Heroes From History- Episode 1- "Jumpin' Joe" Beyrle

The Chronicle of Joe Beyrle: An American in the Red Army

Staff Sergeant Joseph R. Beyrle stationed in Ramsbury, England with the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR) of the 101st Airborne Division in 1943.
Joseph R. Beyrle was born in Muskegon, Michigan, on August 25, 1923. In his early years, Joe struggled in school and was held back in his first year because of his poor English. His grandparents had immigrated to the United States from Bavaria in southern Germany, so in his household, German was spoken just as often as English. Joe was also color blind, which presented him with many unique challenges throughout his life. At times his mother would have to check just to make sure that he was wearing a matching pair of socks.
Like so many Americans of that era, the Beyrle family struggled to make ends meet during the Great Depression. The stock market crash of 1929 signaled the beginning of a decade-long period of global economic instability. By 1933, unemployment in the United States had reached twenty-five percent. In his later years, Joe recalled times when he and his family had to wait in long lines to receive surplus government handouts. Two of his older brothers, John and Bill, joined a work relief program called the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), where young men, ages eighteen to twenty-eight, could find jobs in construction, conservation, and public works projects. From 1933 to 1942, over three million Americans had worked in the CCC.

John and Bill Beyrle spent most of their time cutting and planting trees in the upper peninsula of Michigan. They sent half of their earnings to the family back home, but it wasn’t enough to save their house from foreclosure. The Beyrles were evicted from their home, but luckily, Joe’s grandmother took all nine members of the family into her home. In order to help support the family, Joe’s older siblings dropped out of school to find jobs. To earn some extra money, Joe found work sweeping at a local barbershop. Determined to see at least one of their children graduate, Joe’s parents pushed him to stay in school and earn his diploma.
Joseph Beyrle graduated from Saint Joseph High School on June 7, 1942. He was voted by the senior class as the Best Informed, Most Obvious Temper, Class Shark, and Best Dressed. Joseph was also a gifted athlete who excelled in baseball and track & field. He could run a mile within five minutes, a feat that caught the attention of college recruiters. Joe was offered a scholarship from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, to play baseball for the Fighting Irish. While this was an amazing opportunity, Beyrle decided to turn down the scholarship so he could volunteer for the United States Army.
Just six months earlier, Americans had been shocked by news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. On December 7, 1941, twenty-one ships from the U.S. Pacific Fleet had been sunk or damaged, and over 2,400 Americans had perished in a surprise attack launched by the Imperial Japanese Navy. The day after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government officially declared war on the Empire of Japan. On December 11, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy honored their alliance with the Japanese by declaring war on the United States.
With America now actively involved in World War II, millions across the country either volunteered or were drafted into military service. Of the 16 million Americans who served in the U.S. armed forces during World War II, over 10 million were draftees. Joe decided to volunteer since he believed that he would be drafted sooner or later. In Muskegon, one particular recruitment poster caught Joe’s attention. It depicted a U.S. Army paratrooper armed with a Thompson submachine gun dangling by a parachute after jumping out of an airplane. The bold text at the bottom of the poster read; “Jump into the Fight.” This subliminal message inspired Joseph Beyrle to become a paratrooper.
At the recruitment center, Joe had to admit on his application that he was color blind. This was a potentially serious problem for him. Inside the transport aircraft, red and green signal lights prompted the paratroopers to prepare, and then jump from the plane. Joe asked the recruiting sergeant if his color blindness would disqualify him from the Airborne. The Sergeant asked him if he had ever gotten a traffic ticket for running a red light. Beyrle replied, “No.”
“Then don’t worry,” said the sergeant, “A dozen guys will push you out when the light changes.” With an approval stamp on his application, Joseph Beyrle was accepted into the United States Army.
During a brief stint at Camp Custer, Michigan, Beyrle and a dozen other recruits were assigned to the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR) of the 101st Airborne Division. From there they boarded a train destined for Toccoa, Georgia, where they would undergo airborne training. After three days of travel, Beyrle and the rest of the recruits arrived at a sprawling Army camp in a beautiful but remote area of northeastern Georgia. Just overlooking the town and its military base was a mountain called Currahee, which in Cherokee means, “Stand Alone.” Currahee became the motto of the 506th PIR and was often heard as a war cry shouted by the paratroopers either on the battlefield or jumping out of a plane. Those like Beyrle who served in the 506th were dubbed “Currahees.”

