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The world over, action for the athletes hasn’t been confined to their respective arenas. Many are the sportspersons who acquired as much fame and renown for their lives off the field as much as they did on it. However, athletes, too share along with their countrymen the one trait that sets them on par with everyone else, their many marvellous feats notwithstanding, that of patriotism. In times of war, many athletes have rose to the occasion, answering in earnest their nation’s call for aid and serving bravely on the battlefront. It is now time to look at some of the most illustrious names in the field of sport who served their countries in war.
#1 Don Bradman (Cricket)
Dubbed by then Australian Prime Minister John Howard in 2001 as ‘The Greatest Australian alive’, months before he would breathe his last, Don Bradman warrants no introduction. Even those unfamiliar with the game of cricket are likely to be familiar with his name, if not the astounding feats that he accomplished with the willow.
However, few are aware that, when World War II broke out, Bradman volunteered for active service and enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force in 1940, before being persuaded by the Australian Governor-General Lord Gowrie, who was wary of losing Bradman as a casualty to war, to settle for the post of Lieutenant in the Army.
The latter option, perceived largely as a safe bet, would result in Bradman being severely criticized for choosing an easy exit from the battlefront. However, his stint as a supervisor of physical training would end up leaving Bradman debilitated and battling fibrositis.
#2 Keith Miller (Cricket)
In 55 Tests, Keith Miller scored nearly 3000 runs, scalped 170 wickets and was widely acknowledged as one of the game’s finest fielders. By the time he bid adieu to his game, his reputation as one of cricket’s finest all-rounders was firmly established. Australian cricket wouldn’t witness a greater all-rounder.
Although the two talismans of Australian cricket, Miller and Bradman shared the dressing room for a relatively brief span of time, the two could often see eye to eye. The shadow of the Second World War, clung closely to the Australian team and unlike his captain, Miller had many a close shave with death.
A fighter pilot for the Royal Australian Air Force in the Second World War, Miller had looked death from too close a distance and his perspective on cricket had, as a direct consequence undergone a radical shift. Cricket meant nothing more to him than a game and his approach towards the same often bordered on the lackadaisical, an attitude which Bradman couldn’t bring himself to condone.
The sheer abundance of his talent, however, made up for his indifference and along with Ray Lindwall, he went on to form one of the most fearsome bowling combinations, one that would terrify batsmen the world over for nearly a decade.
#3 Fred Perry (Tennis)
Fred Perry’s name is enshrined in the memories of Tennis lovers in United Kingdom, for it was he who, prior to Andy Murray’s tryst with Grand Slam glory, had been the symbol of their country’s prowess in tennis.
However, Perry, tired of being looked down upon by the elite who dominated the Lawn-Tennis scene in England and the highly exclusive nature of the tennis clubs, took up residence in the more ‘Libertine’ country, the United States of America, of which he became a naturalized citizen in 1938.
Following the attack on Peral Harbour by Japan, when America declared War against the Axis forces, Perry, in a bid to showcase his loyalty to his adopted country enlisted himself in the US Air Force, where he served as a fighter pilot.
#4 Helen Hull Jacobs (Tennis)
Former World Number one player Helen Hull Jacobs won 10 Grand Slam titles, four of which she won in the singles’ circuit. She is most remembered for her rivalry with yet another World Number one player Helen Wills Moody, a barrier which Jacobs had an exceedingly hard time surmounting. An iconoclast, Jacobs created history in 1933 by becoming the first woman to wear man-tailored shorts.
However, her penchant for emulating men wasn’t circumscribed to the tennis court. When the Second World War broke out, Jacobs served as a commander in the US Navy Intelligence. She holds the distinction of being one of a meagre six women to have achieved that rank in the US Navy.
#5 Fritz Walter (Football)
Although nearly a decade had passed since the end of the tumultuous event that was the Second World War, the memories of a bitter defeat, aggravated by the atrocities perpetrated by Adolf Hitler, continued to linger and Germany in 1954, was very much in need of some upliftment, at least as far as its spirits were concerned.
And Fritz Walter, along with his teammates, won Germany (then West Germany) its first ever Football World Cup to give their nation a reason to unite and enjoy. Fritz Walter played 61 matches for Germany and scored 33 goals in the same, apart from also essaying a key role in their epic triumph in the World Cup.
