Against All Odds

by P. J. Naworynski

  Although the rink had artificial ice, the teeming rain had created giant pools of water and slush. The surface was a total mess from the get-go. Undeterred, the Flyers launched into the match with gusto as if they were playing on an outdoor rink back at home. Ab Renaud led the attack with a pair of goals. Patsy Guzzo, Wally Halder, and George Mara also banged in nice goals despite the brutal playing conditions. In between the posts, Murray Dowey stunned the Swiss as he snagged shot after shot in his custom-made mitt. With a few minutes to go in the final period, the Swiss pulled their goalie and added another attacker to the ice. But a strong Flyers defence and Murray’s hot hands kept the Swiss puck out of the net. At the final buzzer the game ended 6–3 in favour of the Flyers. Coach Frank Boucher told reporters: “The conditions were very bad but it turned out to be a pretty fair game and the boys looked good.”

  Players from both teams were soaked to the skin. Throngs of spectators choked the Flyers’ access to their bus, so the Canadian lads walked back to their hotel shivering in the cold, with blue lips and short of breath. When they got back to their cushy digs at the Dolder, there were hot baths waiting for all of them. As an added bonus, Sandy ordered each of the guys to have a shot of cognac before bed to stave off a cold. The cognac came courtesy of George Mara’s liquor empire contacts.

  Buoyed by their victory against the strong Swiss contenders, Sandy Watson and Frank Boucher were pleased to see their team finally coming together. Not only that, but they were blown away by the scrawny last-minute surprise from the Beaches. Quite simply, Murray Dowey was like a magician in net. He possessed an extraordinary glove hand and lightning-fast reflexes. Boucher had never seen anything like it. The rest of boys on the Flyers bestowed Murray with a new nickname. From then on they called him “Fast Hands.”

  Watson and Boucher homed in on a revised strategy. They needed goals to win games. Thankfully their attackers and snipers were beginning to find their groove. But if they focused on teamwork built around defence, backchecking, and Dowey’s prowess in between the pipes, they might have a chance to win it all. Boucher told his boys that their top priority was defence. His mantra was “Defence, defence, defence.” If the other teams couldn’t score, they couldn’t win.

  That love of baseball that Dr. Watson was so worried about when he first met Murray back in Ottawa was shaping up to be the Flyers’ secret weapon. Murray’s goaltending style was very different from that of other netminders. Most goalies tended to play the pads, go down, and try to block or smother shots. Sure Murray could block, but if the puck was in the air, he was going to catch it. The Europeans had never seen a goalie catch a puck before.

  With just a few days to go before the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games, the Flyers packed up their gear and checked out of the Dolder Hotel for another exhibition match against the Swiss national team in the mountain town of Basel. Like everything else in Switzerland the train station was spotless. The train itself was clean, comfortable—and electric. It seemed to transport them effortlessly through the mountain passes. The boys marvelled at it all. Unlike Britain and France, this place felt completely untouched by the war.

  The Swiss team and their coach, Wyn Cook, were on the same train. The Flyers hung out with the Swiss players, taking the opportunity to get to know a little more about their competitors. Cook was an old friend of Roy Forbes’s from Winnipeg, and the two spent the train ride catching up and reminiscing. Once they arrived in Basel, both teams settled into separate hotels and tried to grab some rest after playing through that frigid deluge back in Zurich.

  On Sunday, January 25, the sun was shining, thick snowflakes cascaded down, and the town was picture-postcard perfect. Patsy Guzzo got up bright and early to go to church with André Laperrière before the day’s game. The mass was in German, and they didn’t understand a word, but it still felt good to get to church.

  That afternoon a dark cloud began to loom over the Flyers. As the boys got suited up in their hotel rooms, many of them were feeling light-headed from the high altitude. Others were developing colds and feeling run ragged from the travel and Friday’s game in the rain. Most figured that once they hit the ice and the crisp mountain air, however, all would be good.

