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Veteran Spotlight

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Like Father, Like Son

by Priscilla Rall

The first Baker, Henry, came to Maryland in 1742. He settled on a farm near Unionville, where his descendant, Wilbur Baker, farmed in the early 1900s. Wilbur only left the farm to serve in WWI in a supply company, driving a truck carrying supplies and sometimes the wounded in France. When he returned to the United States, he married Emma Glisan. They had two children: William Glisan Baker (born in 1923) and Betty Baker Englar. Betty’s husband, Donald, was a coxswain in a Higgins boat on D-Day in Normandy. William, or Bill, took a different route.

Bill grew up working on the home farm, milking cows by hand, making hay, and husking corn. He remembered the fun young people had at husking parties held at night under the full moon. Then they gathered ears of corn in baskets and threw them onto wagons to take to the corn crib by the barn. His mother was an excellent cook. Bill’s favorite meal was having breakfast after milking. It consisted of pudding and hominy, not the choice of many today. Emma really had her hands full at threshing time when she would have to feed about 18 thresher men.

Bill attended a one-room school, which eventually became the Linganore Grange Hall, and then to Linganore High School. In the fall of 1940, he began college at the University of Maryland, majoring in agricultural education.

Also, Bill’s uncle, Monroe Stambaugh, his cousin, Nevin Baker, and good friend, Warren Smith, served in the war. Warren was captured in the Battle of the Bulge and was a POW. He eventually became a well-respected educator in Frederick County. Nevin, after serving in the Marine Corps, went into banking.

At College Park, Bill enrolled in the Enlisted Reserve Corps. By the beginning of his spring semester in his sophomore year, he was told he was now in the regular Army. After a three-day visit home, Bill took the trolley to Union Station, and then on to Fort Lee, Virginia, where he went through basic training. Afterward, he was sent to Camp Lee for technical training and truck driving school. He was soon promoted to T-5, working in the mailroom. Tiring of this, he filled out forms to either enter Officers’ Candidate School (OCS) or join the paratroopers.

The camp commander, D. John Markey, a good friend of Bill’s father, strongly suggested that a rifle company was not the best place to be and urged him to return to Quartermasters’ School at Camp Lee. Bill took Markey’s advice and eventually was assigned to Camp Campbell with the 4332 Service Company as the 2nd Platoon Leader. The company consisted of four white officers and 212 African American soldiers.

First, they were sent to Fort Devan for two weeks, and then they were placed on a convoy that sailed from Boston in April 1943 to Amsterdam. There was still the danger of German U-boats, and the convoy was guarded by destroyers. After safely arriving in Holland, Bill and another officer had the choice of joining Graves Registration or a supply company for an armored unit. They flipped a coin for it, and Bill ended up in a truck supply company. They rode trucks filled with ammunition for howitzers and tanks. When they got to the Remagan Bridge, they had to wait a few days for the engineers to complete a pontoon bridge to replace the damaged bridge. One day, while staying in a German manor house in the center of town, Bill vividly recalled awaking to the tragic news that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had died. Everyone wondered, “What would happen now?”

When in Leipzig, Germany, his company was tasked with taking truckloads of enemy guns, cleaning and repairing them, and then sending them off. The worst experience Bill can remember is when his convoy, carrying ammo, came to a crossroads. The MP there told them to go one direction…the wrong direction! Suddenly, they were confronted with a German howitzer…and quickly turned around. They ended up stuck in a ditch until they pushed the truck out and drove back to safety. Boy, did they give the MP hell for sending them in the wrong direction!

Once, when Bill’s company had crossed near the Remagan Bridge, he was in a foxhole with one of his men when a Messerschmitt flew up the river, shooting at the Americans. They were lucky that time. Usually, ammo convoys had little protection and were prime targets for the Nazis.

Finally, the war in Europe was over, and Lt. Baker was sent to Marseilles, where the troops were staging for the next offense: Japan. He was on a ship for one-and-one-half days, bound for the Pacific when they got a change of orders. They were going home. Bill returned to the shores of the United States, and after a 30-day leave, was eventually discharged in the summer of 1946.

Returning to college, Bill graduated in 1951 with a certificate to teach agriculture. He resumed his friendship with Marguerite “Weetie” Stitely from Woodsboro, who graduated from Hood College in 1947. She became a beloved librarian at Thurmont Elementary School for many years. Bill and Weetie were married in September 1947. They had three children: Bill Jr., Becky, and Katrina.

Bill began a long career teaching agriculture at Emmitsburg and then at Catoctin High School until retiring in 1980. Along the way, he attended an auctioneering school and continued auctioneering even after retiring from teaching. One of his proudest accomplishments was forming the Thurmont & Emmitsburg Community Show, which continues to this day.

