A patriot is a person serving the Motherland, and the Motherland is, first of all, the people.

American soldier of the Red Army, or the unstoppable Joseph Beyrle

Joseph Beyrle is the only American infantryman who officially took part in battles in both the American and Red Army on the western and eastern fronts of World War II. The desire to continue the fight was so strong in him that after his escape from the concentration camp and crossing the front line, he continued to fight against the common enemy in the ranks of the Soviet allies, as part of one of the tank battalions.

Photo from POW Byerly's map. Son John Byerly asked his father what he was thinking when his photograph was taken. Answer: “Will I have time to kill the photographer when he is distracted?”

But the strict conditions of detention did not break his will to resist, and the Germans only achieved the completely opposite result... In total, he tried to escape three times, and, unfortunately, little is known about his first escape, but the second was almost successful.

Joseph and his prison comrades managed to get quite far away, and they already felt safe, but a mistake with the train, unfortunately, ended this attempt. The fact is that the fugitives mixed up the trains and boarded a train that went in the Berlin direction instead of the one that would have headed east to Warsaw, where they hoped to cross the front line.

After that, he was transported for interrogation to the Gestapo, claiming that he was not an ordinary prisoner, but a specially trained spy, seeking to get to Berlin to carry out a special task, trying to torture him into a confession. But none of the charges were ever proven, and the Wehrmacht urgently demanded that he be returned to its jurisdiction, as a person captured on the battlefield. Thus, thanks to German pedantry and mutual hostility between the departments, he remained alive.

After this, Baerli was sent to be held in the Stalag III-C prison camp near the city of Kostrzyn nad Odra, from where he escaped for the third time. Now he walked completely alone, guided only by the sounds of cannonade, and a few weeks later he managed to successfully cross the front line, since by that time in that region of Poland it was quite washed out and reach the position of the advancing Soviet tank brigade.

According to him, he came out to meet Russian tanks, and as an identification sign of an ally, holding a pack of American “Like Strike” cigarettes in his hands, he constantly repeated “American tovarishch, Amerikansky tovarishch!” This pack of Lendlease cigarettes over his head was for him the only identifying mark of an Allied soldier that should be known to Soviet soldiers. This was probably quite dangerous, because the Red Army soldiers saw the American uniform for the first time, Robert’s stock of Russian words was probably limited, and he could easily have been shot in the heat of battle.

After his identity was partially clarified and they began to believe him, Beyrle began to ask that he be temporarily left to serve in this tank brigade until a meeting with the allies took place. He probably wanted to take revenge on the Germans for humiliation in captivity and his nature, risky by nature, still required adventure. Or maybe it seemed to him that the war was about to end and the Allied troops would unite, so there was no point in taking a roundabout route to America.

One way or another, Joseph wrote a special request, which was considered at a fairly high level and by the competent, as they said then, departments, because, apart from the German prisoner of war identity card, he did not have any documents, and was, in the end, satisfied. The brigade had several Sherman tanks, and he began to serve as a machine gunner on one of them.

As part of a Soviet tank brigade, serving on an American tank, wearing a Soviet uniform and being an American citizen, he was probably for the soldiers around him a living embodiment of the idea of ​​​​the military brotherhood of the Allies and hopes for eternal peace between countries, regardless of the political system and ideology, but, of course, after the surrender of the common enemy, Germany. Nothing is known about the attitude of his superiors towards him as a US citizen, and although he was a kind of special soldier, they were unlikely to be singled out from the general mass and especially protected.

At the end of January 1945, the tanks of the battalion in which Joseph now served liberated the very concentration camp (Stalag III-C) in which he was held before his escape. One can probably imagine the surprise of Beyrle’s former comrades in captivity when they saw him among the liberators in Soviet military uniform. But after a few days his service with the combat units of the Red Army was completed.

During the German bombing of the battalion's positions, he was seriously wounded by fragments of a bomb dropped by a Ju-87 and was sent for treatment to a hospital located in Landsberg. During his treatment there, Marshal Zhukov met him, as a man of quite an amazing destiny, and therefore a local landmark. During the conversation, Beyrle, who probably realized after being wounded that he had fought enough, asked to be sent home.

He was given an official letter to confirm his identity, since he did not have any valid documents. Joining a convoy of trucks headed for the territory of the USSR, Joseph safely reached Moscow, where he immediately went to the American embassy. There he was surprised to learn that since June 1944 he had been declared dead in his homeland; an obituary was even published in the local newspaper and a memorial service for the paratrooper was held in the church.

Moreover, until the Americans were able to confirm his identity with sufficient reliability for them by comparing fingerprints, he was kept in the Metropol Hotel under guard as a suspicious person. After the identification of the fingerprints was carried out successfully, all suspicions of espionage were removed. He was no longer able to fight anymore; in April he was sent to his homeland, Michigan, and in May he was already celebrating his victory in Chicago.

Joseph Baerle died suddenly while sleeping from a heart attack in 2004, on December 12, while visiting a parachute base in Toccoa, Georgia. It was in Toccoa, back in 1944, that he trained before being sent to war in Europe. In April 2005, he was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

Joseph Byerly raised three children during his life, he also had seven grandchildren and one great-grandson. One of his sons, John Beyrle, had a successful diplomatic career and served as US Ambassador to Russia from 2008 to 2012.

