🇺🇸 The U.S. Army declared him dead in Normandy. But they had no idea how hard Joseph Beyrle was to kill!
Seven months later, American paratrooper Joseph Beyrle was fighting the Germans... with the Red Army!
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On D-Day, Beyrle jumped into France with the 101st Airborne Division. Separated from his unit, he carried out several acts of sabotage before being captured.
He spent seven months in German hands, passed through seven prison camps and endured two failed escapes. On his third attempt, in January 1945, he finally broke out of Stalag III-C!
Moving east, he encountered a Soviet tank unit. Beyrle raised his hands, displayed a pack of Lucky Strikes and shouted the only Russian words he knew:
"Amerikansky tovarishch!" - American comrade.
Instead of sending him to the rear, the Soviets allowed him to join them. Armed with a Soviet submachine gun, the American paratrooper fought alongside their tanks for nearly a month, until a German air strike wounded him.
Marshal Zhukov later helped him reach the American Embassy in Moscow.
There, Beyrle faced one final problem: The United States believed he was dead. His dog tags had been found on a corpse, and his family had already held his funeral.
Only his fingerprints proved that Joseph Beyrle had returned from the dead!
In 1946, he married in the same church where his funeral Mass had been celebrated, with the same priest.