Lt. Jesse Baker, "B" Co. 7th Engineers, was killed by enemy action on Aug. 18, 1967.
Jesse was from Whitmire, S. C. and 23 years old at the time of his death.
Lt. Baker is honored on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Panel 25E, Row 10.

 

BBelow is a video made by his friends.
 

 

 


Pete Conley with Lt. Bakers parents in 1992
I was fortunate to meet and correspond with Lt. Bakers parents after my return from Vietnam. They were wonderful people and it was easy to see where the special qualities of Lt. Baker came from. They have since passed on and, I'm sure, enjoying the company of their son once again. [Pete Conley]

 
 

Up at the Danang airfield in a storage yard on the Air Force side, there was this
wing for an O-1 Bird dog leaning up against the fence along the road.  I
drove by it several times but one day, Jesse Baker came home with it in the
back of a dump truck.  "Good Trading Material" he boasted and the thing sat
around our equipment lot for weeks.  On day, a chopper landed and the crew
chief ran over and asked me if that was my wing.  He went on to say that
they had a couple of Bird Dogs deadlined and could really use it.  When the
deal was done, we had a couple of pallets of plywood which ended up being
used to floor all the hooches in our new camp. [Dick Phaneuf]

Hello. I checked into your site as the result of some thinking I've been doing recently about Vietnam. In the last few years, I seem to need to remember those who were lost. I didn't know Jesse Baker had been killed until some time ago when I was in DC and just happened to look down and see his name on the Wall. I ran into him  just a few times around Nam O during the early summer of '67 when I was a young LT new in Vetnam, but I recall him very well - he and I had a good time talking, as I was from Cheraw, SC, and he was from not too far away in Whitmire. We also had a good time kidding each other about Carolina and Clemson, as in those days the rivalry was pretty intense. We promised to look each other up sometime when we got home - but you know how things go. I just never got back to SC much. I was 3rd Platoon Cdr and XO, H/2/7 1967 -1968; a lot of the time we were over on the hills around the Cu De River, though later the Company went down to Liberty Bridge. I was sad to see Jesse Baker's name, and not know for all those years he'd been killed. Pardon the rambling. I just wanted to say Semper Fi and Best Wishes to the  members of your Company.
Tom Wannamaker, Arcola, Illinois