In September 2002, the book by publicist Thomas Taylor, “The Simple Sounds of Freedom,” was published in the United States; in 2005, on the wall of the church in St. Côme-du-Mont, near which Byerly landed in 1944, a memorial plaque was unveiled, and in the same year a documentary film about him was released in Russian, directed by Nina Vishneva, the English version of which received several prizes abroad in 2007, in Spain and USA.

An exhibition dedicated to Byerly and his military adventures was opened in 2010 in Moscow, during 2011-12 it was planned to tour US cities - in Orleans, Toccoa, in the state of Omaha and ended in his hometown of Byerly - Muskegon in June 2012 .

The amazing battle path is one of the interesting and rather paradoxical episodes of the Second World War and may indirectly testify to the sincere friendship and trust of the allies in each other in that struggle at the level of ordinary soldiers, who bore the brunt of the hardships of those military trials...

A photo from a personal file after one of the escapes. Father of former (2008-2012) US Ambassador to Russia John Beyrle.

Joseph Beyrle (eng. Joseph Beyrle, August 25, 1923, Muskegon (Michigan, USA) - December 12, 2004, Toccoa (Georgia, USA)) - is considered the only soldier of the Second World War who fought against the Germans in both the American and Soviet armies. Father of former (2008-2012) US Ambassador to Russia John Beyrle.

Joseph Byerly was born in Muskegon, Michigan, where he graduated from high school in 1942. He could have received a scholarship to study at the University of Notre Dame, but instead he volunteered for the army. According to the entry on his prisoner of war card, which would later be filed against him by the German authorities, he worked as a butcher.

Service in the US Army. 101st Division

Byerly was assigned to the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division's Screaming Eagles, a unit specializing in radio communications and demolition. At that time, the division was located in the English city of Ramsbury and was preparing for the opening of the Second Front. After nine months of training, Beyrle took part in two combat operations in May and April 1944 to deliver gold to the Resistance Movement in France.

D-Day. Sabotage works. Captivity

Joseph Beyrle as a prisoner of war of the Wehrmacht. July 1944. Son John Byerly: “I once asked my dad what he was thinking about when he was photographed. He answered: “Will I have time to kill the photographer while he’s filming me…”

On June 6, 1944, the day the Second Front opened, the C-47 aircraft carrying Beyrle came under fire over the Normandy coast. Jumping out of the plane over Comme du Mont, Sergeant Byerly lost contact with the other paratroopers, but was still able to blow up an electrical substation. He blew up several more objects before being captured by the Germans a few days later.

Over the next seven months, Beyrle was held in seven different German prisons. He escaped twice, but was caught both times. Byerly and his fellow prisoners hoped to reach the Soviet army, which was located nearby. After an unsuccessful second escape (finding himself in Poland, he and other escaped prisoners of war mistakenly boarded a train bound for Berlin), he ended up in the Gestapo, but was soon handed over to the German military, since the Gestapo did not have the right to hold prisoners of war.

Escape and service in the Red Army

Joseph Byerley prisoner of war card. 1944-1945

Beyrle ended up in a concentration camp for prisoners of war in Alt Drevice, a suburb of the Polish town of Kostrzyn nad Odra. At the beginning of January 1945, he escaped once again, this time successfully, walking in the direction of the sounds of cannonade from the First Belorussian Front. After a couple of weeks, he was able to reach the front line, and after crossing it, find a Soviet tank brigade.

Coming out to meet the Russians with his hands raised, he repeated with emphasis: “I am an American comrade! I am an American comrade!” Beyrle persuaded the command of the 1st Tank Battalion of the 1st Guards Tank Brigade (namely the guard of Captain A.G. Samusenko) to allow him to stay and fight with them. Thus began his service in a Soviet tank battalion, which lasted a month. His skills as a demolitionist and machine gunner came in handy - the battalion had an American Sherman tank.

The battalion in which Beyrle fought liberated the very concentration camp from which he escaped at the end of January. In early February, he was seriously wounded (he was bombed by Ju.87 dive bombers), and was sent to a Soviet hospital in Ladsberg (now the Polish city of Gorzow Wielkopolski). Marshal Georgy Zhukov arrived at the hospital and, having learned about the American paratrooper, wanted to meet him. Byerly asked the marshal to help him return home. By order of Zhukov, Beyrle was given an official letter, which he presented when checking his documents on the way to Moscow, since all his documents remained with the Germans. In February 1945, he reached the American embassy in Moscow.

Homecoming

1945 Joseph Byerly returned to his native Michigan.

At the embassy, ​​Beyrle learned that the US War Department declared him dead on June 10, 1944. A funeral service was held in the church in his hometown of Muskegon, and an obituary was published in the local newspaper. Before fingerprints confirmed his identity, Byerly was held under Marine guard at the Metropole Hotel.

Byerly returned to Michigan on April 21, 1945, and two weeks later celebrated the victory in Chicago. The following year he married Joana Halovel. Ironically, the wedding took place in the same church and by the same priest who served his funeral service two years earlier. After the war, Byerly joined the Brunswick Corporation, where he worked for 28 years and retired as head of the delivery department.

In 1994, for his unique service during the war, Beyrle was awarded commemorative medals at a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Front. The event took place at the White House in Washington. The awards were presented by US President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

Departure

Joseph Byerly died of an attack of heart failure on December 12, 2004 in Toccoa (Georgia, USA). In April 2005, he was buried with honors at Arlington Military Cemetery.

Family

Joseph Byerly is survived by three children, seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild. His son John Beyrle served as US Ambassador to Russia from 2008 to 2012.

