They trudged through compacted snow for about a half mile. Whenever Joe staggered the colonel supported him, muttering in English and Russian, mostly about how Hitler had caused so many terrible things.
“I was running a fever, and it made me start thinking about Hitler, not that I hadn't before, but in a new way. Here I was just one of millions of people, most suffering much more than I, who were Hitler's victims. How had God allowed him, what would He do with him?
“I recognized Red Square. It was lit up, though there was very little electricity in Moscow. The colonel steered me toward the entrance of a compound.”
They were stopped by two armed Americans, the first Joe had seen since Normandy, Marine guards in overcoats. Apparently the Russians hadn't told the embassy he was coming, so the Marines didn't quite know what to do with him. The Russian colonel stayed to explain the arrival to a U.S. Army major who was called to the gate. The colonel showed the major Joe's passport and stood with hands clasped behind his back while it was read. The major nodded approval and thanked the colonel, whose task was now completed.
“He bear-hugged me. I was pretty weak and could hardly squeeze back but shook his hand and thanked him. The major thanked him again, we all saluted, and the colonel marched off into the snow. I didn't think to ask him for my passport—it had served its purpose. My head was swimming, for now I'd made it, made it back, reached the end of my stalag dreams and fulfilled my obligations.”
For many years Joe's son John has been inquiring with Russian military historians about recovering Zhukov's letter. It hasn't turned up, probably because it was used as evidence against Zhukov that he was too palsy with Westerners. When he became so popular during the war Stalin saw him as a threat. Zhukov was the foremost national hero, so he wasn't purged; Stalin just retired him.
The major took Joe into the embassy, formerly the National Hotel. The lobby was high-ceilinged and ornate but cold enough to require an overcoat. Joe was ushered to an office to be interviewed by a man who introduced himself as a member of the U.S. Military Mission to Moscow. He was the first American civilian Joe had seen since the USO shows in England.
“He said he'd check out my story with the Soviets, then asked if I was feeling all right. My appearance must have shown him before I answered. He made a phone call, and in a few minutes two men in U.S. Army uniforms came in and asked if I'd like to have a shower and some good hot American food. Would I! My bath in the Warsaw convent had been great, but this shower was like heaven. I felt I had fever but not a care in the world. After drying off with fluffy towels I was given new underwear, socks, shoes, uniform trousers, and shirt. Someone took my temperature. When it was read I was told to take all that off, put on pajamas, and climb into a bunk. I must have slept for at least ten hours. It was full daylight when I awoke. At some point I remember orange juice beside my bed left by a doctor who had examined me, but I didn't remember him at all. I sucked it down like an alcoholic. Anything citrus was ultimate luxury. I could almost hear my body say, 'Hey, this is vitamin C!' ”
When Joe was back in uniform again the major informed him there had been a glitch. In his possessions was a kriege dog tag but no GI tag. How did that happen? Joe explained how the GI tags had been taken during his first interrogation in Normandy. The major indicated this was unusual—Joe certainly agreed with him but didn't say anything about Greta— so some more things would have to be checked out. After that Ambassador Harriman wanted to see Joe. The wait was fine, and he went back to bed.
“The major gently woke me and said he was just checking to see if I was still alive—I'd been out cold for another ten hours. Maybe it was because I was coming back to my senses, but I had a feeling he was looking at me differently.”
IN THE FALL of 1944, when Joe's parents had been informed that contrary to previous telegrams he had not been KIA but was instead a POW, this information somehow did not reach a certain branch of the War Department, which continued to carry Joe as dead, with a notation that a body had been found with his dog tags but also with uncertainty if the corpse was actually Joe's. Someone in G-2 had added a flag to the file requiring that information about anyone purporting to be Joe should be sent by the fastest possible means to the Pentagon. The major in the Moscow embassy complied with this instruction. The fastest means of transmission at that time was telegram. While Joe was asleep, the answer came back from the Pentagon to regard him as suspect, possibly a Nazi assassin targeted on Ambassador Harriman.
