Jumping Joe

My college classmate, Duffy Brent who serves as a docent at The American Heritage Museum in Hudson, Massachusetts, recently turned me on to the incredible story of Jumping Joe Beyrle. Joe was the first American paratrooper to land in France on D-Day. He also has the distinction of being the only soldier to fight for both the United States and the Soviet Union against the Nazis.  Intrigued, I read “Beyond Hitler’s Lines” which is an engrossing story of Beyrle’s amazing exploits.

Born in 1923 in Muskegon, Michigan, one of Joe’s first memories was standing with his father in a government food line during The Great Depression. When Joe graduated from high school in 1942, he turned down a baseball scholarship from Notre Dame and enlisted in the army.

Beyrle volunteered to become a paratrooper and was assigned to a parachute division known as the “Screaming Eagles”. Beyrle specialized in demolition and was deployed to England to prepare for the upcoming invasion against the Nazis. While still in training, Beyrle volunteered for two covert missions- successfully delivering gold bars to the French Resistance in occupied France.

2,501 U.S. paratroopers died on D-Day and many more were wounded or listed as missing. The plane carrying Beyrle came under enemy fire over the Normandy coast, and he was forced to jump from the exceedingly low altitude of 360 feet. Joe lost contact with his fellow paratroopers after his landing. Undaunted, he successfully blew up a power station. After performing a few more solo sabotage missions, he was captured by German soldiers.

Over the next seven months, Beyrle was held in seven different German prisons. He escaped twice but was recaptured both times. After the second escape, he set out for Poland but boarded a train to Berlin by mistake. Beyrle was then savagely tortured by Gestapo agents but ironically his life was spared by German military officials who determined that the Gestapo had no jurisdiction over prisoners of war.

Taken to yet another POW camp, Joe escaped in early January,1945. He headed east, hoping to meet up with the Soviet army. After a few weeks he encountered a Soviet tank brigade. Joe raised his hands, holding a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes, and shouted in Russian, “American comrade!”. The battalion commander was Aleksandra Samusenko, the highest-ranking Soviet female tank officer. Impressed by Joe’s story, she allowed him to join her unit on its way to invading Berlin. Beyrle’s demolitions expertise was very useful to his new battalion, and he assisted in the liberation of his former prison camp. One month later, he was wounded during a German air attack.  Beyrle was evacuated to a Soviet hospital where he received a visit from Soviet Field Marshall George Zhukov. The legendary general was amazed by Joe’s story and provided Beyrle with official papers to help him rejoin American forces.

A Soviet military convoy delivered Beyrle to the US embassy in Moscow. There he learned that the U.S. War Department had reported him as killed in action on June 10, 1944. A funeral had been held in his honor in Muskegon.  On April 21, 1945, Beyrle returned home and celebrated V-E Day, with friends and family.  He married JoAnne Hollowell in 1946 in the same church and by the same priest who had held his funeral mass in 1944. Joe spent 28 years as a factory shipping supervisor before his retirement.

Jumping Joe was honored on the fiftieth anniversary of V-E Day by President Bill Clinton and President Boris Yeltsin. Beyrle died in his sleep in 2004 during a visit to Toccoa, Georgia where he had trained as a paratrooper.  Deservedly, he is interred at Arlington National Cemetery. Ironically his son, John Beyrle served as the United States Ambassador to Russia from 2008 to 2012.

Have a great weekend. I’m back blogging but due to an increased volunteer workload and a new cable show, I’m cutting back to twice a month.