Amateurism. That! Always that. It had been 16 years since we had naively feigned to be done with it.… Today I can risk the confession; I was never much concerned about the question of amateurism. It had served me as a screen to convene the Congress to Re-establish the Olympic Games. Seeing the importance that others lent it in the sporting world, I would show the expected zeal in that direction, but it was zeal without real conviction.24
At any rate, fencing was the first sport in the Olympics with an event for professionals (won by Leon Pyrgos of Greece); in 1900 it was extended to saber and épée. In 1904 there was a singlesticks event and two years later “three-cornered saber.” The Olympics of 1906 have always troubled the statisticians and figure in hardly any record books, yet after the St. Louis Games in 1904 it had been decided that, wherever else the Olympics might be staged, there should be another Olympics, also on a four-year cycle, sited permanently in Athens. A fencing team was sent by Britain, captained by Theodore Andrea Cook, president of the British Olympic Council. Cook was required to write an official report, which he did in The Cruise of the Branwen.
It is a bizarre production. For a start, the Branwen was a 135-foot-long yacht owned by one of the team, Lord Howard de Walden, aboard which four members of the fencing squad traveled to Athens.25 While a detailed account can be found of the performances of the twenty-four-man British team, one also encounters quotations from Greek, Latin, and French literature, an extended discussion of the techniques, ancient and modern, of javelin and discus throwing; descriptions of Vesuvius, the Parthenon, and Oedipus Rex (as performed in the main stadium of the Games); two full articles, in French, reprinted from a magazine to which Cook had contributed; and a long report on what the fencers saw on their journey home.
The Games themselves drew 901 competitors. In overall results Britain came second to France, Greece third, and the United States fourth. “The gospel of good sport has spread,” wrote Cook, “until it has reached nations that were previously untouched by any single spark of athletic emulation.… England no longer stands alone, as once she did, as the apostle of ‘hard exercise.’ ”
Most of the crowned heads of Europe attended the opening ceremony, and once the Games were under way up to thirty thousand people crowded into the stadium, sited just below the Acropolis. The customary gymnastic displays culminated in the performance of Colonel Black’s Swedish team, who gave “an almost excessive testimony to the practical results of that gentleman’s persistent energy in the cause of national calisthenics.” The six-man British fencing squad included two peers and one knight, yet it was representative enough and on its return home roundly beat a Rest of Britain team. Howard de Walden fought at foil, saber, and épée; since the previous week he had won the Craven Stakes at Newmarket, it was “a record which will be difficult to beat.” Cook points out that “the average age of the British team (43) greatly exceeded that of any other team, as I have no doubt its average height and weight did also.”e Britain’s first match, against Germany, was watched by Edward VII, who was so impressed that on his return to London he agreed to be patron of British fencing. The team met France in the final. It was one-hit épée, and after judging against Britain described as “nothing short of scandalous,” the match ended in a draw, 8–all. They re-fought the entire match, France eventually winning 9–6.
These “Intermediate Olympics” were recognized by the International Olympic Comittee until 1949, when they were removed from the list. Even though the experiment was not repeated—by 1908 the Games were already a costly affair—The Cruise of the Branwen remains a beguilingly offbeat account of an international sporting event. Lord Howard and his passengers must have sensed that too, because they composed a fourteen-verse poem, the “Song of the Branwen,” whose final stanza runs:
The fencing venue at the “unofficial” Athens Games of 1906. Edward VII came to watch and was so impressed he became the patron of Britain’s fencing association. (illustration credit 9.2)
The young Bulgarian dreams it
As the stars pale in the sky;
Dalmatians, Turks and Magyars
Have heard its battle-cry;
And a nameless terror seizes
The wives of Paris town
When they read the name of Branwen
And her swordsmen of renown.
