The boys might have peeked into the shop and seen all of them, but what they couldn’t have seen was the night when the SS men would come for Ruth, the littlest of them. Ruth they would take to her death first, because she had asthma and was too weak to work. The rest of the family they would leave in Köpenick to work as slaves—Eva in a Siemens munitions factory, her parents in a sweatshop, manufacturing German military uniforms—until it was time to come back for them too, in March 1943. Then the SS men would put Richard and Hedwig on a train to Auschwitz. Eva would evade them, escape into Berlin, hide there, and miraculously survive the war. But she would be the only one, the rarest of exceptions.
Like the Hirschhahns, many of the Köpenickers the boys passed on the street that afternoon were doomed: people who waited on the boys in shops, old women strolling around the castle grounds, mothers pushing baby carriages on cobblestone streets, children shrieking gleefully on playgrounds, old men walking dogs—loved and loving and destined for cattle cars and death.
• • •
That evening the boys went down to the water in Grünau to watch the repechage boats and learn who would join them, Hungary, and Switzerland in the medal race. Surprisingly, neither Germany nor Italy—the two crews, other than the British, about whom Ulbrickson was most concerned—had won their preliminary heats. Now, though, rowing under gray skies, Germany easily cruised past the Czechs and the Australian police officers. Italy crushed the high-stroking Japanese crew, Yugoslavia, and Brazil. Both winners seemed to ease up at the end, conserving energy and turning in relatively slow times, doing just enough to qualify. Great Britain, on the other hand, had its hands full with the Canadians and French, and the crew had to turn in the fastest time of the day to win their heat, but win they did.
Al Ulbrickson knew now which crews he was going to race against for the gold medal on the following day: Italy, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, and Switzerland. But when he went to find out his lane assignment, he got a rude surprise. The German Olympic Committee and Fédération Internationale des Sociétés d’Aviron—headed, respectively, by Heinrich Pauli, chairman of the rowing committee for the Reich Association for Physical Training, and Rico Fioroni, an Italian Swiss—had implemented new rules for lane selection, rules never used before in Olympic competition. Ulbrickson didn’t understand the formula, and to this day it is unclear how it worked or whether there even was really a formula at all. The net effect was the opposite of the usual procedure, in which the fastest qualifiers earned the favored lanes and the slower finishers had to make do with the least favored lanes. In this case, as everyone at Grünau was by now painfully aware, the best lanes were the protected ones closest to shore: lanes one, two, and three; the least desirable were lanes five and six, out in the widest part of the Langer See. Ulbrickson was horrified and furious when he saw the assignments—lane one: Germany; lane two: Italy; lane three: Switzerland; lane four: Hungary; lane five: Great Britain; and lane six: the United States of America. It was the almost perfect inverse of the order he had expected based on the qualifying times. It handicapped the most talented and fastest boats, and gave every advantage to the slower boats. It gave the protected lanes to the host country and her closest ally, the worst lanes to her prospective enemies. It was deeply suspicious, and just what he had feared since first seeing the course at Grünau. If there was any kind of headwind or crosswind the next day, his boys were going to have to make up as much as a solid two lengths just to get back to even with the field.
• • •
The next morning a cold, steady rain was falling in Grünau, and a blustery wind was whipping down the racecourse. At the police academy in Köpenick, the jubilation had evaporated. Don Hume was still in bed, his fever spiking once again, and Al Ulbrickson had decided he could not row. Don Coy would have to step into the shell again at the stroke position. Ulbrickson broke the news to Hume, then to the others as they got up that morning.
At the breakfast table, the boys ate scrambled eggs and steak, sitting silently, their eyes seeing nothing and no one. This was the day they had worked for all year—three years for most of them—and it was inconceivable to them that they would not all be together in the boat in the last race. They began to talk it over, and the more they talked the more certain they were—it just wasn’t right. Hume had to be there with them, come what may. They weren’t just nine guys in a boat; they were a crew. They got up en masse and went to Ulbrickson. Stub McMillin was the team captain now, so he cleared his throat and stepped forward as their spokesman. Hume was absolutely vital to the rhythm of the boat, he told his coach. Nobody else could respond as quickly and smoothly to the moment-by-moment adjustments that a crew had to make during a competitive race. Bobby Moch piped up. Nobody else but Hume could look him in the eye and know what he was thinking even as he was thinking it, he said. He just had to have Hume sitting in front of him. Then Joe stepped forward: “If you put him in the boat, Coach, we will pull him across the line. Just strap him in. He can just go along for the ride.”