Memory of D. Byerly

In September 2002, Random House published Thomas Taylor’s book about Joseph Byerly, “Simple Sounds of Freedom.” The thin-bound book was published under the title “Behind Hitler’s Lines” in June 2004.

In August 2005, a memorial plaque was unveiled on the wall of the church in Côme-du-Mont, France, where Byerly landed by parachute on June 6, 1944.

In 2005, a documentary film in Russian, “American Soldier of the Soviet Army” (written and directed by Nina Vishneva), was released in America. In 2007, Nina Vishneva made a version in English - “Joseph and His Brothers in Arms”. The English version of the film received first prize at the documentary film festival in Granada (Spain) in the category “Best Cinematography”; a special certificate from the San Francisco Short Film Festival (USA), as well as first prize at the Barcelona Documentary Film Festival in the category “Best Realization of a Concept.”

In 2010, exhibitions were held on Poklonnaya Hill in Moscow, in the Russian Museum of St. Petersburg and in the Pskov Kremlin, presenting documents about Beyrle’s stay in a German concentration camp for prisoners of war.

The veteran always went to parades

Joseph Beyrle (1923 - 2004) is considered the only soldier of World War II who fought against the Germans in the American and Red Army. Father of former (2008-2012) US Ambassador to Russia John Beyrle.

On June 6, 1944, the day the Second Front opened, the C-47 aircraft carrying Beyrle came under fire over the Normandy coast. Jumping out of the plane over Comme du Mont, Sergeant Byerly lost contact with the other paratroopers, but was still able to blow up an electrical substation. He blew up several more objects before being captured by the Germans a few days later.

Over the next seven months, Beyrle was held in seven different German prisons. He escaped twice, but was caught both times. Byerly and his fellow prisoners hoped to reach the Red Army, which was located nearby. After an unsuccessful second escape (finding himself in Poland, he and other escaped prisoners of war mistakenly boarded a train bound for Berlin), he ended up in the Gestapo, but was soon handed over to the German military, since the Gestapo did not have the right to hold prisoners of war.

Beyrle ended up in a concentration camp for prisoners of war in Alt Drevice, a suburb of the Polish town of Kostrzyn nad Odra. At the beginning of January 1945, he escaped once again, this time successfully, walking in the direction of the sounds of cannonade from the First Belorussian Front. After a couple of weeks, he was able to reach the front line, and after crossing it, find a Soviet tank brigade. Coming out to meet the Russians with his hands raised, he repeated with emphasis: “I am an American comrade! I am an American comrade! Beyrle persuaded the command of the 1st Tank Battalion of the 1st Guards Tank Brigade (namely the guard of Captain A.G. Samusenko) to allow him to stay and fight with them. Thus began his service in a Soviet tank battalion, which lasted a month. His skills as a demolitionist and machine gunner came in handy - the battalion had an American Sherman tank.

The battalion in which Beyrle fought liberated the very concentration camp from which he escaped at the end of January. In early February, he was seriously wounded (he was bombed by Ju.87 dive bombers), and was sent to a Soviet hospital in Ladsberg (now the Polish city of Gorzow Wielkopolski). Marshal Georgy Zhukov arrived at the hospital and, having learned about the American paratrooper, wanted to meet him. Byerly asked the marshal to help him return home. By order of Zhukov, Beyrle was given an official letter, which he presented when checking his documents on the way to Moscow, since all his documents remained with the Germans. In February 1945, he reached the American embassy in Moscow.

At the embassy, ​​Beyrle learned that the US War Department declared him dead on June 10, 1944. A funeral service was held in the church in his hometown of Muskegon, and an obituary was published in the local newspaper. Before fingerprints confirmed his identity, Byerly was held under Marine guard at the Metropole Hotel.

Byerly returned to Michigan on April 21, 1945, and two weeks later celebrated the victory in Chicago. The following year he married Joana Halovel. Ironically, the wedding took place in the same church and by the same priest who served his funeral service two years earlier. After the war, Byerly joined the Brunswick Corporation, where he worked for 28 years and retired as head of the delivery department.

In 1994, for his unique service during the war, Beyrle was awarded commemorative medals at a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Front. The event took place at the White House in Washington. The awards were presented by US President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

On September 17, 1943, the British military transport ship Samaria arrived in Liverpool Harbor. The 3rd Battalion of the 506th Parachute Regiment of the 101st American Airborne Division was also on board. Along with other paratroopers, Technical Sergeant 4th Class Joseph Byerly, who only turned 20 a month ago, also set foot on the British shore. No one could know then that from that moment a cycle of events comparable to a deadly whirlwind began in his fate. This whirlwind will throw Beyrle behind enemy lines, force him to go through the humiliation of captivity, make three escapes, be in the clutches of the Gestapo, look into the eyes of death more than once, see with his own eyes the great commanders and, finally, become the only American who fought as part of the Red Army in the East front. Of course, he was accompanied by incredible, one might even consider fantastic, luck, but it would have been blind if young Joseph had not shown a high degree of courage, resourcefulness, perseverance, bravery and loyalty to his military duty, his “landing” character...

Joseph Byerly was born on August 25, 1923 in the town of Maxigon, on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, into a large family of William and Elizabeth Byerly. They were descendants of emigrants from Bavaria (Bairen in German), which is reflected in the spelling of their surname. Even when Joseph was studying at St. Joseph's School, he became interested in athletics - he ran a mile in less than 5 minutes. After graduating from high school, he was offered a scholarship to the University of Notre Dame, but he joined the army, eager to get into the war that had been raging on another continent for many years, especially since his two older brothers, John and Bill, had already made a similar choice .

