Joseph Beyrle
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Joseph R. "Jumpin' Joe" Beyrle (August 25, 1923 - December 12, 2004) is thought to be the only American soldier to have served in both the United States Army and the Soviet Army in World War II. Born in Muskegon, Michigan, Beyrle graduated from high school in 1942 with the promise of a scholarship to the University of Notre Dame, but enlisted in the army instead.
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[edit] U.S. Army
Upon his enlistment, Beyrle chose to become a paratrooper, joining the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne's "Screaming Eagles" division, specializing in radio communications and demolition, and was first stationed in Ramsbury, England to prepare for the upcoming Allied invasion from the west. After nine months of training, Beyrle completed two missions in occupied France in April and May 1944, delivering gold to the French Resistance.
On June 6, D-Day, Beyrle's C-47 came under enemy fire over the Normandy coast, and he was forced to jump from the exceedingly low altitude of 120 meters. After landing in St. Côme-Du-Mont, Sergeant Beyrle lost contact with his fellow paratroopers, but succeeding in blowing up a power station. He performed other sabotage missions before being captured by German soldiers a few days later.
[edit] P.O.W.
Over the next seven months, Beyrle was held in seven different German prisons, escaping twice only to be recaptured. Beyrle and his fellow prisoners had been hoping to find the Soviet army, which was a short distance away. After the second escape, Beyrle was turned over to the Gestapo by a German civilian. Beaten and tortured, he was released to the German military after officials stepped in and determined that the Gestapo had no jurisdiction over prisoners of war.
Beyrle was taken to the Stalag III-C POW camp in Alt Drewitz, from which he escaped in early January 1945. He headed east, hoping to meet up with the Soviet army. Encountering a Soviet tank brigade in the middle of January—reportedly holding his "hands up and [saying], 'Amerikansky tovarishch, Amerikansky tovarishch"—Beyrle convinced the brigade's commanders to allow him to fight alongside the unit on its way to Berlin, beginning his month-long stint in a Soviet tank battalion, where his demolitions expertise was appreciated.
[edit] Soviet Army
Beyrle's new battalion was the one that freed his former camp, Stalag III-C, at the end of January, but in the first week of February, he was wounded during an attack by German Stuka dive bombers. He was evacuated to a Soviet hospital in Landsberg (now Gorzów Wielkopolski in Poland), where he received a visit from Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov, who, intrigued by the only non-Russian in the hospital, learned his story through an interpreter, and provided Beyrle with official papers in order to rejoin American forces.
Joining a Soviet military convoy, Beyrle arrived at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in February 1945, only to learn that he had been reported by the War Department as KIA on 10 June 1944 on French soil. A funeral mass had been held in his honor in Muskegon, and his obituary was published in the local newspaper. Embassy officers in Moscow, unsure of his bona fides, placed him under Marine guard in the Metropol Hotel until his identity was established through his fingerprints.
[edit] Post-military
Beyrle returned home to Michigan on 21 April 1945, and celebrated V-E Day two weeks later in Chicago. He was married to JoAnne Hollowell in 1946 -- ironically, in the same church and by the same priest who had celebrated his funeral mass two years earlier. Beyrle worked for Brunswick Corporation for 28 years, retiring as a shipping supervisor.
His unique service earned him medals from U.S. President Bill Clinton and President Boris Yeltsin of Russia at a ceremony in the Rose Garden of the White House marking the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994.
[edit] Death
Beyrle died in his sleep of heart failure on December 12, 2004 during a visit to Toccoa, Georgia (the town where he trained with the parachute troops in 1942). He was 81. He was buried with honors in Section 1 of Arlington National Cemetery in April, 2005.
His son, John Beyrle, is currently (2006) the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Bulgaria.
On 17 September 2002, a book by Thomas Taylor about Beyrle, The Simple Sounds of Freedom, was published by Random House. A paperback version, Behind Hitler's Lines, came out 1 June 2004.
In August 2005, a plaque was unveiled on the wall of the church in St. Côme-du-Mont, France, where Beyrle landed on June 6th 1944.
