Still the Manhattan kept on coming from the New World to the Old – nearing the shore of Ireland on a chill day – and the flickering flame and the padding feet kept on coming, too, from the ancient world.
On board the Manhattan Owens captured the boredom in simple words in his diary: ‘The day as a whole was very dreary & nothing exciting happened.’ Stephens noted in hers how pretty yet bare Ireland looked and, later, with the Manhattan sailing mostly within sight of land, how ‘picturesque’ Plymouth looked.2
That was eleven days before the Opening Ceremony; towards midnight, the flame left Eleusis; 2,728 runners to go.
WEDNESDAY 22 JULY
On the Wednesday the torch left Thebes at 3.45 a.m. and by midday reached Delphi, to the ancient Greeks the centre of the universe. There, in an ancient stadium with stone tiers cut into the parched countryside, runners, some in traditional costume, some in athletes’ singlets, ran with it in a ceremony lasting 70 minutes. From Delphi the narrow old road wound slowly down to the town of Lamia by the coast and another ceremony, this one lasting an hour.
The German broadcasters encountered problems at Delphi. Because of a ‘misunderstanding only one cable had been laid, and under difficult conditions in tropical heat a second cable had to be laid in order to provide the necessary means of communication … after an hour this difficulty too was removed. The broadcast went off without further incident.’3
In Berlin, German journalists – already ordered ‘to use Olympic Games and preparations for them for extensive propaganda in Germany’ – received another directive from the Ministry of Propaganda, warning that if they published anything ‘prior to the official press report’ they did so ‘at their own risk’. Nobody could mistake what that might mean. ‘Reports about the Rassenschande [sex between Aryans and Jews] will be reduced to a minimum. The racial point of view should not be used in any way in reporting sports results. It is the duty of the press to remember that during the Olympic Games no attacks against foreign customs and habits should be reported. The Chinese in Berlin have already complained twice.’
At Le Havre the Manhattan prepared for her final leg to Hamburg. Customs officials came on board and did all their paperwork so that the Hamburg disembarkation could proceed with minimal inconvenience. Later the ship moved past Dover and out into the North Sea.
Holm followed the impetus of her own saga. The details are understandably scant and sometimes contradictory, but clearly between Cobh and Hamburg something happened. One source quotes her as saying she was ‘free, white and 22’ and intended to behave as she wanted, adding that during the French port stopover she was ‘seen staggering with a young man along the deck and was later overheard shouting obscenities through her porthole’. Some sources suggest she told Brundage she trained on champagne and caviar, others that she said this loudly but before the trip. It seems likely that at a farewell party she got very drunk and, trying to get back to her cabin, met the chaperone of the women’s team who, worried about the state she was in, called for medical assistance. She let loose a tirade against the team’s officials and their rules, and passed out. When the doctors arrived they couldn’t wake her.4
The Icelandic team arrived at the Olympic Village.
That night the flame reached Lamia, a sprawling hilltop town with a fort, some 200 kilometres north of Athens: leaving Lamia, 2,497 runners to go and, from midnight, ten days to the Opening Ceremony.
THURSDAY 23 JULY
The flame moved through Larisa and cut inland to the mountain town of Kozano, founded by Christians in Ottoman times, cut back towards the coast and Thessalonika. The roads were deep in the countryside, isolated, and wound through the thinly populated Thessalonian plain. That meant the runners had to be conveyed long distances to arrive at their posts. No trees grew along this stretch to protect them from the burning Greek sun which at times took temperatures as high as 122 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Manhattan moved along the Dutch coast, sometimes travelling at only a few knots, and Stephens found the glimpses of Holland picturesque, too, including of course the windmills. Evidently she went to bed early but couldn’t sleep, took a stroll on deck and heard distinctive sounds coming from under the canvas of a lifeboat. Soon enough Owens emerged. Minutes later a girl emerged, too, and, passing Stephens, wished her good morning.5
Stephens subsequently recalled that the morning after the Holm incident all the female competitors were ‘paraded’ through Holm’s cabin, presumably as a warning against the demons of drink because Holm had a very visible hangover.6
The Manhattan kept on coming, now towards Cuxhaven at the mouth of the River Elbe and Germany. At Cuxhaven a boat bearing the Olympic and Nazi flags came alongside to take off the horde of newsmen and photographers who had boarded at Le Havre. As the Manhattan moved down the Elbe, passing river traffic greeted her with waves. Then she rode at anchor for several hours waiting for the high tide. The team practised their march past for the Opening Ceremony.