Originally named Camp Tombs after a Confederate Civil War general, Camp Toccoa became the training center for several airborne units. Ironically, since the local municipal airport was too small to accommodate C-39 and C-47 Army transport aircraft, trainees had to travel 137 miles southeast to conduct jump training at the airborne school in Fort Benning, Georgia. Over 17,000 U.S. Army paratroopers were trained at Camp Toccoa during World War II, including the men of Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Regiment, who were immortalized in the novel and TV miniseries, Band of Brothers.
The commander of the Regiment, Colonel Robert F. Sink, wanted to establish the 506th PIR as an elite fighting unit. To that end, the training regimen at Toccoa became one of the most grueling in U.S. Army. An obstacle course featured a section where paratroopers had to crawl under barbed wire wrapped in pig entrails to simulate the gruesome nature of warfare. Since the camp didn’t have a rifle range, trainees had to march thirty miles to Clemson University in South Carolina for shooting practice. The paratroopers were often put through long endurance marches and exhausting hikes as part of their conditioning for combat. The hallmark of training at Camp Toccoa was a six-mile run up and down Currahee Mountain.
One day after a long period of training exercises, Beyrle and the trainees were treated to a delicious supper in the mess hall: spaghetti and meatballs with parmesan cheese, and for desert, strawberry shortcake. It was a treat that many of the men who grew up during the Great Depression had never experienced. Just as everyone was finishing up chow, Colonel Sink and the other officers burst into the mess hall to give a surprise command: three miles up, three miles down Currahee on the double. The message was clear; always be on guard and expect the unexpected.
On December 1, 1942, the Currahees were put to the ultimate test of physical endurance, a cross-state march from Camp Toccoa to Fort Benning. After reading about a unit in the Imperial Japanese Army that broke the world record for distance marched, Colonel Sink believed that his men could do better. In three days, the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment marched across the state of Georgia. Of the 556 enlisted men assigned to the unit, only twelve failed to complete the march.
Joseph Beyrle was better prepared for the hardships of training than most, having excelled in physical fitness throughout his youth. Beyrle was promoted to Technical Sergeant and would eventually reach the rank of Staff Sergeant. He specialized in communications and demolition as a member of I Company, 3rd Battalion of the 506th Regiment. He also developed a passion for parachuting, which earned him the nickname of “Jumpin’ Joe.” After nearly a year of training, the Currahees were transported to Camp Shanks, New York, where they would prepare for deployment overseas.
Located just north of New York City, Camp Shanks was the main embarkation point for U.S. troops being shipped off to Europe, earning the nickname of “Last Stop USA.” After a brief stay in New York, Beyrle and his comrades traveled to the East Side docks on 42nd Street in Manhattan, where they boarded an old British luxury liner, the HMS Samaria. Sailing out into the Atlantic, the ship joined a large convoy off the coast of Long Island transporting U.S. troops and supplies to Great Britain. The convoy was heavily guarded by destroyer escorts and Allied aircraft to protect the ships from possible attacks by German U-Boats that were still prowling the Atlantic.
On September 17, 1943, exactly one year after Joseph Beyrle joined the U.S. Army, the 506th PIR arrived in Liverpool, England. From there they were transported to the town of Ramsbury, just west of London. For the next nine months, the Currahees trained to take part in the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe, codenamed Operation Overlord. American paratroopers conducted numerous combat exercises in rural England while Allied ground troops practiced amphibious landings along British coastlines.