“i WELL REMEMBER my first Moscow breakfast. An orderly asked what I wanted and was surprised that I said just oatmeal with milk and sugar plus some hot toast from real bread. I explained that I hadn't had much food and I was afraid that anything rich or fried would be too much for my stomach. I was offered American cigarettes but said I only used them for trading and gambling.
“The embassy doctor came by again, and this time he was concerned about my shoulders, which he said were in very bad shape, as if I didn't know. He was working on them when the major came in and said something about a problem about my identity. Officially I'd been KIA in Normandy and my parents so informed. This was an awful shock because I couldn't imagine them thinking I was dead. And something was wrong, I realized, when remembering that Schultz had checked on my mail that had been held up at XII-A. If someone had written me late in the summer, they must have known I was alive. I was confused, feverish, and then really disturbed when the major said I'd have to be moved to the Metropole Hotel until my identity was confirmed. This was because of a diplomatic agreement, according to him, which allowed only bona fide Americans to stay at the embassy. I became angry and said if my identity was in doubt, why not fingerprint me and send the prints to Washington? I knew I'd been fingerprinted when I joined the army, so there must be a set on file. The major said that was a good idea. An intelligence NCO was brought in, and I was fingerprinted before being taken to the Metropole.”
It irked Joe to be driven there by a Marine guard who said he was along only for protection. Joe replied he was a veteran of the Red Army with nothing to fear from Russians. The next morning the Marine took him over to the military attache's compound, where the food was much better than at the Metropole.
“He was sure right about that. I remember my first meal at the compound: roast chicken, mashed potatoes, white bread rice pudding, and chocolate cake. It was too much for me, and I got sick. Before we returned to the Metropole, I was interviewed by two intelligence officers, who seemed doubtful about my story. One got in back of me and said something loud and fast in German. I didn't react. I guess they expected me to, if I were a kraut. Then they started in on my German background, asked if I'd ever visited Germany before the war or if any of my family was there. The questions sounded a lot like our interrogation of Websky, the mole we executed in III-C.”
Back at the Metropole Joe gazed out a small window at dark, drab Moscow. There was very little sunlight, only a few hours a day during the Russian winter. It was depressing and he was depressed. This situation was impossible, for all he'd done to get here—to be suspected of being some Hitlerite plant. Even worse was thinking about his parents and the grief they must have gone through. That night he went out in the hall to go to the latrine and was confronted by two armed Marine guards.
“I'm afraid I cursed them.
“My fever grew higher, I could feel it, and had periods of wooziness. I was going bonkers and began planning an escape from the hotel. Of all my escape plans, this was the wildest and dumbest of all!
“I'd noticed that around midafternoon there was only one guard on my door, till a second one arrived about a half hour later. My plan was to jump the single guard and lock him in my room. What I'd do then was rejoin the Red Army and get home by way of Berlin.
“I very quietly opened the door a crack and peeked out into the hall. The guard's profile was toward me, about three feet away as he read an American magazine, his chair tipped back against the wall. He didn't look as big as I had been (before losing sev
enty pounds) and of course couldn't be as tough as a paratrooper, he being a mere Marine. I grabbed him around the chest, pinning his shoulders, and with a lunge pulled him off the chair and toward the door. With his forearm he flipped me back and flat on my ass. Beyrle, I thought, you've really slipped a long way from Toccoa!”
The Marine looked at Joe sympathetically, handled him easily, and put him back in the room. The second Marine arrived to say, sorry, but Joe would have to be locked in. That afternoon the major came to reason with him: confidentially, he believed Joe's story, but that couldn't be the embassy's official position till his prints were confirmed in Washington. Joe was still ranting betrayal but after a sedative fell asleep while still talking with the major.
“I had a pent-up need to talk, and did about everything— my experiences at home and during the war. After that I clammed up for many years. I remember the major sitting there like a psychiatrist, not taking any notes, though, and that calmed me. Gradually he darkened into a silhouette and was gone.”
