Members of the honor guard walk alongside the coffin of Brig. Gen. David Baker, who was buried on Wednesday at Arlington National Cemetery. (PHOTO BY VIOREL FLORESCU / May 13, 2009)
ARLINGTON, Va. - In 1972, a wounded U.S. Air Force pilot named David Baker was wheeled into a Viet Cong prisoner of war camp in the jungles of Cambodia, badly wounded and awkwardly bundled in a makeshift bicycle litter.
His six fellow American POWs in the camp didn't give the 25-year-old Huntington resident much chance to live. A bullet had nicked a major artery in his leg. A U.S. medic who was a prisoner at the camp concluded that a blow to the injured limb could cause a fatal hemorrhage.
But survive he did, long enough to see freedom again. Long enough to see his kids grow up.
Yesterday, the five surviving Americans who had been held prisoner with Baker, including one who flew half way around the world to be there, assembled at Arlington National Cemetery for the funeral of their POW comrade.
"A man who would not die in 1972, where we would have had to bury him in a POW camp, has died," said the former medic, retired Army Capt. Mark Smith, who lives in Bangkok. "When you have prayed for someone like that, when you've loved someone like that, then when they do die, you come."
Smith was among more than 200 people who, along with Baker's wife, Carol, and sons, David Jr., 38, and Christopher, 30, followed the horse-drawn caisson that bore Baker's flag-draped coffin through Arlington's tree-shaded rolling hills, where Baker was laid to rest.
The military honors awarded him included a "missing man formation" flown by F-15 jets. F-15 fighters had been Baker's favorite military planes, and the formation's four jets appeared suddenly, shattering the quiet of the Virginia spring afternoon, before one streaked upward into a cloud-studded sky.
Baker, - who survived eight months of captivity before being freed in a prisoner exchange, then resumed a military career that took him to the upper rungs of the Air Force before he retired in 1997 as a brigadier general - died at 62 on Jan. 29 of heart failure at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.
His son David Jr. said his father had battled circulatory problems related to the gunshot wound for the rest of his life.
During the funeral, held at Arlington's Old Post Chapel, retired Maj. Gen. Donald Shepperd eulogized Baker as "a good husband, father, brother and friend," whose toughness allowed him to survive a year of harsh interrogation by the Viet Cong, then return home to his family and military career.
Baker Jr. had been so young when Baker was shot down over Cambodia on June 17, 1972, that he did not recognize his father when the two were reunited at Kennedy Airport eight months later.
Baker said his father did all he could to re-bond with his family, and resumed a military career that saw him become the only Vietnam-era POW to fly missions over Iraq during the Gulf War. Shepperd said one of the most enduring images of the Gulf War - the burned-out Iraqi tanks and other military vehicles that littered the road leading back to Baghdad - had been created by the deadly handiwork of fighter pilots flying under Baker's command.
Baker went on to serve in the Pentagon as a vice director of operational plans to the Joint Chiefs. "I think all of us were very proud of Dave's success in the military," Smith said.
His six fellow American POWs in the camp didn't give the 25-year-old Huntington resident much chance to live. A bullet had nicked a major artery in his leg. A U.S. medic who was a prisoner at the camp concluded that a blow to the injured limb could cause a fatal hemorrhage.
But survive he did, long enough to see freedom again. Long enough to see his kids grow up.
Yesterday, the five surviving Americans who had been held prisoner with Baker, including one who flew half way around the world to be there, assembled at Arlington National Cemetery for the funeral of their POW comrade.
"A man who would not die in 1972, where we would have had to bury him in a POW camp, has died," said the former medic, retired Army Capt. Mark Smith, who lives in Bangkok. "When you have prayed for someone like that, when you've loved someone like that, then when they do die, you come."
Smith was among more than 200 people who, along with Baker's wife, Carol, and sons, David Jr., 38, and Christopher, 30, followed the horse-drawn caisson that bore Baker's flag-draped coffin through Arlington's tree-shaded rolling hills, where Baker was laid to rest.
The military honors awarded him included a "missing man formation" flown by F-15 jets. F-15 fighters had been Baker's favorite military planes, and the formation's four jets appeared suddenly, shattering the quiet of the Virginia spring afternoon, before one streaked upward into a cloud-studded sky.
Baker, - who survived eight months of captivity before being freed in a prisoner exchange, then resumed a military career that took him to the upper rungs of the Air Force before he retired in 1997 as a brigadier general - died at 62 on Jan. 29 of heart failure at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.
His son David Jr. said his father had battled circulatory problems related to the gunshot wound for the rest of his life.
During the funeral, held at Arlington's Old Post Chapel, retired Maj. Gen. Donald Shepperd eulogized Baker as "a good husband, father, brother and friend," whose toughness allowed him to survive a year of harsh interrogation by the Viet Cong, then return home to his family and military career.
Baker Jr. had been so young when Baker was shot down over Cambodia on June 17, 1972, that he did not recognize his father when the two were reunited at Kennedy Airport eight months later.
Baker said his father did all he could to re-bond with his family, and resumed a military career that saw him become the only Vietnam-era POW to fly missions over Iraq during the Gulf War. Shepperd said one of the most enduring images of the Gulf War - the burned-out Iraqi tanks and other military vehicles that littered the road leading back to Baghdad - had been created by the deadly handiwork of fighter pilots flying under Baker's command.
Baker went on to serve in the Pentagon as a vice director of operational plans to the Joint Chiefs. "I think all of us were very proud of Dave's success in the military," Smith said.
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