In April 1944, Joseph Beyrle was one of three paratroopers selected from the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment to partake in a covert mission into Nazi-occupied France to deliver gold coins to the French Resistance. In the dead of night, Beyrle parachuted near the town of Alencon in the Normandy Peninsula where he made contact with the Resistance. Ten days later, he was secretly flown back to England, undetected by the Germans. One month later, Sergeant Beyrle dropped into Normandy once again to deliver gold coins to the French Resistance. Not long after he returned to his unit at Ramsbury, all of southern England went into lockdown. The men were confined to their staging area and all contact with the outside world was cut off.
Extraordinary efforts were undertaken to ensure that the location of the invasion was kept secret from German intelligence. Even the Allied troops, which had spent over a year preparing for the invasion, did not know where they would be landing. Only the highest echelons of the Allied military command knew of the plans for Operation Overlord. With D-Day just around the corner, Sergeant Beyrle and his comrades were finally briefed on where they would be landing: Normandy, France. Ironically, it would be Joe’s third jump into this region.

In the years leading up to D-Day, the Germans made preparations to repel the Allied invasion by building the Atlantic Wall, a formidable series of coastal defenses stretching from the Bay of Biscay and along western France to the arctic coast of Norway. Allied intelligence determined that Normandy was the weakest section of the Atlantic Wall. Having become aware of this, the Allies carried out an elaborate deception to convince the Germans that the invasion would take place anywhere but in Normandy.
Operation Overlord called for 24,000 American, British, Canadian, and French airborne troops to drop deep behind enemy lines after midnight. Their mission was to secure key points and eliminate German positions beyond the beaches, where nearly 132,000 Allied troops were to land at dawn. The area of the Normandy coast designated Utah Beach represented the western flank of the Allied assault. The 101st Airborne Division was assigned to secure four critical routes near the beach to block any German counterattacks and to ensure the rapid advance of U.S. troops coming ashore at Utah. Other objectives included the elimination of German strongpoints, the disruption of enemy communication and movements, and the establishment of a bridgehead across the Douave River.
On June 5, 1944, after days of planning, preparation, and waiting in confined areas, the paratroopers were finally given the go. As a massive armada of ships carried troops across the English Channel towards the beaches of Normandy, transport aircraft filled the skies carrying airborne elements to their designated drop zones. Joe Beyrle wrote in his diary:
“We flew approximately ninety minutes from England when we hit the Normandy Peninsula. We started taking AA and ground fire, flying at approximately 700 feet. Several planes were hit and exploded or crashed. We got the stand-up and hook-up, redlight, greenlight, and jumped at 400 feet and I landed on the church roof at Saint-Come-Du-Mont, taking fire from church steeple, slid down and made my way through a cemetery surrounding a church, over a wall and headed toward our objective, which was two wooden bridges over the Douave River behind Utah Beach. The Germans had torched a house in the area where I jumped and were firing at the planes that followed us. Tracer bullets were criss-crossing the sky. Many troopers were hit before landing”.

