The "Band of Brothers" Member who ended up in the Red Army

This one is too good not to post.  A member of the 506th Parachute Regiment, Joseph Beyrle was captured within a few days of landing during of D-Day.  In the meantime, he managed to cause a great deal of mayhem.  After capture, he was sent east to Stalag IIIC, where he made several attempts to escape.  In January of 1945, he finally escaped from the German prisoner camp and linked up with a Red Army tank unit.
The tank unit was commanded by Alexandra Samusenko (the only female armored battalion commander in the Red Army and a real hottie):
For the next month, Joseph fought alongside the tank battalion on its way through Poland.  In the first week of February, he was wounded in an air attack, sent to a hospital, visited by Georgi Zukov and then sent on to Moscow and the US embassy before his evacuation back to the US.

Beyrle was married in 1946 by the same priest who had presided over his in abstentia funeral two years earlier.  He received a special award from Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin in 1994.  Beyrle died in 2004.

How many guys have won the Purple Heart, Croix de Guerre and the Order of the Red Banner?  Beyrle is presumed to be the only American to have fought for the Red Army in WWII.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are SS bolts a Neo-Nazi Symbol?

Soviet Paratroops Early Disaster