In mid-1942, in the United States, on the initiative of Generals J. Marshall and O. Bradley, an experiment began to create a new type of military. The 82nd Infantry Division, formed at Camp Clebornene, Louisiana, was split into two, and two airborne divisions, the 82nd and 101st, were formed from its base at Fort Bragg. Pre-existing parachute regiments were assigned to each division, while the infantry regiments were converted into glider regiments.

Under the command of Colonel Robert Sink, the 506th Parachute Regiment was formed at Camp Toccoa (Georgia), the first to receive basic and parachute training. The regiment consisted of 1,800 soldiers, assembled in three battalions of three companies, each of which consisted of 132 conscripts and eight officers and was divided into three platoons and a headquarters section. The platoon, in turn, was divided into three rifle squads of 12 people and one mortar squad of 6 people. The mortar squad was armed with a 60 mm mortar, and the rifle squad had a 30-caliber machine gun.

The personnel of the 506th Regiment were recruited primarily from civilians who voluntarily expressed a desire to become paratroopers, and they received additional pay for jumping. One of them was a young volunteer, Joseph Byerly. Several weeks of intense physical training at Camp Toccoa would prepare the volunteers for further training at the jump school, which included an incredibly tough training obstacle course and a full-on march up Mount Currahee and back. This mountain became the emblem of the 506th regiment, its motto and symbol. During this time, Byerly learned radio engineering and took part in testing portable radio stations in the jungles of Panama. His passion for athletics helped him greatly, and 1/3 of all volunteers were expelled from the landing precisely because of poor physical fitness.

In November 1942, part of the battalions was sent to the Fort Benning parachute school, with 2/3 of the regiment sent on foot. After qualifying as paratroopers, the 506th was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles, Fort Bragg, and in September the regiment was sent to the UK aboard the transport Samaria. . The units were stationed in the Liverpool area, where parachute repair and maintenance workshops were opened, and training began in the vicinity of the village of Chilton Foliet. At the end of 1943 and until the beginning of 1944, there was a constant replenishment of personnel of the 506th and other regiments to strengthen them before the landing in Normandy. It was then that Joseph personally saw General D. Eisenhower and Field Marshal B. Montgomery, who came to the division to check on the paratroopers who were to land first.

By this time, Byerly had already completed more than 60 jumps and was considered an experienced skydiver. This, as well as a good knowledge of the German language, drew the attention of the Special Operations Directorate to the young paratrooper. In April-May 1944, he was sent twice to the territory of occupied France to deliver gold to members of the Resistance, and both times he successfully returned. In May, Beyrle was part of 6,928 fighters of the 101st Division, assembled in ten groups, who were the first to land on D-Day in Normandy with 432 C-47 aircraft. And although the division did not yet have combat experience, the paratroopers believed in success thanks to their persistent one-year training in the States and eight months in England.

On the afternoon of June 5, Allied airborne troops began preparing for landing and further combat operations. They packed and adjusted their equipment, wrote last letters to their relatives, and applied camouflage paint to their faces. Many paratroopers gave themselves a Mohawk haircut to scare the enemy. For the rest of his life, Joseph was engraved in his memory by the words of the commander of the 506th regiment, Colonel R. Sink, spoken already in “Douglas”: “Today is a great night. Tomorrow, throughout our homeland and in the countries of the allies, bells will ring, announcing that you have arrived, that the liberation landing has begun... The trust of your high command is with you. Fear will very soon become a reality for the Germans. Inspired by the justice of our cause and the strength of our might, let us destroy the enemy wherever we find him. May God be with each of you, our soldiers! By our deeds we will justify His faith in us.”

It was towards fate that Joseph Bayerly jumped on the night of June 6, 1944, along with other 13 thousand American and 7 thousand British paratroopers. The 3rd Battalion, 506th Regiment, was given a special mission: to fly from Exiter Airfield and land at Drop Zone D near Carentan to capture two bridges over the Dover River. The commander of the 3rd Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Wolverton, and his deputy, Major George Grant, were killed during the landing. Only 120 of the 680 people who took part in the landing were able to complete the task assigned to them.

But Joseph Byerly was not among the first... Jumping from the C-47 just a few seconds ahead of the others with the regimental cry “K-Y-Y-U-RR-A!”, He soon realized that he was separated from them by several kilometers. Joseph landed on the roof of a church in the town of Saint-Côme-Du-Mont and, moving to the gathering place and having previously gotten rid of excess equipment, found himself completely alone. He only came across the dead.

Each paratrooper was required to carry an M-1 rifle, 160 rounds of ammunition, two fragmentation hand grenades, a kilogram of plastic explosives, and a Mark IV anti-tank mine weighing about 4.5 kg. Most of the soldiers armed themselves with pistols, knives and bayonets. The paratroopers were provided with field rations for three days and cigarettes - two blocks for each. Everyone was given first aid kits with bandages, sulfa drugs and two tube syringes of morphine. The paratroopers of the 101st Division also received a children's toy “cricket”, which had to be used instead of a call sign and password - one click must be answered with two. Joseph, as Captain McKnight's radio operator and demolition bomber, had to jump with a radio and explosives, plus he upgraded his arsenal with a Thompson submachine gun and a Colt .45 caliber.

