warspite1
Posts: 41353
Joined: 2/2/2008
From: England
Status: offline
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: Michael Vail
Among the first 'Germans' captured at Normandy were several Koreans. They
had been forced to fight for the Japanese Army until they were captured by the Russians and forced to fight for the Russian Army until they were
captured by the Germans and forced to fight for the German Army until they were captured by the US Army
warspite1
Here is a picture of the Yang Kyoungjong, that Anthony Beevor mentions in his one volume history of WWII (and the Wiki entry below):
Yang Kyoungjong (March 3, 1920 – April 7, 1992) was a Korean soldier who fought in the Imperial Japanese Army, the Soviet Red Army, and later the German Wehrmacht.
In 1938, at the age of 18, Yang was in Manchuria when he was conscripted into the Kwantung Army of the Imperial Japanese Army to fight against the Soviet Union. At the time Korea was ruled by Japan. During the Battles of Khalkhin Gol, he was captured by the Soviet Red Army and sent to a labour camp. Because of the manpower shortages faced by the Soviets in its fight against Nazi Germany, in 1942 he was pressed into fighting in the Red Army along with thousands of other prisoners, and was sent to the European eastern front.
In 1943, he was captured by Wehrmacht soldiers in Ukraine during the Third Battle of Kharkov, and was then pressed into fighting for Germany. Yang was sent to Occupied France to serve in a battalion of Soviet prisoners of war known as an "Eastern Battalion", located on the Cotentin peninsula in Normandy, close to Utah Beach. After the D-Day landings in northern France by the Allied forces, Yang was captured by paratroopers of the United States Army in June 1944. The Americans initially believed him to be a Japanese in German uniform, and he was placed in a prisoner-of-war camp in the United Kingdom. At the time, Lieutenant Robert Brewer of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, reported that his regiment had captured four Asians in German uniform after the Utah Beach landings, and that initially no one was able to communicate with them. Yang was sent to a prison camp in Britain. Later he was transferred to a camp in the United States. After he was released at the end of the war, he settled in Illinois where he lived until his death in 1992.
 Attachment (1)
_____________________________
England expects that every man will do his duty. Horatio Nelson October 1805  |
Printable Version
OT - Odd WW2 Facts - 
and someone *mis*operated it. 
Talk about a really unique set of circumstances. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong flush.
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread