Episode 30: Red-Blooded American in the Red Army: The True Story of Joseph Beyrle - The Only Soldier to Fight for Both American and the Soviet Union in World War II, Part IV

This week we wrap up the series on Staff Sergeant Joseph Beyrle who, after several attempts, finally escaped from a German POW camp in Poland, and after walking more than thirty miles east on foot, finally linking up with the Red Army. Initially, the Russians wanted to Joe farther east to be evacuated along with several other American POWs they had just liberated, but he insisted that the was not a liberated POW, but an escaped POW, and as such, he wanted to be allowed to join their ranks and fight the Germans. The unit's commander welcomed him into their ranks, handed him a PPSH-41 (seen above) and he continued fighting for several more weeks.

The commander of the tank battalion Joe joined with a female major with a  long Russian name that he was never able to remember so he simply called her major. A few online sources believe it was Aleksandra Samusenko, a famous Soviet armor commander who was eventually killed after crossing into Germany on the final push to capture Berlin. However, Samusenko was a captain, not a major, and from what I read online and in Joe's biography The Simple Sounds of Freedom, I do not believe Beyrle's major and Samusenko were the same person - and, unlike some of the online claims, there was more than one female armor battlaion commander in the Red Army.

Joe fought alongside Major's infantry force until he was injured by a German dive bomb attack, but not before he was able to help liberate Stalag III-C, the same POW camp he had escaped from nearly a month earlier. The US POW's were shocked when Joe revealed who he was and Joe was shocked to learn that Brewer and Quinn, the two men who attempted to escape with him, were now buried under wooden crosses near the exercise yard. He was unable to learn if they had been killed during the escape attempt of if they had been executed after being recaptured before he was called away by the Russians to blow open the same in the camp commandants office, which he did. Inside were German records of the POWs (Joe's is seen above) as well as money from several different countries. Joe helped himself to a handful of American greenbacks before helping to stuff the rest into duffel bags for the major.

Beyrle continued fighting with the Russians for a few days after liberating Stalag III-C, until he was wounded in a German dive bomber attack and evacuated to a makeshift Russian hospital. One of his greatest regrets was not knowing Major's name and not being able to find out if she had survived the war.

While in the "hospital" he was able to have the shrapnel from the dive bomber removed from his leg but there was no anesthetic to help him during the surgery and nothing to clean his wound with so it eventually became reinfected. His Soviet medical records (above) eventually made their way back into American hands much like his POW record did.

While he was recovering, the hospital was visited by Marshall Gregory Zhukov, the most famous military leader in the Soviet Union who was interested in the American patient at the hospital and who provided him with a personally-written letter, that acted like a passport, to help Beyrle navigate the Soviet Union's bureaucracy and get back to American forces.

Joe used the letter to finally make it to Moscow and found an English-speaking Russian lieutenant colonel who delivered him to the US embassy. The Americans took care of his reinfected wounds, but the were initially suspicious about Joe's story. He had German POW ID tag but his American dog tags had been stolen back in Normandy and it took some time to verify that he was who he said he was (especially since part of the War Department was still operating under the bad information that he had been killed in action in France. Until his identity was confirmed, there was some concern that he was a German agent sent to kill the US ambassador to Russia.

After Beyrle's identity was verify, he was returned home to a joyous reunion with his family. Joe continued to receive medical treatment for his injuries and the Army tried to talk him into staying in the service, becoming an officer, and handling Russian counterintelligence in German after the war. In the end, he decided he was ready to return to civilian life and was discharged from the Army in 1946.

After the war, he married, had three children, and settled into civilian life. 

In 1994, Joe was invited to the White House by President Bill Clinton, where Russian President Boris Yeltson would also be present, for the commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of D-Day. While at the White House, Joe was recognized as the only Allied soldier to fight on both the western and eastern fronts during the war, and Yeltson presented him with four decorations: The Order of the Red Star, the Order of Great Patriotic War, the Medal for Valor, and the Russian equivalent of the Purple Heart.

Those were added to his already impressive medal case which included the Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts, the POW Medal, and Croix de Guerre from France, the Combat Infantry Badge, and Jump Wings with one combat jump star, among others.

Staff Sergeant Joseph Beyrle died in his sleep on December 12, 2004 while in Toccoa, Georgia, where he had trained as a paratrooper. He was 81 years old. The following year a plaque was placed at the church in St. Côme-du-Mont to commemorate his landing on the church roof during D-Day.

From 2008-2012, Joe's son John served as US Ambassador to Russian where he never missed a chance to honor the veterans of the Red Army - including his father - who sacrificed so much to end the Nazi threat to the world.