Over and over again, Joseph listened to the radio broadcast, but it was all in vain: only the crackling of radio interference, and he, having broken the walkie-talkie, buried it. The American paratroopers were instructed: if they had nothing else to do, they could start destroying communication lines. He remembered that he had seen on the map on the outskirts of the town a small German relay station. Having sneaked up unnoticed, he managed to blow up the generator and dynamo. At dawn, having stumbled upon the Germans for the first time, he threw grenades at them and, jumping over a hedge, rushed east to look for his own, often checking the compass. For almost 20 hours, Joseph tried to connect with his people - hungry, tired, but ready to fight. Closer to dusk, moving almost by touch, crawling from one hedge to another, he saw a passage in the field and rushed towards it. Hearing the rustling, Joseph responded by giving a signal twice with a mechanical cricket, which meant “friends,” but in response he heard a sharp: “Hyunde hoch!”, and after a few seconds, strong male bodies fell on him.

The camouflaged machine gun nest with nine German paratroopers belonged to the 6th Parachute Regiment (FJR6) under the command of Oberst Friedrich-August von Heydte. Joseph was lucky that he fell into the hands of his “colleagues”; he was mistaken for an officer, searched and disarmed.

It must be said that he was captured because of a miscalculation by his command. Yes, yes, because the idea of ​​​​using mechanical “crickets” implied their use only at the beginning of the landing, i.e. in complete darkness. At the same time, the headquarters completely missed the fact that during daylight hours crickets do not make any sounds, and a mechanical signal given in the daytime can give away the location of the paratrooper. The Germans quickly realized what was happening, and, as Joseph himself later guessed, he was not their first prisoner...

Without fighting for even a day, Beyrle was captured. While he was being led to the collection point for prisoners of war, he firmly decided to refuse cooperation with the enemy and demonstrate to everyone that he was a real soldier. Joseph did not lose heart and fled the same day after the shelling, despite receiving a “shameful” wound in the buttock.

But the next day he was captured again, his personal tag was taken away and he was sent to a collection point between the cities of Saint-Lo and Alençon. Here the group of the first American prisoners was visited by the commander of the German Army Group B, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Although the visit lasted only ten minutes, Joseph remembered the tenacious upward gaze of the short field marshal. Next, the American paratrooper was awaiting the interrogation center for prisoners of war, located in a castle east of Falaise. For the rest of his life, Byerly’s head was left with a mark from the butt of a German rifle, as a reminder of that week of interrogations. Not wanting to accidentally let it slip, he pretended to be crazy, until in the end they left him behind, giving him a good beating at the end. About a month before the liberation of Paris, Joseph was “lucky” to walk through its streets as part of a column of prisoners under the hooting of French collaborators, where he even managed to get into the frames of a German propaganda film. From the Paris train station, all prisoners of war were sent to Germany in cattle cars. On the way, the train was bombed more than once by Allied aircraft, but Joseph was lucky again...

“Krieg” is a derivative of the German word kriegsgefangener, which, in fact, means prisoner of war, as 30 thousand Americans who were in German captivity at that time called themselves. Officially, the stay in captivity began with delivery to the camp, where the prisoner was registered, photographed, vaccinated and given a badge with a personal number, the latter giving the right to send a postcard home through the Red Cross. All personal data of the prisoner of war were then sent to the Wehrmacht information service about military losses and prisoners of war. Employees of the relevant departments filled out three special registration cards for each prisoner of war: one remained in the information service, the other was sent to the prisoner of war’s homeland or to the country in whose army he served, and the third was sent to the International Red Cross in Geneva. Each prisoner of war received a special badge - KG, which was sewn to the uniform on the back and to the left trouser leg under the knee. Prisoners were differentiated by types of troops, military ranks, nationality and religion. Then they were sent on foot or in wagons to a stationary camp - a stalag in accordance with the rank and branch of the troops. The first one for Joseph was Stalag XII A in the suburbs of Limburg, then IV D near Annaburg, IV B in Mühlberg and, finally, III C near Küstrin. Joseph told his son about his mood in the photograph taken in Stalag XII A after the war, when he asked what his father was thinking about when he was photographed: “Will I have time to kill the photographer when he is distracted?”

Nevertheless, Joseph learned to survive in the camp according to the recipes of the rangers captured near Dieppe in August 1942: “each time leave a little food in reserve, tomorrow there may not be any left,” “no matter how tired you are, train,” “think, what and to whom do you say.”

According to the Hague Convention of 1907, food for prisoners of war had to meet the standards of the reserve forces of the country that captured the prisoners. The Kriegs received from the Germans daily about 230 g of bread, 0.5 kg of boiled potatoes, 15 g of margarine, 20 g of horse meat, 20 g of marmalade or jam, 2 mugs of ersatz coffee - in the morning and in the evening. According to the agreement between Germany and the Red Cross, each prisoner of war was still to receive a weekly food parcel. And although this agreement was violated, parcels were still delivered at least twice a month. Typical contents of an American Red Cross package received by prisoners of war since 1943 included: a can of beef and pork stew, liver pate, a can of salmon, a packet of coffee or cocoa, a package of cheese, raisins or prunes, orange concentrate, powdered milk, margarine, sugar, chocolate, biscuit, several bars of soap and 2 packs of cigarettes. In general, it was a good package. This legal supply of products led to power in the camp of “tough businessmen”, those who most profitably managed the exchange of products, cigarettes or won them in gambling. Many losers who could not pay off their debts performed services for these businessmen, who were called “Batmen” in camp slang. Stalag IV B had its own escape technology, called the “Basel Express”. To do this, it was necessary to save, win, steal 60 cartons of cigarettes (which was practically impossible in camp conditions) and bring them to the committee for organizing escapes. Here the future fugitive began to study German. Through bribed German guards he received Ausweiss, a ticket and pass to the Swiss border, a basket of food and civilian clothes. Moreover, the Germans received a cigarette advance for the ticket, and received the rest only after the fugitive reached Switzerland and received a postcard from him in the camp.

