MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - Historical Legends

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

Today’s podcast features 3 stories about historical legends. The audio from all three stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel, which is just called "MrBallen," and has been remastered for today's podcast.Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos:#3 -- "Smoke" -- During WW2, one man redefined what it means to have a "high pain tolerance" (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzm-T_btfa0)#2 -- "Mad Jack" -- His weapon choices during WW2 made him famous (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu0Yz9tUpTo)#1 -- "Real Life Super Hero" -- The most insane war story ever (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHjDgOSur5c)For 100s more stories like these, check out our main YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's podcast features three stories about historical legends. The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description. The first story you'll hear is called Smoke, and it's about how one man redefined what it means to have a high pain

tolerance. The second story you'll hear is called Mad Jack, and it's about how one man's weapon choices during World War II made him famous. And the third and final story you'll hear is called Real Life Superhero, and it's very likely the most insane war story ever. But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious Delibered in Story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please replace all of the Amazon Music Follow Buttons Windex with olive oil. Okay, let's get into our first story called Smoke.

I'm Emily and I'm one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. And they don't get much bigger than the man who made badminton sexy. OK, maybe that's a stretch, but if I say pop star and shuttlecocks, you know who I'm talking about. No? Short shorts? Free cocktails?

Careless whispers? OK, last one. It's not Andrew Ridgely. Yep, that's right. It's Stone Cold icon George Michael. From teen pop sensation to one of the biggest solo artists on the planet, join us for our new series, George Michael's Fight for Freedom. From the outside, it looks like he has it all. But behind the trademark dark sunglasses is a man in turmoil. George is trapped in a lie of his own making, with a secret he feels would ruin him

if the truth ever came out. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to your podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wanderie Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. I'm Peter Frank-O'Pern. And I'm Afua Hirsch. And we're here to tell you about our new season of Legacy, covering the iconic, troubled musical genius that was Nina Simone. Full disclosure, this is a big one for me. Nina Simone, one of my favourite artists

of all time. Somebody who's had a huge impact on me, who I think objectively stands apart for the level of her talent, the audacity of her message. If I was a first year at university, the first time I sat down and really listened to her and engaged with her message, it totally floored me. And the truth and pain and messiness of her struggle, that's all captured in unforgettable music that has stood the test of time. Think that's fair, Peter? I mean, the way in which her music comes across is so powerful, no matter what song it is. So join us on Legacy for Nina Simone. The United States formally entered World War II in December of 1941, following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii by the Japanese. Roughly six months later, a 21-year-old Alabama native

named Henry Irwin joined the Army Reserve. After nearly two years of additional military training, Henry was made into a radio operator and was assigned to a B-29 bomber. A B-29 bomber is this huge aircraft whose sole purpose is to drop bombs. And so in February of 1945, Henry and his B-29 bomber unit were sent to the Pacific to do just that, drop bombs on the Japanese. Two months after arriving, Henry's B-29 was tasked with being the lead bomber in a group attack on a Japanese chemical facility located about 125 miles north of Tokyo. Aside from just operating his radio inside of the B-29, occasionally Henry's job was to organize the other planes in the attack when their B-29 was the lead attacker. And so the way he would do this was by dropping a series of smoke bombs out of his plane

and then once they touched the ground and all the smoke was coming up, he would hop on his radio and communicate with the other pilots in his sortie and tell them to organize themselves off of this visual reference point on the ground. He would basically have them fly to certain positions relative to the smoke cloud. And so once all the pilots had been organized into proper formation,

they would continue to their target and commence their bombing raid. For this mission, Henry was in his typical position right behind the front turret gun towards the front of the plane. When his pilot told him to start dropping smoke bombs, Henry did as he was told. And so he pulled the lever which opened up a chute on the bottom of the plane and all these smoke bombs began tumbling out of it. Now as soon as he pulled that lever, all of the smoke bombs that were in that particular chute were ignited. They were on a timed fuse and so

they would tumble out of the plane and then then before hitting the ground, they would ignite, and then smoke would start billowing out of them. But for some reason, after he pulled that lever, a couple of the smoke bombs fell out of the chute, but one of them kind of got turned around, and as it tumbled down, it kind of caught itself on the lip and bounced back up into the plane and it struck Henry square in the face, shattering his nose, and then it ignited and literally lit Henry's face on fire, which instantly blinded him. Smoke bombs are not considered lethal devices because they do not explode the way typical bombs do.

