. And then at the same time, we were doing maintenance on the aircraft to keep it out. They began to bring bodies back, and as you said a moment ago, the numbers kept increasing.
I want to say initially, the first numbers I started to hear were maybe a few hundred, a couple hundred people. Then that became 400 and so forth and so on. And then they found the children and I think that was—the Air Force is flying them back in on their CH-53s, I think they were.
And the Jet Ramp or whatever—the firehouse—it wasn’t far from where they were staging these coffins and body bags. So the stench was just horrible, even though they were in body bags, and they—and I’m told the body bags leaked, so they brought in these metal containers, shipping containers, for lack of better terms.
And even with that, the stench was there. I recall that as much as anything else—that smell. The day they found the children, they may have been three or maybe four days in. That seemed to take a big toll on everybody, because I’m on the flight line and I’m talking to the air crews that are coming back and forth, because we were just sharing information at that point.
And that particular day, they found the children, which just seemed to really take the steam out of everybody, because apparently, as you said earlier today, the parents, the mothers, or whoever had fallen on the children, so we didn’t know they were even there. That really took a toll on all of us.
Jones: And so you’re smelling the corpses, and it’s very hot and humid, right?
Taylor: Very hot. Very humid. Yes.
Jones: Did you also see the body bags?
Taylor: Yeah. They had a huge staging area and the C-141s were flying in from the States. They would fly in. They had these C-141s. They would load these containers up on the C-141s and they would take them back to Dover, Delaware. So they staged him right there at that part of the airfield.
Jones: So I’ve asked you about kind of the initial impacts, and you mentioned confusion and what’s going on. Let’s say we’re on day four or day five, and we have a pretty good idea of what happened. How are you processing stuff at that point? Then the news is coming in. Not only are the numbers growing, but now we’ve got children, and I don’t know if you knew this at the time, but maybe we’ve got three children in the same body bag, that sort of thing.
How is this all affecting you on day four or five?
Taylor: I don’t remember. It was just getting the job done at that point, getting the mission done. So that was my mission focus: let’s get this done. Never heard the story about three or four children in body bags. Never heard that story until now. That’s breaking news for me. But at that point it’s, let’s drive on; let’s get the mission done. That was the focus, and I think that was pretty much what everybody was doing.
Jones: You almost kind of become a robot, that kind of thing? You are kind of shut down and just work and don’t think about what’s going on?
Taylor: Pretty much, yeah. I think at a certain point, it would probably have become overwhelming at some point, that amount of death—and I talked to guys who had dealt with that in Vietnam and that kind of thing. And so those conversations came. One guy in particular, I remember, was another Crew Chief that I’ve met and we were talking, and he said, “in all these years and his time in Vietnam, he saw a lot of death but never saw anything like that before.”
You stay focused on the job. Do the job. Get the job done, and get out of there.
Jones: What do you remember about—about a week after you take off, so now your plane has its wheels up and you’re heading out of Georgetown? What do you remember about that?
Taylor: Well, I remember Thanksgiving. We were there during that period. They flew in meals for us, Thanksgiving dinners. And I want to say—it’s a long time ago—I remember the guys coming back because a lot of those guys were from Fort Clayton. Grave Registration showed up maybe on day three or day four into the mission. So the infantry guys were out of Clayton, which is not far from Corozal, not far from the air base, Albrook. I knew some of them. They came back and they began to burn their uniforms. That’s how bad the stench was in their uniform. And there was this huge pit and they put all their clothing in, and they burned it. They were issued brand-new clothing, brand-new jungle fatigues and boots.
That’s when, according to my mind, the mission was done for us.
Jones: This happened in Guyana?
Taylor: It did, yes. So in my mind, I said, okay, we’re Mike Charlie at this time; we’re mission completed.
Then I’m preparing myself because now we’re getting ready to go back in a few days. I’m not sure of the exact date that we departed; I’m thinking maybe Friday or that Saturday. That is what comes to mind, but I’m not sure of the exact date.
Jones: At what point does this kind of settle in? I’m imagining you now; you’re back at base in Panama. I’m assuming you’re living in barracks. You head back to the barracks. You’re by yourself or maybe talking with other people. I mean, at what point does it settle in like—what the heck was I just involved in? What was that week I just spent?
Taylor: It did. I can’t give you a timeline of when it happened or anything like that, but there was that moment where you kind of realized, maybe when we were landing back in Panama or whatever, I don’t know. But you don’t walk away from that kind of thing unscathed. You just don’t. That’s a long shadow. It sticks with you for a while; it sticks with you forever. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.
