My American Comrade – by Yury Zarakhovich

”This is where we’re staying, John and I.  And this is also where I was held under arrest in February 1945.”   The tall, strong man gave me a wry smile – at 55, he hadn’t lost his athletic figure, or soldier’s posture.  “All the same, staying at the Metropol was a little nicer than sitting in a German POW camp.”

It was February 1979, the peak of a new bout of Cold War hysteria. And the man I was speaking to in the corridor of the Metropol Hotel was an American,  Joseph Beyrle, who had come to Moscow to visit his son John – now the  US ambassador to Russia, but then working as a guide on a US agricultural exhibition.

Joseph’s own account of his first trip to Moscow, 34 years earlier, was brief and terse. But his story – the story of an American soldier fighting Hitler’s army in the ranks of the Soviet Army  -- made my head spin.  And with good reason.

On June 5, 1944, the night before D-Day, he parachuted behind enemy lines into Nazi-occupied France, into a hail of German bullets.  As he jumped, just a few hundred meters away, he saw another transport plane carrying fellow servicemen burst into flames after being hit by enemy fire.

Joe’s own landing did not go well: he smashed onto the roof of a church in the village of Saint-Come-du-Mont. Worse still, after losing contact with fellow paratroopers, he found himself completely isolated. But this 20-year-old sergeant, a member of the legendary 101st Airborne's "Screaming Eagles,” an expert rifleman, wireless operator and explosives expert, was possessed of not only a strong body, but also an unyielding spirit.

Even before the Normandy landing, he had parachuted twice behind enemy lines to perform joint missions with French Resistance fighters in occupied France. He must have distinguished himself: they didn’t give out sergeant stripes for nothing in those days.

“It was my duty to fight the Nazis”, Beyrle, who always shied away from being called a hero, said many years later. “I volunteered to join the army. As an athlete I was offered a scholarship at the university. But my two elder brothers were already in the army, and I understood why.  No matter how young I was then, I knew that Hitler was a mortal threat for us all.”   

No question, it was bad luck to lose contact with your squad.  But, as Beyrle reminded me, “we were trained to accomplish the mission even if we were on our own.”  And that is precisely what he did. He first blew up a power substation, then several other targets.  But then the Germans got the better of him.  Beyrle was unlucky to run into a group of enemy soldiers. He threw a few grenades, and nearly escaped – until he jumped a hedgerow and found himself staring into the muzzle of a machine gun, a whole German squad keeping him in their sights.

Seven months of interrogations and torture followed; seven German camps and prisons, and two failed escape attempts. Having evaded the guards, he reasonably headed East towards advancing Russian allies. After his second escapee, though, it was a lack of knowledge of the situation that let him down. Joe and two fellow escapees mistakenly took a train to Berlin and ended up in the hands of the Gestapo. Fortunately, the Wehrmacht reclaimed him – formally, Gestapo had no right to hold army captives.  It could be that the Wehrmacht just wanted to use Beyrle for its own purposes, as the officers took away his identification, something that was against all the rules. One way or another, the Wehrmacht inadvertently helped Beyrle solve his problems when it sent the American to the camp at Alt Drewitz in Poland. In January 1945, Joe, together with two other POWs, made another daring escape. Beyrle was the only one to dodge the guards’ bullets. He evaded the dogs by walking down the middle of a stream for several kilometers. Eventually he scrambled onto the other bank leaving the clueless dogs far behind. For two weeks during the day he hid wherever he could.  At night he walked towards the ever-louder pounding of guns in the East. 

The Russians came to him themselves. As their tanks rumbled towards the barn where he was hiding from German patrols, Beyrle came out with his hands high in the air. He was clutching his last waterlogged pack of Lucky Strikes, cigarettes issued to US soldiers, which except for his ragged paratrooper’s uniform was the only proof of his American identity.  From Russian prisoners at the Alt Drewitz camp, he had learned a few phrases in their language.  And now, facing Russian soldiers, he shouted: “Ya Amerikansky tovarishch! (I’m an American comrade!) Ya Amerikansky tovarishch!”