China, Latvia and Yugoslavia arrived at the Olympic Village.
A single Chinese competitor had gone to Los Angeles in 1932 and this ‘aroused worldwide attention as it had not been expected by the Chinese government’. It sparked even more worldwide interest that the most populous nation on the planet was being represented by a single individual. Since 1935 the Chinese had prepared very seriously, setting up special training camps for sixty-nine competitors – athletes, swimmers, basketball players, footballers, weight-lifters, boxers and cyclists – as well as preparing thirty-nine observers and nine demonstrators of the traditional Chinese martial art of wushu. A party of 150 journalists and visitors accompanied the team and paid their own way.7
The Manhattan sailed into Hamburg that night, her Olympic flags illuminated by searchlights and whipping in the wind. The competitors were excited and so were the people on shore and in other boats nearby, those on board shouting enthusiastically up at the competitors, who responded with what sounded like Indian war whoops.8 When the Manhattan docked the searchlights went off and the competitors were ushered to bed to get whatever sleep they could in the excitement. After breakfast at 6 a.m. they would have a long, long day in prospect.
The Manhattan ought to have docked that Thursday but because of
the reception of the City of Hamburg we arranged with the United States Lines officials … to have the arrival delayed so that the team could disembark on the morning of July 24. This … made it possible for the athletes to be received by the City of Hamburg in the morning and by the City of Berlin in the afternoon and reach the Olympic Village, be roomed and settled in their new quarters before nightfall. No extra charge was made by the United States Lines for the extra night on board ship or for the additional meal served.9
The flame continued to move across Greece; there were now nine days to the Opening Ceremony, 2,250 runners to go.
FRIDAY 24 JULY
Near Thessalonika, towards midday, a storm – rain and hail – pounded the relay run and a cloudburst transformed the route into a muddy morass. Still the flame came and it did reach Thessalonika, Greece’s second city, modern and decorated by Byzantine churches. The rain beat down but the radio car reported everything ready. It broadcast that several thousand people lined the streets and the houses were decked with green and Olympic flags. At a ceremony in the St Dimitri Church Square the mayor received the torch and, in a speech, set out the virtues of bringing different people together. He handed his torch to a local runner and the flame headed north again, towards the Bulgarian border. The radio team packed their equipment and set off after it.
The American Olympic Committee met over Eleanor Holm and decided to dismiss her from the team. Brundage made the announcement that she ‘has been dropped for violation of training rules and her entry in the Olympic Games cancelled’. After the ‘cocktail party’ episode she had received an official warning and now became the only competitor to be disciplined. She would be asked to return her uniform and housed apart from the team.
The following day she would return to the United States on another ship, the Bremen.
This was front-page news, and big front-page news. Holm was famous, extremely good looking, expected to win a gold medal, married to a celebrity and the antithesis of a humble Olympic competitor ready to tug their forelock to anybody: a potent cocktail. Many things amused Holm – including men, parties and champagne, but Mr Avery Brundage did not amuse her and being dropped didn’t, either. Through a mixture of tears, pleas for sympathy, begging forgiveness, kicking, screaming and threats she intended to let the world know exactly how she felt: another potent cocktail.
At Hamburg the Americans came down the gangway from the Manhattan in a great column, each man wearing boater, blue uniform bearing the Olympic emblem and white trousers. The way they carried themselves, so open and easy and confident, made a great impression on the people watching, as did their sheer numbers, emphasising that a boycott would have delivered a terrible blow to the whole Games – but they were here and, at this instant, they were on German soil.