Jones: You just said that this event cast a long shadow, and then you said you won’t forget it. But is it only a memory or is it a shadow in some other way? You said you don’t get out of this kind of thing unscathed.
Taylor: Yeah. I’m after seeing that and learning the story behind it, because initially we didn’t know the story. I don’t practice any kind of religion. In fact, after learning this story, I’m very skeptical of isolating folk or isolating myself or just blindly believing anything because I’ve seen the evil that people have done in the name of religion or politics. God knows what else? That was my largest takeaway psychologically. Every year in the fall, I get this feeling about myself. I—it’s hard to describe it, but it’s really weird, and I rarely talk about it. Probably less than my immediate family. Very few people I know ever went there. My family knows because they saw the plaque on the wall from Guyana for the awards I received while I was there. I very rarely speak of it.
Jones: What awards did you receive?
Taylor: Humanitarian Service Medal and the Joint Commendation Service Medal.
Jones: Let’s say you’re somewhere; you’re at a restaurant or at a store and you overhear somebody use that phrase, “don’t drink the Kool-Aid.” Does that always kind of make you pause a little bit when you hear that?
Taylor: It actually pisses me off because people don’t realize what that symbolizes to me.
Jones: What does that mean to you?
Taylor: Death. These people blindly followed this man. They trusted him. As a result of that trust, he killed 900 or so Americans. That’s a lot. So to joke about something like that is not cool.
Jones: Has that ever happened to you where you’ve heard somebody use that phrase and you just kind of said something?
Taylor: Yes.
Jones: What happened?
Taylor: They just kind of looked at me, kind of like I was crazy or whatever. But I said that’s not cool. That’s not cool. A lot of people died drinking the Kool-Aid that you are making fun of right now. That’s not cool.
Jones: Did you tell them that you had actually seen it?
Taylor: I did not.
Jones: If I could give you a pill that would take away the memories you have from what you saw in Guyana, would you take that pill?
Taylor: No.
Jones: Why not?
Taylor: I think those kinds of experiences shape people and they shape your thinking. As I said earlier, it is a long shadow, and I learned from it. I wouldn’t give that back. I want that experience in my life.
Jones: Let’s pretend we’re on one of those news channels where you’re supposed to fix the world in two minutes, one of those kinds of situations. And I just ask you, what is the thing that most stands out in your mind when you remember that week in a country you had never even heard of before, and I had never heard of it either, until the news reports? Now all of a sudden you’re in a country you’d never heard of before. You’re there for a week. What most stands out in your mind from that time?
Taylor: That’s a good question, because there are a lot of emotions in there. I don’t know that I can answer that question. Again, I go back to the whole thing about blindly following someone or being afraid to question authority. Just any number of questions that would come to my mind. An old Colin Powell book that I read years ago. I’m a big fan of his. Never be afraid to question the experts, and never be afraid to challenge people on what they’re telling you. And don’t blindly follow anything. I don’t care who it is. That would be my takeaway.
I don’t know that that could have ever been prevented because of how isolated they were. Isolation is, I think, the biggest factor in that these folks weren’t allowed to hear news outside of what you decided to allow them to know.
Freedom of the press would be my thing. Doesn’t matter if you’re in a foxhole in the middle of Timbuktu or whatever; take information and evaluate it and make sure it’s factual and don’t be afraid to challenge people or information for that matter. Because it’s dangerous when you get to a place where if it—if it’s above questioning and I can’t question it—I don’t want a damn thing to do with it. I don’t care who it is. I don’t want anything to do with it. That would be my take from it. Challenge it and challenge it, whoever’s giving it to you.
Jones: You’ve seen the consequences of what happens when people get into a situation where they’re not able to challenge and they’re not able to question.
Taylor: Absolutely.
Jones: Is there anything else that comes to mind that we haven’t touched on here that you’d like to share?
Taylor: I would. It’s not related. Well, I guess it is related. I’ve spoken to a few people in the last few years about this incident here. And very few of them understand the military’s role in this entire thing. I think it’s a story that is overlooked and maybe not talked about enough, whether it be military or civilians for that matter.
Jones: I agree with you. My hope is that other veterans will hear what you’re saying and then be willing to share their own stories because it’s really important to get these stories recorded.
Taylor: There were a lot of good soldiers there and a lot of good airmen there during my timeframe. We did a tremendous job. They deserve the recognition that comes with that. That is what I’d like to say. I’d like to say thank you to all those guys.