Joseph Breckinridge Bayne (1880–1964) was born in Washington, DC, into a family of physicians. Like his father, he chose medicine, graduating from Georgetown University Medical School in 1903. Surgery was his real interest, but he kept a private practice in Washington for several years before abruptly volunteering for the British Red Cross in 1916 to serve on the Eastern Front.
The decision would put him at the center of a remarkable episode of Romanian wartime history. When other Allied personnel evacuated Bucharest ahead of the German occupation, Bayne stayed behind to treat the wounded. He ran surgical teams in military hospitals, then, when typhus broke out in the countryside, went alone into the villages to fight it. The Romanian royal family decorated him for the work, and he returned to the country later as an officer of the American Red Cross.
Back in Washington after the war, he served as chief physician for the railroad. During World War II, he volunteered at the Pentagon. He died at 83.
