WORLD WAR II REUNIONS ARE SMALLER, THE VETERANS ALARMINGLY fewer as actuarial predictions become morbidity statistics. The 101st Airborne Division holds its reunions at different locations each year in August, the month of the division's birth in 1942. These veterans are the Screaming Eagles, and their casualties to age are said to have “soared.” I'm a second-generation Screaming Eagle—my father commanded the division during World War II and I fought with it during Vietnam—so naturally my interest in the 101st is intense, so much so that I wrote a history of its campaigns in the Gulf War and a biography of the longest-serving Screaming Eagle in Vietnam.
I continued to browse reunions in search of a remarkable war story, especially from the Big One: “Let me hear from you old guys before you soar!” I'd say. Despite this urging the response most often was bemusement from a septuagenarian as he studied his shoes. He wasn't ready to relive that war and never would be; or he deflected the thought with an increasingly popular laugh line: “The older we get the better we were!”
Eventually the vets began mentioning Joe Beyrle (pronounced “buy early”). Did I know he had fought longer with the Soviet army than with the American? No one, to my knowledge, had even fought with both. We were introduced at a snowbird reunion in Kissimmee, Florida.
It didn't take a long interview with Joe to realize that his is one of the most extraordinary American adventures of World War II. A true story, beyond doubt in all matters of importance, with only small indulgence needed for accuracy of times and places. There is corroborating evidence from other POWs; where there is not, Joe's modesty speaks for his veracity. Diaries and journals in POW camps were of course forbidden by the Germans, and any attempts to keep such records were punished and noted in a prisoner's file. Ironically, Joe was able to capture those records from his former captors.
In relating his story my most difficult contemplation was perspective. What was predominant, what was key in his experience? Luck and its fickleness seemed the theme. Was Joe's luck ultimately good or bad?
Good! He is not just alive—after his burial—but leading a satisfying life. His health concerns are more reminders of that than pain from the past, even though they carry dire medical labels like beriberi, amoebic dysentery, frostbite, skull fracture, and multiple wounds. Survivor's guilt, usually a major ingredient in the psyche of ex-POWs, is no evident part of Joe.
In Normandy on the fiftieth anniversary of D Day, Jack Smith of ABC asked Joe why he allowed himself to be captured. A flicker of reflection revealed a half century of mulling that question. “Preservation” was his answer. Preserving life, at least temporarily, made better odds than dodging submachine-gun bullets fired from six feet away. So stark a choice cannot be second-guessed even in light of its consequences.
From that inevitable choice concatenated unimagined misery. A fellow POW said that those who saved their lives lost their ego—a salutary exchange if ego is the root of all evil. But ego is also the stem of individuality. Joe survived as an individual, with an individual outlook, individual obstinacy, individual daring, and individual faith. That personality, plus inordinate luck he pushed beyond reasonable limits, got him through situations that killed all of his closest buddies.
He is an exemplar of what Tom Brokaw has called the Greatest Generation. Joe's thoughts of that generation are not his focus today; instead it is his family, the rising generation, his children, their families. He would not dedicate this book to anyone in particular but approved the dedication in the World War II yearbook of the 101st Airborne: “To the memory of our buddies, living and dead, the many rich and varied experiences we shared; and to hope that we may, in some measure, abide by and help to preserve the way of life for which we went to war.”
No veteran more deserves the way of life Joe now enjoys. This book is a way of paying last respects to him and those like him who gave us our world.
Thomas H. Taylor
A NOTE ON MILITARY ORGANIZATIONS
AT THE BEGINNING OF JUNE 1944, THE 101ST AIRBORNE Division numbered about 14,000 soldiers. As one of four infantry regiments in the 101st, the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment had an initial strength of about 2,500 paratroopers, divided into three battalions of equal size, each with three rifle companies of about 200 men.
German divisional strength varied widely throughout the war. In Normandy the Screaming Eagles were opposed by the big 709th Division (14,000 coastal defense troops) and the 243rd Division, which was half that size. Dreaded panzer divisions rarely fought with their full complement of 160 tanks.
Russian divisions were even smaller than German, and were replaced by whole new divisions when they took heavy casualties. Joe guesses that the Russian tank battalion he fought with numbered about 400 men and women, not quite twice the number of his American company.