In Moscow, U.S. Vet Rejoins His Comrades in Arms

MOSCOW — Back then, in the chaotic violence of Germany’s death throes at the end of World War II, Tech. Sgt. Joseph Beyrle knew only two words of Russian: “Amerikansky tovarishch!” -- American comrade! -- he shouted to members of a Soviet tank unit.

He hoped they understood. The same unit had just shot a German couple from a nearby farmhouse, chopped their bodies into pieces, and fed them to the hogs. Beyrle had his hands up, and for long moments the Russians simply stared at him, Russians being, as he puts it, “great starers.” Then they offered him some pork soup.

Beyrle, who had escaped from a German POW camp into the arms of the advancing Soviet army, spent the next month fighting in a Russian tank battalion under the command of a tough female officer who alternately led her troops into battle with a ferocious war whoop and cradled them on her shoulder when they came back terrified. Injured by a bomb early in 1945, Beyrle made his way to Moscow and reached the U.S. Embassy.

Now, Beyrle knows many Russian words, especially the word for “thank you”: “Spasibo, spasibo, spasibo!” the 80-year-old Michigan resident said from the stage of a Moscow theater this week, honored as the only soldier widely recognized here as having fought with both U.S. and Soviet forces in the Second World War.

Beyrle has been back to Moscow several times since the war, but at this weekend’s Victory Day celebration he will stand in Red Square at the side of his son, John, the second most powerful American diplomat in Russia.

“From what people tell me, he has become a Russian expert,” Beyrle said in an interview at the embassy Friday. Was it because of the war stories he heard while growing up? Did Beyrle tell his son there was as much to love as to fear on the other side of the Cold War trenches?

He shrugged.

“I talked very little about my experiences in World War II, until later in life,” he said. “But I think it must have played a role. And John has come to admit it.”

Beyrle has a vest covered with decorations from both the U.S. and Russian armies. His exploits have been chronicled in a book, “The Simple Sounds of Freedom,” by Thomas H. Taylor. This week, he added to his collection an AK-47 assault rifle, presented to him by its designer, former Lt. Gen. Mikhail Kalashnikov, at a star-studded ceremony for Russian war movie actors, real Russian war heroes -- and one American.

“I created it for the defense of the motherland. But my weapon has turned into the weapon of peace!” Kalashnikov declared as he thrust the weapon that launched a thousand guerrilla wars into Beyrle’s hands. “Let it serve as a symbol of the friendship between two peoples!”

Russia takes the world war seriously. Veterans and Memorial days in the United States are given over largely to barbecues and small-town parades, but Russia’s capital city all week has been gearing up frenetically for what is, after all, merely an off-year anniversary of the defeat of Germany in what is known here as the Great Patriotic War.

Russian President Vladimir V. Putin mailed off congratulatory letters to 1.1 million surviving veterans. In addition to the military parade in Red Square on Sunday, the city has scheduled concerts, theatrical performances and races all over Moscow.

“One thing that somebody explained to us last night: ‘This is a holiday with tears in its heart,’ ” said Beyrle’s wife, JoAnne.

Whereas the U.S. lost about 410,000 military personnel during World War II, Russia lost an estimated 7.5 million soldiers to the Germans. Entire cities were consumed. Leningrad, now called St. Petersburg, came under a 900-day siege that killed as many as a million civilians -- including 200,000 in two months. Stalingrad, now Volgograd, became the 20th century’s defining example of hell on Earth.

“We in America don’t understand it, because we never had a war on our own soil until Sept. 11,” Beyrle said.

Still recovering from his wounds in 1945, Beyrle was able to get to Moscow only with the aid of renowned Russian field commander Marshal Georgy Zhukov, who encountered him during a hospital visit, and not surprisingly, “wanted to know how I got to where I was.”

Beyrle described how he fought a desperate advance through hostile territory with the Russians, helped them liberate his old POW camp, and told how he was now stranded in Russia with no travel documents. The next day, a letter arrived at the hospital bearing Zhukov’s signature. “You don’t need to know what it says,” he was told. “Just know that you can use it to go anywhere you want to go.”

Armed with the letter, Beyrle got to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow but was told he had been killed in the D-day invasion at Utah Beach in Normandy.

Protesting that he had been captured, not killed, Beyrle insisted on being fingerprinted. A few days later, he was officially recognized and sent home.

At the awards ceremony, Beyrle was surrounded by a dozen young Russian Navy cadets who kept casting shy glances at him, and Russian veterans who took turns being photographed at his side.

“During the Great Patriotic War, we were allies who fought against one enemy,” said Ivan Tsapov, an 82-year-old former pilot said of Beyrle’s visit. “They were trying to prevent the spread of fascism, and so were we. Then, of course, they somehow began to forget about that. But time takes its own, and now we are united again, in our struggle against terrorism.”