PART III
Soldier from the Wars Returning
June, 1964
Chapter 1
GERMANY CAME TO A full stop that day. France also ground to a standstill. So did Scandinavia, the Low Countries, and lands far more distant from the ancient city of Rouen, where the contest was to be held.
Saturday afternoon is a busy time in Europe. Not that day. Factories everywhere shut long before the kickoff. Stores, shops, offices closed. Theaters emptied. Traffic subsided. Each metropolis suspended its normal activities.
The only crowded places were bars, cafés, bistros, bierstubes, trattorie. People poured into them to watch the game on television. Twelve countries had requested the match live for their national networks. All Europe was aroused.
Why this excitement over a game of football? First, because it was more than a game. This contest pitted the Stade Rouennais, champions of France, against Bayern-Munich, champions of Germany. Hence it was a French-German contest, the first time since the end of the war that a team from across the Rhine was to play in a country which had suffered more than four years of occupation, deportation, and even starvation.
Everyone who knew football realized there would be a twelfth man on the field for France: the French crowd in the stands.
But chiefly the match was important because of two outstanding players. Who in all France could forget that the greatest of German goalkeepers was the man who had shot French hostages during the war and been tried in the very city of Rouen? And if the Munich team was led and inspired by its veteran captain and goalkeeper, the French also had their star. He was a young, nervous, magnificent forward named Jean-Paul Varin. Everywhere in France he was called the “comingman français.”
In cities, towns, and villages throughout the land, thousands of boys addressed a football the way Jean-Paul did. Young men of every age tried to run like him, shoot like him, pass like him. He was far better known than any politician or movie star. When you saw men with their heads together in a café or a train, they were not necessarily talking about business or politics. More likely they were discussing Jean-Paul Varin.
Now he would come up against the great German veteran. After the Feldwebel von Kleinschrodt had gotten out of prison, serving six years of his ten-year term, he had felt lost. His brother had been killed in action in the last week of the war. Many friends were also gone. Some were still in Russian prisoner-of-war camps. His mother was dead. His family vanished. The great estate on the Baltic was in ruins, devastated by the Russians, then occupied by the British. Finally one night the main house and other buildings caught fire and burned to the ground.
Where could he go? What could he do? He did the thing that came naturally, the thing he liked best of all—he turned to football. It was a poorish living, coaching junior teams in and around Hamburg. For several years he practiced continually, running to get his legs back. At first it was difficult for him to keep up with his boys when refereeing one of their matches. Gradually his legs returned. So did his form. Often he played goal. As goalie he could see the entire field, watch all the boys in action, coach them as they ran and passed. With a whistle around his neck he would blow twice to stop play and race out to correct their mistakes.
The boys learned. They liked the challenge of the man in the goal before them. They improved. Before long his teams began to win. They were noticed, and he became known as the animator of football among the youth of Germany.
After several years in which he kept attracting attention, the manager of Werder of Berlin had the idea of asking him to try out for the team. He did, playing superbly. As a goalkeeper his age—he was then thirty-eight—mattered less. True, he had slowed down, but in goal he was magnificent. He knew all the techniques of the attacker. His reflexes were still keen, his coordination perfect, and he could outlast anybody on the field. When he stepped in for Werder-Berlin the team won nineteen straight games.
Next he transferred to Bayern-Munich and helped them win a title with his superb play in goal. He soon became mentor and team leader. Within a few years he had twelve caps—that is, he had played twelve times for his native land in international competition. Once he traveled to London, where his defensive play won a game against West Ham, the English champions. By this time he was God the father of German sport.
Now, with his team, he was returning for the first time to France. The small stadium at Rouen was, of course, sold out. It normally held fewer than 20,000 people, and although 10,000 extra wooden seats had been added, hordes had to be turned away. A makeshift press box had been constructed for the dozens of sportswriters and radio and television reporters. They came from as far away as Oslo in the north and Rome in the south. Suddenly this sleepy city on the Seine had become the sporting capital of the entire continent. Dozens of commentators speaking every language in Europe appeared, all concentrating on that afternoon of football.
