Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption (6 page)

For a Depression-era teenager accustomed to breakfasting on stale bread and milk, and who had eaten in a restaurant only twice in his life,* the Manhattan was paradise. Upon rising, the athletes sipped cocoa and grazed from plates of pastries. At nine, there was steak and eggs in the dining room. A coffee break, lunch, tea, and dinner fol owed, nose to tail. Between meals, a ring for the porter would bring anything the heart desired, and late at night, the athletes raided the gal ey. Inching around the first-class deck, Louie found a little window in which pints of beer kept magical y appearing. He made them magical y disappear. When seasickness thinned the ranks of the diners, extra desserts were laid out, and Louie, who had sturdy sea legs, let nothing go to waste. His consumption became legendary. Recal ing how the ship had to make an unscheduled stop to restock the pantries, runner James LuVal e joked, “Of course, most of this was due to Lou Zamperini.” Louie made a habit of sitting next to the mountainous shot putter Jack Torrance, who had an inexplicably tiny appetite. When Torrance couldn’t finish his entrée, Louie dropped onto the plate like a vulture.

On the evening of July 17, Louie returned from dinner so impressed with his eating that he immortalized it on the back of a letter: 1 pint of pineapple juice

2 bowls of beef broth

2 sardine salads

5 rol s

2 tal glasses of milk

4 smal sweet pickles

2 plates of chicken

2 helpings of sweet potatoes

4 pieces of butter

3 helpings of ice cream with wafers

3 chunks of angel food cake with white frosting

1½ pounds of cherries

1 apple

1 orange

1 glass of ice water

“Biggest meal I ever ate in my life,” he wrote, “and I can’t believe it myself, but I was there … Where it al went, I don’t know.”

He’d soon find out. Shortly before the athletes came ashore at Hamburg, a doctor noted that quite a few were expanding. One javelin competitor had gained eight pounds in five days. Several wrestlers, boxers, and weightlifters had eaten themselves out of their weight classes, and some were unable to compete. Don Lash had gained ten pounds. Louie outdid them al , regaining al the weight that he’d lost in New York, and then some. When he got off the Manhattan, he weighed twelve pounds more than when he’d gotten on nine days earlier.

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On July 24, the athletes shuffled from the ship to a train, stopped over in Frankfurt for a welcoming dinner, and reboarded the train toting quite a few of their hosts’ priceless wine glasses. The Germans chased down the train, searched the baggage, repatriated the glasses, and sent the Americans on to Berlin. There, the train was swamped by teenagers holding scissors and chanting, “Wo ist Jesse? Wo ist Jesse?” When Owens stepped out, the throng swarmed him and began snipping off bits of his clothing. Owens leapt back onto the train.

The athletes were driven to the Olympic Vil age, a masterpiece of design crafted by Wolfgang Fürstner, a Wehrmacht captain. Nestled in an undulating patchwork of beech forests, lakes, and clearings were 140 cottages, a shopping mal , a barbershop, a post office, a dentist’s office, a sauna, a hospital, training facilities, and dining hal s. A new technology cal ed television was on exhibit in the vil age office. There were wooded trails, over which bounded a multitude of imported animals. The Japanese athletes were especial y taken with the deer and began feeding them treats in such volume that the Germans discreetly moved the deer out. One British wag wondered aloud where the storks were. The next day, two hundred storks appeared.

Louie was housed in a cottage with several other athletes, including Owens. The great sprinter kept a fatherly eye on him; Louie repaid him by swiping his DO NOT DISTURB sign, leaving poor Owens besieged by autograph seekers. Louie swam in the lakes, ate appal ing quantities of food, and socialized.

The hit of the vil age was the Japanese contingent, whose tradition of prodigious gift giving made them the col ective Santa Claus of the Games.

On the first of August, Louie and the other Olympians were driven through Berlin for the opening ceremonies. Every vista suggested coiled might. Nazi banners had been papered over everything. As much as a third of the male population was in uniform, as were many children. Military units dril ed openly, and though powered aircraft were forbidden under the Versail es Treaty, the strength of the burgeoning Luftwaffe was on conspicuous display over an airfield, where gliders swooped over impressed tourists and Hitler Youth. The buses had machine gun mounts on the roofs and undercarriages that could be converted into tank-style tracks. The city was pristine. Even the wagon horses left no mark, their droppings instantly scooped up by uniformed street sweepers. Berlin’s Gypsies and Jewish students had vanished—the Gypsies had been dumped in camps, the Jews confined to the University of Berlin campus—leaving only smiling “Aryans.” The only visible wisp of discord was the broken glass in the windows of Jewish businesses.