As you can see, Western prisoners did not die of hunger at all, unlike Soviet ones. Deprived of Red Cross parcels by the will of Stalin, our prisoners were on half-starvation rations and were subjected to abuse by the guards. To the credit of the Western prisoners of war, it should be said that at the first opportunity they tried to share rations and the contents of the parcels, trying to somehow help their starving comrades in arms. Lieutenant General M.F. Lukin, who was in German captivity for more than three years, wrote that in all the camps he had visited since October 1941, “prisoners of other states, knowing that we had a“ lethal ration ,” secretly they gave us food, sometimes even a smoke.” Byerly was also involved.

Arriving on September 17, 1944 at Stalag III C, located in eastern Germany, Beyrle learned from Soviet prisoners of war that the Red Army was already fighting in Poland, and realized that if he were to flee, he would have to flee to the east. Here in the Stalag he found his “accomplices” Brewer and Quinn. Joseph was lucky again - he won 60 (!) packs of cigarettes at the dice. They bribed a German guard, who one October night pretended not to notice how the fugitives cut the wire and disappeared into the forest. Joseph and his comrades managed to climb into the train car with grain for the horses. The train was heading east. They traveled for several days - the carriage was attached to one train or another. But finally the train stopped. It was a depot on the southern outskirts of Berlin. It’s impossible to imagine, but three American paratroopers in uniform ended up in the capital of Nazi Germany. The giant depot, destroyed by bombing, was deserted, and the fugitives hid unnoticed in a manhole in the sewer system. A few days later, in search of water, they came across an elderly railway worker, who treated them to sausage and beer and, covering them with a tarpaulin, transported them on a cart to some basement, where he safely... handed them over to the Gestapo.

Joseph was beaten with fists, boots, clubs, and whips, trying to force him to confess that he was a spy dropped over Berlin from an American “flying fortress.” This would allow the Gestapo to shoot him on the basis of a “commando order.” They stubbornly did not want to believe him, because in the camp their comrades at roll calls were still shouting out their names, hiding the fact of their escape, and, apparently, the commandant was in no hurry to report a successful escape to the top. Even the camp tags of prisoners of war did not help...

Salvation from the clutches of the Gestapo unexpectedly came in the person of an unknown Wehrmacht lieutenant colonel with two machine gunners. The fact is that by October 1944, when Germany’s defeat was only a matter of time, the question of German responsibility for war crimes committed after the war reasonably arose. The Allies scattered millions of leaflets in which they guaranteed a post-war search and trial of war criminals, including those who committed their crimes against Allied prisoners of war. Therefore, the Wehrmacht stood up for the three American paratroopers, sending them back to Stalag III C, where they received only 15 days in a punishment cell.

But Byerly, Brewer and Quinn did not give up the idea of ​​escaping. This time they decided to use a farm wagon, which brought three huge barrels of beets, turnips and zucchini to the camp every Friday and Tuesday. One Tuesday in January, the remaining prisoners organized a fight to distract the guards. At this time, the fugitives quietly took places in empty barrels on a cart and found themselves outside the camp. But moving downhill, the van hit a stone and... the barrels overturned, broke, and the guards on the watchtowers opened fire on the fugitives. Brewer and Quinn were mortally wounded, and Byerly, dodging like a hare, reached the forest and ran several kilometers along the creek bed to throw the camp sheepdogs off his trail.

He made his way east for about a week, bypassing German villages and farms, until he heard the thunder of artillery cannonade - on January 12, 1945, the Vistula-Oder operation of the Soviet troops began.

Part of the strategic Vistula-Oder operation was the Warsaw-Poznan offensive operation of the 1st Belorussian Front under the command of G. K. Zhukov - one of the largest front-line operations carried out during the war. The operation was swift. Over the course of 20 days, Soviet troops, in the vanguard of which the 1st Guards Tank Army operated, advanced to a depth of 500 km, liberating the entire western part of Poland in their zone. 35 enemy divisions were completely defeated, another 25 lost from 50 to 70% of their personnel, and about 150 thousand people were captured. Having begun a breakthrough in several areas and advancing a distance of 20 to 30 km per day, by February 3, Soviet troops reached the distant approaches to Berlin on the river. Oder and captured bridgeheads on its western bank in the areas of Breslau and Küstrin. It was in this area that our fugitive made his way to the east...

Seeing the first Soviet soldiers with weapons in their hands, Joseph came out to them with his hands raised, holding the last pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes above his head and repeating the phrase he had learned in the camp: “Ja Amerikansky tovarishch, Amerikansky tovarishch!” They came just to look at Joseph, who was some kind of alien creature for the Red Army soldiers. A huge amount of vodka and alcohol was poured into the poor American to commemorate the military commonwealth of the Allied nations.

Byerly is lucky again! He ended up in the combat group of the first tank battalion of the 1st Guards Tank Brigade, which was commanded by the only (!) female tanker and the only female deputy commander of the tank battalion of the 1st Guards Tank Army, Captain Alexandra Samusenko (died in March 1945).