So wherever you happened to be that day you heard their rapid-fire commentary—across the street, from the café on the corner, from every open window and every open door.
In France and Germany middle-aged men stared at television screens, dreaming dreams of their youth. Young men and boys saw themselves on other fields for other teams: Rotweiss of Essen, Real of Madrid, Benficia of Lisbon. No other single event in the history of sport had ever before united so many millions in so many disparate lands.
Yet who could forget one salient fact? Certainly nobody present at the game, no one watching in France, was unaware that the father of young Jean-Paul Varin had been murdered by the Feldwebel von Kleinschrodt in a small Normandy village twenty years ago. Everyone knew that as a boy of seven or eight he had witnessed the killing of his father. There it was. There it remained in the hearts and minds of French men and women. Try as they would, and many honestly did try, they could not expunge the bitter memories of that June day. The story of the shooting had been brought out in the trial. It had burned into them all. You might try to thrust it aside, you might say it was ancient history, an incident of two decades ago, best forgotten. You might make an effort to ignore it.
The fact, however, was that the greatest goalkeeper in the history of German football was the hated symbol of French defeat. He was the Butcher of Nogent-Plage.
Chapter 2
THE GERMAN TEAM ARRIVED several days prior to the game and put up at a small hotel on the Seine nearly six miles from Rouen. Each morning before practice they went for a five-mile walk across country.
“Stamina, that’s what football is all about,” the baron said to them. “The team that is the freshest in the last five minutes usually wins. We took the league because we outlasted better teams. Look at me, I’m over forty, but I believe I could outlast some of you young chaps because I’ve still got my legs. You fellows with your Porsches and Karmann Ghias will lose the use of your legs someday.”
They realized he was right. Had they not seen him run in a practice match when occasionally he came forward on the field to coach the offense?
The afternoon before the day of the game he took each man out alone for a stroll in the countryside, discussing the tactics to be used, the makeup of the French team, how they should handle their adversaries, and especially what to do about Varin.
“We should allow Varin and the French to do the running. Let them play their game and hold them. Nothing is more discouraging than to play your best and not score. Then every few minutes you boys turn it on. When the opportunity arises, go. You can score goals, Sepp. Turn it on, suddenly, unexpectedly. These boys are dangerous here in Rouen before their own crowd, but they can be beaten.”
Never did he mention his notoriety as the Butcher of Nogent-Plage, which would make the match so bitterly fought. He did not need to. His teammates were as aware of it as he was.
Early that evening, before dinner, a press conference was arranged in the dining room of the hotel. Television cameras pointed directly at the baron. On a table before him a dozen microphones had been placed to pick up
his words. The journalists and commentators kept after him from every corner of the room, talking in four or five languages, some needling, others more understanding and less insistent. He replied evenly to each man, pausing a few seconds to think before responding, never permitting himself to be ruffled by the most hostile remarks. Even when a blond Dane asked whether he was pleased to be back in France again.
Those queries he did not care to answer he turned aside tactfully, discussing only matters pertinent to the game. His adroitness at handling this rather unfriendly group of newsmen made you appreciate his qualities. You could understand why he had been chosen to assume responsibility and lead his team into action. How, he was asked, would Germany defend against the marvelous French offense, which nobody to date had stopped?
He thought a moment and then replied slowly, “France is a nation of individualists. You would expect the French players to be a great team, of course they are. To win in their league they had to be. I saw them play last year at Dusseldorf—they are magnificent attackers, finely trained, skillful, never letting up. But, nevertheless, though they are a team of champions, they are also and primarily a team of individualists. By that I mean they sometimes ask a man to do it on his own. Now our tactics are somewhat different.”