Ulbrickson told them to go upstairs and get their gear and get on the German army bus waiting outside to take them down to Grünau for the race. The boys began to troop upstairs. After a long few moments, Ulbrickson shouted up the stairwell after them, “And bring Hume along with you!”
• • •
By early afternoon the rain had still not let up in Grünau. Low clouds wreathed the peaks of the Müggelberg above the racecourse, and fog filtered through the woods down closer to the water. The Langer See was rough, the wind still brisk out on the water, the scene dark and gloomy.
But tens of thousands of spectators, most of them German, began to flood into the regatta grounds, huddled under black umbrellas or wearing rain slickers and hats. Despite the weather, they were in high spirits. In the 1930s rowing was the second most popular Olympic event—after track and field—and in the preliminaries Germany had shown every sign of being highly competitive, if not dominant, in this year’s medal round. A stream of fans crossed the pontoon bridge at the western end of the course and began to fill the massive wooden bleachers on the far side of the water. Thousands more jammed themselves into the grass enclosures at the water’s edge, pressed shoulder to shoulder in the rain. Three thousand of the luckiest took refuge under the cover of the massive permanent grandstand, right in front of the finish line. By the time the first race approached, somewhat more than seventy-five thousand fans had packed the regatta grounds, the largest crowd ever to witness an Olympic rowing event.
German fans waiting in the rain
Leni Riefenstahl’s cameramen scurried about, chasing spectators out of the way of their shots, trying to keep their equipment dry. In the elaborate press headquarters inside Haus West, hundreds of journalists from all over the world tested their telewriters and their shortwave and standard radio-transmission equipment. Bill Slater, NBC’s commentator, opened his hookup to New York. Olympic judges tested the electronic timing apparatus at the finish line. The shortwave-broadcasting boat took up its position behind the starting line. In the elaborate shell houses along the Langer See, oarsmen stowed their street clothes in lockers and began to don their national uniforms. Some of them stretched out on massage tables and let masseurs work the prerace tension out of their back and shoulder muscles. The American boys found a free massage table and laid Don Hume out on it, like a corpse bundled in overcoats, keeping him warm and dry and rested for as long as they could. George Pocock, meanwhile, began applying a coat of sperm whale oil to the underside of the Husky Clipper.
• • •
At 2:30 p.m., as the boys continued to prepare in their shell house, the first race of the day—the four-man with coxswains—got under way at the starting line. The Swiss jumped out to an early lead but were soon overtaken by the German boat. As the boats began to approach the finish line, the American boys could hear the roar of the crowd swelling outside, beginning to chant, “Deutschland! Deutschland!
Deutschland!,” the sound rising to a crescendo as Germany sliced across the finish line a full eight seconds ahead of the Swiss. Then the strains of the “Deutschlandlied” joined by tens of thousands of voices. Then another, deeper, more guttural roar from the crowd, and a different chant: “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!”
Adolf Hitler had entered the regatta grounds, followed by a large entourage of Nazi officials. Wearing a dark uniform and a full-length rain cape, he stood for a few moments gripping the hand of FISA’s Italian Swiss president, Rico Fioroni, as the two smiled and carried on an animated conversation. Then he made his way up a staircase to the wide balcony in front of Haus West and took his place of honor, looking out over the crowd and the Langer See, holding his right hand up. As his entourage arranged itself on either side of him, the crowd and the international press saw that he had brought nearly the entire top tier of the Nazi hierarchy with him. Just to his right was Joseph Goebbels. The crowd continued to thunder “Sieg Heil!” until Hitler finally lowered his hand and the racing resumed.