However, make no mistake about it, you would not want to be near a military-grade smoke bomb when it went off. In order for it to emit that very thick and long lasting smoke that it does, the smoke bomb ignites a chemical fire within itself that burns extremely hot. And so when the smoke bomb came back inside the plane and ignited right in front of Henry, those chemicals landed on his face. And so that's why he caught on fire.

And if that wasn't bad enough, the smoke bomb also filled the plane completely with smoke, making it impossible for the pilots to see anything. Despite his burning, shattered face, all Henry could think about was if he didn't get this smoke bomb off the plane, in the next few seconds, they were all going to crash and die. So instead of trying to put out his burning face, Henry began feeling around on the ground for the smoke bomb, which again is basically like a fireball. And when he found it, he pulled it into his chest, trying to smother it as best as he could. And while his body completely engulfed in flames, Henry began low crawling his way towards the front of the plane,

where he knew just by touch there was going to be a window. And so as he agonizingly crawled, he's on fire, he finally gets to this window, he can feel it above him and he manages to lift the smoke bomb up and throws it out the window. And then afterwards he collapses on the ground and he passes out completely on fire, fully expecting to die. A few seconds later, the smoke inside of the plane cleared because now the smoke bomb was gone, and the pilot who had put the plane on autopilot but did have to drop significantly in altitude because they were starting to stall, finally could see again and saw they were about

300 feet from hitting the water. And so he was able to pull back and get them out of their dive, and he narrowly escaped crashing into the water, and he turned around and began flying back to base. On this return trip, the crew who were unhurt began assessing the damage and they saw Henry on fire on the side of the plane. And so they rushed over and they put him out with a fire extinguisher expecting him to be dead. But to their shock and horror, he was still alive. And so they gave him morphine for his pain and expected him to die any moment. But Henry didn't die. Instead, he was very cheerful on the flight all the way back to base. And he would ask each of his crew members if they were okay.

And they would all say, yeah, I'm just fine. It's really you who we're concerned about here. When the pilot finally landed back at base, Henry's body had stiffened up so dramatically from being on fire that the doctors couldn't actually get him out of the plane's side door. And so they had to dismantle the side of the plane to get Henry out. And so the doctors fully expected Henry was going to die basically any moment from his horrible wounds. But since he hadn't yet, they did everything they could to try to save him. They put him through dozens of surgeries, including one where they would try to remove the chemical flecks from the smoke bomb that

had embedded in his eyes. And since these chemicals combusted as soon as they made contact with oxygen, every time they pulled out one of these flecks, it would burst into flames and very painfully burn Henry's eyes a little bit more. While Henry was undergoing all these surgeries, the rest of his B-29 crew immediately went to their commanding officer and said, you have to put Henry in for the Medal of Honor. The Medal of Honor is the highest award you can achieve in the U.S. military. After the commanding officer heard the story of what Henry had done, he agreed, and in record time, he got the paperwork processed and got Henry approved for this award. But there were no actual physical medals of honor on the island to actually present to Henry.

And the officers and the rest of his crew were worried Henry would die before the actual medal was shipped out to the island to be given to him. And so the only medal of honor that was on this island was inside of a museum behind a glass case. And so one of the officers in Henry's crew went into the museum, shattered the case, took the display Medal of Honor, and rushed to Henry's bedside and put it around his neck. And then after that, somehow, Henry just didn't die. After dozens and dozens of surgeries, Henry actually regained sight in one of his eyes and regained the use of most of his body. Henry would later be asked in an interview what it was like to do this very heroic thing that he did. And he would say, well, you know, I only moved the bomb 13 feet,

but 13 feet feels like 13 miles when you're on fire. Henry would go on to be honorably discharged from the military, and he would spend the next 37 years working closely with other burn victims, trying to keep them positive and optimistic about their recovery. He would also go on to have four children, one of which became an Alabama state senator. In 2002, Henry died of natural causes at the age of 80. Hello, I am Alice Levine and I am one of the hosts of Wondery's podcast British Scandal. On our latest series, The Race to Ruin, we tell the story of a British man who took part in the first ever round-the-world sailing race. Good on him, I hear you say.