The privileged atmosphere in which fencing was conducted, and the small number who practiced it, meant that several celebrities had time to take up the sport and could excel at it without encountering too much competition. In France, Gustave Eiffel, who raised the great tower, fenced until his seventy-fourth year. Paul Gauguin was keener still. André Maginot, responsible as minister of defense for the ill-fated Maginot Line, took particular pleasure in fencing, even teaching his sister at foil.26
In Britain, another young fencer to make his mark was Winston Churchill, who took up the sport at Harrow. At the age of seventeen he wrote to his mother, “I have won the fencing. A very fine cup. I was far and away first. Absolutely untouched in the finals.” Churchill was chosen to represent Harrow at the Public Schools championships, the toughest event open to schoolboys in those days. He wrote home excitedly, “My fencing is now my great employment out of school as now that I represent the school it behooves me to ‘sweat it up.’ ” Come the day, according to The Field, “although only a boy in appearance, he quickly showed the spectators that in the use of the foil he had been well tutored.” He beat boys from Eton, Winchester, Bradfield, and Tonbridge before facing the intimidating “Deanley [actually Dearnley] (Late First Life Guards) of the Gymnasium, Oxford, and winner of the Army fencing championships on three different occasions.”
The bout was for the best of seven hits. “Master Churchill at once went for his man and cleverly won the first point, following this by adding two more hits. The guardsman, however, secured the next two; but with astonishing rapidity the next was added to Churchill’s score. The final bout produced some ‘smart fencing’ and, amid great applause, the son of the illustrious statesman [Lord Randolph Churchill] was hailed the victor.… Churchill is undoubtedly one of the smartest competitors with the foil ever seen at these annual contests.” “His success,” added The Harrovian, was “chiefly due to his quick and dashing attack, which quite took his opponents by surprise. Churchill must be congratulated on his success” as his opponents “must have been much taller and more formidable than himself.” It is odd that a guardsman should have been allowed to fence in a school competition; possibly the fight-off was arranged immediately after the championships, or else Dearnley was allowed to take part as the event was held at the army barracks in Aldershot.
After Harrow, Churchill may have dabbled at his chosen sport during his army days in India, but there is no evidence of it. It was in India that in 1897, commanding a small detachment in open country during a rearguard action against Pathan tribesmen, he decisively rejected the sword. As the Pathans closed in on the small hillock he and his men were defending, the adjutant of Churchill’s battalion scrambled up and panted, “Come on back now. There’s no time to lose. We can cover you from the knoll.” At this Churchill pocketed his ammunition (it was a standing order to let no bullets fall into enemy hands) and was on the point of retreating when a fusillade killed the man next to him and struck five others, one of whom, Churchill later recorded, “was spinning around just behind me, his face a mass of blood, his right eye cut out.” Recovering the wounded was a point of honor, as torture was inevitable if they fell into Pathan hands. Churchill and his command were halfway down the slope, carrying their casualties, when some thirty tribesmen charged them. In the resulting chaos the adjutant was hit. Churchill ran to rescue him, but a Pathan swordsman got there first, butchering him with a stroke. At this point, Churchill recalled his championship and promptly drew his saber. “I resolved on personal combat à l’arme blanche.” But he was on his own by now, and more Pathans were hastening toward him. It occurred to him that these clansmen were not public schoolboys. “I changed my
mind about cold steel.” Instead, “I fired nine shots from my revolver”—and leapt to safety, an Indiana Jones before his time.27
IT WAS MILITARY PRESSURE THAT LED TO THE INTRODUCTION OF THE modern pentathlon at the Stockholm Games of 1912, although the hand of Coubertin is evident. Conan Doyle’s Brigadier Etienne Gérard had been translated into French in 1898, and who could resist such bravura passages as this:
“You are, as I understand, a good swordsman?” said he.
“Tolerable, sire,” I answered.
“You were chosen by your regiment to fight the champion of the Hussars of Chambarant?” said he.
I was not sorry to find that he knew so much of my exploits.
“My comrades, sire, did me that honor,” said I.
“And for the sake of practice you insulted six fencing masters in the week before your duel?”