The crowd soon had plenty of opportunity to make more noise. In event after event that afternoon, German oarsmen charged down the course ahead of their competition, winning gold medals in the first five races. Each time, the Nazi flag was raised in front of Haus West at the end of the race, and each time the crowd sang “Deutschland über alles” a little more loudly. On the balcony Goebbels, dressed in a light-colored trench coat and a fedora, applauded theatrically, almost clownishly, as each German boat crossed the line. Hermann Göring, in a dark uniform and cape like Hitler’s, bent over and slapped his knee with each German victory and then turned and beamed at Hitler. Hitler, peering through his binoculars, simply nodded enthusiastically each time a German boat crossed the line in first place. By five thirty the rain had tapered off, the skies had lightened, and the crowd was in a frenzy as it began to look as if Germany, despite all expectations to the contrary, would sweep the day.
In the sixth race, the double sculls, the German boat led all the way down the course to the final 250 meters, but the British pair Jack Beresford and Dick Southwood staged a terrific rally and won by almost six seconds. For the first time all day, a queer hush fell over the regatta course at Grünau. In the shell house, where he was checking the rigging on the Husky Clipper one final time, George Pocock paused for a moment and realized with sudden pride that, out of old habit, he was standing bolt upright, listening to “God Save the King.”
As the final and most prestigious event of the day—the eight-oared race—grew near, the crowd began to grow noisy once more. This was the rowing event that nations boasted about more than any other, the ultimate test of young men’s ability to pull together, the greatest display of power, grace, and guts on water.
A little before six, Don Hume got up from the massage table where he had been resting and joined the rest of the boys as they hoisted the Husky Clipper to their shoulders and began to amble down to the water. The German boys and the Italian boys were already in their boats. The Italians were wearing silky light blue uniforms, and they had tied white bandanas rakishly around their heads, pirate-style. The Germans were resplendent in white shorts and crisp white jerseys, each emblazoned with a black eagle and swastika. The American boys were wearing mismatched track shorts and tattered old sweatshirts. They didn’t want to get their new uniforms dirty.
Bobby Moch tucked Tom Bolles’s lucky fedora beneath his seat in the stern of the shell. Just offshore, a German naval officer stood on the bow of a launch, his arm extended in a Nazi salute in the direction of Hitler. The boys huddled briefly with Ulbrickson as he went over the race plan one last time. Then they stepped into the shell, sat down and laced their feet into the stretchers, pushed off from the float, and started to paddle up the lake toward the starting line. Ulbrickson, Pocock, and Royal Brougham, clutching binoculars, made their way through the crowd and climbed up to a balcony of one of the shell houses near the finish line. All of them were grim faced. Good as their boys were, they figured their chances of taking the gold were slim to none—not out in lane six and not with Don Hume looking like a dead man.
• • •
In Seattle it was early morning. For days, department stores, electrical appliance stores, the Sherman Clay piano store, even the jewelry store Weisfield & Goldberg had been doing a land-office business selling new Philco 61F Olympic Special cabinet radios. Despite the $49.95 price tag, Seattleites had been snatching them up. Each came with a shortwave tuner and a special “high-efficiency aerial” kit to ensure clear reception of both the standard radio broadcast on NBC and shortwave broadcasts in a variety of languages direct from Berlin. Now, as race time approached, sales representatives were trundling the last few radios ordered the night before into Seattle homes and setting them up.
At Harry Rantz’s now nearly finished house on Lake Washington, there was no money for a fancy new international radio, but Harry figured the older Philco he had bought back in April for the California race would pull in the NBC broadcast on KOMO just fine. He had gotten up before dawn and made coffee and turned the radio on, just to make sure it was working. Joyce had come over a bit later and gotten the kids up, and now they were all in the kitchen, eating oatmeal, smiling awkwardly at one another, and trying to steady their nerves.
