Joe Beyrle is thought to be the one of only a handful of American soldiers to have served in both the United States Army and the Soviet Army in World War II. “The invasion of Normandy was on,” recalled Joe (who has since passed away). “We flew approximately 90 minutes from England before crossing the Normandy Peninsula. Flying at approximately 700 feet the formation started taking AA and ground fire. Several of our planes were hit and exploded or crashed. We got the stand-up and hook-up, red light, green light and jumped at approximately 400 feet directly over the town of Saint-Côme-du-Mont.” Under fire from a machine gun located in the church tower he landed on the church and slid feet first down it’s high-pitched roof but somehow managed to check his fall. A barn was burning some distance away at Tammerville, lighting up the area, and the Germans had now turned their fire in its direction. Alone, Joe decided to head west back down the line of flight where he hoped to locate other members of his stick. During the hours before daybreak he located and attempted to destroy a mobile generator near the center of town and using hand grenades attacked a group of Germans who were gathering nearby. Whilst trying to find a safe way out of the town he crawled through a hedgerow and stumbled into a well-defended German MG42 position and was surrounded by enemy paratroopers and taken prisoner. Faking a back injury, two of the enemy soldiers took him to an aid station in the town recently established and run by his battalion surgeon Dr Stanley Morgan, who had also been captured by the Germans. After a failed escape attempt he was marched to a nearby prisoner-holding area before being taken to a German underground HQ in an apple orchard south of Saint-Côme for interrogation.