Beyrle was lucky: the tank battalion’s political commissar spoke some English. He helped him communicate with the commander – a tough woman with major’s stripes who had lost her husband and all her family in the war. In Beyrle’s memory, she came to symbolize all the suffering and grief of the Soviet people, as well as their tenacity and unbreakable spirit.  But her name was far too complicated for him to remember. He called her simply “the Major” and that was how he remembered her all his life. Later, in the 1980s and 1990s, Joseph and his son John tried to find that battalion and its commander, but their efforts were in vain – the war left no record of them. So many people were laid to rest in common graves, so many units disappeared without a trace, with the few remaining soldiers sent to beef up less battle-bled divisions. The survivors cared little about records then – fighting on was the most important thing.

After treating her “American tovarishch” to vodka and soldier’s porridge, the Major said he would be sent to the rear, and then, along with other Americans liberated from prison camps, to Odessa, from where he would sail home to America. After hearing the translation Beyrle put down his glass. “I was not ‘liberated’ --  I escaped.   I escaped to link up with you, and fight the Nazis with you. We are allies, aren’t we? We must fight together.”
That was typical for Joseph Beyrle.

The battalion had several US Sherman tanks received under the Lend-Lease deal. The last ice between Joe and the Russian commanders was broken when he put in order their radio transmitters and established communications. Soon it turned out that he was a first-class demolition expert, and machine gunner, and from that moment on he seemed a natural fit in the battalion. Joe was a soldier like any other. The Russians saw him as “one of us”. That was how clutching a Soviet PPSh machinegun on top of his Sherman he rolled into the Alt Drewitz camp to free his erstwhile prison mates.

Had he served a little longer, the “American tovarishch” might have caught the vigilant eye of Smersh officers, but that didn’t happen. A month later, a dive bomber hit his Sherman.  Joe was blown off the tank and transported to a field hospital in critical condition.  And there… “I had recovered enough to start noticing things,” he remembered in February 1979. “It was then that suddenly everybody around me started scurrying around – there was hustle and bustle everywhere. Whoever could stand was standing at attention.  I realized that the top brass was coming.  It’s the same in every country.”

But Joseph had no idea how high this top brass reached.  And least of all did he expect Marshal Zhukov to come to his bed. Someone  must have told the marshal about this most extraordinary Red Army soldier.

“I tried to stand – he was a marshal, after all!  But somebody told me: ‘Don’t move, you are wounded.’ I felt very embarrassed: a sergeant, I had never had a chance to speak to a general even in my own army -- and here Zhukov himself was standing before me.  But the marshal was very friendly.  He asked who I was, where I came from and whether I had a family. And then he said that as soon as I got better, they would help me return home. Zhukov asked if I needed anything.   I told him I needed a document to help me get to the American embassy.  And they brought me a piece of paper. I still don’t know what was written on it, but its effect was truly magic. Just imagine.  Here I am walking through devastated Poland in a ragged US paratrooper uniform knowing how to say in Russian only “I am your American tovarishch”, “I love you” and naturally “Let’s have a drink”. I bump into a retreat-blocking detachment, show them the letter and they snap to attention. I had no problem hitching a ride with a convoy, and there was always a place for me on the train. That’s how I got to Moscow. The last NKVD patrol stopped me right outside Moscow. The officer spoke English, and he himself took me to the US embassy.  It’s a shame that he took away Zhukov’s letter.  He said I wouldn’t need it any more. That’s a real shame.”

We tried to find that letter. In the 1990s, top officials at the Lubyanka assured us that the most thorough search in the archives had yielded no result. Alas.

“At the embassy I was immediately placed under arrest,” Joseph continued the story of his odyssey 34 years later. “My family had been notified about my death in June 1944, but in fact I was alive and well. As they went about verifying my identity, I was kept at the Metropol, where John and I are staying now, with marines as my guards. Once everything checked out, I went home.”  During the interview John, who at the time was 25, was staring at his father with such amazement that Joseph had to explain: “It’s the first time that he’s heard a lot of this story.”  

”You never told me ...”

”And you never asked”, Joseph smiled.

And that, too, was typical Joseph Beyrle.

