Buchanan graduate Bud Baker took 13 rounds from a machine gun while serving his country in Vietnam.

“Seven in the chest, three in the right leg and three in the right arm,” said Baker, who was with the 199th Army that day on a mission to free Prisoner’s of War in North Vietnam.

He still remembers when it happened: April 24, 1968.

“Battle started at 12 o’clock and I got out of there about 3 1/2 hours later when they finally got to me,” he said. “It was a place called Iron Triangle.”

The fact that Baker is alive today is a credit to members of his unit who pulled him out. He still gets emotional talking about those men more than 40 years later.

“We were brothers — closer than brothers. We could finish each others’ thoughts before they could,” he said. “If it weren’t for them I wouldn’t be here right now. I owe everything for them.”

Dressed in full Army uniform, Baker was one of hundreds of people who visited the Cost of Freedom tour, which opened Thursday at Niles High School. It includes a 360-foot replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. Etched upon it are the names of more than 58,000 Americans who died in the conflict.

Baker said 47 of them are from his unit.

“It’s a healing process that takes place in our community and our state,” said Baker, who lives and Coloma and is a chaplain for Lakeland Hospital. “I don’t want to come, but I felt like I owed it to them. I just owe it to them.

“I’m glad it is here because people need to know that freedom isn’t free. There is a cost.”

Kneeling down in front of the black wall, Benton Harbor’s Lin Lisle did a pencil sketch of the name Thomas Williams Hastings — a classmate of hers at Battle Creek Central.

“It’s very disheartening to know that the war is still killing off people through Agent Orange,” said Lisle, whose husband Gary served in Delta Company First Battalion Ninth Marines during Vietnam.

Gary visited the traveling wall when it was in St. Joseph four years ago. He was too emotional then to sketch out the names of the members of his company that died.

He gave it his best shot Thursday.

“It gets a little easier as time goes on,” Gary said as he sketched the seventh name of 22. “What’s really tough is it took me a long time just to remember the names. People would come in and be there a week or two weeks and then they are gone. You hardly had a chance to get to know them.”

The Cost of Freedom Tour continues through Sunday. It is open 24 hours to anyone.