But there is a problem, as there always is in this show. The man in question hadn't actually sailed before. Oh, and his boat wasn't seaworthy. Oh, and also tiny little detail almost didn't mention it. He bet his family home on making it to the finish line. What ensued was one of the most

complex cheating plots in British sporting history. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. month early on Amazon Music with your Prime membership? That's right. All your favorite Mr. Ballin episodes can be heard on Amazon Music ad-free, and you'll always be the first one to catch our new episodes. But that's not all. You get access to other amazing shows like Mr. Ballin's

Medical Mysteries, Morbid, 48 Hours, and 2020, all ad-free too. And you know what that means, uninterrupted listening, so no more cliffhangers. Amazon Music is your home for all things true crime and offers the most ad-free top podcasts, so we definitely have something for you. And it's already included in your Prime membership. To listen now, all you need to do is go to amazon.com slash ballin. That's amazon.com slash ballin. Or download the free Amazon Music app.

It's just that easy. Our next story is called Mad Jack. In 1926, Jack Churchill graduated from one of the UK's most prestigious military academies called Sandhurst, thus becoming an army officer. His first assignment was to an infantry unit stationed in Burma, but when he got there, it was peacetime, so Jack didn't have much to do. But instead of just sitting around all day, Jack did what any other restless young military officer would do, and he mastered the bagpipes, despite being 0% Scottish. He also took a trip across the entire Indian subcontinent on his motorcycle,

almost entirely on unpaved roads. But in 1936, despite these incredible side hobbies, he just wasn't really that interested in being a part of the military when there wasn't anything going on, and so he decided to get out. He moved to Nairobi, Kenya, where he became a newspaper editor slash male model slash movie extra. During his off time, he still took his bagpiping very seriously, placing second in a prominent piping competition in 1938. He also picked up another hobby, archery, and he became so good at it so quickly that he was chosen by England to represent them in the archery, and he became so good at it so quickly that he was chosen by England to represent them

in the archery world championships in 1939. Later that same year, when World War II broke out, Jack decided now's a good time to get back into the army. So he rejoined the army and he was promptly sent to France to help defend their borders against a potential Nazi invasion. But shortly after Jack arrived, Hitler was able to push through those defenses, and he launched a brutal Blitzkrieg campaign against the Allies in France. Blitzkrieg is a military tactic that's basically an all-out attack, all at once, with everything you got. So planes, tanks, artillery, infantry, you just send all of it in an attempt to overwhelm your enemy before you run out of resources. And in this case, Hitler's blitzkrieg was successful.

In just six weeks, they not only invaded France, they conquered it. But during that six-week battle for France that the Allies ultimately lost, Jack made a name for himself by employing two particular weapons that nobody else in World War II was using. He is the only one who used these weapons for the entirety of World War II. Jack and two other infantrymen were up on this hill overlooking this town that was full of Nazis, and at some point, five Nazis come running out to the edge of this town, and they duck behind a wall that's about 30 meters away from Jack. And one of these Nazis stands up and quickly crumples to the ground. And his four Nazi comrades look to see what happened to him, and they see a dead man on the

ground with the back end of an arrow jutting out of his chest. And that arrow was fired by none other than Jack Churchill. Because for the duration of World War II, he didn't carry a gun. He didn't need a gun. Instead, he carried a bow and arrow and a long broadsword. Although periodically, he would scoop the weapons up off of dead enemy soldiers, and he would fire those. When asked why he didn't just carry a gun in the first place, he responded, any officer that goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed. From then on, he became Mad Jack and his peers loved him, but his leadership hated him. They said he was setting a terrible example, that no one should be running around with a sword and a bow and arrow. But he was so effective,