Episode 29: Red-Blooded American in the Red Army: The True Story of Joseph Beyrle - The Only Soldier to Fight for Both American and the Soviet Union in World War II, Part III

 

Shortly after receiving a telegram that said Joseph Beyrle was a prisoner of war, the Beyrle family received the above telegram saying that he was actually killed in action. This mistake likely occurred when remains in a US uniform wearing the dog tags were recovered following the D-Day invasion. It turns out that Joe's dog tags were taken and worn by a German soldier also wearing a US uniform. If the German had been caught with these on he could have been executed as a spy. Instead he was killed in action. The remains were so devastated that the dog tags were used to identify the remains. The misidentification was only discovered when the Germans got Joe to a POW camp in Germany more than a month after D-Day and he was registered as a POW with the International Red Cross. By this time his family had already held a funeral.

After (more or less) recovering from a fractured skull he received at the hands (or rifle butt) or his captors following several unsuccessful interrogation sections, Beyrle was moved to the first of three permanent prisoner of war camps: Stalag XII-A.

This was the largest camp Joe was held in. During the war, it would routinely house anywhere from 5,000 - 10,000 prisoners.

The second camp Joe was sent to, Stalag IV-B, was supposedly the original prisoner of war camp built in 1939 just south of Berlin after the invasion of Poland. The reason prisoners were transferred was to prevent escape, which Beyrle had been thinking of even before reaching his first camp.

He came to the attention of the escape committee as a good escape candidate but he was transferred again before an escape could be planned.

The final camp Joe was transferred to, Stalag III-C, was located just across the Oder river from Germany in Poland. He was one of the first Americans transferred to the camp that was divided into American and Russia half. Before the Americans arrived, European POWs had  been housed there but also separated from the Russians. For the most part, American POWs were treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention. For the most part, the Russians were left with next to no food or medical care and exposed to the elements. After the war, a mass grave with more than 12,000 Russian remains was found  in the surrounding area. Today a cross stands where the camp once was.

Records indicate that before Joe escaped from Stalag III-C no one ever had. He successfully escaped with two confederates, Brewer and Quinn. Their plan was to hop onto a train that passed the camp each night, heading east, and link up with the Russians. Unfortunately, before reaching the Eastern Front the train car was connected to another engine and changed directions. Now the fugitives were heading west. When the train stopped, they were in Berlin. Not where escaped American POWs wanted to be in 1944.

Long story short, the POWs were betrayed to the Gestapo, take to Gestapo Headquarters on Prinz Albrercht Strasse, and tortured. Unlike most Gestapo prisoners, the POWs were not killed, but only because a German army officer came to the headquarters, armed, took them from the Gestapo, and returned them to Stalag III-C. Unstratified by their failure, Beyrle, Brewer, and Quinn devised another escape plan. During their second try, both Brewer and Quinn were shot - Joe thought the wounds did not seem life threatening - and started making his way east on foot.   

Episode 28: Red-Blooded America in the Red Army - The True Story of Joesph Beyrle, The Only Soldier to Fight for Both America and the Soviet Union in World War II, Part II

This photograph was taken when Joe Beyrle was transferred to a permanent POW camp inside Germany, which won't happen until part III of the story but seeing as he is now in German custody, it thought it was appropriate to use here.

When Beyrle jumped into Normandy he was one of the few paratroopers dropped anywhere near his assigned drop zone so when he saw a church beneath him, he knew it was the church in the middle of the small village St Côme-du-Mont. Unfortunately, he was dropped so low that he couldn't avoid the church and landed on its roof.

In 2005, a plaque was placed on the church commemorating Joe's rough landing 61 years prior.

Despite the confused drop of paratroopers, mixed American units had a lot of success against the Germans that night. The longer an individual trooper took to link up with friendly forces, the more likely he was to run into a German force too large to take on. Many of the Allied paratroopers captured on D-Day were alone or wounded. Joe was captured by German paratroopers as were the Americans in this photo.

The day after his capture, Beyrle saw his battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Robert "Bull" Wolverton handing in a tree from his parachute harness. He has been killed in the jump. Before the jump into Normandy, Wolverton, the first commander of 3rd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division lead the battalion in a prayer that was well remembered. He also laid out the initial outline for the first post-war 3rd battalion reunion that was held in 1947 per his instructions. The 29 year old was buried at the US Military Academy Post Cemetery in West Point, New York.

Wolverton (left), checking the equipment of another paratrooper equipment on 5 June 1944

  After Beyrle was transported out of Normandy, he was taken to a collection point - an old monastery known as Starvation Hill to those interned there - before being moved to a different location with a handful of others to be interrogated. While there, there were presented to the senior Germany commander in France, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who liked to review POWs to get a feel for the caliber of troops he was facing. 

Notoriously self-conscious about his height, he didn't even look at Beyrle who was more than six feet tall and towered over the 5'6" field Marshal. After the review, Joe's questioning continued but he refused to answer any questions which frustrated his captors to the point that they struck him in the head with a rifle butt. This fractured his skull and put him in a coma for six days... which seems like a good place to take a break in Beyrle's story.