The 506th was scattered across the area; only Colonel Sink along with most of 1st Battalion landed at or near their assigned Drop Zone. After landing on top of the church, Sergeant Beyrle found he was all alone. It was very dark and German troops were swarming throughout the area. Hoping to run into his fellow paratroopers, he decided to move towards the assigned objective at the Douave River. On the way, Beyrle carried out the secondary objective of harassing German forces. Armed with explosive charges, Joe singlehandedly blew up a power substation in the town of Saint-Come-Du-Mont. While maneuvering through the hedgerows of Normandy, he accidentally fell into a machine gun pit occupied by a dozen German paratroopers. Now a Prisoner of War, Sergeant Beyrle was taken to German headquarters for interrogation.
The Germans were overwhelmed by reports of paratrooper landings all across Normandy. Chaos and confusion was widespread. While the 82nd and 101st Airborne were scattered across the region, small groups of American paratroopers acting independently were wreaking havoc, eliminating key strongpoints, ambushing German troops, and capturing strategic positions. While the main objectives had not been achieved, the airborne units played a vital role in degrading Germans resistance. At dawn, the Allies successfully carried out amphibious landings along the Normandy coast and gained a foothold from where they would launch the next stage of their campaign to liberate Europe.
The Germans forced Sergeant Beyrle and other POWs captured during the D-Day Invasion to march towards the town of Carentan. Along the way, they came under artillery fire from advancing American units. During the barrage, Joe was struck by shrapnel in his left buttocks and blown into a nearby ditch. Regaining consciousness, he provided critical first aid to two American POWs who had their legs blown off. As a German patrol came by to recover the wounded, Joe and two other POWs decided to make a run for it. Losing his captors and fellow comrades in the hedgerows, Beyrle wandered through Normandy for hours until he was recaptured by the Germans.
Once again in enemy hands, Sergeant Beyrle and other American POWs were sent to the city of St. Lo. The convoy they were traveling in was strafed by U.S. fighter aircraft, but luckily there were no casualties. Later that night, St. Lo was bombed by the U.S. Army Air Force, leaving most of the city in ruins. Amazingly, not one bomb struck the area where the POWs were being held. The next day, Beyrle and the other prisoners where marched to the village of Tessy Sur Mur. Nearby was a monastery, which the Germans turned into a detention facility that was dubbed “Starvation Hill."
Interrogators were especially harsh to Beyrle when they learned that he was of German ancestry.
"I was interrogated 20-24 hours a day; they were trying to get all the usual questions answered. Why me, a German, was I fighting for the Jews, Roosevelt, and Morganthau against my own people? Sometime during the questioning I called a German officer a SOB and woke up several days later in a hospital with a big headache and a bashed head and later I was taken back to the monastery”.
For the next few weeks, Sergeant Beyrle endured grueling treatment as an American POW. He was put to manual labor with other prisoners, helping the Germans rebuild damaged rail tracks across northern France, which were continually being bombed by Allied aircraft. Later he was moved to a warehouse near Paris, where he and other prisoners were kept for two weeks with little food and water. After an exhausting march through the streets of Paris, Beyrle was loaded onto a train transporting POWs east. The boxcars were overcrowded and conditions onboard were unsanitary. During the journey, Allied fighter aircraft attacked the train, riddling it with a hail of bullets. Inside Joe’s boxcar, several POWs were killed and two dozen were wounded. But the train did not stop, and the prisoners remained locked inside for five more days until reaching their final destination.
When the train finally came to a stop and the doors were opened, the prisoners found themselves at Stalag XIIA in Limburg, Germany. There, Sergeant Beyrle was registered as a POW, given his serial number, a shower, a shave, and a chance to write to his family back home. A few days later, the Germans began moving the prisoners further east.
On September 17, 1944, Beyrle arrived at Stalag IIIC in Alt Drewitz, Germany (modern day Poland), just forty-five miles east of Berlin. His group was the first of over 2,000 American POWs who were held at this camp, along with French, British, Soviet, Italian, Serbian and Belgian prisoners. One day while working outside the compound, the prisoners attempted to steal potatoes from a wagon and were fired upon by German guards. One POW was killed and Beyrle was shot in the right arm.