  They piled into a fleet of taxis and made their way to the outdoor rink. An army of more than sixteen thousand rabid Swiss fans encircled the ice. They were jammed into the wooden stands and spilling out onto the streets. Standing shoulder to shoulder the cheering crowds blanketed multiple blocks. Hundreds of others crowded onto nearby hills for a bird’s-eye view of the rink. Swiss coach Wyn Cook now knew what his boys were facing in Canada’s “mystery team.” His players were the bronze-medal favourites, they were on home turf, and they weren’t about to turtle to the boys in blue who had beaten them back in Zurich.

  After the usual formalities both teams got off to a fast start. The Swiss got on the board first with an early goal. Patsy Guzzo answered back and tied things up. By the end of the first period the score was deadlocked 2–2. Then, in a complete reversal of form, the Flyers fell to pieces and the Swiss poured on the pressure. The lighter Swiss players were too much for the fast-tiring Canadians. Time and time again the Canadians were penalized for physical play and bodychecks that would never have been called back in Canada. Meanwhile the Swiss trotted out the European habits of holding, hooking, and taking dives, without any repercussions. Even the spears and jabs they deftly delivered to the Flyers went unpenalized.

  All game long the short twelve-inch boards of the figure skating rink plagued the Canadians. They repeatedly fired pucks over the pint-sized boards into the snow. The Swiss, on the other hand, had no such problems and used the boards to bank their passes to great effect. They scored two more unanswered goals in the second period and jumped ahead 4–2. The Flyers attempted to bounce back in the third, but it was too little, too late. Tired, winded, and outplayed, they bowed down to the Swiss and lost 8–5. The massive hometown crowd poured onto the streets, cheering and chanting in exultation. Even though this was just an exhibition match, beating the mighty Canadians, from the country that gave birth to the sport, felt like winning Olympic gold to the legions of Swiss fans.

  The loss to the Swiss national team was a heartbreaker for Sandy Watson and Frank Boucher. This was not the result they were hoping for with the Olympics right around the corner. With the exception of a few stars, the Flyers played terribly. After the game Hubert Brooks said it was like a punch in the guts for him and most of the guys. Roy Forbes said every guy on the ice was working like hell, but they were misfiring and couldn’t find their groove. Maybe the press was right. Maybe this team was destined to embarrass the nation.

  From all angles, the sad performance against the Swiss team on the eve of the Olympics was a shocking wake-up call for the boys. They had to play better, get used to the high altitude, and buy into Coach Boucher’s defensive strategy. They had to stop playing like a bunch of individuals. And they had to do it now!

  The pressure was also on Boucher to deal with the archaic rule of dressing only eleven players. Although the Flyers were travelling with seventeen bodies, Olympic rules dictated that each team was allowed to dress only eleven players plus a backup goaltender for each game. The rest of the guys would have to sit out the games and ride the bench.

  With all the new blood and last-minute shuffling back in Ottawa, Frank had seen these boys play as a team in only a handful of exhibition games in England, France, and Switzerland. He wasn’t ready to pick his starting eleven. He was still assessing the new guys and juggling line arrangements and defensive pairings. He told the players, “I have to pick eleven. It’s no knock against anyone else. Once I pick the lineup, I’m going to stay with it until we lose.”

  No one knew yet who was going to sit out and who was going to play. Snow fell heavily in the mountains, and some of the boys grabbed a cable car for a scenic late-night jaunt to the top of the nearby ski runs. Eventually they all made it back to their hotel rooms. Murray Dowey tucked into
a game of cards, playing rummy with Patsy Guzzo and Red Gravelle before retiring to bed. In the morning they were up early to pack their things and head off to St. Moritz, winter playground for the rich and famous.

  Before they hustled off to the train station, Frank Boucher held a light morning skate for another look at his options. Snow had continued to fall throughout the night and all morning, so the boys did as much shovelling as they did skating.

  To get to St. Moritz they needed to hop a couple of trains. When they hauled their bags onto the final train for the last leg of their journey, both the American and the English hockey teams were already on board. The Yanks and the Brits had snatched up all the available seats and weren’t about to budge for the Canadians. The Flyers stood the entire ninety-minute ride as the train slowly wound its way through the steep mountains to St. Moritz at six thousand feet above sea level. This was it. Four and a half months before, Sandy Watson read a newspaper article back in Ottawa and hit the roof. Now, he and the band of brothers he had assembled were finally at the threshold of the Olympics.

