On one of these deployments, he was one of the first pair of Combat Controllers clandestinely infiltrated into the Laotian Civil War, under the call sign Butterfly.
When that assignment was superseded by Raven Forward Air Controllers, Jones returned stateside and transferred into the U.S. Army as a warrant officer to finish his military career with U.S. Special Forces in 1969.
As the Korean War began, 18-year-old Charles Larimore Jones joined the U.S. Air Force and underwent enlisted basic training.
Postwar, he returned to the United States and volunteered into the Air Force's Combat Control Team program in 1954.
[2] In 1962, Jones re-entered the Combat Control field, serving with the 62d Operations Group at McChord Air Force Base.
While with Jungle Jim, he was the first combat controller dedicated to duty in the Vietnam War with the U.S. Army Special Forces.
He was then charged with running the schooling for Combat Controllers; he added Scuba diving, HALO jumps, and medical training into the Air Commando curriculum.
As part of this duty, he had the forward air control manual he helped create translated into both Lao and Thai.
He also earned a Juris Doctor at the Thomas Goode Jones School of Law of Faulkner University (at the time, Alabama Christian College).