Bahr, Colonel Roy W.

Colonel Roy W. Bahr

September 10th, 1930 — February 7, 2020

He joined the Naval Air Reserve on his 17th birthday and served as an aviation ordinance man until July 1950. At that time, he joined the US Army and graduated from the Infantry Officer Candidates School in Fort Benning, Georgia in 1951.

His first Special Forces assignment was in 1962 where he was a guerrilla warfare instructor in the Unconventional Warfare Department, US Special Warfare School, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Bahr arrived in Vietnam in March 1968. In Vietnam, he first served as a Commanding Officer of Special Forces Forward Operational Base (FOB) #3, in Khe Sanh. When he arrived Khe Sanh was under siege and had been since late January 1968. FOB #3 remained in Khe Sanh until June 1968. Bahr became Commanding Officer of FOB #1 in Phu Bai, then CO off FOB #2 in Kontum and finally as the first Commanding Officer of Command and Control Central.

He is the recipient of the Combat Infantry Badge, the Expert Infantry Badge, Master Parachute Badge, Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Cluster (OLC), Soldiers Medal, Bronze Star Medal, Air Medal with OLC, and other awards and decorations. Units he commanded during combat operations in Vietnam were awarded two Presidential Unit Citations, the highest award that a unit can receive for Extraordinary Heroism. Bahr was inducted into the Infantry OCS Hall of Fame in 1972.

Surviving in addition to his wife, Maxine Williams-Bahr, are stepson Mark Williams and wife Kristin, granddaughter Anna Bryn Williams of Knoxville; sister, Audrey Grimes of Newport, RI, and nephew Stephen and wife Kimberly Grimes, their children Mathew and Grace of Hampton Bays, New York, and niece Anne Grimes and Rene Walker, and their children Hunter, Cole, and Avery, of North Providence, Rhode Island.