  AT THE 1948 GAMES OF RENEWAL, Olympic hockey was a round-robin competition. There were no playoffs. There was no sudden death and no shootouts. The gold medal would be awarded to the team that won the most games. Back in England, Bunny Ahearne had advised the guys to hammer in the goals but to be very mindful of the goals against just in case it came down to a tie. In the case of a tie, the medals would be determined by the teams’ goal average: essentially goals scored divided by goals allowed. If a team scored fifty goals during the tournament and let in twenty goals, they would have a quotient of 2.5. Whereas a team that scored thirty goals and let in only three would have a quotient of 10. The team with the highest quotient would win. So although it was important to accumulate goals, keeping your opponents from scoring was even more critical. The Flyers had to stick to Boucher’s game plan: defence, defence, defence.

  IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON ON JANUARY 28 when the train pulled into the railway station tucked into the Swiss Alps. A cacophony of station bells heralded their arrival while porters, dressed in smart uniforms with the names of their respective hotels emblazoned on their caps, greeted their new guests. It was as if the Flyers had been transported into a winter wonderland. A thick carpet of snow at least five feet deep blanketed the entire resort village. The tinkling bells of horse-drawn sleigh taxis floated through the air. Villagers going about their business dodged visiting skiers as they raced along the snowlined streets. In the distance two giant mountains, the Languard and the Julian, reared up out of the earth and loomed larger than life.

  Wealthy boys like George Mara and Wally Halder had already been exposed to this kind of lavish world. But for the rest of the Flyers it was as if they had been plopped onto a movie set. This was a village far removed from the bump and grind and noise and grime of any normal city. Rather, this idyllic, peaceful town oozed wealth and consisted almost entirely of luxurious hotels and shops.

  Spared the kind of destruction that had scarred England, France, Poland, Italy, and other parts of Europe, St. Moritz still boasted many magnificent buildings and venues. War, however, had decimated the once-bustling tourist trade that was a major component of the town’s lifeblood. Until recently many of the hotels had been closed and boarded up. With the arrival of the world’s athletes, the Olympics presented St. Moritz with an opportunity to open its doors wide once again.

  A who’s who of the world’s wealthy elite and royal society had flocked to the alpine playground to take in the Games and enjoy being pampered at one of the swanky hotels. The boys saw the familiar faces of celebrities they had rubbed shoulders with ever so briefly up in first class on the Queen Elizabeth. Movie star Paulette Goddard and her husband, Burgess Meredith, were there, as were Johnny Weissmuller and Henry Ford. A long list of princes, dukes, kings, duchesses, lords, and other notables had also come to St. Moritz.

  But what was obviously absent were the masses of working-class spectators from other countries. Aside from the athletes, the delegates, the media, the wealthy elite, and those from nearby towns and villages, St. Moritz was far beyond the reach of most people’s pocketbooks. Post-war travel restrictions and currency exchange restrictions also limited the number of tourists capable of making the journey to witness the Games.

  One of the spectators who was able to dig deep and make her way to St. Moritz on her own dime was Bea Grontved. She had come to St. Moritz to get married. Her soon-to-be husband was none other than Hubert Brooks. Hubert and Bea had met a few years earlier, when he was searching for downed airmen in Copenhagen as part of the Missing Research and Enquiry Service. Bea was working for the American occupation forces in Germany. They met at a party when she was home in Denmark visiting with her family, and they fell madly in love. Bea and Hubert spent every minute possible together and got engaged while he was working overseas. When he was reposted back to Canada, the two made plans for Bea to immigrate and join him in Ottawa. The instant Brooks made it onto the RCAF Flyers hockey team, the lovebirds set in motion a new plan to tie the knot in St. Moritz right after the Olympics, win or lose.

