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News :: International Relations |
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American at Red Square Marks Victory Day |
Current rating: 0 |
by AP
(No verified email address) |
07 May 2004
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POW rescued by Russians, then fought the Nazis with them, returns again to celebrate WWII victory over Germany in Red Square |
MOSCOW (AP) -- As Russians dust off their Soviet-era medals and crowd Red Square on Sunday for a parade marking the 59th anniversary of Hitler's defeat, one veteran among them will be proudly displaying U.S. military insignia.
For 80-year-old Joseph Beyrle of Muskegon, Mich., Russia's Victory Day is no less his holiday: After escaping from a German prisoner-of-war camp, Beyrle joined a Soviet tank division advancing on Berlin.
``At first I was a curiosity. Then I became part of them,'' Beyrle said in an interview at the apartment of his son, John, who is deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy.
As a 20-year-old Army sergeant, Beyrle parachuted into Normandy during the D-Day invasion but was pinned down by fire. On his third night on the ground, he climbed over a hedgerow and right into a German machine-gun position.
Beyrle repeatedly tried to escape from several POW camps, but at 6-foot-2 1/2 inches and 180 pounds, he was often too big to squeeze through small spaces.
Eventually, in late 1944, he and two other Americans bribed their guards with 60 packs of cigarettes and jumped on an eastbound freight train, hoping to meet Soviet troops whose approaching gunfire they had heard from the camp. But the train looped back west and deposited them in Berlin.
Railway yard workers led them to Gestapo headquarters where ``they beat the living hell out of us,'' Beyrle said.
They were returned to Stalag III-C, the camp they'd fled. In January they sneaked out hidden in barrels, but these fell off the truck just outside the gate. Beyrle's two buddies were shot and killed, but he outran the dogs and German guards and hid in a hayloft.
A Soviet division arrived some nights later, riding on Sherman tanks supplied by the United States, Beyrle said.
``I knew two words: 'Amerikansky tovarishch''' -- American comrade, Beyrle said. ``I put my hands up and told them I wanted to go with them to Berlin to defeat Hitler.''
The commander, a woman, argued with the political commissar about whether to allow an American to join their column of 80-90 tanks. Eventually they took him aboard and Beyrle repaid them when he rigged explosives to blow away trees the Germans had felled across a road.
``From that time, they accepted me,'' he said.
Beyrle spent about a month with the Soviet soldiers, sharing their rations of buckwheat porridge larded with Hormel fat -- another U.S. contribution.
They could barely communicate, Beyrle said, but ``we drank toasts to Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill and the Studebaker truck. I taught them to sing the Notre Dame victory song.''
The Soviet troops rolled westward, liberating POW camps, including the one where Beyrle had been held, and killing suspected collaborators, whom they ``piled up like cordwood,'' he said.
Beyrle wasn't destined to see Berlin fall.
German dive bombers attacked ``and I was blown off the tank and had shrapnel in the groin and I ended up in a Soviet hospital,'' he said.
There he was visited by Georgy Zhukov, the legendary Soviet marshal, who arranged papers to get him to Moscow. He lived for three days at the U.S. Embassy, but was moved to a hotel because diplomats feared he could be an impostor: A check with the War Department had revealed Joseph Beyrle's death in action.
Months before, U.S. authorities had notified Beyrle's parents first of his capture, then of his death, and had even paid them a $861 death benefit. Beyrle found out later that a German soldier had been buried in Normandy with his dog tags.
Beyrle persuaded the embassy to fingerprint him, and once his identity was established, he headed home.
Beyrle, who had been trained as a butcher, worked selling insurance after the war. He has visited Moscow six times, often attending the Victory Day parade with his diplomat son, and has made frequent trips back to Normandy to explore battlefields.
Within a few years of Beyrle's homecoming, the U.S.-Soviet alliance of World War II gave way to the Cold War. But Beyrle says it never entered his mind, as he rode along with his new comrades, to be afraid of them.
``They were our savior,'' Beyrle said. ``We were their savior. They were my savior.''
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press |
Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
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Re: American at Red Square Marks Victory Day |
by Jack Ryan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
07 May 2004
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Dear Joseph Beyrle
First thanks for your heroic service and for as the article says "proudly displaying U.S. military insignia". John F. Kerry threw his away although he seems to be unclear about medals or ribbons.
The Russians certainly did fight well in WWII with alot of American Lend Lease material or American design.
Again, thanks for your service.
Jack |