The Americans attended a ceremony in the town hall and some expensive wine glasses went missing. Whoever had ‘borrowed’ them was ordered to return them or else. The team boarded two special trains for the three-hour journey to Berlin. The engines had large swastikas draped over their sides.
Coming as Holm did from a free country, sporting officials had the power to deselect her, but once they had done so they became powerless. Holm did not get on the Bremen or any other ship. She intended to continue pleading her case and raising hell.
Stephens remembered Holm out of her uniform and holding suitcases, preparing to board the train which the team wasn’t on. Stephens found the situation ‘pathetic’. Presumably the American officials boarded the second train because on the journey to Berlin Holm spent an hour talking to members of a special subcommittee, trying to persuade them to reinstate her. She told one of its members, ‘I know I’ve been drinking too much and I’m all wrong.’
The two trains eased into the Lehrter station, one of those stone-clad buildings with heavy porticos. A band welcomed them, various dignitaries prepared to greet them and the crowd in the foreground held their arms rigid in the Nazi salute. Many in the crowd wore military uniform and that immediately set the tone. Men in uniform were so numerous they provided a constant backdrop to daily life and, thus, to the Olympics.
The American team engulfed the platform, and reporters and newsreel cameras moved in among them.
Velma Dunn says that, in general, ‘every man, and every boy of military age, was in uniform. Everyone. That was very striking. When we got to Berlin about two-thirds of the people on the platform greeting us were military people. Definitely.’10
As Marty Glickman made his way slowly down the platform a stranger tapped him on the back. Glickman turned and saw a man smaller than himself. The man enquired in English with a perfect American accent, ‘Are you Marty Glickman?’ Glickman felt immediate apprehension and said he was an American. (Paradoxically, Glickman had some command of German and could probably have understood the question if it had been put to him in that language.)
The stranger: ‘You’re Jewish, aren’t you?’
Glickman said he was.
The stranger said he was, too. He explained that he attended medical school in Berlin because he couldn’t get to one in America because of the anti-Semitic regulations. They wished each other luck and the stranger melted into the throng.11
Outside the station an immense crowd waited and the American team stood in the open-top buses taking them to the town hall. They were happy and making a lot of noise. The traffic halted to let the buses through, causing congestion. Brundage said that the streets ‘had been roped off and hundreds of thousands of spectators cheered and waved greetings to the American athletes from every sidewalk, window, balcony, roof and other point of vantage. It was a cordial and inspiring welcome.’12
Glickman likened it to a Broadway parade and even people with considerable Olympic experience confessed they’d never seen anything like this.
At the town hall, Reich Commissar for Berlin Julius Lippert made a speech – amazingly the only speech. He presented Brundage with a commemorative medal, in response to which Brundage said: ‘No nation since ancient Greece has captured the true Olympic spirit as has Germany.’ It was a breathtaking statement, even from Brundage’s fixed position and even given the necessity to flatter.
Then the buses took the Americans out to the Olympic Village where, in those boaters and blue uniforms, they marched two and three abreast along the winding pathway to their cottages. German reporters, who had travelled from Hamburg with the team conducting interviews, were astonished at how little the Americans appeared to know about the performances of other athletes. One journalist sought out Owens and quizzed him over a rival long-jumper, Luz Long from Leipzig, who’d done 7.82 metres, enough to beat the Olympic record of 7.73 metres set in 1928. Owens professed ignorance.