There were frequent discussions among American POWs about the possibility of escape. Sergeant Beyrle was a member of a committee comprised a group of prisoners who were responsible for security and escapes. They discovered that several plans to break out of the camp were thwarted because the Germans were tipped off by an inside source. In order to find out the identity of the mole, the committee planted false information and traced back the source of the leak. After a military tribunal held by the prisoners, the suspect was found guilty and executed for treason. Later it was discovered that the GI in question was a German national who was planted amongst the POWs as a spy. It wasn’t long after the mole had been neutralized that Beyrle began plotting his own escape.
In POW camps, the most precious commodity was cigarettes, which were used as a form of currency and negotiation. Sergeant Beyrle had recently won sixty packs of cigarettes in a game of dice. While talking with two fellow POWs about plans for escaping, they came up with a unique idea.
“After discussion we came up with a plan which we took to the Escape Committee. It was quite simple. I would offer one of the guards walking outside the barbed wire ten packs of the cigarettes if he would let us cut the wire while he was walking post and then go through when his replacement was walking past. After several meetings through the wire with him, he agreed he would get five packs before and five packs after we escaped”.
One night, Joe Beyrle and two of his fellow GIs cut through the wire fence after giving cigarettes to the guard. Once outside the wire, they made their way to a rail yard located just south of the camp. Every night, from nine to eleven, a train would come passing through which, according to one of their sources, would take them east through Poland. Hopefully they would make contact with either the Polish Resistance or Russian troops advancing from the east. Beyrle and fellow POWs, Brewer and Quinn, snuck onto a German freight train and, after a few hours, they came to a stop. When they got out, they were horrified to find that the train had taken them to Berlin, the capital of Nazi Germany.
The escaped POWs hid in the freight car the entire day until it got dark. That night, British bombers from the Royal Air Force attacked the city causing widespread havoc. While maneuvering through the rail yard, the men came across an elderly German worker. Beyrle explained to him their situation and offered a few packs of cigarettes in exchange for his assistance. After some tense negotiations, the old man agreed to help them. The exhausted escapees were given a temporary haven, along with some food and beer. The following night, the yard worker hid the escaped POWs in his wagon and transported them to meet with members of the German underground. Beryle, Brewer, and Quinn were introduced to several Germans who promised to help them escape to the west.
The following morning, while hiding in an underground safe house, the escapees were startled by the sounds of gunshots and screams from upstairs. A group of armed Germans stormed the building and rushed into the basement. Beyrle and his comrades were recaptured by the infamous secret state police. He recounts:
“In the next seven to ten days we found out everything we had heard about the Gestapo was true. We were interrogated, tortured, kicked, knocked around, walked on, hung up by our arms backwards, hit with whips, clubs, and rifle butts. When you thought they could do no more, they would think of other ways to torture you. When you would slip into semi-consciousness, they would start again. This went on for days at a time and then they would dump you into a cold, dark cell, with no sanitary facilities and dirty from a previous occupant”.

After days of brutal treatment, a group of German Army officers came to Gestapo headquarters to reclaim the escaped POWs, asserting that they were under the jurisdiction of the Army. The three men were spared further torment by the Gestapo, but they were eventually taken back to Stalag IIIC. Each man was placed in a small cell for thirty days of solitary confinement with meager rations of food and water. Temperatures were dropping dramatically with the onset of winter, threatening to freeze them to death. Thankfully, all three men were released after a week in solitary when visiting members of the Red Cross intervened on their behalf.
By January 1945, Sergeant Beyrle was once again contemplating escape. The POWs secretly kept a radio in their barracks, which kept them up to date on the war. The latest information was that Soviet troops of the Red Army were rapidly advancing through Poland. Three and a half years earlier, Nazi Germany had invaded the Soviet Union, seeking to claim its vast territory and resources. After the epic victory at Stalingrad on February 2, 1943, the Red Army had been relentlessly pushing west, driving the Germans out of the Soviet Union. By the end of 1944, Soviet troops had liberated most of their homeland and were sweeping across Eastern Europe. On January 12, 1945, the Red Army launched a massive offensive from the Vistula River in Central Poland towards the Oder River in Eastern Germany. Warsaw fell to the Russians on January 17, followed by Krakow and Lodz on January 18. Within days Soviet troops were in German territory. Beyrle concluded that his best hope of freedom was to make contact with the advancing Russians.

