After 66 Years, A Brother's Remains Return From World War II

Nearly 66 years to the day that his older brother was killed in action, 82-year-old Kenneth Bayne learned his sibling’s remains will come home to rest. Pfc. Robert Bruce Bayne, class of 1939, died serving his country in Germany in 1945.

Unidentified for decades, buried first in Germany and later France, Kenneth Bayne was informed by the Army Wednesday that his brother’s remains are expected to be brought to Dundalk in the next few weeks. Bayne and his twin brother Calvin submitted to DNA samples several years ago in attempt to help the Defense Prisoner of War and Missing Personnel Office identify their brother, whose enlistment dental records, it was eventually discovered, had been in error.

“I don’t want to be in the limelight, but I would like people to know about my brother," Bayne said in an interview with Patch. "I’m telling you he was a nice man, a good guy who took care of us, and the kind of brother you could look up to.”

Bayne explained his father died when he and his twin brother were 3 years old, leaving his mother with four children, including an older sister, to care for alone.

“He was 10 years older than us—he was the man of the family,” Bayne said.

Robert Bruce Bayne initially was granted a deferment from the Armed Services because his mother was a widow with young children. He later enlisted on June 7, 1944. Until that time, he’d been supporting the family by working at Western Electric. He also took night school classes at Johns Hopkins.

“He was embarrassed,” Bayne said. “By 1944, there were no healthy young men walking around the streets, only woman and children. He was 26. He asked my mom and she said okay. When he went in, he sent every dollar home.”

A soldier serving in the 76th Infantry Division, 141st Regiment, Bayne was killed crossing the Rhine River on March 28, 1945. Gen. George S. Patton’s U.S. Third Army had just begun crossing the Rhine north of where Bayne was attempting to bridge the river in a rubber boat with three other soldiers. Bayne and two men were killed by German gunfire, but one soldier survived.

About a year after his brother’s death, the lone survivor from the boat, Lt. Brooks Alexander, visited to Dundalk to meet Bayne’s mother and his lost comrade’s family. Brooks had been wounded in the attack.

“He came and told us what happened before I ever got any information from the Army,” explained Bayne, 15 at the time his brother enlisted. “He felt it was his responsibility.

Initially not identified, Bayne was buried in a German cemetery. Later, his remains—probably in the 1950s, his brother guesses—were removed and buried in a military cemetery in Draguignan, in Southern France, still unidentified because of the dental record errors.

It wasn’t until July 2008, Bayne said, that his hope to return his brother’s remains to Dundalk was renewed. Bayne was watching a CSPAN interview with new leaders at the Defense Prisoner of War and Missing Personnel Office, who said their mission was to bring home those missing in action, including from World War II. For years, he said, the emphasis had been on soldiers missing in action from Southeast Asia.

At a meeting on March 28, 2009, 64 years to the day his brother was killed, the Defense Prisoner of War and Missing Personnel Office turned over 100 pages of documents of Pfc. Bayne’s death and the circumstances regarding his remains to his younger brother. On July 21, 2010, Kenneth Bayne said, his brother was disinterred from his grave in France and the remains were sent to Hawaii.

In Hawaii, DNA samples from the remains were turned over to a lab and proved a match to the twin brother’s samples.

“Lo and behold, I get a call and he’s coming home,” Bayne said, adding that plans are being finalized to place his brother’s remains with his wife's remains and Calvin's wife’s remains at family mausoleum at the Oakland Cemetery.

Bayne said he and his brother will buried there as well someday.

“My brother was ‘a lifer’ in the Boy Scouts and took my brother and I camping many times,” Bayne said. “He liked to fool around with boxing and was an athletic guy. He used to get down on his knees and box with me when I was young. I remember one time,  as our mother called us in, he turned his head and I took advantage and batted him. He said, ‘One minute,’ to our mother and hit me back, playing around.

“He was a good guy.”