Baldomero López

Baldomero López was a Tampa Marine who went over the seawall at Inchon on September 15, 1950, leading a rifle platoon of Company A, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines. Contemporary photographs show him climbing with a pistol and a grenade. Moments later, wounded as he tried to throw the grenade, he covered it with his body so the men packed on the wall would not take the blast. He was killed where he fell.

The Medal of Honor citation is the public record: the landing, the wound, the choice. He was twenty-five. The Marine Corps and the city that raised him kept his name on ships, schools, and a stretch of Florida road. Those are public honors. They are not a second medal invented here.

This register lists him as killed in action at Inchon — accounted for, not missing. The photograph and the citation are enough. This page will not invent an MIA line for a lieutenant who died on the wall in front of his own platoon. It will not add dialogue he did not leave.

He was born in Tampa, Florida, on August 23, 1925. The photograph is the official landing image the Corps still uses when it names the seawall. This page will say a platoon leader had a grenade in his hand and used his body when the throw went wrong, and that the citation is in the naval record because the Navy wrote it down. Inchon was a landing, not a rumor, and the wall is a place the Corps can still point to. The men packed behind him lived because he stayed on the grenade.