However, he found the Village ‘all “very interesting” and impressive, especially the little television screen – the first one he ever saw – set in one of the central buildings for the transmission of the Olympic events. For his first evening, however, he was most impressed with the cool night air, which afforded solid sleep at the end of a hectic day.’13
Years later Owens claimed he hadn’t prayed in public on the Manhattan and there was even less question of doing that in Berlin, which he described as a ‘godless city’ although he felt there must have been some believers who rejected Hitler’s theories of racial supremacy.14
Because the women’s quarters were within the Olympic complex, after dinner Stephens and some of the other American athletes wandered over to have a look at the stadium.15
Glickman wrote a letter to his parents recording his impressions. He roomed with Eddie O’Brien, a Syracuse runner on the 4 × 400 metre relay squad, and some of the other sprinters – Owens, Wykoff, Stoller – occupied rooms nearby. Glickman set out the geographical location of the Village and found its layout and buildings perfect. He described the hundreds of cottages with their twelve rooms, each containing a couple of beds, a desk and wardrobes.
Zamperini bunked nearby, too, and claims that Owens – ‘a prince of a guy, a sweet, humble man’ – was delegated to act as his chaperone for two interrelated reasons: Zamperini was by his own admission ‘frisky’, and the athletes were allowed into Berlin at night.16 Owens didn’t prove much of a chaperone, and for two more interrelated reasons: Zamperini discovered that when you order beer in Germany they’ll be big ones and the effects can lead a man to scale a flagpole near the Reichstag to get a Nazi flag as a souvenir. When armed guards gathered below him he shouted the only German word he knew: ‘Bier!’
Marshall Wayne found himself in with fellow diver Elbert Root, whom he described as a ‘wild Indian’. Wayne was supposed to chaperone him, but Root regularly escaped by the window, went to Berlin, filled himself with Wurst (sausage), came back and threw up all over the room.17
Holm, booked into a Berlin hotel, shed her tears in copious amounts and pleaded for Brundage to give her one last chance. Many team members supported her reinstatement – more than two hundred signed a petition, but Brundage remained unmoved. ‘We gave you every chance,’ he was quoted as saying to her. ‘You have only yourself to blame. Now you’ve got to take it [the consequences]. I appreciate how you feel but you forced our hand and we had no alternative. I can tell you the Committee’s mind is definitely made up.’ Back home in the United States, her husband Art Jarrett told the Associated Press news agency that obviously he was disappointed his wife had been dropped, but added that she ‘wasn’t a ten-year-old any more. She’s been around long enough to know how to handle herself. They ought to give some more of those swimmers champagne. Maybe they would win a couple of races.’
The American women went to their own quarters where Stephens found a political manifesto sent through the post to her, as it had been to various other likely meda
llists. Originally in Dutch but now translated, it said hundreds of innocent Germans could not attend the Games because they were political prisoners. It expressed the hope that Hitler would be influenced by the Olympic spirit to free them, but appealed to women competitors to refuse to compete. Similarly, Australian Pat Norton remembered Argentina’s Jeanette Campbell receiving a letter from Holland asking her to organise a women’s boycott of the Opening Ceremony and demand the release of two Dutchmen who had disappeared on a trip to Germany.18
Dorothy Odam, the British high-jumper, remembers: ‘I was given a letter from somebody in a concentration camp telling me of all the horrible things that were going on, what was happening to them, and asking me to show it to someone in England. But being rather young I showed it to my chaperone and they took it away from me.’19
Costa Rica, Haiti, Hungary and Switzerland arrived at the Village.
Fritz Wandt stood ‘in front of the reception building trying to get autographs. I happened to be there when the Swiss team arrived. I saw that something was going on at the entrance to the reception building and there came all the dignitaries, the commandant, a band and also the boys of honour [in white shorts and white knee-length socks wearing white caps]. The Swiss team arrived in buses and were welcomed by the commandant, who made a speech. They lined up in formation and the national anthem was played while their flag was hoisted. What was especially interesting was the standard-bearer in front of the Swiss team – it must be a habit in Switzerland – but he brandished flags in the air to produce different patterns. That was so impressive I can still remember it. Then the band moved in front of them and they all marched into the Olympic Village.’20
At midnight, two hours after the torch had left the town of Sérrai near the Bulgarian frontier, there were 2,016 runners to go and seven days to the Opening Ceremony.
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