Photo By 1st Lt. Courtney Caimona | U.S. Marine Corps 1st Lt. Phillip D. Jones, second from the right, leads lane...... read more read more
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FIVE HILLS TRAINING AREA, Mongolia - What does it mean to uphold a legacy? For some, it means attending the same university as generations of one’s family line. For others it means taking over the family business. For U.S. Marine 1st Lt. Phillip D. Jones, it means serving in the military like both of his parents.
Jones was born on Okinawa, Japan, in 1990. Both his mother and father were serving as pilots in the U.S. Air Force when Jones was born. The formative years of Jones’s youth were spent on Okinawa where fundamentals such as politeness and sportsmanship were learned from his neighbors.
“I loved it,” said Jones. “The people are nice. It’s a very polite culture. There is a lot of history (on Okinawa), and I am a big history buff. They also have a lot of basketball, which I love.”
Jones returned to Okinawa in March of this year as an infantry officer with Company C, 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, currently assigned to 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force, under the unit deployment program.
Since returning to Okinawa, Jones has had ample training opportunities both on and off of his home island. One of those opportunities was Exercise Balikatan 2014, where Jones spent three weeks training with his unit alongside regional allies in the Republic of the Philippines.
“The squad leaders, staff sergeants and platoon commanders got together from both the U.S. Marines and the (Armed Forces of the Philippines) and just talked and had a great time sharing training,” said Jones.
Jones is currently in Mongolia for the Khaan Quest 2014 exercise, which provides U.S. Marines and Mongolian Armed Forces and service members from 22 other nations an opportunity to share military knowledge, bilaterally train for international peacekeeping missions, and increase overall security of the Asia-Pacific region.
Khaan Quest is a regularly scheduled, multinational exercise co-sponsored by United States Marine Corps Forces Pacific and United States Army Pacific, and hosted annually by the Mongolian Armed Forces.
“I think the main point (of the exercise) is building bilateral interoperability,” said Jones. “Sharing our tactics, techniques and procedures and learning their TTPs (tactics, techniques, and procedures) will help us build a global footprint.”
While Jones’s platoon will be participating in the field training exercise portion of Khaan Quest 14, Jones himself will be taking on a unique role as the only U.S. Marine participating as a lead instructor for the FTX.
The FTX portion of the exercise consists of eight training lanes, including a cordon and search training lane lead by Jones. The forces participating in the FTX are broken into eight groups and rotate through one lane per day until all eight lanes are complete.
After Khaan Quest 14 concludes Jones will be looking forward to returning to Okinawa for an additional month before returning to his permanent duty station in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
| Date Taken: | 06.19.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 06.23.2014 20:59 |
| Story ID: | 134128 |
| Location: | FIVE HILLS TRAINING AREA, MN |
| Web Views: | 362 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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