they let him continue. Throughout the brutal six-week battle for France, Jack would lead dozens of these small raids against the Nazis. And he would just pick them off one by one with his bow and arrow and with his sword. And in one particular raid, he got shot through the neck. But he was so nonchalant about it that when he got back to base, someone was like, hey Jack, you're bleeding. And he was like, oh yeah, I am. They were like, well, what happened? He's like, ah, machine gun. After the Allies finally lost this battle for France and were forced to evacuate, they found a diary from one of the British soldiers. And in it, he talks about the one thing that motivated him and the other troops around him, and that was the sight

of Mad Jack running hither and thither with his bow and arrow and his broadsword. For his bravery in France, Jack was awarded the military cross. After leaving France, Jack heard about this new unit, the commandos, that was being stood up to aggressively sabotage Nazi operations, and they were looking for volunteers. And Jack didn't know much about what they were going to do, but they promised combat, and so he was all for it, and he didn't know much about what they were going to do, but they promised combat. And so he was all for it and he volunteered. The commando unit would go on to become the famous British Special Forces. And the training they put Jack and the other volunteers through was absolutely brutal.

And Jack just loved it. He loved being in the commandos. After graduation in 1941, Jack was put in command of a commando unit that was tasked with going to this Norwegian town of Vagsøy and taking down a Nazi garrison there. And so they loaded up into their amphibious landing craft and Jack's got his kilt on, he's got his bagpipes, and he plays the bagpipes on the entire transit over to Vagsøy to pump up the commandos. And then Jack's landing craft was the first to reach the shores, and when its ramp came down, Jack was the first off and he just kept playing his bagpipes, despite the fact that the Nazis now see them and they're shooting at him. The rounds are impacting around him as he's blaring his bagpipes, and only when he finished his song did he shoulder his bagpipes, pull out

a grenade, he saw some Nazis running along the ridgeline, he throws a grenade at them, and pulls out his sword and runs into battle. In just a few hours, the Nazi garrison had fallen, and Jack was awarded his second military cross. During the Italian amphibious landings in 1943, Jack again was in charge of a commando unit, and they were tasked with capturing a Nazi observation post that was in this town just outside of Salerno. It was well defended and fortified and Jack and his men were outnumbered 20 to 1. So Jack came up with a genius plan. Instead of using stealth tactics, he broke his small team into six different groups and he placed them all around the outside of this town. And it was nighttime so the Nazis did not see them setting up.

And then on Jack's call, he had them all yell out at the exact same time, Commando! And the Nazis in the town were so caught off guard by all this yelling coming from all around them they assumed a huge force is coming to take over this town. And so they went on the defensive. And so after their big war cry Jack and his group are the first to charge down into this town and Jack and one other guy would actually splinter off. And they would discover this big group of Nazis that were setting up their mortars. And so Jack and this guy sneak up behind one of them. And Jack grabs him from behind, holds this sword to his throat, and orders him to tell the rest of the team to surrender. And so the rest of the team, who vastly outnumber Jack and the other guy, they turn around and they see this lunatic wearing a kilt, wielding a sword.

He's got bagpipes slung over his shoulder along with a bow and arrow. And they're like, OK, we give up. Shortly after, the rest of the Nazis in this town would surrender to Jack and his men. And for his actions, Jack would be awarded the Distinguished Service Order. the Distinguished Service Order. In 1944, Jack was in Yugoslavia with the commandos trying to capture a strategically valuable location called Point 62. And when every man in his team was either killed or severely wounded, and when Jack had run out of arrows, instead of surrendering, he pulled out his bagpipes and started playing until a grenade detonated behind him, knocking him unconscious. The Nazis captured him and sent him to Berlin to be interrogated

because they believed, because of his last name, Churchill, that he was connected to or related to the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. He wasn't, not at all, so they ordered Jack to be sent to a concentration camp. On his way out of Berlin, Jack secretly flicked a lit cigarette butt into one of his interrogator's offices. And he lit it on fire, but nobody knew it was him. And so Jack arrives at this concentration camp, and he's only there for a couple of months before he and another British military officer manage to escape by crawling underneath one of the barbed wire fences.