After much discussion, Beyrle, Brewer and Quinn came up with another audacious plan to escape. While out in the exercise yard, one of them would fake a seizure and the other two would run to get a stretcher. All three would head to the dispensary while the other POWs in the yard would start a fight to distract the guards. The plan unfolded to near perfection as the Germans were preoccupied by the commotion in the yard. Carrying Quinn on the stretcher, Beyrle and Brewer made it past the gate towards the dispensary, but once they were out of sight, they hid themselves inside barrels on a supply wagon. Just outside the camp, the wagon tipped over after rolling over a stone while making a sharp turn downhill, and the three stowaways fell out as the barrels rolled across the ground. As the escapees made a run for cover, German guards opened fire, gunning down Brewer and Quinn. The Germans then proceeded to unleash their guard dogs, but Beyrle was able to make it into a nearby stream where the dogs lost his scent. Having escaped from captivity a third time, Joe began making his way east hoping to reach Russian lines.
For the next three days, Sergeant Beyrle carefully maneuvered his way through German territory. Meanwhile the sounds of artillery and gunfire were intensifying with each passing moment as he neared the frontline. Joe hid inside the hayloft of a barn after a day of heavy fighting between troops of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army. After awhile he began to hear the sounds of tanks growing closer. Finally he could hear voices coming from outside the barn, not German voices but Russian. Advanced elements of the 1st Guards Tank Army had reached his position. Beyrle came out with his hands up, walking cautiously towards the Russians who had their weapons aimed at him. He held up a pack of American Lucky Strike cigarettes and shouted the only words he knew in Russian: Amercanski Tovarish! (American comrade). Naturally the Soviet troops were suspicious, but after a few tense moments, they brought him to their commanding officer.
Sergeant Beyrle was amazed to see that this unit was operating American-made M4 Sherman tanks sold to the Soviet Union as part of the lend-lease act. He was even more surprised to find that the Russian commander was a beautiful young woman, a highly-decorated Red Army officer who commanded a great deal of respect among her troops. Known to him only as “the Major,” in all likelihood she was Aleksandra Samusenko, a legendary tank commander who received numerous awards for bravery, including the Order of the Red Star for singlehandedly taking out three German Tiger Tanks during the Battle of Kursk. Joe wrote:
“I told her that I was an escaped U.S. POW and I wanted to join them and go to Berlin with them and kill Nazis. After much consultation between the commander and the Soviet Commissar, I was allowed to join them and was given a Russian submachine gun with a round drum. The next morning, after very heavy artillery saturation of the area to our west, we left the farm and headed west. There I was, an American escaped POW on an American Sherman tank, with a woman tank commander!”

Aleksandra Samusenko, one of the most famed tank commanders in the Soviet Union during World War II. She allowed Sergeant Beyrle to fight as part of her tank brigade after he escaped from Stalag IIIC.

For the next few days they continued to push west towards Berlin. Sergeant Beyrle quickly proved to be a valuable asset to the Russians by using his demolition skills to help them blow up trees that were obstructing their advance. After fighting several battles through Eastern Germany, the 1st Guards Tank Army found itself within the vicinity of Joe’s former POW camp, Stalag IIIC. Along the way, they liberated a group of American POWs who were forced by German troops to march east; sadly two of the prisoners were killed during the shoot out. The next day, Beyrle and the Russians stormed the camp, overwhelming the guards and liberating thousands of Allied POWs. After securing the area, Russian officers summoned Beyrle to the German commandant’s office.
“The Russians had some quarter-pound blocks of U.S. nitro-starch they did not know how to explode. I blew open the big safe in the office and the Russians were interested in the camera, watches, rings and any Russian rubles. I was able to liberate most of the U.S. dollars and invasion currency as well as Canadian dollars, British pounds, and French francs. I had a satchel as big as a three-suiter filled with currency, which I tied on the back of our tank. I was also able to get my POW record and picture which I was able to bring home”.
After liberating Stalag IIIC, Sergeant Beyrle continued west with his Russian comrades determined to reach Berlin. For the next two weeks, he fought as a Red Army soldier with the 1st Guards Tank Army, witnessing some of the most brutal fighting of the campaign. Soviet troops were advancing in overwhelming strength and numbers, but resistance was intense as German forces fought desperately to defend the fatherland.

One early February morning, Beyrle was riding on a column of Sherman tanks just a few miles from Berlin when suddenly a group of Stuka dive bombers from the German Luftwaffe swooped in to attack. During the ensuing chaos, Joe was badly wounded, going in and out of consciousness from loss of blood as a Russian medic helped him to the rear. He ended up amongst dozens of wounded Red Army troops at a Soviet military hospital in Landsberg an der Warthe, Germany (modern day Gorzow, Poland).
One day, the hospital was honored with a surprise visitor. Sergeant Beyrle noticed that many of the patients were attempting to stand, so he too stood. Joe was awestruck when he saw the VIP visitor coming through. It was Marshal Georgy Zhukov, the most decorated military commander in the history of the Soviet Union. Zhukov was a veteran of World War I, the Russian Civil War, and the Soviet-Japanese Border War. During World War II, he took part in numerous campaigns, including Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk, Ukraine, Byelorussia, Poland, and Berlin. He was also one of only two men to ever earn the prestigious title of Hero of the Soviet Union four times.
As Marshal Zhukov greeted the hospitalized troops, he was astonished to come across an American. Through an interpreter, Beyrle explained to Zhukov who he was, where he came from, and how he wound up fighting with the Red Army. His story fascinated the Russian General, who promised to help him get home.


