 Memorial Fund |
Remember...Paul Eugene Bays
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On February 24, 1943, Paul Eugene Bays was born in Rosemont, Taylor County, West Virginia. His parents were Paul Manuel Bays and Ida Belle Byrd. He had one sibling by the name of Nancy A. Wilfong. Paul grew up in the little community of Rosemont, West Virginia, and attended school in Taylor County. Rosemont is in a secluded area in Taylor County. While Paul was growing up in the twentieth century, it was a time when the fate of democracy hinged on the backs of the brave young men fighting oversees with the Allied forces in World War II. Conditions in Rosemont were really the same as they were in the rest of the country because the war in Europe affected everyone.
On November 1, 1955, the Vietnam War began, which was a war between the pro-communist North Vietnamese and the anti-communist South Vietnamese. The United States entered the war by sending 540,000 troops to support the South Vietnamese in order to stop the spread of communism and to stop the communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh.
| After attending high school in Taylor County and being granted his high school diploma, Private First Class Paul Eugene Bays enlisted in the U.S. Army in the 140th Transportation Detachment, 117th Aviation Company, 52nd Aviation Battalion, U.S. Army Support Command. The jobs of the Support Command were to maintain and repair cargo and assault helicopters. When Paul was killed, he was with his unit at Vietnam in a Vietnamese billet that was leased for their unit and was bombed by a Viet Cong suicide bomber. The whole building was destroyed. Tragically on February 10, 1965, Paul Eugene Bays and his unit made up most of the 21 casualties and 23 wounded that day in South Vietnam. After his death, Pfc. Bays' remains were returned to the United States and buried at Flemington Cemetery in Flemington, West Virginia. He also has his name engraved on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall on Panel 1E, Line 89. |  Military marker for Pfc. Paul Eugene Bays in Flemington Cemetery. Courtesy Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund |
Article prepared by Bryce Sullivan and Roy Pennington, George Washington High School JROTC
March 2019
West Virginia Archives and History welcomes any additional information that can be provided about these veterans, including photographs, family names, letters and other relevant personal history.
