“I woke up in a German hospital with the German nurses working on me. And
I knew I wasn't dead, because angels don't speak German.”
This is what an American parachutist nicknamed “Jumpin’ Joe” said later in life,
recalling an experience he had during the
Second World War, after the Gestapo hospitalised him through torture.
It’s a great quote from a great story, a story of perseverance and humanity in
the face of untold horror, a story we’re going to share with you now.
It begins with the birth of our protagonist, Joseph R. Beyrle, in the city of Muskegon,
Michigan, in 1923. Beyrle’s parents, funnily enough, were of German origin
and had moved to the States before the turn of the century. Unfortunately for them,
they had to raise their son during the Great Depression. Times were tough for Beyrle,
and after he graduated from high school in 1942, they got tougher. But this was by choice.
In the words of a much older Beyrle:
“[My family] don’t understand that I felt it was my duty to volunteer [as
a paratrooper for the US Army], and what went on [in the war] and what it was like. I tell
them that if it wasn’t for what we did, they would all be marching the goose step today,
and the first question [they ask] is, ‘What’s the goose step?’”
It was during the completion of basic airborne infantry training that Beyrle earned the
nickname “Jumpin’ Joe.” As part of their training, paratroopers had to, as you might expect, practice
jumping out of planes. Many of them were worried they’d roll an ankle or snap a leg during these
jumps, so they paid “Jumpin’ Joe” a few bucks to make the jumps for them, using their names.
After Beyrle completed his training, the army assigned him to the “Screaming Eagles,” AKA the
506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. The unit was stationed in
England in the lead-up to Allied operations in occupied France in April and May 1944.
As a radio communications and demolitions specialist, Beyrle participated in at least
two clandestine missions whose objectives were to deliver gold to the French resistance.
Then, on the 6th of June, Beyrle’s world was flipped upside down.
En route to blow up some bridges behind Operation Overlord’s Utah Beach, Beyrle’s C-47 Skytrain
came under attack, and his team was forced to ditch at low altitude, far from their targeted
drop zone. Despite having just 110 meters (or 360 feet) between him and the ground, Beyrle survived
the drop. And now he was alone behind enemy lines, with no way of contacting his fellow paratroopers.
Instead of freaking out, Beyrle decided to blow up a power station. He then continued
to blow shit up until, a few days later, the Germans captured him.
Things got pretty grim for Beyrle at this point.
He was moved from prison to prison to prison, and in this time two of his escape
attempts ended in capture and reprisal. According to Beyrle’s daughter Julie,
“[Dad] had a dent in his head; it was very visible. I remember putting my
finger in it. When I would ask him about it, he said, ‘A German got mad at me.’”
In his third escape attempt, Beyrle and his fellow escapees managed to get clear of the prison,
only to mistakenly board a train to Berlin instead of a train to Poland. This time,
after his inevitable capture, Beyrle was turned over to the Gestapo.
In Beyrle’s words, “I’d resisted interrogation before, better than
most. [But under the Gestapo,] I was not being interrogated,
just tortured, extremely tortured, for the pleasure of the torturers.”
While they weren’t angels, someone was looking out for Beyrle, however.
Learning of Beyrle’s predicament, some German military officials surmised that, by holding
onto a military prisoner, the Gestapo was in breach of its role as a civilian police force.
If Beyrle was going to be locked up anywhere, it would be in a prison run by the German military.
Freed from the Gestapo, Beyrle was treated by the German nurses
we mentioned at the start of this video and then transferred to Stalag III-C POW
camp in western Poland. And once again, he managed to escape. This time for good.
It was January 1945 at this point. Beyrle had been between POW camps for about seven months,
and he was, understandably, pissed off. So he decided to head east,
hoping to run into the Red Army and re-join the fight alongside the Soviets.
Bumping into a Soviet tank battalion,
he raised a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes and shouted “American Comrade,” in Russian,
one of the few phrases he knew. And it seems that his cigarettes did indeed
bring him luck. The battalion’s commander, a woman named Aleksandra Samusenko, took some
convincing but finally allowed the American stray to join her in her war against Germany.
Beyrle’s son John later discussed this event in an interview, stating:
“I think [Dad] was amazed and frankly a lot of Russians to this day are amazed
to find out that women commanded tank units at the end of the war. He was just delighted
to be in friendly hands; they gave him a weapon and allowed him to ride along.”
Over the next three or so weeks, Beyrle proved himself a worthy addition to the
tank battalion by using his demolition skills to obliterate trees blocking the
unit’s advance. Under Samusenko’s leadership, Beyrle even helped liberate the very POW camp
in which he’d previously been held. Unfortunately, Beyrle was wounded
during a German dive bomber attack soon after. This saw him transferred to a Soviet hospital.
As if Beyrle’s story wasn’t bizarre enough, none other than the indomitable Marshal Georgy
Zhukov visited him during his recovery. Through a translator, Beyrle told Zhukov his story. And
Zhukov must have liked it because he organised for Beyrle to re-join his American brothers in arms.
When Beyrle arrived at the US embassy in Moscow in February, he learned he was, in fact, dead.
Well, that was what the records said, and what everyone back home believed.
They’d even held a funeral for the poor bloke and published his obituary in a Muskegon newspaper.
While the embassy confirmed Beyrle’s identity via his fingerprints, Beyrle got to chill
under the watchful eye of the Marine guard in the Metropol Hotel in the centre of the Russian city.
With his identity confirmed, the embassy returned Beyrle to the United States in time
to celebrate V-E Day. And what a story he had to tell his fellow celebrants.
But life goes on, and Beyrle had to set the war aside and make a return to civilian life.
He got married, had kids, and worked for Brunswick Corporation for 28 years.
However, he didn’t seek to wholly forget his time in Europe. Twenty years after he leapt
from that smoking C-47 on D-Day, he returned to Normandy to reflect on his experience alongside
some other American veterans. One such veteran, Donald R. Burgett, had the following to say:
“I didn't know [Beyrle] very well, but I sure know he could shoot and was one hell of a guy.
It's good for us to remember the sacrifices that were made by men like him in liberating France.”
On D-Day’s 50th anniversary in 1994, US President Bill Clinton and Russian
President Boris Yeltsin awarded Beyrle service medals for his bravery in the
war. He was a hero in the eyes of the Americans and Russians both.
According to Beryle’s son, “[My father’s] great fear was the slow slide into oblivion,
a nursing home, or worse. [He] always said, ‘When I go, I want to drop and skid along the ground.’”
And while Beyrle didn’t get to leave this world in such a drastic fashion as that,
he at least avoided the nursing home. During a visit to Georgia, where he’d trained as a
paratrooper and earnt the nickname “Jumpin’ Joe” back in 1942, he died in his sleep.
But his story lives on, and we’d love to know what you think about it. Had you heard about
“Jumpin’ Joe” before today? Do you know of any other Americans who fought in Soviet
units during the war, or visa versa? Is there anything about Beryle’s story we
missed? Anything we got wrong? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.