They'd slowly burrowed a tunnel without anybody noticing. And then they jumped down into this abandoned drainage pipe pipe and they crawled out to freedom that way. But their freedom would be short-lived because they only made it a couple of miles before they were recaptured by the Nazis, and so they were ordered to go to another concentration camp that was considered much more secure. But after only having been at this new concentration camp for less than a year, once again Jack was able to escape. This time it was because there was a power outage at the camp, and Jack just put his shovel down and casually walked out the front gates, and nobody noticed.

He walked 150 miles in the treacherous terrain of the Alps, surviving on vegetables he had stolen from people's gardens. And then finally, eight days later, he came across a United States armored division, and they took him in and reconnected him with British troops, and then he was ultimately sent back to England. And while Jack was free, he was very frustrated that the war in Europe was effectively over and he had missed most of it. And so he requested a transfer to go out to Burma to fight against the Japanese in the Pacific theater. But as soon as he got there, the Americans had just dropped the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan, abruptly ending World War II. And when Jack heard about this, he was so disappointed he would

not get to do any more fighting. He was quoted as saying, ah, if it wasn't for those Yanks, we could have kept this war going for another 10 years. Even though the war was over, Jack desperately wanted to get into combat at least one more time, and so he went to jump school and qualified as a parachutist at the age of 40. And with this new qualification, he was assigned to a light infantry unit, and they were deployed to Palestine to train their army how to better fight the Arab forces. And while he was there, he gained even more fame when he defended a Jewish medical convoy from an Arab ambush, and he did this all while wearing a kilt. Another time, he and 12 of his men helped evacuate 700 people from a Jewish hospital

that was under attack from Arab forces. After Palestine, Jack came back to England and eventually retired from the army, and then begrudgingly took a desk job within the Ministry of Defense. And every day on his commute home on the train, he would take his briefcase and throw it out the window as they were moving. What he had figured out was if he threw it at the exact right moment, it would land in the backyard of his house and he wouldn't need to carry his briefcase from the station to his house. But he didn't explain that to any of the other passengers on the train. They just figured there's some crazy guy who keeps throwing his briefcases out the window. In his retirement, he also became an extremely talented surfer.

And at one point, he wanted to surf the Severn Boar, which is this huge wave in southwestern England that nobody else had surfed before. And locals that were familiar with this treacherous wave, they cautioned him and said, you really shouldn't do this. And he looked at them and he just said, I'll be all right. And then he proceeded to be the first person ever to successfully ride that wave. Jack would ultimately die in 1996. He was 89 years old. The next and final story of today's episode is called Real Life Superhero. The United States formally entered World War II on December 8, 1941 after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. At the time, Joseph Byerly was a senior at his high school in Muskegon, Michigan, and

he had a scholarship to attend Notre Dame University the next year. But after his graduation in 1942, he decided he didn't want to go to college so long as other kids his age were going off to fight the war. And so he enlisted in the army, and he immediately volunteered for one of the most dangerous units, the parachute infantry. Joseph completed a brutal accelerated training regimen that included exhausting PT and blistering heat, extended forced marches, grueling full kit runs up mountains, as well as both American and British jump schools. By 1943, Joseph was fully trained and stationed in England and was eager to put his training to the test. But the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France, also known as D-Day, was still a few months away. But Joseph didn't want to wait that long, so he volunteered for

an incredibly dangerous mission that the OSS was recruiting paratroopers for. The OSS was the predecessor to the CIA. Basically, volunteers would parachute in the middle of the night into Nazi-occupied France with a backpack full of gold. Once they hit the ground, they'd meet up with the French resistance and give the gold to them, and then the resistance would do their best to protect these volunteer paratroopers and hopefully give them a ride back out to England. But by no means was it a guarantee, because many of these volunteers were killed in the process. This was some hardcore deep cover spy work that the OSS would tell tell their volunteers if you get caught on this mission you're gonna get tortured and you're gonna get executed joseph would successfully complete this