  Bea was staying at the Park Hotel on the edge of town. The boys were staying at the Stahlbad Hotel, a short walk away. A slew of athletes from other countries were also staying at the Stahlbad. The Czechs, Norwegians, Romanians, Yugoslavs, English, Poles, and Swedes all raced down the halls, piled into their rooms, and basically took over the hotel.

  The Flyers cozied into their lush rooms at the Stahlbad. Like the earlier Swiss hotels they had stayed in, the Stahlbad was head and shoulders above the establishments they’d been subjected to in England and France. Old roommates Murray Dowey and André Laperrière settled in for a two-week stay. Patsy Guzzo roomed with Andy Gilpin and trainer George McFaul in a massive suite that had a salon with a chesterfield and lounge chairs. It also happened to be the only room on the floor with a phone in it. The boys quickly christened it as the de facto hangout spot for card games. Although Hubert’s fiancée, Bea, was just down the road at the Park Hotel, he roomed with fellow warrior and defenceman Frank Dunster.

  Although it was hockey that had brought them all together for the journey to Switzerland, the men of the RCAF Flyers were bound by the shared experience of war and the darkest days of the Depression. So far they had been unimpressive on the ice and were routinely lambasted by the press and their opponents. On the eve of the Olympics, with the eyes of the world watching, could they each reach down again to harness that fortitude for another sort of battle?

  The Allied air war was a brutal campaign with devastating results for both sides. For the men of the RCAF, survival rates were grim. If you made it through ten missions you were considered lucky. Of the 125,000 Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, and British aircrew who served in Bomber Command, almost 55,000 were killed. If you made it to thirty missions you had completed your full service and could go home.

  Although Frank Dunster was one of the lucky ones who survived his first full tour of duty, he wasn’t about to leave the battle. Between February 15 and December 2, 1944, Dunster flew thirty-seven missions against the heaviest of heavy targets, night after night after night. Berlin, Essen, Cologne, Nuremburg . . .

  His love of trigonometry landed Dunster in the navigator seat of his Halifax bomber—the odds were against him and the job required nerves of steel. The Halifax was a workhorse capable of delivering a serious payload of bombs, but she was light on armour, was light on guns, and had a tendency to go into a tailspin or lose control if she was flung around for evasive manoeuvres to avoid night fighters and flak.

  Over his thirty-seven sorties, there were lots of near misses and harrowing experiences. Late one evening just after takeoff, Frank and his crewmates narrowly avoided a mid-air collision right over England with another bomber from 420 Squadron. With hundreds of these giant metal beasts cueing up to head off in tight formation into the night, collisions were inevitable. Heavy losses played a toll on Frank’s mind. After some missions, it was
a struggle to keep a brave face when people you’d had breakfast with in the morning were simply gone the next day. You didn’t have to do anything wrong to get shot down; you just had to be at the wrong spot at the wrong time. It was just a question of luck.

  On March 30, 1944, Frank’s Halifax was one of nearly eight hundred Allied bombers that took to the night skies for an all-out assault on Nuremburg. Weather reports had indicated a protective light covering of cloud all the way over to the target. But as the bomber stream made its way across the Atlantic the clouds dissipated, leaving the bombers illuminated by a glowing full moon. From the ground below, the Lancasters, Halifaxes, and Mosquitoes were silhouetted against the moonlight. As they lumbered through the cool, crisp sky, the heat from their massive engines left huge contrails and provided the Luftwaffe fighter pilots and ground batteries with a bead on the hapless behemoths from miles away. They waited for the approach and then unleashed a world of hell upon the bomber stream. One by one bombers exploded in flames and dropped from the sky.

  The mission to Nuremberg became an aerial massacre. The night fighters had time to attack the front of the bomber stream full force, then land, rearm, and fly up to attack the rear. Eighty-two Lancasters and Halifaxes were lost en route to the target. An additional thirteen went down over Nuremburg and on the way home. Nearly a thousand Allied airmen died in the span of a few hours.

  Dunster and his mates in 420 Squadron were among the fortunate ones. They happened to be in the middle of the bomber stream. The bombers at the front and at the back bore the brunt of the Axis attack. Again it was luck of the draw. A week later, Frank was in the air again.