The buses drove to the Olympic stadium. Entering in a parade of nations and standing at attention, the athletes were treated to a thunderous show that culminated in the release of twenty thousand doves. As the birds circled in panicked confusion, cannons began firing, prompting the birds to relieve themselves over the athletes. With each report, the birds let fly. Louie stayed at attention, shaking with laughter.

Louie had progressed enough in four 5,000-meter races to compete with Lash, but he knew that he had no chance of winning an Olympic medal. It wasn’t just that he was out of shape from the long idleness on the ship, and almost pudgy from gorging on board and in the vil age. Few nations had dominated an Olympic event as Finland had the 5,000, winning gold in 1912, ’24, ’28, and ’32. Lauri Lehtinen, who had won gold in ’32, was back for another go, along with his bril iant teammates Gunnar Höckert and Ilmari Salminen. When Louie watched them train, noted a reporter, his eyes bulged.

Louie was too young and too green to beat the Finns, and he knew it. His day would come, he believed, in the 1,500 four years later.

In the last days before his preliminary heat, Louie went to the stadium and watched Owens crush the field in the 100 meters and Cunningham break the world record for the 1,500 but stil lose to New Zealander Jack Lovelock. The atmosphere was surreal. Each time Hitler entered, the crowd jumped up with the Nazi salute. With each foreign athlete’s victory, an abbreviated version of his or her national anthem was played. When a German athlete won, the stadium rang with every stanza of “Deutschland über Al es” and the spectators shouted “Sieg heil!” endlessly, arms outstretched. According to the swimmer Iris Cummings, the slavish nationalism was a joke to the Americans, but not to the Germans. The Gestapo paced the stadium, eyeing the fans. A German woman sitting with Cummings refused to salute. She shrank between Iris and her mother, whispering, “Don’t let them see me! Don’t let them see me!”

——

On August 4, three 5,000-meter qualifying heats were run. Louie drew the third, deepest heat, facing Lehtinen. The top five in each heat would make the final. In the first, Lash ran third. In the second, Tom Deckard, the other American, failed to qualify. Louie slogged through heat three, feeling fat and leaden-legged. He barely caught fifth place at the line. He was, he wrote in his diary, “tired as hel .” He had three days to prepare for the final.

While he was waiting, an envelope arrived from Pete. Inside were two playing cards, an ace and a joker. On the joker Pete had written, “Which are you going to be, the joker, which is another word for horse’s ass, or the TOPS: Ace of spades. The best in the bunch. The highest in the deck. Take your choice!” On the ace he had written, “Let’s see you storm through as the best in the deck. If the joker does not appeal to you, throw it away and keep this for good luck. Pete.”

On August 7, Louie lay facedown in the infield of the Olympic stadium, readying himself for the 5,000-meter final. One hundred thousand spectators ringed the track. Louie was terrified. He pressed his face to the grass, inhaling deeply, trying to settle his quivering nerves. When the time came, he rose, walked to the starting line, bowed forward, and waited. His paper number, 751, flapped against his chest.

At the sound of the gun, Louie’s body, electric with nervous energy, wanted to bolt, but Louie made a conscious effort to relax, knowing how far he had to go. As the runners surged forward, he kept his stride short, letting the pacesetters untangle. Lash emerged with the lead, a troika of Finns just behind him. Louie floated left and settled into the second tier of runners.

The laps wound by. Lash kept leading, the Finns on his heels. Louie pushed along in the second group. He began breathing in a sickening odor. He looked around and realized that it was coming from a runner ahead of him, his hair a slick of reeking pomade. Feeling a swel of nausea, Louie slowed and slid out a bit, and the stench dissipated. Lash and the Finns were slipping out of reach, and Louie wanted to go with them, but his body felt sodden.

As the clumps of men stretched and thinned into a long, broken thread, Louie sank through the field, to twelfth. Only three stragglers trailed him.