insane mission and then he liked it so much he did it again shortly after his second successful oss mission word came down that d-day was set to take place on june 6th joseph's unit was told they were going to be parachuted into France the night before in order to destroy bridges, cut power supply lines, and generally soften up defenses before the main invasion happened just a couple of hours later at Utah Beach. So in the dead of night on June 5th, Joseph and his unit were flying over France when they were struck by enemy fire. And so as their plane is literally falling to the ground, Joseph leaps out the door when he's only 400 feet off the ground. And he manages to survive the jump as parachute inflated

just in time. But he landed on top of a church where a Nazi sniper was up in the steeple taking shots at all of the other paratroopers. And when the sniper saw Joseph on the roof, he began taking shots at him and Joseph managed to dodge the rounds before slipping off the roof and running out of sight. Completely alone with no idea where the rest of his unit was, Joseph took off running from the church and once again had to dodge more sniper fire and he eventually made it to the town's power substation, which he blew up with thermite. So he cut the power to the town and from there he went building to building to building killing every Nazi he came across including an entire squad of Nazi infantry that he ambushed with grenades. At some point Joseph made his way over to one of the bridges leading into this town that if he blew up it would

prevent Nazis from sending reinforcements to Utah Beach. But as he crawled through one of the hedgerows he fell headfirst into a Nazi machine gun nest, and when he turned around, there were a bunch of machine guns pointed at his face, and so he surrendered. Joseph was marched deeper into France to a POW holding area, and as soon as he got there, explosions ripped out all around him. It wasn't clear if it was German artillery or American aircraft, but whatever it was, it was killing both Germans and American POWs. Joseph took shrapnel to the leg and was blown into a ditch, and despite being in excruciating pain, he took this as an opportunity to escape. And so he got up and ran away as best as he could with his injury, and for 12 hours he remained uncaught behind enemy lines before he was ultimately caught again. This time they put

Joseph in the back of a covered locked truck to keep him from escaping, and they decided they would send him to St. Lowe and decide what to do with him there. But on their transit to St. Lowe, an Allied aircraft strafed the vehicle that Joseph was in, and Joseph survived the attack and was able to leap out of one of the holes in the side of the truck from this attack, and he attempted to escape, but once again, he was caught. The Nazis finally got Joseph to St. Lowe and as soon as they got there, the Americans launched an all-night bombing campaign on the city, but once again Joseph narrowly survives. A recurring theme of Joseph's story

is that he is repeatedly almost killed by his own teammates. For the next few days, Joseph was interrogated 20 to 24 hours a day, but he didn't give them any information, and he repeatedly called them sons of bitches until they got so fed up with him they just beat him to a pulp, and he was knocked unconscious and kept in the hospital for several days. For the next three months, Joseph was starved, beaten, interrogated some more, and moved to multiple POW camps. He'd be forced to do backbreaking labor all day. At night, he would survive Allied bombing runs, and he would constantly weather hunger, disease, and exhaustion. At one point, he was locked inside of this boxcar with 50 other

guys. He could barely move inside of it, and once again, it was strafed by Allied planes, and he was one of the very few people to survive that. by Allied planes, and he was one of the very few people to survive that. In September of 1944, Joseph was moved to a Russian POW camp in Poland that held about 12,000 Russian men and women POWs. And as soon as he got there, he immediately began planning his escape. Two months later, on a freezing night in November, Joseph, along with three other American POWs, managed to cut the barbed wire and snuck out of the camp and began making their escape south. They snuck into a railway station and hopped on a train car they believed was headed for Poland. Their plan was

to meet up with the Soviet Red Army as it pushed through the region. But unfortunately, they got on the wrong train and they wound up in Berlin, the capital of Nazi Germany. One thing you don't hear much about when it comes to World War II is there was actually a large number of Germans that hated Hitler and totally disagreed with the Nazis. And so they organized a German underground resistance that was designed to help the Allies during the war. And so when Joseph and the other three American POWs arrived in Berlin, still wearing their POW uniforms, a member of the German resistance saw them and immediately grabbed them and brought them into hiding. But after only a week, the infamous Nazi

