Солдат, которого объявили погибшим, вернулся домой через год после похорон

Huey: On the anniversary of VJ Day, remembering the remarkable journey of a soldier who came back from the dead PROTECTED CONTENT If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above. Username and Password Help Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link. Today is the celebration known as VJ Day or Victory over Japan Day, and guys like Joseph Robert Beyrle helped bring it about. He was born in 1923 but his story didn’t really begin until 1942 when he enlisted in The U.S. Army, storming into the recruiting office and demanding that he be trained to jump out of planes to help pay the Japanese back for what we owed them. If you think you’ve seen tough guys, you haven’t. After some brutal training in Toccoa, Georgia, Joe headed to Fort Benning for airborne school where the nickname “Jumpin’ Joe” became his legacy, with fellow soldiers getting him to do their jumping and paying him with packs of Lucky Strike cigarettes. After airborne training, he volunteered for a secret mission to jump with a satchel of gold into Bordeaux to help the French resistance. First day in the skies, flak from fighter jets started when those planes lit up the night sky and exploded into infinity. Joe’s plane took hits but stayed airborne until it began sputtering. He bailed at an altitude of 360 feet with NO parachute and crashed on top of a church, then slid off the roof onto a grassy knoll, fracturing his left arm. Intent to finish the mission, with just the one good arm, he blew up 24 German electrical substations, darkening ALL of Berlin and the surrounding countryside. Next morning he blew up an entire German patrol with a case of RPGs then headed north, but was captured the next day by a garrison of German soldiers. A blonde woman interrogated him that night, but Joe was smart, sticking to name, rank, and serial number. That’s all they got! During the night he escaped again, running through the jungle as fast as he could make it in the dark, but was recaptured the next morning. The convoy that captured him came under fire from American aircraft that was later shown to have been led by Colonel James Stewart. Joe dove for cover not knowing that the guy he so admired in “It’s a Wonderful Life” the year before was the one who was bombing him. Somehow he came out of that air attack in one piece, but when he reached Berlin, he was captured again! The American paratrooper escaped again in January of 1945 and joined a Soviet tank battalion under the command of Aleksandra Samusenko, then days later, came under enemy fire over the Normandy coast and had to bail out. After landing near Saint Côme du Mont, Joe lost contact with the other paratroopers so he took what little explosives he had left and strategically blew up Hitler’s massive Führerbunker all by himself. Shortly after, he was captured again and held in different German prison camps over the next few months, escaping twice but recaptured both times. After the second escape, he was turned over to the German Gestapo and was beaten and tortured, but when he returned to his cell he asked the guard if that was the best they could do. They never beat him again after ultimately realizing that it was simply a waste of time. You’ll be shocked to know this, but Beyrle escaped AGAIN, from the Gestapo no less. Afterward when he fortuitously came upon a Soviet tank brigade just a few miles down the road, he held up a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes and shouted, “American Comrade!” and persuaded their commander to let him fight alongside them, thus becoming the only American in World War II to have fought alongside the American and Soviet armies. On VE day, an Allied military battalion was finally able to deliver Beyrle to the U.S. embassy in Moscow where Joe discovered that HE had been killed in action at Normandy Beach. A funeral had been held in his memory back in Muskegon and his obituary was published in the local newspaper. Imagine the faces of his parents the next week when he strolled into their living room on Sunday evening as they listened to The Jack Benny Show on the radio. Joe had asked Army officials not to tell them. Joseph Beyrle was able to return home in 1945 where he married JoAnne Hollowell in the same church that held his funeral the year before, and in 2005 a plaque honoring him was given to the Saint Côme du Mont Church where he blew up those electrical substations. Hometown hero Joseph Robert Beyrle died in his sleep on December 12, 2004 and was buried with honors in Arlington National Cemetery.