Ray Baldon was one of the twin sons of Ozro, Baldon Sr. & Mabel Parrish-Baldon.  He was born in Wisconsin on May 6, 1919.  Besides his twin brother, he had three other brothers and one sister.  It is known that he and his brother, Fay, worked on farms in Walworth County, Wisconsin.

    Knowing that it was just a matter of time before he would be drafted into the army, Ray with Fay, and their friend Donald Schultz, enlisted in the Wisconsin National Guard in Janesville.  Another member of the company was his cousin, Phil Parish.  On November 25, 1940, the National Guard unit was federalized as A Company, 192nd Tank Battalion.  He was now a member of the regular army.

    While Ray was training at Ft. Knox, his little brother injured his leg which resulted in a serious infection.  In an attempt to cure her youngest son, Ray's mother moved to Belvedere, Illinois, near her oldest son.  

    After training for nearly a year, the 192nd was sent to Louisiana to take part in maneuvers.  It was after the maneuvers that the members of the battalion were told that they were being sent overseas.  Ray received a furlough home to say his goodbyes. Once home Fay and Ray took their little brother from doctor to doctor hoping to find one who could cure him.  At one doctor, they were told that by the time they returned home from overseas, their little brother would be dead.

    Ray returned to Camp Polk were the battalion's tanks and other equipment was loaded onto flat cars.  Traveling west by train, Ray arrived in San Francisco and taken by ferry to Angel Island.  There, he received a physical and inoculations for duty in the Philippine Islands.  

    On Thanksgiving Day, 1941, Ray arrived in the Philippines.  He spent the next two weeks preparing for maneuvers.  On December 8, 1941, he lived through the Japanese attack on Clark Field.

    With A Company, he fought to slow the Japanese conquest of the Philippine Islands.  It was on April 9, 1942, that he became a Prisoner of War when the Filipino and American defenders of Bataan were surrendered to the Japanese.

    On April 9, 1942, Fay became a Prisoner Of War when the Filipino and American forces on Bataan were surrendered.  With his brother, Ray, he took part in the death march.  He and many other members of A Company, made their way to Mariveles at the southern tip of Bataan, there they started what became known as the death march.

    Fay made his way north toward San Fernando.  Once there, he and the other POWs were held in a bull pen.  The pen had been used by other POWs the night before and full of human waste. 

    After spending the night at San Fernando, the POWs were packed into small wooden boxcars used to haul sugarcane.  The cars could hold forty men, but the Japanese packed 100 men into each one.  They then shut the doors.  The heat and smell was unbearable. Those men who died remained standing.

    At Capas, the POWs disembarked.  The bodies of the dead fell out of the cars.  The POWs walked the last few miles to Camp O'Donnell.

    As a POW, Ray was held at Camp O'Donnell.  As many as fifty POWs died each day.  There was only one water faucet in the camp for 12,000 POWs.  In an attempt to get out of the camp, Fay and Ray volunteered to go out on a work detail back to Mariveles.  It was there Ray, became ill with dysentery.  He was returned to Camp O'Donnell, where he died on May 7, 1942, at about 2:15 in the afternoon.  He was buried in Section D, Row 3, Grave 10.

    After the war, the remains of Pvt. Ray Baldon were reburied at the American Military Cemetery outside of Manila.  The reason this was done was that his mother did not want him buried alone in a grave meant for his brother and him.  His family also had a memorial headstone placed at Billings Creek Cemetery in Vernon County, Wisconsin.

    One final part of this story needs to be told.  Ray had probably already died when his little brother was treated with a new medicine named penicillin.  His little brother, who the doctor had predicted would be dead before Ray and Fay would return home, not only lived to see the end of the war but still resides in Wisconsin near their childhood home.