Woodstock, IL.
Date of Birth: 21 September, 1923
Date of Death: 25 July, 1944
Branch of Service: United States Marine Corps
Rank: Private First Class
Unit: Company I, 3rd Battalion, 22nd Marines, 1st Provisional Marine Brigade
Place of Death: Island of Guam, Marianas Islands, Pacific Ocean
Private First Class Robert A. Barker
Navy Cross Recipient
On the morning of July 21, 1944, the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade hit the beaches south of the Orote Peninsula on Guam, the largest island in the Mariana Islands. Among the Marines who came ashore that day was Private First Class Robert A. Barker of Woodstock, Illinois — a twenty-year-old from West Judd Street who had enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserve and trained for exactly this kind of fight. His battalion, the 3rd Battalion of the 22nd Marines, landed in reserve. Within days, they would be in the thick of it.
Robert Allen Barker was born on September 21, 1923, to Glenn A. Barker and his wife, on West Judd Street in Woodstock. The 22nd Marine Regiment had been commissioned on June 1, 1942, at Camp Elliot in San Diego, California, designated as an independent regimental combat team — one of the first of its kind after the start of the war.
The battle for Guam was intense and fast-moving. In roughly twenty days of fighting, American forces drove the Japanese from the island and declared it free of organized resistance. On July 25, 1944 — four days after the initial landing — Robert Barker’s company was brought to a halt by point-blank fire from a partially concealed enemy tank. What happened next earned him the Navy Cross.
Without being ordered to do so, Barker crawled forward through withering machine-gun, mortar, and sniper fire to reach a position from which he could engage the tank with his rocket launcher. His first shot missed. He did not fall back. He steadied himself, held his ground under fire, and fired a second round that put the tank out of action. With the threat eliminated and his company’s advance no longer blocked, he turned and began making his way back to his lines. He was killed by a sniper before he reached them. He was twenty years old.
The Navy Cross was awarded posthumously. Word reached his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Glenn Barker of Woodstock, over the following weekend. The local paper noted that little comment was necessary — that Robert Barker had given his life for his country in a manner that had left nothing but words of praise from his government.
His remains were returned to Woodstock and laid to rest at Calvary Cemetery, where he is buried today.
1st Provisional Marine Brigade
22nd Marine Regiment
Calvary Cemetery
Woodstock, McHenry County, IL.
To visit the cemetery, click on his Headstone