As he spoke, the room grew unnaturally quiet. Here was a football captain talking frankly, freely, and yet modestly about his opponents and the tactics he would use against them the following afternoon.
His cool confidence was contagious. Reporters bent forward to catch every word. All present knew of whom he was thinking: Jean-Paul Varin, the greatest centre forward ever produced in France.
Then a small dark Italian spoke. His German was excellent, his tone unpleasant. “Do you fear Varin?”
A collective sigh, a sort of “aaahhh” rose. One reporter stopped midway in the act of lighting a cigarette. Another, who had stood up to rush away and file copy to meet an early deadline, quietly sat down again.
Surely this was too much. This was pushing him too far. This was unfair. The tall figure behind the table did not stir. But watching closely, you could see his right hand tighten around the stem of a microphone.
The newsmen waited for his answer. Would he explode in anger? Would he suggest that he had been tried, convicted, and imprisoned by the French for a crime he had not committed. Or would he ignore the question entirely?
For endless seconds he stood motionless. Then his mouth opened and in flawless Italian he replied. “We Germans greatly respect the French team and all their players. We do not fear anyone.”
Chapter 3
THE FOOTBALL PLAYED ABROAD is a sport in which there is less violence than the football played in the United States. Names are taken by the referee, players are cautioned, but only occasionally is a man sent off the field for deliberate roughness. Since there is no substitution in European football, the loss of a player is a severe penalty because then a team must play with only ten men against eleven. To lose a goalkeeper or an important forward can be disastrous.
But if there is usually no great amount of violence on the field in games between top-class teams, violence persists in the stands. In Spain and Italy especially, the fans go crazy, and football riots are front-page news everywhere.
Recently a French sporting newspaper published an advertisement which read: “Monsieur Collet, the referee of the football match last Sunday between the Racing Club de Calais and the Stade Roubaisienne, wishes to thank the members of the Calais team for saving his life after the match.” A joke? No, it happened. Football abroad is a serious affair. Many teams keep a car under the stadium during their games. The engine is running and a chauffeur sits at the wheel to rush the referee to safety if the home team loses.
Sometimes riots get out of hand. Fixtures in the stands are uprooted, rocks, bricks, and even seats have been torn loose and hurled onto the field. Players have been shot at during a contest. In the coalfields of Yorkshire in the North of England, they throw what is called a Barnsley snowball. This is a lump of coal covered with snow and hurled at an offending referee.
The day of the game at Rouen, a great broad river of people flowed through the turnstiles of the stadium. Young people, old people, poor people, rich people, people of all kinds and classes. Men in expensive Alpine hats, men in cloth caps and work clothes. Thousands of women and girls were there, for the game had breached the sex barrier because of the attraction of the young football genius on the French side. Speculators were getting fifty dollars a ticket outside, and selling all they could obtain.
Many Germans carried huge banners of greeting from across the Rhine. München Grüsst Frankreich. Berlin Grüsst Frankreich. Bremen Grüsst Frankreich.
Then outside the stadium came an explosion. A car had caught fire. Two men leaped from it and were lost in the crowd. Successive blasts rocked the car as one bunch of firecrackers after another went off. The fire was put out by the Rouen Fire Department—luckily on hand and waiting—and policemen, who then searched the parked vehicles. Many were filled with fireworks and other explosives, guns, even small cannon to celebrate the victory or perhaps menace the winners. These cars were seized and put under guard.
Inside, the chanting, cheering, and sometimes jeering crowd roared at everything. Hawkers passed through the stands selling programs, beer, and souvenirs, from T-shirts to ties and blazers with France or Germany embroidered on the pockets. At last the German team trotted single file onto the field. Thousands of horns blew triumphantly, thousands of Germans waved red-black-and-gold banners with drill-hall precision, left-right, left-right, left-right, all in unison.
“Hoi, hoi, hoi,” they shouted. This was their team, the one that had shut out Torpedo Moscow for the first time. The noise from the stands beat down on the field like heavy surf pounding on sand or shale.
