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DENTON – Like most combat veterans, he keeps his campaign medals in perspective because to soldiers like him, the ones who never made it home are the real heroes.
But while Caroline County native Jim Baker, 92, is proud of his 21-year Army career, he takes in stride his own experiences as an infantryman that earned him a Purple Heart, a Bronze Service Star and an Army Commendation Medal with “V” Device. More often, he remembers the names and heroics of his fellow soldiers – be they American, Korean or Vietnamese.
Dressed in his trademark flannel shirt and jeans held up with suspenders, James Ormand Baker sits surrounded by memorabilia bathed in sunlight. This is the room he added onto the front of the old Central School, built in 1879, near Burrsville. He lives here with his wife of 13 years, Jan Taylor Melfa Baker, a well-known local artist.
His memory is razor sharp as he recalls his days as a soldier, and his skills as a storyteller are equally honed.
Born Feb. 1, 1932, and a 1949 graduate of Caroline High School, Jim joined the National Guard’s 29th Division based in Denton in March 1950, less than four months before the start of the Korean War. He worked at DuPont’s nylon plant in Seaford, Delaware.
While many speculated his division would be activated, it never happened.
In January 1952, Jim’s mother passed away and he volunteered to go on active duty two months later. Completing his basic training at Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, he went to leadership school and on to Fort Benning “for just a very brief spell,” he said. That’s when he was ordered to Korea, where he was attached to “an experimental regiment in the Third Infantry Division, the 65th Infantry Regiment, which had been part of the Puerto Rican National Guard,” he said.
He served alongside Korean, Puerto Rican and Black soldiers, with Puerto Rican officers. The company to which he was attached had seen very heavy combat, decimating it.
On July 21, 1953, Jim wrote to his paternal aunt, Nora Baker Craft, in Denton. “Please excuse me for not writing you sooner, but I have been pretty busy,” he penned in the three-page letter signed, “Love, Ormand.”
“Well it sure don’t look much like there is going to be a truce,” he wrote. “Things are the worst they have been for over 2 years over here.”
Three days later, on July 24, he and his company “went to plug the gap” where “the Reds made the big break through at Kumsong Bulge,” he wrote to Nora.
The operation became a “full-scale attack” involving “hand-to-hand” combat with the Chinese forces. He received “the bad end of a hand grenade that got thrown,” spraying shrapnel into his left hand and flak jacket, he said.
“I knew that it stung my hand – I didn't know how bad,” Jim said. “I got two or three really bad bruises in my flak jacket where other pieces of shrapnel went in but didn't penetrate the skin. But when daylight came that morning, I was just blood from head to foot and didn't even realize it, and my hand had gotten so I couldn't hardly move, and so they medevaced me back and put me on a hospital train to Taegu (Air Base).”
Three days later, the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed on July 27, thus ending the battle and the war. The Battle of Kumsong River was one of the last battles of the Korean War.
For his courage under fire and the wounds he sustained on July 24, Jim was awarded a Purple Heart.
Jim stayed on in Korea, returning home in March 1954. He bought a black 1954 Ford coupe with a 460 police interceptor engine for less than $1,400 cash. He contemplated leaving the Army, but a recruiter persuaded him to reenlist with a tantalizing offer: Teaching a 4-week rifle skills course to ROTC cadets at Fork Union Military Academy in Virginia. He would later be assigned duties as rifle platoon sergeant and instructor at other colleges.
While on this tour, he met Naomi Carolyn Jackson of Brookneal, Virginia, and married her on Nov. 5, 1954. They not only lived in several states, they visited all 50 states, mostly in their large RV, and “a whole bunch of foreign countries,” Jim said.
Their children recently commemorated what would have been their 70th wedding anniversary. Carolyn passed away 20 years ago, but their legacy includes four children – David, Leslie, Mary Elizabeth and Vicki Lynn –13 grandchildren, 18 great-grandchildren and one great-great grandchild so far.
“My wife said we moved 13 times in 10 years, and that was about the truth,” Jim said.
Another 17-month stint in Korea – “one of the real good tours” where he hunted pheasant during down time – was followed by hand surgery to remove the shrapnel lingering in the top of his hand four years after the wound, and a three-year tour in Germany where he was on the rifle team the last two years of his tour.
For a brief period, he left the Army and tried his hand at farming back home, but Carolyn convinced him to reenlist when an unattended air compressor blew out the side of the barn. “You ain’t no damn farmer,” she said. “You better get back in the Army.”
In 1967, Jim was sent to language school to learn Vietnamese. He was 35 years old, a husband and father, and deployed to Military Advisor Group Vietnam (MAG-V) as a psychological operations and civic-action advisor in the IV Corps Tactical Zone, which comprised the 16 southern provinces in the Mekong River Delta area. He stayed 15 months on his first tour, then extended it three months.
It was during this extension that Jim was awarded his Army Commendation with a V for valor.
According to the General Orders narrative dated Dec. 5, 1968, Sgt. 1st Class Baker “distinguished himself by heroic action on Oct. 10, 1968. While evacuating severely wounded Vietnamese soldiers during the night, he “fearlessly exposed himself to enemy fire as he maneuvered (a) small boat up the Sadec canal,” the report stated.
While the Navy was operating on the Mekong River, “they were tied up; they couldn't get a boat down there. These were good soldiers … and the nearest medical facility was up at the province headquarters, so nothing to do but get them up there,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Acting with complete disregard for his personal safety, he crossed four known Viet Cong communications and liaison routes enroute to medical facilities,” the report stated.
At the time, Jim was part of a small team. “I lived with the Vietnamese, ate with the Vietnamese, did operations with the Vietnamese,” he said. “We had a little Boston Whaler boat, and I could get about 12 Vietnamese in it, but I couldn't get it up on step, because they had a 40-horse Evinrude (engine) on it.”
They slowly made it to their destination, and the Army recognized that Jim’s “heroic actions were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Army and reflect great credit upon himself and the military service.”
He returned stateside to the transportation school at Fort Eustis, in Newport News, Virginia, to help write a new program. But that tour was short-lived. On Jan. 1, 1970, he was on a plane back to Vietnam, to the province just north of Sadec Province where he had evacuated the wounded. He returned home Christmas morning, and finally retired in 1972 out of Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia, where he and Carolyn had bought a home.
After her death in 2004, Jim moved back to Caroline County, and began renovating his home, the old Central School to which he and his father, James Henry Baker Jr., added two bedrooms 60 years earlier.
After retiring from the Army, Jim earned his bachelor’s degree and worked several jobs, settling into a career as a safety engineer. He retired from full-time civilian employment almost 40 years ago. “I got a well-rounded education,” he said.
Besides traveling, he researches local and family history and creates jewelry with precious stones as a lapidarist. Nine years ago, he entered politics when Caroline countians elected him to the Republican Central Committee.
His 21 years of active duty were “exciting,” Jim said. “I had a lot of really good tours, and I had not so good tours, and I did a lot of shooting.”
