John Richard Bayens

John Bayens – known as “Jack” to friends and family – was born in Louisville, Kentucky on 15 November 1923. He was the eldest of two children raised by Valentine (“Val”) and Rosella (“Rose”) Bayens, and as devoted to his sister Rosemary. The two were “inseparable,” according to the Bayens family, and could often be found on the Ohio River in their little sailboat.

Jack attended St. Elizabeth Catholic Elementary School, St. Xavier, and Louisville Male High School. Always “full of life and [with] a big, contagious smile,” Jack was also of a military mindset, and participated in his school’s ROTC program. The training he received likely influenced his decision to volunteer for the Marine Corps.

Jack was just seventeen years old when he petitioned his parents for permission to enlist. His pitch was persuasive, and on 27 August 1941, he entered the Marine Corps from the Louisville recruiting station. After training at Parris Island, Private Bayens was stationed at the Naval Ammunition Depot in Dover, New Jersey. It was here that he learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s official entry into World War II.

Bayens spent most of 1942 at the Dover depot, earning a promotion to Private First Class during the spring. At some point in the late summer or early fall, he transferred to Company D, Second Tank Battalion at Camp Elliott, California – and lost his stripe into the bargain. Jack’s career as a tanker was brief; in the winter of 1943, he was sent to Baker Company, First Battalion, 6th Marines. He fought with them as an infantryman on Guadalcanal during January and February of 1943, then traveled to New Zealand for a period of rest and recuperation.

Service with B/1/6 seems to have agreed with Jack Bayens. On 1 April 1943 he earned his PFC rating once again, and spent the next several months training with his squad, platoon, and company. There was also time – although far too little for anyone’s liking – to spend on liberty in nearby Wellington.

In October 1943, PFC Bayens and his buddies boarded the USS Feland and sailed from New Zealand – bound for the invasion of Tarawa.

Jack Bayens and his company landed on the island of Betio, Tarawa atoll, on the night of 21 November 1943. The battalion arrived ashore at Green Beach in rubber boats, and prepared for a morning attack to the east which would turn the flank of Japanese positions and help establish contact between hard-hit and depleted units still trapped along the Red beaches.

After a day of exhausting fighting, Baker Company dug in and prepared a night defense. They were in an exposed position, and that night a force of several hundred Japanese troops hit their lines, breaking through in a few places and causing chaos and mayhem through the night and into the early morning hours of 23 November. Ultimately, the Marines held, but paid a stiff price for maintaining their positions.

One of the casualties of 22 November was PFC Bayens, struck in the head and chest by shrapnel from an exploding shell or grenade. “Jack died suddenly, and with a smile on his lips,” wrote PFC John E. Swanson. “He was buried by some of his friends.” Swanson’s letter of condolence reached Louisville before the official telegram announcing Jack’s death.

The next morning, Bayens and nearly thirty other men – many from his own First Battalion, 6th Marines – were laid to rest in a trench grave near where they fell. He was the seventh man buried in this location, called “Gilbert Islands Cemetery” by the 6th Marines, and “East Division Cemetery, Row D” by Graves Registration. The mass grave was later destroyed or built over, rendering the remains of all buried there non-recoverable.

The “Row D” burial site went undiscovered until the spring of 2019, when an archaeological expedition led by non-profit organization History Flight excavated the site and recovered human remains.

Jack Bayens was identified from the History Flight recovery and officially accounted for on 23 September 2019.

CENOTAPHS
Honolulu Memorial, Tablets of the Missing

FINAL BURIAL
Evergreen Cemetery, Louisville, Kentucky