“I had the privilege of being out seven times in as many days, sire,” said I.
“And escaped without a scratch?”
“The fencing master of the 23rd Light Infantry touched me on the left elbow, sire.”28
The London Times recently wrote of the modern pentathlon in an editorial that “this event is said, implausibly, to replicate the five skills … needed by an Ancient Greek officer to escape from enemy lines.”29 Very implausibly. The original pentathlon (from the Greek penta, “five,” and athlon, “contest”) was featured for the first time in 708 B.C., after Spartans had complained that too many Olympic events favored civilians and did nothing to reward the skills of warriors. It consisted of running (the length of one ancient Greek stadium, now deemed to be 192.27 meters), jumping, discus, javelin, and wrestling—the first four events held on a knockout basis until there remained only two competitors, who would then wrestle for the crown. The pentathlon was immediately positioned as a major event of the games, and the winner was named “Athlete of the Festival.”
The modern version consists of a freestyle swim of 300 meters, a twelve-object show-jumping course on a horse previously unknown to the competitor, twenty shots from 25 meters at a target 155 millimeters in diameter, a 5,000-meter race across country, and a fencing “poule unique” in which every contestant is matched successively against everyone else, for a single hit. The notion behind the event was that a gentleman officer might, in battle, be compelled to gallop across broken country, cut his way through enemy lines with sword and pistol, swim a river, and run many miles to deliver an important message—a remarkable vision, but exactly what Gérard underwent in that very first adventure, “The Medal of Brigadier Gérard.”f
A junior officer, even in 1912, would have carried a cavalry saber; Coubertin, in deference to the Olympic hosts, substituted épée, at which Sweden had long excelled. Having initiated the event, he then immodestly declared that it would be the one contest that would “test a man’s moral qualities as much as his physical resources and skills, producing thereby the ideal complete athlete.”
ONE BENEFICIARY OF THIS ADDITION TO THE OLYMPICS WAS A young American soldier who made his international debut at Stockholm: George S. Patton, the flamboyant American combat commander of the Second World War, who would conquer Sicily in thirty-eight days. Patton graduated from West Point in 1909. Fencing was part of his course-work, and although he had never encountered the sport he threw himself avidly into learning all he could. The official West Point team fought at foil, but Patton organized a special broadsword group and even, despite his marked dyslexia, wrote a poem about his new enthusiasm—as well as other pieces about his recollections of his conduct as a swordsman in previous incarnations, much to the amusement of his brother cadets. He would practice on his own for hours, giving free expression to his teenage belief that to be a fine swordsman was an essential trait of any great general. In 1905 he wrote home, “If I never amount to anything else I can turn instructor with the broadsword, for I am the best of the best in the class.” In fact, he was an all-around athlete, setting a record in the 220-yard low hurdles and being an effective football player until he broke both arms at the end of his first year. He was an excellent swimmer and also became adept with rifle and pistol—a range of skills that, taken together, made him a natural candidate for the new Olympic discipline.
In 1896 twelve nations had sent about 100 sportsmen to Athens to compete with 150 Greeks. By 1912 there were twenty-eight nations and a total of 2,547 athletes. The pentathlon was limited to military contestants. Each competitor carried out his own training program, and Patton fed himself a diet of raw steak and salads. On May 10 he was chosen to represent the United States, the only American to take part. The competition was in early July, and forty-two athletes were entered. Patton fancied his chances.
The day before the opening event, he practiced his shooting, scoring 197 points out of a possible 200, good enough for a medal. The competition proper began with the swimming event, in which he did well, finishing seventh. Then came the fencing, in which Patton beat twenty-one of his twenty-four opponents, placing him third. He later recorded, “I was fortunate enough to give the French victor the only defeat he had.” Fencing the first to make three hits, the Frenchman, Lieutenant de Mas Latrie, took a 2–0 lead, but Patton fought back to win convincingly: it was a good victory.31
At this point Patton was in line for a medal, but then came the calamity of the shooting event. He scored a miserable 169, coming in twenty-first. He complained that he had been penalized for missing the target completely on one of his shots, when in fact the bullet had gone through a previously made hole. Much argument ensued, but a miss was recorded: had Patton’s view been upheld, he would have won the gold medal, but there was no evidence to support him. Despite good performances at riding, where he came in sixth, registering a perfect score, and running, where he came in tenth, he ended up fifth overall. Of the top seven finishers, six were Swedes.