By an amazing coincidence, the battalion was armed with American Sherman tanks, and Joseph began to ask to be temporarily left to serve in this tank brigade, reasonably believing that the war was about to end and the Allied forces would unite, so there was no point in going around the America. Apparently, the guard captain liked the young paratrooper, and she left him as a motorized rifle-machine gunner on her Sherman, ordering him to be given a hat with earflaps and a PPSh assault rifle. As part of a Soviet tank brigade, serving on an American tank, wearing a Soviet uniform and being an American citizen, he became a kind of talisman for the tank guards, who tried in every possible way to protect him. But the paratrooper was not satisfied with the role of a souvenir in a combat unit, and he gained the respect of his new fellow soldiers by adjusting all the American radios in the battalion, and sometimes acted as a demolition bomber when clearing rubble on the roads. Soviet soldiers called him Yo, short for Joseph.

Beyrle, having fought for about a month in the guards battalion, left very interesting memories of the Red Army of 1945, its tactics, weapons, morals, customs, and fighting spirit.

He was given an official letter signed by Zhukov, which “opened any checkpoint, put him in any truck going to the front or from the front.” Changing lorries, Studebakers, and diesel cars on ambulance trains heading to the territory of the USSR, he reached Moscow, where he immediately went to the American embassy and where another twist of fate awaited him again...

It is necessary to make a short digression and talk about what befell Joseph’s relatives in his homeland in Maxigon. Already on July 7, 1944, his family received a telegram from the War Ministry that their son was in captivity. This was reported by paratroopers who saw Beyrle in captivity and then managed to escape. In September, a mutilated body was discovered in Normandy, next to which for some reason Beyrle’s army GI badge, taken from him by the Germans after his first escape, was found. Based on this, the family was notified that Joseph had died and that he had been posthumously awarded the Purple Heart. One can imagine the grief of the entire family, who ordered a funeral mass for their son on September 17, 1944. And already on October 23, the International Red Cross reported that Joseph Beyrle was officially captured by the Germans. And the family happily returned the medal and $861 in six months' benefits to the War Department.

Arriving at the American embassy in March 1945, Joseph learned that he was considered dead and, moreover, suspected of being a German spy who was using his data. And before his identity was confirmed by fingerprints, Beyrle was kept under the guard of marines in the Moscow Metropol Hotel. On March 21, 1945, an official order was issued awarding Joseph Byerle the Purple Heart and Bronze Oak Leaf Cluster. The hero returned to Michigan by sea via Odessa on April 21, 1945, and two weeks later celebrated the victory in Chicago. The next year he got married, the wedding took place in the very church where a memorial service was held for him. On December 9, 1953, it was reported that Joseph Byerly had been awarded the Bronze Star Medal for distinguished service in ground action during the Normandy Campaign.

In 1994, for his unique service during the war, Beyrle was awarded commemorative medals at a ceremony in honor of the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Front. The event took place at the White House in Washington. The awards were presented by US President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin. The first Russian president presented Joseph with the Order of Glory of the second degree, the Order of the Red Star and the Order of the Patriotic War of the second degree, and a medal for the 100th anniversary of Marshal Zhukov.

A soldier of amazing fate, the only American who fought in the Red Army, who forever retained sympathy for our country in his heart, died on December 12, 2004. The following year, in April, he was buried with military honors at Arlington Military Cemetery. His son John Beyrle, born in 1954, was US Ambassador to Russia from 2008 to 2011. He is very proud that his father is called a “hero of two nations.” Although Joseph Beyrle himself, according to his son, always said, “that the true heroes are those who did not return from the war...”

About how an American fought in the Red Army

I have known this story for a long time. I don’t even remember where from. But there's a photo of a guy with a jaw like this. And with a glance from under my brows I remember and even treasure. This is Joseph Byerly, an American soldier who was captured in '45. And escaped from captivity. He's in a foreign country. He is in a country that is fighting off Russian troops with all its might, and is still showing off instead of plucking flower beds and welcoming the liberators. And he is the only prisoner who only had a wet pack of cigarettes...

He hid in the barn, afraid that they would find him... It was chilly outside, January, and he had caught a cold. I tried to sleep, but was awakened by the terrible clanging of caterpillars. Cautiously looking out of the barn, Joseph saw tanks with a red star on their armor. “Ugh, allies!”...

Coming out of the barn, he saw Russian soldiers. One of the Red Army soldiers noticed him and raised his machine gun, and Joseph raised his hands, squeezing a wet pack of cigarettes in his palms: “American comrade!” - He said everything he knew in Russian. Who knows how a man, the commander of all these troops, would have behaved, but here Joseph was incredibly lucky: the commander of a tank battalion in major's uniform is a woman! An American who escaped from German captivity had to communicate with her through an officer who spoke a little English. The battalion commander, a native of Belarus, Alexandra Samusenko, ordered Joseph to be fed porridge and poured vodka: he was so cold! Well, she announced that he would be evacuated to the rear and sent back to the States via Odessa. But Byerly put the glass on the table and said: “I am not freed from captivity. I am an escapee from captivity. I ran to come out to you and fight the fascists with you. We're allies, right? So, we must fight together.” This was the argument. By the way, this is also talked about in American schools when remembering the Second World War. They don't lie, well done... Even Obama mentioned it!

