Tom Baker with a fellow veteran after. Photo by Austin Page.
Story was originally published in The Sylva Herald on March 14. The story was co-written with Jim Buchanan.
Across the centuries war has been a constant in the human experience. Needless to say, war itself has changed along the way – the steel in swords became the steel in rifle barrels; motivations changed, and adversaries changed.
But even among those changes can be found constants such as bravery, cowardice, pride and remorse. Those are some of the constants Tom Baker explores in his new book, “The Hawk and the Dove.’’
By the way, an unusual tandem – the aforementioned hawk and dove – are also constants in Baker’s novel.
Baker crosses the centuries in an account that runs the gamut from Viking aggression through perspectives on the Peninsula War, U.S. Civil War, World War II, Vietnam and Rwanda. Along the way are richly detailed personalities, accounts of battle and the hawk and the dove, observing and intervening to influence those personalities in a mythical and sometimes mystical narrative.
Author Pamela Duncan said, “Tom Baker’s debut novel The Hawk and the Dove is a powerful chronicle of eleven centuries of the human pursuit of war and peace.”
Baker is no stranger to combat himself, having volunteered for Vietnam in 1967 at the age of 18. As both of his brothers had already joined the war, Baker said he felt it was his “duty to his family to continue to serve and fight.”
Shortly after he turned 19, Baker was shipped off to Vietnam with the 101st Airborne. During most of 1968 he served as a door gunner with the 1/9 1st Cavalry.
Even after 49 years, he is still haunted by the memory of those life-changing experiences. “I cannot begin to describe the feelings that I get from my memories at war,” said Baker.
The job of door gunner was perhaps the most dangerous of the war, with a life expectancy exaggerated by some as low as five minutes but generally pegged at around two weeks. That’s likely quite accurate, as more than 5,000 U.S. helicopters were shot down by war’s end with the lives on nearly 5,000 helicopter airmen lost.
Baker survived the pursuit of war and faced difficulties with the next challenge: The pursuit of peace.
Upon returning home, “We were greeted with such hate that we felt like we did not have anyone to talk to that would understand the struggles that we were going through leaving combat,” Baker said. “The protesters called us foul names, spit on us, and the worst of all called us baby killers, even though we were not. We were just thrown into a hard time doing the best we could.”
Through “The Hawk and the Dove,’’ Baker was able to work on the healing process by telling his story from a different perspective.
“At first, it was hard to start writing because I was not ready to combat my demons from war, but writing enabled me to start healing and to show people and the ’Nam protesters that we are not the bad people they make us out to be – that we soldiers are just normal people trying to do a job and survive,” Baker explained.
Baker is currently writing his second book, “Memoir of a Young Warrior Wanna-be,’’ that tells his story through his experiences in the Vietnam War.
Baker continues to serve through community engagement as a co-founder of the Jackson County Veterans Organization. They meet once a month to talk and conduct group outings. He helped start the organization in 2010 as a way to give veterans the opportunity to talk and to let them know they were not alone in what they were going through.
“I did not want other veterans to get treated like we did, and this allows them to have a place where they feel welcome and can talk about what they are going through with people who have been through it,” Baker said.
Having faced the stresses of war, Baker recognizes the challenges of healing and returning to peace. He notes that every day 22 veterans die from suicide from dealing with post-traumatic stress. The Jackson County Veterans Organization recognizes the 22 veterans each year at Western Carolina’s Mountain Heritage Day with its “hump’’ march.
The Jackson County Veterans Organization is open to all veterans of any rank, services, and branches. For more information on the Jackson County Veterans Organization, call Tom Baker at 508-5522.
BREAKOUT
Tom Baker and fellow veteran Laurie Jean Cannady will appear on Monday, March 25 in the Hinds University Center Theatre as part of Western Carolina University’s annual Spring Literary Festival.
