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Pfc Robert B. Bayne enlisted at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland on 7 June 1944.

On 28 March 1945, while patrolling the Rhine River in an inflatable raft, Pfc Robert Bayne, Lt Alexander Brooks, and two other enlisted men were attacked near Schwegenheim, Germany. Bayne and the officer were wounded and all four men fell into the swift waters of the river. The lieutenant was rescued, but the enlisted men were not found.

Between 1945 and 1946, Army Graves Registration personnel exhumed remains of three men from two different locations when German citizens reported the graves containing the remains of American soldiers recovered from the river in March 1945. Among items found with the remains were military identification tags. Two of the men were identified as enlisted men from the raft: Pvt Edward Kulback and Pfc William Gaffney. But, due to limited forensic science of the time, the remains of the other individual cound not be identified and were interred at the U.S. Military Cemetery in St. Avold, France as "unknown".

In 1948, the remains of the unknown soldier were exhumed to compare them to available records for Bayne. After several years of analysis, the remains could not be identified and were reinterred as "unknown" at the Rhone American Cemetery and Memorial in Draguignan, France, in 1951.

More than 60 years later, analysis from DPMO and the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) developed case leads, evaluated records and determined that modern forensic technology could offer methods to identify the remains. In 2010, the remains were exhumed once again for analysis.

Among other forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, scientists from JPAC used dental comparisons and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory used mitochondrial DNA -which matched that of Bayne's brothers- in the identification of his remains.

His remains were cremated and are now interred in a niche at the Garden Chapel Mausoleum of the Oak Lawn Cemetery in Eastpoint, Maryland.