The wartime feats of Joseph R. “Jumpin’ Joe” Beyrle are the stuff of legend.  After parachuting into Normandy on D-Day in June 1944, he was captured by the Germans.  Battered and starved, Beyrle, a member of the 101st Airborne’s “Screamin’ Eagles,” was moved through seven Nazi prison camps, tortured, and interrogated.  American troops found his dog tags on another body on Utah Beach, presumably a Nazi spy.  The War Department registered Beyrle as killed in action.  His parents held a memorial service in Muskegon, Michigan.

But four months later, they received a postcard.  Beyrle, with the help of the Red Cross, sent a short note that he was POW and “fine.”  In reality, Beyrle was anything but -- he had lost a third of his body weight.  He staged two escapes.  The third time he got lucky and ran from the Stalag 3-C POW camp in Alt Drewitz in January 1945.  After running for a day, he oriented himself and figured his best chance was to search out Soviet troops, the only U.S. ally fighting in the area.

“I knew two words of Russian, Amerikanskii tovarishch” -- “American comrade,” said Beyrle.  With his hands in the air, he called out to the Soviet troops.  He won their trust by using his demolition skills to blow up trees hindering the advance of the Soviet tank brigade.  Beyrle joined the Soviet ranks, but as his unit advanced toward Berlin, he was seriously wounded in a German attack.  Recovering in a Russian field hospital, he met Marshal Georgiy Zhukov who gave him a letter of transit to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, from where he made his way home to Muskegon.

Beyrle returned to Russia numerous times and traveled widely later in life, despite complications from his war wounds.  He wore a vest filled with American medals on one side and Soviet and Russian medals on the other.  Beyrle’s son, John, became a Russian specialist at the U.S. State Department, rising to the rank of Ambassador to Russia, where he currently serves.