Ahead, the Finns scuffed and sidled into Lash, roughing him up. Lash held his ground. But on the eighth lap, Salminen cocked his elbow and rammed it into Lash’s chest. Lash folded abruptly, in evident pain. The Finns bounded away. They entered the eleventh lap in a tight knot, looking to sweep the medals. Then, for an instant, they strayed too close to each other. Salminen’s leg clipped that of Höckert. As Höckert stumbled, Salminen fel heavily to the track. He rose, dazed, and resumed running. His race, like Lash’s, was lost.

Louie saw none of it. He passed the deflated Lash, but it meant little to him. He was tired. The Finns were smal and distant, much too far away to catch.

He found himself thinking of Pete, and of something that he had said as they had sat on their bed years earlier: A lifetime of glory is worth a moment of pain. Louie thought: Let go.

Nearing the finish line for the penultimate time, Louie fixed his eyes on the gleaming head of the pomaded competitor, who was many runners ahead.

He began a dramatic acceleration. Around the turn and down the backstretch, Louie kicked, his legs reaching and pushing, his cleats biting the track, his speed dazzling. One by one, runners came up ahead and faded away behind. “Al I had,” Louie would say, “I gave it.”

As Louie flew around the last bend, Höckert had already won, with Lehtinen behind him. Louie wasn’t watching them. He was chasing the glossy head, stil distant. He heard a gathering roar and realized that the crowd had caught sight of his ral y and was shouting him on. Even Hitler, who had been contorting himself in concert with the athletes, was watching him. Louie ran on, Pete’s words beating in his head, his whole body burning. The shining hair was far away, then nearer. Then it was so close that Louie again smel ed the pomade. With the last of his strength, Louie threw himself over the line. He had made up fifty yards in the last lap and beaten his personal best time by more than eight seconds. His final time, 14:46.8, was by far the fastest 5,000

run by any American in 1936, almost twelve seconds faster than Lash’s best for the year. He had just missed seventh place.

As Louie bent, gasping, over his spent legs, he marveled at the kick that he had forced from his body. It had felt very, very fast. Two coaches hurried up, gaping at their stopwatches, on which they had clocked his final lap. Both watches showed precisely the same time.

In distance running in the 1930s, it was exceptional y rare for a man to run a last lap in one minute. This rule held even in the comparatively short hop of a mile: In the three fastest miles ever run, the winner’s final lap had been clocked at 61.2, 58.9, and 59.1 seconds, respectively. No lap in those three historic performances had been faster than 58.9. In the 5,000, wel over three miles, turning a final lap in less than 70 seconds was a monumental feat. In his record-breaking 1932 Olympic 5,000, Lehtinen had spun his final lap in 69.2 seconds.

Louie had run his last lap in 56 seconds.

——

After cleaning himself up, Louie climbed into the stands. Nearby, Adolf Hitler sat in his box, among his entourage. Someone pointed out a cadaverous man near Hitler and told Louie that it was Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda. Louie had never heard of him. Pul ing out his camera, he carried it to Goebbels and asked him if he’d snap a picture of the führer. Goebbels asked him his name and event, then took the camera, moved away, snapped a photo, spoke with Hitler, returned, and told Louie that the führer wanted to see him.

Louie was led into the führer’s section. Hitler bent from his box, smiled, and offered his hand. Louie, standing below, had to reach far up. Their fingers barely touched. Hitler said something in German. An interpreter translated.

“Ah, you’re the boy with the fast finish.”

——

Happy with his performance, Louie was itching to raise hel . He had hoped to pal around with Glenn Cunningham, but his hero proved too mature for him.

Instead, he found a suitably irresponsible companion, donned his Olympic dress uniform, and descended on Berlin. The two prowled bars, wooed girls, chirped, “Heil Hitler!” at everyone in uniform, and stole anything Germanish that they could pry loose. In an automat, they discovered German beer. The serving size was a liter, which took Louie a good while to finish. Buzzing, they went walking, then circled back for another liter, which went down easier than the first.

Trol ing around Berlin, they stopped across the street from the Reich Chancel ery. A car pul ed up and out stepped Hitler, who walked inside. Studying the building, Louie spotted a smal Nazi flag near the doors. It would make a swel souvenir, and it looked easy to reach. The banner didn’t yet carry much symbolic meaning for him, or many other Americans, in the summer of ’36. Louie just had a hankering to steal in his head and two persuasive liters of German brew in his bel y.