He returned home to Muskegon, a city on the eastern shores of Lake Michigan, on April 21, 1945. The next year he married JoAnne Hollowell. Ironically, the ceremony took place in the same church and was conducted by the same priest who had celebrated his funeral mass two years earlier. In 1979, Joe traveled to Moscow for the first time since 1945. He came to visit his son who was on assignment in Moscow. That circumstance helped him obtain a Soviet visa, which in those days was a rare commodity.  His story was so enthralling that I just could not keep it to myself. And the man – tall, strong, sturdy, sharp-eyed, full of dignity, courage and restrained irony – was extremely prepossessing. But the Cold War was on… One had to be “ideologically vigilant” and follow all the repugnant Soviet rules… A friend of mine who held an important position at Ogonyok magazine proposed a way out.    

At his suggestion I told the story of Joseph Beyrle to Ogonyok’s editor-in-chief Anatoly Sofronov.  He made a wry face, mentioned the political situation – it was 1979 -- and the watchful eye of the “instances”, which in the codeword language of Soviet days meant high-ranking party officials. “They won’t understand,” he said, uttering the standard bureaucratic incantation.
I mentioned casually that Beyrle was going to be received by the heads of the Soviet War Veterans Committee: generals Pavel Ivanovich Batov and Alexei Petrovich Maresyev, the famous pilot who kept flying despite losing both legs.  Sofonov's attitude changed instantly. “Ah, that changes everything,” he said. “If they’ve been given the go-ahead, then there should be nothing wrong with us reporting on a meeting at the veterans committee.”

When I used my friends' connections to meet general Batov, he expressed sincere regret, noting that the meeting with the American might be frowned upon. But when he learned that Ogonyok was going to write an article about the meeting, he happily agreed to welcome Beyrle at the committee.

Naturally, I didn’t brief Joe on all those details.  I just told him that he was invited to the Soviet War Veterans Committee. “But I am just an ordinary sergeant,” Joe said, looking hesitant, just like 34 years previously he was hesitant to meet Zhukov. “I am not sure it’s right for an ordinary sergeant to sit at the same table with such celebrated generals”…
That again was typical Joseph Beyrle.

I replied: “Batov and Maresyev are real soldiers and true heroes. They sincerely want to meet their wartime ally. You’ll have no problem communicating with each other. And Joe, you really have no reason to be embarrassed. You’re worth a dozen generals.”
The meeting at the veterans committee went like a song. It was open and warm. The veterans established a lasting relationship. Up until his death in December 2004, Joseph Beyrle regularly visited the Soviet Union and later Russia with delegations of American war veterans. Our ally in the war against Hitler, Joseph Beyrle forever remained a true friend of our country. He never had any illusions about the Soviet system, but he bowed his head to the courage and dignity of the people who bore the horrible burden of defeating Nazism. At the same time he considered it inappropriate to meddle with his ally's internal affairs. Had it come to an open fight between the Soviet Union and the United States, Joe would have fought with the same dedication as he did against the Nazis. But he was one of those who knew that common people in the Soviet Union had had their fill of war and wanted no more of it, just like the Americans. He was one of those who understood that only normal human relations would keep the two nations from trouble, and he took on the responsibility for building such relations, regardless of social standing.  I doubt it ever crossed his mind, but Joe was an outstanding practitioner of what was later to become known as “people's diplomacy” and was often more effective than efforts deployed by professional diplomats and politicians. And one more thing – he just loved Russia and Russians, accepting us the way we are.

For me Joseph Beyrle was the incarnation of the best traits of an American: whether young or mature he had unshakable notions of honor.   Strong business acumen – and solid business ethics. Power, dignity and friendliness towards people who came his way – and a subtle but vivid and sharp sense of humor.   Any pomposity was alien to him, but he kept sacred the memory of the horrible war against Hitler and deeply revered everything related to it.  It’s fair to ask why the excruciating trials he went through failed to break him when he was still very young and inexperienced. The answer may lie in Pushkin's observation: “Thus the weighty hammer, which shatters glass, also forges Damascus steel.”

At a 1994 ceremony in the Rose Garden of the White House, marking the 50th anniversary of D-Day, US President Bill Clinton and President Boris Yeltsin of Russia celebrated this American Army sergeant and Red Army tank gunner Joseph Beyrle, paying tribute to his extraordinary service during World War Two. Welcome to the exhibition that will tell you about the unique fate of this remarkable man – our good “Amerikansky tovarishch” Joseph Beyrle.