Walter would have known only too well the misery that the War had wrought upon the world and his country. Having been drafted into the Nazi Army in 1942, Walter had been taken prisoner and was held at a POW (Prisoner Of War) camp in Marmurres, where he played with Hungarian and Slovak guards.
A stint at the Soviet Gulags, where prisoners were not expected to last more than five years, beckoned him before one of the Soviet soldiers identified him as being from Saar territory and not Germany, a recognition that saved Walter’s life. After battling Malaria upon his return to Germany from the War, Walter was recalled to lead the German side in 1951 and the rest, as the cliché goes, is history.
#6 Donald Simpson Bell (Football)
The first professional footballer to enlist in the British Army, Donald Simpson Bell played for Newcastle United and was, in addition to being an exceptional sportsman, a school teacher as well.
Bell joined the West Yorkshire Regiment and moved up the ladder in the army hierarchy very swiftly. For his daring act at Horseshoe Trench in Somme, France, he won the highest honour in the Army, the Victoria Cross (VC) in 1916.
Upon winning the VC, he remarked in a letter to his mother, “I must confess it was the biggest fluke alive and I did nothing. I only chucked one bomb, but it did the trick."
His VC medal was auctioned in November 2010 and fetched a handsome price of £252,000.
Bell was subsequently killed in action later in 1916.
#7 Joe Dimaggio (Baseball)
It has been over six decades since his retirement, but Joe Dimaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, a feat that he accomplished in 1941, remains unbeaten.
Counted amongst the greatest baseball players ever to have played the game, Dimaggio’s life was the very actualization of the American Dream. A player for the New York Yankees, he was the greatest of his contemporaries and captured the imagination of an entire generation of Americans.
Even while his parents, Giuseppe and Rosalia Dimaggio were categorized as ‘Enemy Aliens’ following the bombardment at Pearl Harbour, Joe went on to serve in the Army following America’s declaration of war.
However, he never saw action, stationed as he was at Atlanta initially before being transferred to Atalantic City in New Jersey, as a physical education instructor.
#8 Ted Williams (Baseball)
One of Joe Dimaggio’s greatest contemporaries and equally prolific hitters was Ted Williams, who played for Boston Red Sox. While his life off the baseball field never attracted the sort of frenzy that Demaggio’s did, Williams’s prowess with the baseball bat earned him monikers aplenty, including ‘The Greatest Hitter that ever lived’.
During the Second World War, although he had the option of choosing to play baseball for the Navy, a choice that would have seen him in no danger, he chose to become a Naval Aviator and not only did he turn out to be a good pilot, but also grew extremely fond of flying.
Williams was recalled to active duty again in 1952 during the Korean War, in which he participated in a 35-plane air raid on a tank and infantry training school.
#9 Rocky Bleier (American Football)
Pittsburg Steelers halfback Robert Patrick Bleier a.k.a Rocky Bleier, served in what will remain, one of the most disastrous chapters in American history: The Vietnam War.
A graduate in business management, Bleier was in his rookie year with Pittsburg Steelers when he was drafted into the US Army in 1968. In 1969, he got seriously injured in his left thigh after his platoon was ambushed in a paddy field. Between receiving a bullet on his left thigh and shrapnel piercing his lower right leg, the doctors informed him that he could never play football again.
However, a letter from his Pittsburg teammate, Art Rooney motivated him to strive hard to reclaim his position in the team. Upon returning to the states, Bleier could hardly walk, but trained hard and was back on the team’s active rooster after two years. He would, from that point on, go on to be a part of his team’s starting line-up.
For his services towards the country during wartime, he was awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star.
#10 Waddy Young (American Football)
An All-American football player out of the University of Oklahoma, Walter Robert Young a.k.a Waddy Young was posthumously inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1986.
When he got out of his university, he joined professional football, playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the National Football League (NFL). However, he voluntarily gave up his football career to become a member of an elite flying club during the war. He was among the few who piloted B-24 Liberator bombers over the European Theatre during the war.
On January 9, 1945, he was killed during a B-29 air raid over Tokyo in a plane crash.