Second Lieutenant George S. Patton, Jr. (left), takes on fellow pentathlete de Mas Latrie of France during the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. Patton won the bout 3–2, the Frenchman’s only defeat. (illustration credit 9.3)
Naturally enough, the local papers gave several columns to the event and picked out Patton’s fencing for special mention: his calm had been “unusual and calculated. He was skillful in exploiting his opponent’s every weakness.” Other commentators were more critical: “Patton’s pugnacious, slashing, give-no-quarter attacking style easily made him a crowd favorite but tactically often left him vulnerable to the finesse of his competitors, most of whom were far more experienced.… To attack was to succeed, to defend was to invite defeat.” Another commented, “[The American’s defense] was the despair of his teachers, for the aggressive Patton was interested only in offense. His method of parrying was to counterattack.”
He must have made an impression, however, as the U.S. fencing team now enlisted him for the saber competition, despite his having trained mainly at épée. His own view of the Games was starry-eyed. The Olympics were the closest approximation to the heroic ideal of his fantasies. As for the modern pentathlon, he recorded, “the high spirit of sportsmanship speaks volumes for the character of the officers of the present day. There was not a single … protest or any unsportsmanlike quibbling or fighting for points.… Each man did his best and took what fortune sent like a true soldier, and at the end we all felt more like good friends and comrades than rivals … yet this spirit of friendship in no manner detracted from the zeal with which all strove for success.”32
Patton asked some of his fellow contestants who was the best fencer in Europe, and was told it was Brigade Sergeant-Major Charles Cléry, professional champion of Europe, who taught at the Saumur Cavalry School. Patton at once made his way to Saumur and for the next two weeks took lessons from Cléry at épée and saber. On returning to the United States, Patton set about redesigning the 1840 U.S. cavalry saber (referred to colloquially as “old wrist-breaker”) and wrote a new army manual for its use, with a foreword by Major General Leonard Wood, a family friend and expert fencer—he frequentl
y practiced with President Roosevelt in the White House. Patton was subsequently assigned to the Mounted Service School in Fort Riley, Kansas, where he was given the official title “Master of the Sword.” The first to hold the position, he was thus acknowledged as the foremost expert in the army. For a young second lieutenant, this was prominence indeed.
On his twenty-eighth birthday, the following year, Patton wrote to his wife, Beatrice, “When I get less hair than I now have I will look like a German duelist.” A decade later he would spend five more months at Fort Riley, taking an advanced cavalry course. One day he approached a young instructor, Lieutenant (later to be Brigadier General) Paul Robinett, to swap extra tuition in machine-gun technique for Sunday-afternoon fencing lessons in the attic at their quarters.
Robinett later recalled, “It was a grim business. With every thrust he would shout some such remark as ‘I’ve knocked his eye out! See the blood spew! I’ve bored him through the heart! I’ve ripped his guts out!’ One by one we stepped up to be dismembered. On and on Patton would go, until almost exhausted.”
Patton competed only in the Stockholm Games, as the First World War put paid to the next Olympics. When the Games returned in 1920, fencing was established as a key sport in its own right as well as being one of the mainstays of the pentathlon. However, for most people the “festival” was still small beer: amateurs were not expected to be of the same standard as professionals, there was no sponsorship and little publicity, and the whole notion of international sports meetings had not yet broken through into the world’s consciousness. Instead, there was a different discovery that was making people sit up and take notice, one that in its way did even more than international sports meetings to help keep fencing alive: and that was the cinema.
By the Sword Page 29