From that moment on, Joseph was the only American to fight in the Red Army. Even though his “Soviet” service lasted only about a month, this man became a symbol of the unity of the two countries in the fight against the common terrible enemy - Hitler and fascism. Many years later, his son John organized a traveling exhibition that also visited Russia: “Hero of Two Nations.”

How did it happen that Joseph was captured? I take information from various sources: I didn’t know this at all.

After graduating from high school in June 1942, Joe, a simple American guy from the city of Muskegon, did not go to university, but, together with his friends, joined the ranks of the American army. After nine months of military training and becoming a technical sergeant fourth class, in April 1944 Joseph participated in two military operations to deliver gold to the French Resistance.

The night before the Allied landings, June 5, 1944, 13,400 American and 7,000 British paratroopers landed in Normandy, among them Joseph Beyrle. Then the Allies realized what a meat grinder they were in: the Germans had chosen a good position: from above, from the shore, they were shooting at the landing forces at point-blank range. Those who survived managed to move on. Joseph, one might say, was very lucky. In one: having jumped just a few seconds earlier than the others, he landed several kilometers from the others. As he learns many years later, his greatly thinned ranks of comrades completed the assigned task - they captured two bridges, after which they held them for more than two days. Meanwhile, Joseph spent almost 20 hours trying to reunite with his colleagues. The first time he came across the Germans, he threw grenades at them, and the second time, jumping over a hedge, he saw six Schmeissers and a machine gun right in front of him... A German firing position, from which the fearless Beyrle could not be saved by his machine gun.

However, Joseph did not lose heart and fled that same day, despite his wound. They caught him, beat him up... They didn’t notice that he was an American. The Germans had no friends at that time: they were beaten on all fronts and flanks. Thus begins the camp epic of Beyrle - seven German camps! But for the American command, Joseph disappeared without a trace - and he was considered dead. On September 8, the parents received a funeral. However, already on October 23 it became clear that the sergeant was in German captivity. Beyrle recalled: “The Germans treated the Americans completely differently than they treated Russian prisoners - they treated them simply inhumanely. But we were fed, not forced to work, allowed to play football, receive parcels through the Red Cross. We even had a radio. We helped the Russians as best we could - we secretly passed on food and cigarettes.”

Then there were several attempts to escape, the last one successful. I walked east for two weeks, following the sound of artillery fire. He was a partisan as best he could: he blew up there, he shot there... And he got there! After Beyrle asked to join the tank battalion of the Second Belorussian Front, the commissioner declared that an American prisoner of war had no business serving in the Red Army. In addition, Joseph had no documents, and the fact that he was an American prisoner of war was proved only by tattered cigarettes and cast-off paratrooper uniforms. But when he set up radios on American tanks received under Lend-Lease, and it also turned out that he was an excellent demolitionist and machine gunner, the major convinced the commissioner. Subsequently, Byerly very much regretted that he did not remember the name of this woman. According to his son, John, from 1979 to 2004, his father came to Russia five times, hoping to find Russian colleagues. In 1992, Beyrle presented the veteran of the Battle of Kursk and his grandson with sweets, a baseball cap and souvenir badges of his regiment. Suddenly, before Joseph left, the boy handed him a package: “This is a gift from your grandfather.” Inside, Byerly found... a medal “For Courage” and the Order of the Red Banner! On his last visit to Russia, just before his death, in 2004, John noticed that his father wore these awards to the Victory Parade on Red Square, along with commemorative Russian medals and insignia received from the Russian government. He is depicted with them in one of his most famous photographs.

They went into battle within a few hours after Beyrle became a member of the crew of a Russian tank and was trained in the use of the Soviet PPSh assault rifle handed to him. And two days later, he, together with his new comrades, liberated his compatriots from the very camp in Alt-Drevitsa from which he had just fled: two thousand Americans were there. They were sent home through Odessa, and Joseph again refused to go: he insisted that he wanted to go with the Soviet soldiers to Berlin.

He managed to fight with the allies for about a month: a dive bomber hit his Sherman tank with a land mine, seriously wounding Joseph. He could not even imagine that Marshal Zhukov would come to the medical battalion to visit him. The famous military leader became interested in the history of the unusual Red Army soldier. Joseph asked him to help get to the American embassy and received a paper that, as he later said, “opened any checkpoint, put him in any truck going to the front or from the front.”

Having reached Warsaw on foot, hitchhiking, and by train, and finding complete ruins there instead of the American embassy, ​​he took a hospital train to Moscow. Returning on April 21, 1945 to his native Muskegon - through Odessa, Turkey, Egypt, Italy - he said: “You can’t even imagine how good it is to be home!” Soon he got married. He was crowned by the same priest who had previously celebrated the funeral mass for him. Subsequently, for many years he did not take off his vest, where his Russian awards flaunted, but he spoke little about the war. His children and wife only knew that he was a paratrooper, was captured and somehow the Russians freed him. And son John devoted himself to a diplomatic career and worked in Russia for a long time. And he was, perhaps, her only real American friend. Joseph came to Russia for the Victory Parade in 2004 shortly before his death. He died on December 12, 2004 in Toccoa (Georgia, USA). In April 2005, he was buried with honors at Arlington War Memorial Cemetery.

Joseph Byerly is a recipient of many awards: USA, USSR, Russia, France. He left three children, seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild on this land. His son John served as ambassador to Russia from 2008 to 2012.

And I also have a story in stock about a Russian guy who served in the American army and returned home to Ukraine.