No student who took agriculture from “Bulldog” Baker forgot him. He was one of a kind! As a neighbor of the Bakers for 25 years, I treasured their friendship. Sadly, Bill passed away in 2009, and then both Katrina and Weetie followed him in death. William Baker served his country like his father before him, and then spent the rest of his life serving his community. Truly a life well lived.

If you are a Veteran or know a Veteran who is willing to tell his or her story, contact the Frederick County Veterans History Project at priscillarall@gmail.com.

Bill and Weetie Baker

Veteran Spotlight

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by Priscilla Rall

Military Intelligence Service at Camp Ritchie

When WWII began, it was apparent that the United States did not have plans to train intelligence gatherers, which would be vital for our armed forces. One intelligence organization that was soon formed was the Military Intelligence Service (MIS), and it took over Camp Ritchie from the Maryland National Guard in early 1942. The men recruited for this organization were immigrants to the United States from Europe, mostly Jewish, whose native language was German, Hungarian, or French. They became known as the “Ritchie Boys.”

Henry Marcus was a Ritchie Boy who was born in Vienna in 1915. His father fought in the Austrian Army in WWI and was injured several times. His mother was born in Czechoslovakia.

Henry watched as the Nazis invaded Austria and saw Hitler several times at rallies. After six months in the Austrian Army, he got a passport and a one-way ticket to Baltimore, where his aunt and uncle lived. Fortunately, he met Mr. Rosenstock, a lawyer in Frederick, who helped him travel to Frederick and introduced him to the vibrant Jewish community there. He eventually met Rebecca Sclar and her family, and he and Rebecca were married in 1942. Together, they had one son, Ralph.

Henry joined the Maryland National Guard in 1941 and worked as a cook for Col. Markey. Instead of going with the 29th Division on the Carolina Maneuvers, Col. Markey asked him to go with him to Camp Pickett in Virginia. He was there six months when MIS recruited him and sent him to Camp Ritchie. He recalled the intense instructions on photo interpretation, deciphering, interrogation techniques, the German Order of Battle, and even classes on close combat and silent killing.

Just before D-Day in Normandy, the first group of Ritchie Boys was sent to England. Many of them went to France on D-Day, and one even made a drop with an airborne unit, although he had never jumped before. Si Lewen used a megaphone to broadcast propaganda and convince Germans to surrender. Guy Stern improved the army’s propaganda leaflets that encouraged the enemy soldiers to surrender.

Henry travelled to France in September 1944, where he worked with the Army Air Corps interpreting aerial photos and identifying the locations of German gun emplacements. Later, he was assigned to the 8th Armored Division with the Third Army. He gathered intelligence for the Battle of the Roer River, and later his team directed the entire division across the Rhine River. According to his discharge papers, he worked with the Counter Intelligence Corps in Germany and Czechoslovakia.

Some of the men spent three months in Aachen, and then they were sent to the Hurtegen Forest area. According to the Ritchie Boys, they had clear evidence of a large build-up of enemy troops and went to corp headquarters to report the danger. No one believed them, but that night the Nazis attacked in what is now called the Battle of the Bulge.

Most of the Ritchie Boys escaped, but Germans captured Philip Glaessner. He spent three months in Stalag 9A. The enemy soon located the headquarters of the MIS unit called the IPW (Interrogation of Prisoners of War). In a rage, the Nazis murdered them all. Because many of the Germans were passing themselves off as GIs, the Ritchie Boys were often stopped, and because of their foreign accents, had trouble explaining themselves. One was killed although he gave the correct password. It was assumed he was German because of his accent.

SSgt. Marcus’s most dangerous mission was when he was sent to gather intelligence from the Germans for an upcoming Allied offense. He had to don a German uniform and listen to the Germans in their nearby camp. This is something that the government told him never to disclose, as it is against the Geneva Convention, but after 60 years, he felt it was time to tell his story, which he had never shared before his interview for the Veterans History Project. When asked what he said when in the middle of the enemy encampment, he replied, “Not a damn thing!” The most-difficult part of his mission was returning to the American lines. He was stuck in a large shell hole for two days before he could safely return with his hard-won intelligence.

The OSS (Office of Strategic Services) is better known, eventually becoming the CIA, but few Americans know anything about the MIS and its training center in the Catoctin Mountains. Barney Kandel, Henry’s brother-in-law, told me I should interview Henry, and I am very glad I did. Henry Marcus died in 2006, three months after his interview. The Jewish immigrant Ritchie Boys willingly returned to Europe at the risk of their lives, gathering intelligence vital to the Allied victory. They deserve to be recognized as the heroes they all were.

If you are a Veteran or you know a Veteran who is willing to tell his or her story, you can contact the Frederick County Veterans History Project at priscillarall@gmail.com.

Henry Marcus and his wife, Rebecca.