The embassy doctor came the next morning to see if Joe had been reinjured during his scuffle with the Marine. Nothing had been hurt except pride. Joe asked what happened next if his identity was confirmed. The doctor said he'd be put on the first means of transportation to begin the trip home. That was good news, unless it meant another Russian hospital train. No, the doctor assured him, the embassy had U.S. aircraft at its disposal, pressurized transports, and he'd recommend that Joe fly out. From that point Joe's morale and health began an upward trajectory.
Still he was a prisoner at the Metropole, the same hotel where he was to stay in 1979 while visiting John, who was a guide for the American Agriculture Exhibit. Joe's previous room had become a suite when he and his wife were guests of the Russians for commemoration of the Great Patriotic War.
Incarcerated at the Metropole in 1945, Joe spent the days catching up on news from the Marines. They brought him magazines with every guard shift. The one who'd decked him said there could be a rematch when Joe got back into shape but he'd have to find the Marine in Florida, where he would be a civilian as soon as the war was over.
In a few days the major appeared with the first secretary of the embassy. Sorry for the delay, he began, but mix-ups happen in war. Anyway, Washington has confirmed the fingerprints and had received word from the International Red Cross that Joe had been a POW whose last record was at Sta-lag III-C, now in Russian hands.
“I started laughing like a maniac. Yeah, those records had been at III-C, but I'd liberated them! The other great news was my parents had been informed that my death report had been false and I was now under U.S. control in Moscow. 'Now let's go back to the embassy and celebrate,' the first secretary said. He opened the door, and the Marine guards were dismissed and congratulated me. I was still laughing and crying while they hugged me as if we'd been lifelong buddies. The sergeant of the guard had been wounded in the Pacific and had an idea of what I was feeling.
“From there on there is nothing unfortunate to tell in my story. Life didn't become perfect, but it sure beat anything I'd known before.
“There were two wonderful events before I left Russia. The second was when the plane flew us to Odessa, where there was a U.S. Navy ship waiting to take us to Egypt. There were maybe a thousand of us on the dock, all liberated POWs, air corps and army, many from III-C. We were formed up, called to attention, and marched in file up the gangplank. It is navy tradition to salute the American flag on the fantail when you board. The file was very slow moving up that gangplank.”
When Joe reached the top he knew why. Men were holding their salute, then bending over and crying. Sailors helped them go aboard. When Joe reached the saluting position he could hardly bring his hand up. There was a light, cool breeze. The flag seemed to be in fluorescent colors, red, white, and blue from another world.
“I made my salute slowly, the way it's done now at military funerals. I hadn't planned to salute that way, it just happened.”
The first event was the night after his “confirmation.” Joe was Ambassador Harriman's guest of honor, though he was the only enlisted man among several officers who had been krieges at Oflag 64 in Poland. After hearing his story, they insisted that he sit on the ambassador's right.
Harriman was a most gracious host and began a round of vodka toasts after recounting how he'd sacrificed his liver for the sake of Allied cooperation.
“I knew what he meant. The Russians never started eating before everyone was drunk. The ambassador asked me to say grace. The last time I'd done so out loud was with the sisters. They had understood what I was saying but not the language I was speaking.
“A waiter came around and asked how I'd like my steak. 'Soon! ? said.”
It was a meal from his dreams: filet mignon, au gratin potatos, pureed squash, lemon cake, Caucasian wine, and Turkish coffee. All the krieges were slower to finish the main course than any of their hosts. Joe's filet was so wonderful that he whispered to the waiter, please wrap this up so I can take it to my room. Harriman overheard the request, announced it to the guests, who all chuckled, then applauded when he said the kitchen was open twenty-four hours a day.
“The other krieges agreed that the habit of saving something for later was hard to break. I'm still an icebox hoarder.
“That dinner at the embassy was the finest I've ever had though I've become sort of a gourmet and tried to top it many times. That's fun to try, but I know I never will. You understand, don't you?”
