By The Editors

“History has been made whole today, and our nation is bestowing honor on those who have long deserved it.”

President Bill Clinton spoke those words in early January of 1997 at a poignant White House ceremony held to honor the courage and patriotism of seven African-American servicemen who, a half-century after their bravery on the battlefields of World War II, had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Four of the men had been killed in the war. Two had died in the decades after the war.

Thus, only one, former Army Lieutenant Vernon Joseph Baker, was present that day to receive his due as one of those who distinguished themselves “conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of (their lives) above and beyond the call of duty” with acts “so conspicuous as to clearly distinguish the individual above his comrades.”

Vernon Baker died earlier this week at his home in St. Maries, Idaho. He was 90.

Like many, perhaps most of the awardees of the Congressional Medal of Honor, Vernon Baker lived the life of an ordinary individual both before and after those moments when service to his country and the cause of freedom demanded an extraordinary jettisoning of regard for his own life. For Lieut. Vernon Baker those moments came on April 5, 1945 near Viareggio, Italy when he destroyed at least three German machine nests and an enemy observation post that had pinned down his platoon, killing nine German soldiers.

The next night, he was in combat again, leading his men “through enemy mine fields and heavy fire toward the division objective.”

The tales of heroism of his fellow Medal of Honor awardees had the same outline — an instance of extraordinary bravery layered among the ordinary moments of bravery that are a soldier’s story in war.

The 1997 awards rectified a grievous wrong. Until that moment, of the 433 Medals of Honor awarded to those in all of the military branches for actions taken in World War II, none had been awarded to black service members. It took decades of agitation from black and white military veterans and their supporters that gained momentum in the mid-1990s when the Army commissioned an exhaustive review of World War II battles involving black troops. That produced the names of the seven.

First Lieutenant John Robert Fox, of the 92nd Infantry Division, which was also Baker’s outfit; Private First Class Willy F. James, of the 104th Infantry Division; Staff Sergeant Ruben Rivers, of the 761st Tank Battalion; and Private George Watson, of the 29th Quartermaster Regiment had been killed in the wartime battles for which they were awarded the Medal of Honor. A fifth Medal of Honor awardee, Staff Sergeant Edward Allen Carter, Jr., of the 12th Armored Division, died in 1963. The sixth, Major Charles L. Thomas, of the 103rd Infantry Division, died in 1980.

As is typical of military medal winners generally, and especially those who earned the nation’s highest military honor, Vernon Baker rejected the appellation hero to which he was entitled. Instead, after the White House ceremony, he said something which was perhaps more poignant. “I still don’t feel like a hero. I just feel I was a soldier and I did my job, and I think I was rewarded for it.”