In garrison Baker always wore a fresh set of starched utilities with a blocked cap. Starched and ironed them himself. His creases were sharper than the standard issue Gillette Super Blue double-edged razor blades. Blake was not impressed with the laundry services available in Oceanside, California. But then when you wanted to be the most squared-away Marine that ever lived, how could you find satisfaction from a commercial laundry service? On a hot day after noon chow, Baker would take his second of three shaves, brush his teeth, shower, douse his armpits with Right Guard and change into a fresh uniform. Moreover, he passed the true test of a lifer in that Lieutenant Baker actually liked Marine Corps chow. He ate seconds of the grilled liver on Tuesdays, the fried rabbit that was served on Thursdays, and was the only man in the regiment known to eat the sliced carrot and raisin salad on a regular basis. I came to believe that if Lieutenant Baker had lived in ancient Greece and served the Spartan army in the most minor capacity, the Spartans would have won the Peloponnesian War and changed the subsequent course of Western civilization. A man austere enough to endorse grilled liver, fried rabbit, sliced carrot salad, or the ham and lima bean C-rats is capable of anything.

The lieutenant often took his meals with the enlisted men. He got to know them and care about them. He committed none of the unforgivable sins of the typical second lieutenant. Baker was smart enough to know that when he didn’t know, he didn’t have to pretend otherwise. At these times he would defer to the advice of anyone with a brighter idea, even a common private such as myself. Baker had a broad, wholesome, and charitable worldview, and of course, all of the Marines loved this guy. He was almost everything an officer should be. So it was only natural that when he came up for promotion to first lieutenant, he was passed over. We were slowly gearing up for Vietnam and the Marine Corps, in their infinite wisdom, determined that an officer working in S-1 that couldn’t qualify at the rifle range would be better off selling refrigerators at the Sears store in Topeka, Kansas, than, say, maybe doing a shitload of paperwork in Saigon. On the other hand we had a captain who should have been selling refrigerators on the South Pole. Captain McQueen.