EPILOGUE
IT HAD ALL HAPPENED SO FAST, A CAVALCADE OF HISTORY speeding away like a stupendous comet to become smaller and smaller in memory, yet as vivid as when it filled the sky. Three years, two months, one week, six days: that was Joe's stint in the army, a sum that trips off his lips with a ready smile. The ten months at war were like a convex mirror, enlarging and distorting in its violence but also because ten months constituted a much larger percentage of his life in his twenties than in his seventies.
Joe's final journey began with passage through the Dardanelles to Port Said, in Egypt, where he transferred to a ship of irony, the HMS Samaria, which had carried him over the Atlantic and U-boats to England, where he'd arrived on September 17,1943, exactly one year after being inducted. This time the destination was Naples, where doctors removed the last of his war souvenirs in exchange for two Purple Hearts and GI dog tags.
“Hey, what happened to your other ones?” asked the sergeant who issued them.
“You really want to know?”
For ten days Joe enjoyed Neapolitan cuisine and evidence that the war, though not over, had become almost casual in southern Italy. Daily a German plane flew hundreds of miles to drop propaganda leaflets over Naples. The message was for Americans to surrender now before the Wehrmacht reconquered Italy. Rather than shoot the plane down as they easily could have, the Allies welcomed its visits for their comic effect.
On March 31, 1945, Joe began a long-awaited westward voyage. The next day was at sea and Sunday, the most beautiful Easter of his life. It was celebrated by mass on decks crammed with GIs. The priest asked if anyone had been an altar boy; Joe volunteered and is proud that he could recite every response in Latin.
Naturally during the boring days ahead dice rolled constantly for troops flush with back pay. With three hundred dollars in his pocket Joe started hot. By mid-Atlantic his winnings had reached thirty thousand, so vast a sum that he paid two bodyguards a thousand dollars each to protect it, not just from theft but from himself. “Throw me in the brig if I touch the last ten grand.” They almost had to. Joe lost the other twenty thousand.
From the Statler Hotel in Boston Joe called home, heard the voices of his parents and their emotion for nearly an hour. Their every other sentence was “You sure you're all right?” I soon will be, was his answer, because the next day he'd be on a train for Chicago.
There at Fort Sheridan occurred the last macabre event of Joe's war. As the homebound GIs were processed for leave and discharge, they were fe
d in a mess hall where German POWs were the KPs. Dinner one night was steak, baked potatoes, and all the trimmings. Several ex-krieges went back for seconds but were refused by the Germans. Melee and mayhem broke out when someone noticed SS tattoos. Before MPs arrived, a number of Germans were beaten to death with cafeteria trays or stabbed with steak knives. The incident never got into the papers. The war was not yet over, and censorship was still in effect.
Homecoming in Muskegon was in May 1945, the same month as V-E Day. Joe's train arrived at 11:30 A.M., to be met by a score of family, friends, and more kisses than he'd received in his previous twenty-one years. The welcomers pro-ceeded to his parents' house, where dozens of neighbors came by with congratulations, affection, and so many long hugs that Joe had to announce that his shoulders were still a medical problem. The phone never stopped ringing during the reception.
A huge dinner followed. He ate to the point of gorging but secreted some of the leftovers in his bedroom. Untouched during his absence, the room looked just as he'd left it at the end of his last stateside furlough, less than two years ago but a chasm in the past. Yet at that time in 1943 he had premonitionally known that his room would never be the same, and it wasn't. He'd left his youth there. Its symbols were now artifacts.
Concurrent with the hero worship bestowed upon him (which lasted for months), Joe started to point the course for the rest of his life. The postwar period had just begun while the personal consequences of the war, now overwhelmingly pleasant, lingered. Joe was not discharged till November 1945, a medical discharge with a percentage disability, from a hospital in Maywood, Illinois. The army made a pitch to retain him with a commission and assignment to Soviet coun-terintelligence. His posting would be in Berlin. Joe thought it over seriously but declined because “I didn't think I had any more luck left in Germany.”
Behind Hitler's Lines Page 36