This one of the most weird and impressive stories out of WWII. That I have ever heard. Even more improbable is that it’s actually true!
So here goes!
Yang Kyoungjong is born in Korea which is dominated by Japan. Gets drafted by the Japanese Army. Then goes and fights the Red Army and get captured.
Is given choice fight for Stalin or basically gets killed. Long live the Revolution right?
Then he gets captured by the Invading German Army.
Is given the same choice again join or get a bullet in the ear. Sieg Heil right?
He is then sent to France and guess what? He gets captured by the American Army / 101st Airborne Division.
After getting done with being a POW in the States. He later on settles down to live out his life in Illinois. Good thing as I doubt that he would of survived the Korean War.
Here is some more information about this guy from Wiki:
Yang Kyoungjong March 3, 1920 – April 7, 1992)
He was a Korean soldier who fought in the Imperial Japanese Army, the Soviet Red Army, and later the German Wehrmacht during World War II.
He is to date the only soldier to fight on three sides of a war, and this legendary status has earned him much recognition.[1][2][3][4]
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.[1][3]
In 1943, he was captured by Wehrmacht soldiers in eastern Ukraineduring 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; 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 and later 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.[1]
Controversy
In December 2005, SBS (Seoul Broadcasting System) aired a documentary on the existence of the Asian soldiers who served Nazi Germany and were captured by Allied forces. The documentary concluded that, despite the fact that there were indeed Asian soldiers in the German army during World War II, there was no clear evidence indicating the existence of an individual named Yang Kyoungjong.[5]
See also[edit]
- Lauri Törni – Finnish Army captain who served in the Finnish, Waffen SS, and United States armies
- Joseph Beyrle – American soldier who fought in both the U.S. Army and Soviet Red Army during World War II
- Aleksandr Pavlovich Min – ethnic Korean military officer in the Soviet Red Army during World War II, posthumous recipient of the Hero of the Soviet Union (in Russian)
- Ivor Thord-Gray – Participated in 13 different wars covering several continents.
- Apolonio de Carvalho – Brazilian Army officer who fought alongside the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War and later on reached the rank of colonel in the French Army fighting Nazi Occupation.
- My Way – 2011 South Korean film inspired by Yang’s story.