John B Kinne
John was born on the 3rd of December 1877, in Beloit, Wisconsin, and he enlisted in, what is now, the North Dakota Army National Guard. When he was deployed to the Philippines in support of the Philippine-American War, he was a Private with Company B of the 1st North Dakota Infantry, and it was his actions on the 16th of May 1899, that would later earn him the Medal of Honor. The citation reads:
With 21 other scouts charged across a burning bridge, under heavy fire, and completely routed 600 of the enemy who were entrenched in a strongly fortified position.
John was personally chosen to join a group of scouts that moved at the head of the military movement through Filipino-controlled areas. These men were known as Young’s Scouts and John had been picked to join the Scouts to replace members that had been killed in action three days earlier. When John and the Scouts reached the Cabon River, and the bridge that crossed it, they found a large number of Filipino soldiers that proceeded to light the bridge on fire. John followed three Scouts over the burning bridge under fire and like the citation states, were able to disperse the enemy and extinguish the flames on the bridge. He was one of five Scouts to earn the Medal of Honor for their actions on that day and one of eleven over a three-day period. John received the Medal of Honor from President Theodore Roosevelt on the 17th of May 1906, and I am unsure when specifically, but he was discharged from the Army around that same time, possibly in 1902.
John attended Fargo College, where he graduated, before moving to Chicago to attend Rush Medical College to receive a medical degree. Two years later, on the 14th of October 1908, John married Gertrude and I did not find any record of the couple having children. When the US became involved in World War 1, he commanded an ambulance company as an Army Captain in France. John Baxter Kinne died on the 18th of July 1954, at the age of 76 and he and his wife are buried in the Fern Hill Cemetery in Aberdeen, Washington: Mausoleum E-1.
