EXCLUSIVE: ‘I lost him the way I found him’: Grieving father tells how adopted US Army vet son came into his life via a phone call and then left the same way after being killed in Ukraine war

Two life-changing phone calls bear close parallels for Howard Jones.

The heartbroken father said goodbye to his adopted son this week after the army veteran was killed fighting for Ukraine.

When Department of Defense officials broke the devastating news over the phone two weeks ago, Howard couldn’t help but be reminded of the call he took from Social Services early in his late son’s life.

“You could almost say that’s that one phone call on the other side of his life. I got a call that he had been killed in action,” Howard told DailyMail.com.

Jeff Jones, 48, from Maine, was killed on July 31 when he was hit by a high-explosive mortar shell in Bakhmut, an eastern part of Ukraine largely occupied by Russians.

Howard adopted his son when he was just eight years old after Jeff’s mother was deemed unfit to care for him.

“Jeff kind of came into the world in a violent way and he obviously went out in a violent way. It’s a bit ironic,’ he said.

Born in Maine, he grew up in the slums of Lewiston with his mother living with severe mental health problems.

His biological father, Howard’s brother-in-law, ran away when he was just six months old.

Jeff played with many “rougher kids” but quickly learned how to defend himself mentally and physically.

When he was five years old, his mother was committed to a mental health facility and Jeff was sent to live with relatives while she recovered for over a year.

She was eventually released and they lived together again, wandering the streets of Cambridge and Boston.

When the pair were apprehended by police, they refused to reveal any information about their identities.

“He stuck to it, he didn’t say anything about who he knew or where he was from,” Howard said.

It was decided that Jeff was not safe in her care and he was placed in foster care for about six months.

At one point, authorities were able to link him to Howard and Earlyline.

“I got a call from social services telling us ‘we found Jeff. We didn’t know where he was. They had just disappeared. Haven’t communicated with anyone in the family,” Howard explained.

“We went down, picked him up, did all the necessary paperwork to take them in as a foster child, and in about two years we adopted him.”

Jeff graduated from high school and took a job for two years before joining the military and completing basic training at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia.

He trained to skydive after joining the Army Airborne Division and jumped out of airplanes until knee problems disqualified him in his early 20s, Howard says.

“His life’s purpose of joining the army and making a career out of it was just shattered,” says Howard.

Jeff eventually married and the couple had a son, but they separated when the boy was a child.

His adoptive mother Earline died of breast cancer in 2007 after a very courageous and determined battle.

Jeff worked in Boston for several years before moving to his father in Columbia, South Carolina, and then to California

In 2019, Jeff returned to Maine and lived in Westbrook, where he worked in a factory that made Covid test kits.

After a year and a half, he started traveling for six weeks to visit friends in Poland prior to the war in Ukraine.

He returned to Maine, got another job before moving to Perry, Georgia at the start of the Russian invasion.

“For three months all he talked about was coming over and volunteering, fighting the Russians. He was determined to go,” says Howard.

“I helped him, but I wouldn’t fund him directly. I told him “I don’t want to be chased by your mother”.

“My focus was on convincing him to do humanitarian work.”

He went to Europe in March 2022, ended up with a friend in Krakow, Poland, and accepted a volunteer position at train stations where refugees arrived.

“Jeff helped everyone, all the families, where they had to go through immigration and make their way wherever they went in the world.

“Unfortunately, that wasn’t very challenging. So he decided to go to Lviv in Ukraine where he met a group of people, mostly medics, who had a team and were forming a new team to form a medic team, not to join the Ukrainian army but to be volunteers sent by the Ukrainian army, to go to the front and help treat injured Ukrainian soldiers and recover bodies.”

Jeff was trained to assist in field triage and his primary function was to guard the medics and wounded troops.

During that time, Ukraine trained new recruits, but with limited resources.

Howard claims that the medical teams would train the new recruits and befriend a group of people killed by a Russian missile.

“Jeff’s group had to go in to collect the bodies. I don’t know how many injury cases they handled, but they had to help support that,” he says.

One day while on patrol, Jeff’s group was fired upon by artillery and they were forced to take shelter behind a building that was hit by a shell.

A concrete wall collapsed and landed on Jeff, putting him in a local hospital for five days.

“He was saved by his helmet,” Howard says.

When he got out of the hospital, he decided he wanted to come home and Howard helped him with money to return to Georgia.

But when he came back almost immediately, Jeff started talking about another trip to Ukraine.

“The same thing started all over again,” he said.

“I tried to convince him to take EMT training in Georgia and serve as an EMT, which I thought would be fulfilling, but he didn’t show enough interest to go.

“What he did was he came to Poland and joined the American Ukrainian Foundation. They received supplies from all over the world.

“He worked with them for about four weeks. We corresponded a lot during that time.’

“When they made a delivery, he came somewhat close to the Kiev front, I believe, where he made contacts with the Ministry of Defense and signed up for the Ukrainian army, as a foreign fighter.

“He trained a lot with foreign fighters, some of whom had no military experience at all.”

Jeff kept in touch with Howard, but got used to keeping quiet for about a week.

On July 31, Jeff had returned from a shootout and sent a message to Howard saying that he had volunteered to go on a mission that all other groups of people feared.

“He said he’d tell us when he got back,” Howard.

“I messaged him, never got a reply back. Less than four hours later I received a phone call from a friend who said he had been killed.’

Though shocked and overwhelmed with grief, Howard says the news came as no shock after preparing for the worst.

“Within five or six hours of learning he was alive, I received unconfirmed information from the embassy that he had been killed.”

Four days later, he received the call from the US embassy to say that Jeff’s death had been confirmed by the Ministry of Defense in Ukraine.

“When I heard it was done, I wasn’t necessarily surprised. He voluntarily admitted that he was a risk taker. He was protective of the group of people he was with.”

Jeff’s body was recovered from the battlefield and his ashes are expected to return to Bangor International Airport in September.

This week, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine held a ceremony to recognize Jeff and his service. His picture was in the middle of a table with his name, date of birth and date of death printed on a wooden box.

Howard is proud of his son and hopes people understand why it was so important for his son to try and make a difference.

“He told a lot of people and realized how risky it was, and he was willing to sacrifice himself.

“He wanted to give meaning to his life.”