The next day, Sergeant Beyrle was given the incredible news that he was going to Moscow. After a few days traveling through war-torn Poland, he boarded a hospital train that took him into the Soviet Union. Reaching the outskirts of Moscow, Beyrle was taken by a Russian Colonel through the city to the U.S. embassy near the historic Red Square. Anticipation quickly turned to disbelief when Joe was ushered into a room where two U.S. Army officers questioned him with a U.S. Marine standing guard. When Joe asked why there was an armed Marine with them, they stated that, according to their records, Joseph R. Beyrle was killed in action on June 10, 1944.
When Sergeant Beyrle was captured on D-Day, a German soldier took his dog tags. Later on, U.S. troops discovered the tags on an unidentified body in the Normandy countryside. Back in Muskegon, Michigan, the army had sent a telegram to his parents informing them that he was dead. At his funeral, they buried what they thought was his body in a grave that had a tombstone with his name on it. Not until they received Joe’s postcard from Stalag XIIA in Limburg did his parents become aware that their son was still alive. After a few days of questioning, the U.S. embassy in Moscow confirmed the identity of the soldier in their custody as Sergeant Joseph R. Beyrle.
After an interesting stay in Moscow, Sergeant Beyrle joined a dozen newly-freed POWs headed for the Soviet port city of Odessa in Ukraine. From there, they boarded a ship that took them across the Black Sea to Istanbul, Turkey, and then to Port Said, Egypt. After a brief stay, the Americans were transferred to the HMS Samaria, the same British liner that had brought Joe to England in 1943. From Egypt, the former POW’s sailed to Naples, Italy, where Beyrle underwent surgery at a military hospital to remove shrapnel from his body. On April 1, 1945, Joe left Italy for the long journey back to the United States. On April 21, Sergeant Beyrle finally arrived home in Muskegon, where he had a tearful but happy reunion with his family. For him, the incredible journey was finally over.
Back in Europe, American, British, French, and Canadian troops stormed the heart of Nazi Germany while the Soviets swept in from the east. On April 25, 1945, American and Soviet troops met at the Elbe River near Torgau, Germany, in a symbolic meeting between East and West. Five days later, Adolf Hitler committed suicide inside his underground bunker in Berlin as German and Soviet troops fought a bloody urban battle in the streets of the city. On May 7, Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allied Powers. The following day became known as Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) as millions across the globe celebrated the end of the war. On VE Day Joe took part in a massive victory parade through the streets of Chicago, Illinois.
Sadly, Aleksandra Samusenko, the Russian tank commander who accepted Beyrle into her unit, did not live to see the end of the war. She was killed in action on March 3, 1945, in the village of Zulzefirz, Germany, which is now part of modern day Poland. She was only twenty-three years old.

On November 28, 1945, Joseph R. Beyrle was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army due to injuries he suffered during the war. He went on to work for the Brunswick Manufacturing Corporation where he became a shipping supervisor. On September 14, 1946, Joe Beyrle married his sweetheart JoAnne and they went on to have a daughter and two sons. Following in his father’s footsteps, Joseph Beyrle II served honorably in the Vietnam War as a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division. John Beyrle went on to become the U.S. Ambassador to Russia from 2008 to 2012.
Joseph Beyrle is the only known person to have fought for the United States and the Soviet Union during World War II. On June 6, 1994, during the 50th Anniversary of D-Day, Joe was invited to a special ceremony at the White House in Washington D.C. where he was decorated with medals by U.S. President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin. In his later years, he worked closely with the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and the American Legion. His story has been the subject of two best-selling biographies, The Simple Sounds of Freedom and Behind Hitler’s Lines, both written by Thomas Taylor.

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Additional video footage :

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