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Ware shares memory of fallen comrade

Elkins veteran Roger Ware stands Friday near the grave of his friend, Lance Cpl. Dennis Baxter, at Little Arlington Cemetery in Cravensdale. The Elkins friends served in the same location in Vietnam for two short months before Baxter was killed.

ELKINS — Each year around Memorial Day, the gravestones of veterans at Little Arlington Cemetery in Cravensdale get spruced up with American flags and a little extra attention.

For Elkins veteran Roger Ware, one grave stands out — it belongs to his buddy Dennis Baxter, a 19-year-old Marine who was shot down in battle on Jan. 26, 1967. Ware was there when Lance Cpl. Baxter died, as members of 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment taking part in Operation Tuscaloosa got into a two-hour shootout at a river crossing southwest of Da Nang.

Before the barrage of enemy fire took out Baxter and wave after wave of more than 50 other Marines that day, Ware said he remembers speaking briefly with his longtime friend.

“I told Dennis, ‘Hey buddy, you keep low.’ He said, ‘Oh, they’ll never get me.’ You know, those were things we all said,” Ware recalled during an interview Friday, sharing his experiences in Vietnam and other places over his 32 years of active military service.

Ware said he and Baxter played together as kids and had known each other in school. Although Baxter grew up in Elkins and attended Elkins High School, his parents had divorced and moved away. His father had moved to New Jersey, while his mother had moved to Bridgeport, Ware said. So when Baxter enlisted in the military, he joined in Clarksburg but was shipped out from Summit, New Jersey.

Ware enlisted in the Navy, after receiving “some greetings from Uncle Sam” that would have drafted him into the Army in 1965. He went through Navy boot camp in Great Lakes, Illinois in November 1965, and was stationed briefly in Jacksonville, Florida, before being assigned to support the U.S. Marines as a field medical officer, known as a hospital corpsman.

Ware said he was home on leave before getting ready to head to Vietnam, and he ran into Baxter’s niece at a grocery store on Diamond Street. She gave him Baxter’s address and told Ware to look for him, but Ware said he never thought they would end up seeing each other.

Once he landed in Vietnam in 1966, Ware said he remembers having to run from mortar attacks right away, and he didn’t know if he could stand it.

“It’s like standing in front of an oven, and you just smell the musty smell of the jungle,” he said, explaining he and the other guys were instructed to grab their gear and run as fast as possible for over 2 miles to get out of the line of fire. “I think, ‘Wow, I’m out of shape. … I’m not going to make it over here.'”

His service with the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment included work with the Fox and Hotel companies at Chu Lai, Con Thien, Khe Sahn, Dong Ha and An Hoa, he said.

As a “medical guy” he tried to take care of the wounded, but there was only so much he could do.

“Here I was, 19 years old,” Ware said. “You’re doing the best you can, as quick as you can.”

He said it’s hard to describe how close he became with his fellow soldiers.

“Those guys would gladly give their life for you,” Ware said. “With my platoon in Vietnam — I spent a lot of time with them, and we went through hell.”

Ware said he’d been in Vietnam a little while before he unexpectedly ran into his Elkins friend. He said he was walking past a Marine who was cleaning a machine gun, and it turned out to be Baxter.

“I look at him, I say, ‘Hey, I know you!’ He says, ‘Rog, what the heck are you doing here?'”

“Small world, isn’t it?” Ware said.

“From the Marines side, I think we were the only two people from Randolph County there at the same time, in November 1966,” Ware said.

The Elkins pals only served in the same location in Vietnam for two short months before Baxter was killed.

He said members of 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines proudly call themselves “life-takers and heart-breakers,” and they were tough.

Baxter also was smart and experienced, and Ware said he never thought he’d be killed.

“It’s luck. It’s just pure luck. Training will help you … but no matter how good you are, things can happen to you,” Ware said.

He remembered putting his friend’s lifeless body into a helicopter to be shipped back to the United States, and Ware said he assumed Baxter was interred in the Bridgeport/Clarksburg area.

On Veterans Day in 1969, Ware was home on leave and said he went to Little Arlington Cemetery with his mother to check on her uncle’s grave. She wasn’t sure where it was, so they were walking through the markers.

Ware had no idea he would stumble upon the marker for his longtime friend.

“I’m walking, looking at the graves,” Ware said. “I look down, and I see Dennis Baxter. It was like I’d seen a ghost. … I was just caught up in emotions.

“I swept off the grass (from the marker) and I just kind of said, ‘Wow, he finally made it home’ — and here I was, thinking he was in Clarksburg.”

Ware said he visits the grave at least once a year to scrape grass off the marker, and he also checks on the graves of other veterans he knew — both those who were killed in action and those who’ve passed away after their military service was over.

He makes a point of honoring veterans, and he has worked with local and state officials to name several local memorial bridges.

Ware spent 32 years in active military service all over the world, and 28 of those years were in direct support of the U.S. Marine Corps. When he retired, he was a chief warrant officer 4. He was named the 2016 National Marine of the Year, and Ware has received numerous awards, including the Bronze Star with combat “V,” Purple Heart (3), Meritorious Service Medal (2), Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal (3) and others.

“When you stay in 32 years, my goodness you go a lot of places,” he said, mentioning he was deployed to Antarctica in 1968, and also served all over the United States and had deployments to the Western Pacific, Mediterranean and Caribbean. He also served in the Persian Gulf in support of Operations Desert Shield, Desert Storm and Provide Comfort.

Since Ware retired in 1997, he has become active with several veterans groups. Ware is a national staff officer for the Marine Corps League, serving as adjutant of the Mideast Division, and he also is national staff officer of the Military Order of the Devil Dogs fellowship society. Ware also is past commander of American Legion Post 29 in Elkins, and has worked extensively with the Toys For Tots nonprofit organization.

Ware and his wife, Judy, live in Elkins.

Region Editor Beth Henry-Vance can be reached at bvance@theintermountain.com.

Editor’s note: This is the first article in The Inter-Mountain’s Unsung Heroes series, which will feature veterans in our area and share first-hand accounts of their military service. The series will publish each Monday between now and Veterans Day.

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