Karol Anthony Bauer was born on January 13, 1913, in Connecticut. He was the son of Michael Edward Bauer and Karolina Nizinski Bauer. He was married to Marjorie McDowell. He took the oath as a cadet at the United States Military Academy on July 1, 1932, having previously served as an Army enlisted man. During his graduation leave in 1936, he voluntarily enrolled in the U.S. Army Finance School in Washington, D.C., where he completed the Special Officers Course in Accounting for Money and Property. He began his first permanent assignment with the distinguished 26th Infantry Regiment at Plattsburg Barracks, serving there, at Pine Camp, New York, and at Camp Perry, Ohio, until September 1939. After a brief tenure as Provost Marshal at Fort Ord, California, he was deployed to the Philippines and assigned to the 45th Infantry (Philippine Scouts).

Captured after the fall of the Philippines, he was taken as a prisoner of war at PW Camp #1 in Cabanatuan until December 1944, when he was placed aboard the Oryoku Maru en route to Japan. The ship was bombed and sunk by American aircraft at Subic Bay on December 15, 1944, and he lost his life in the attack.

Maj Bauer's name is memorialized in the Tablets of the Missing in the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, Manila, Capital District, National Capital Region, Philippines.

Source of information: www.findagrave.com, alumni.westpointaog.org