All over America millions of people—people who had hardly heard of Seattle before the Poughkeepsie Regatta, people who had to go to work later that Friday morning, if they were lucky enough to have a job, people who had to tend to the farm chores, if they were lucky enough to still have a farm—were also starting to fiddle with the dials on their radios. The Jesse Owens story had already galvanized much of the nation, driving home what exactly was at stake in these Olympic Games. Now America waited to see if the rough-and-tumble western boys from Washington State would write another chapter in the story.
At 9:15 a.m., the voice of NBC’s commentator, Bill Slater, began to crackle over KOMO’s airwaves in Seattle, relayed from Berlin. Joyce rummaged in her purse and pulled out a small book. She flipped through its pages and carefully extracted a delicate green four-leaf clover that Joe had given her and she had pressed between the book’s pages. She laid it atop the radio, pulled up a chair, and started to listen.
• • •
As the boys rowed up the course toward the starting line, it became clear just how challenging the weather and their lane assignment were going to be. Rain showers had begun to slant down out of the sky again, but the rain wasn’t the problem. They were from Seattle, after all. The wind, however, was gusting erratically out of the west, quartering across the racecourse at roughly a forty-five-degree angle, pushing in bursts and fits at the starboard side of the shell. Up front, Roger Morris and Chuck Day were having a hard time keeping the boat on an even keel. In the stern, Bobby Moch was clutching the wooden knockers on the tiller ropes, tugging this way one moment and that way the next, manipulating the rudder, trying to keep the boat on a straight course.
The boys had rowed through plenty of wind in Seattle as well as Poughkeepsie, but this gusty, nearly sideways stuff was going to cause problems. Moch would have preferred a steady, straight-on headwind. Directly in front of him, facing him, Don Hume was trying to conserve energy, setting a nice, methodical paddling pace for the boys behind him but not putting much into his own strokes. Moch didn’t like the looks of him.
Joe Rantz felt pretty good, though. As the noise of the crowd fell away behind them, the world in the shell had grown quiet and calm. It seemed to be past time for words. Joe and the boys in the middle of the boat were just rocking gently back and forth, rowing slow and low, limbering up, enjoying the in and out of their breathing, the synchronized flexing and relaxing of their muscles. The boat felt easy under them, sleek and lithe.
Anxiety had bubbled in Joe’s belly all morning, but it started now to give way to a tenuous sense of calm, more determined than nervous. Just before they’d left the shell house, the boy
s had huddled briefly. If Don Hume had the guts to row this race, they’d agreed, the rest of them just flat out weren’t going to let him down.
They pulled the shell up in front of the starting line, pivoted the Husky Clipper 180 degrees, and backed her up against the gangway. A delicate young man in what looked like a Boy Scout uniform crouched down, reached out his arm, and laid hold of the stern. They were out in the middle of the Langer See here. Ahead of them lay a wide-open and exposed gulf formed by the curvature of the northern shore. The wind was worse than it had been down in front of the grandstands, pushing relentlessly now at their bow, slapping small, choppy waves against the port side. Roger Morris and Gordy Adam were struggling, stroking in place on the starboard side, trying to lever the boat back against the wind and keep the bow pointed more or less down the middle of the lane. In the next lane over, the British boat backed into position. Noel Duckworth was hunkered down in the stern, his cricket cap pulled tight on his head to keep it from blowing away.
They waited for the start. Bobby Moch flipped the megaphone down in front of his face. Every few moments he hollered instructions up front to Roger and Gordy, then glanced anxiously over his shoulder to see whether the starter had emerged yet from the canvas shelter on top of the starting boat. Duckworth was doing the same next door. But both of them were primarily focused on their bows. It was critical that the boat be lined up straight at the start. Behind them, and out of sight, the official starter suddenly emerged from his shelter, holding a flag aloft. The flag snapped wildly over his head for a moment. Almost immediately, he turned slightly in the direction of lanes one and two, shouted into the wind in one continuous, unbroken utterance, “Êtes-vous prêts? Partez!” and dropped the flag.
Bobby Moch never heard him. Never saw the flag. Neither, apparently, did Noel Duckworth. Four boats surged forward. The British boat and the Husky Clipper, for a horrific moment, sat motionless at the line, dead in the water.