secret police, aka the Gestapo, discovered them and arrested them. Over the next 10 days, Joseph and the other American POWs got to see firsthand just how awful the Gestapo really were. They were constantly interrogated while they were beaten, kicked, walked on, strung up by their arms backwards. They were hit with whips, clubs, and rifle butts until they drifted into unconsciousness. And then as soon as they started to come to, it would start all over again. After those 10 days, the Gestapo turned Joseph and the other three American POWs over to the German army, who put them in the brutal prison camp called the Stalag Luft 3. Upon arrival, Joseph was immediately sentenced to 30 days inside of a four by five foot pine box that was too small to stand up or lay down in. Fortunately for him, he only had to endure seven days because a Red Cross operative from Geneva intervened on his

behalf. It would take months for Joseph to get his strength back after being inside of this box, but as soon as he did, he began plotting his next escape. One night, Joseph, along with his three American POW buddies, managed to break through a prison wall and made a mad dash for freedom, but the Nazi prison guards saw it and opened fire on them. All three of Joseph's friends were killed as they ran, but Joseph got away, only to hear the faint barking of the German shepherds the Nazis had sent to hunt him down. So in the freezing cold of Poland in January, Joseph leapt headfirst into a

partially frozen river and swam over two miles down it before getting out and running blindly into the woods. Somehow, miraculously, he managed to reach Soviet lines before he froze to death. And there, he spoke with battalion commander Alexandra Samisenko, a woman who holds the distinction of being the only female tank commander in all of World War II. Even though Joseph spoke very little Russian, he convinced her to let him join her unit. And so she gave him a gun and some ammunition and she told him what their next objective was. They were going to liberate the same POW camp he had just escaped from. And so Joseph, alongside the Soviet Red Army that he now fought for, turned around and goes smash this POW camp. And after the dust had settled, Joseph raided

the main camp office and stole his defiant official POW photo that the Germans had taken of him on the first day he got captured. Joseph continued to fight alongside the Soviets across the Eastern Front for a couple of months, but when a German dive bomber blew up the tank that Joseph was riding on, he was evacuated to a Russian field hospital. There, he received a visit from Georgy Zhukov, the most important Soviet military commander in World War II, who was intrigued by the only non-Soviet in the hospital. He sat with Joseph and learned his story through an interpreter, and then afterwards he provided Joseph with official paperwork that would allow him to rejoin American forces.

And so, in February of 1945, Joseph was sent to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, but unfortunately, when he finally met a friendly American face, after nearly a year of fighting behind enemy lines, they didn't believe his story. They told him that Joseph R. Byerly had been killed in action on June 10, 1944, and that they had already had a funeral mass in his honor in Muskegon, and that his obituary had already been printed in the paper. But despite Joseph painstakingly going through his story over and over again, the ambassador just could not believe what he was hearing. And so worried Joseph might actually be a well-trained German spy, the ambassador sent him to Odessa to have his credentials verified.

But Odessa had the same problem and couldn't verify him, so they sent him to Egypt. Egypt had the same problem, and they too could not verify his credentials. And so they sent him to Italy, where they finally used fingerprints, and they confirmed that yes, this is in fact Joseph R. Byerly. And so on April 11th, 1945, Joseph returned home, and needless to say, his parents were very surprised to see him because they were convinced he died 10 months earlier. One year later, Joseph would actually get married in the same church that held his funeral mass when everybody believed he was dead. Joseph was given the Purple Heart, and then in the 1990s was given additional presidential awards

from U.S. President Bill Clinton as well as the Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Joseph was also given a custom-made AK-47 from the guy who invented the AK-47. Joseph died in 2004 at the age of 81, and his son would go on to become the U.S. ambassador to Russia under George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. If you got something out of this episode and you haven't done this already, please replace all of the Amazon Music Follow Buttons Windex with olive oil. This podcast airs every Monday and Thursday morning,

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