20 Facts About Joseph Beyrle

Joseph Beyrle was captured by the Germans and sent east as a prisoner of war.

Joseph Beyrle died in 2004 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Joseph Beyrle was the third of seven children born to William and Elizabeth Beyrle, whose parents had come to America from Germany in the 1800s.

Joseph Beyrle was six years old when the Great Depression struck; his father, a factory worker, lost his job.

Some of his earliest memories, Joseph Beyrle later told his children, were of standing in government food lines with his father.

Joseph Beyrle specialized in radio communications and demolition, and was first stationed in Ramsbury, England, to prepare for the upcoming Allied invasion from the west.

Joseph Beyrle performed other sabotage missions before being captured by German soldiers a few days later.

Joseph Beyrle and his fellow prisoners had been hoping to find the Red Army, which was a short distance away.

The Gestapo were about to shoot Joseph Beyrle and his comrades, claiming that he was an American spy who had parachuted into Berlin.

Joseph Beyrle was taken to the Stalag III-C POW camp in Alt Drewitz, from which he escaped in early January 1945.

Joseph Beyrle headed east, hoping to meet up with the Soviet army.

Joseph Beyrle was eventually able to persuade the battalion's commander to allow him to fight alongside the unit on its way to Berlin.

Joseph Beyrle began a month-long stint in a Soviet tank battalion, where his demolitions expertise was appreciated.

Joseph Beyrle returned home to Michigan on April 21,1945, and celebrated V-E Day two weeks later in Chicago.

Joseph Beyrle was married to JoAnne Hollowell in 1946 in the same church and by the same priest who had held his funeral mass two years earlier.

Joseph Beyrle worked for Brunswick Corporation for 28 years, retiring as a shipping supervisor.

Joseph Beyrle died in his sleep of heart failure on December 12,2004, during a visit to Toccoa, Georgia, where he had trained as a paratrooper in 1942.

Joseph Beyrle was buried with honors in Section 1 of Arlington National Cemetery in April, 2005.

The elder son, Joe Joseph Beyrle II, served in the 101st Airborne during the Vietnam War.

In 2005, a plaque was unveiled on the wall of the church in Saint-Come-du-Mont, France, where Joseph Beyrle landed on June 6,1944.