The Germans wore blue shorts and white jerseys. Then the French appeared in dark red jerseys and white shorts. Immediately thousands of tricolored flags sprang up on the opposite side, fluttering in a kind of irreverent pattern of color in the afternoon sunshine. All over the stands strangers addressed each other.
“There! That’s Jules Garnier, Number four.”
“That’s Bonnet....”
“That’s Laffont, six. With the bandage around his left knee. He was hurt against Lille, you know. They said he might not play.”
“Which is Varin?”
“Varin! You’ve never seen Varin! He’s Number two. That’s him, the tall boy who looks like an angel.”
“Ah, so that’s Varin. We only saw him once on television. We’re from Marseille.”
“We’ve come all the way from Bordeaux. Ah, there’s Rudy now.”
The referee, in blue shorts, high blue stockings and a blue jersey, appeared below. He was Rudolph Stampfli, a former fullback for Zurich and once a Swiss international who spoke four languages. He was known as the best referee in all Europe, firm, decisive, noted for his quick decisions, and possessing a vast knowledge of the game.
The two captains conferred with him, the tall baron twitching the brim of his gray cap, that lucky cap he had saved since before the war and wore only in an international match. Garnier, the captain of France and the massive outside right who had competed fifteen times for his country, shook the hands of the Munich goalkeeper.
On the sidelines the two teams waited. The tension built up and up. The players longed for the game to start. After the opening rush downfield they would forget everything—the crowds, the shouts, the whistles—everything save that round balloon at their feet.
It’ll be all right, each man told himself. I’ll be fine as soon as play begins.
Chapter 4
BUT IT DID NOT start. The band played “The Watch on the Rhine,” the German national anthem. Then the “Marseillaise.” Still the game did not start. Time passed. Seconds were minutes, minutes seemed as long as a day. The athletes did what athletes the world over do in such circumstances. They leaped high in the air, squatted and squatted again.
They kicked their feet out and up. They bent over, twisting at the waist, to touch the ground on either side. Some walked around nervously, unable to stand still. Nothing happened. From above, the French stands whistled and shouted. The delay was torture for everyone. The captains standing beside the stocky referee straightened up. But the ball stayed under the arm of Rudy Stampfli. The crowd all over now yelled for action.
“Commencez!”
“Anfangen!”
“Why don’t they begin?”
“Commencez! Commencez! COMMENCEZ!”
It appeared that the jam at the entrance gates had been so great, the confusion in the stands so widespread, that many spectators had not yet found their seats and were blocking the aisles. Hence the kickoff was delayed. The wait seemed forever.
The referee looked at his watch. Six, seven minutes had passed. Eight. Nine. Ten.
His arm went up. He snapped his out-pointed hand toward the small circle at midfield. The whole stadium roared as the teams rushed out, eager for action. One Frenchman crossed himself as he stood poised for action, not for victory, no, but to acquit himself well that day.
Suddenly the whistle sounded. The start proved that this was no match for weak hearts. France kicked off and pushed the ball gently to Bonnet, a wing, who kicked it far ahead to the right, a pass beautifully spotted. Varin set off at full speed as though the ball were already there. Sepp Obermeyer, Uncle Sepp, the German veteran who had been assigned to mark Varin, was caught flat-footed by that amazing and effortless burst of speed. You had to play against the boy to appreciate him.
Here it was, the very first minute of the game and the famous French attack built around their young star centre forward, around ball control, around pace and more pace was taking over.
“VarIN... Var... IN... Var... IN... Var... IN....”
The cheers rose, burst into an unearthly roar as the tall Number 2, taking the ball back on the pass, snaked his way through the German defense, stopped short, twisted, curled the ball around his feet, raced ahead, evading the defensive backs. A dart, a dash, a stop, a pivot, a turn, a twist, and he was nearing the goal.
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