Devil at My Heels: The Story of Louis Zamperini (4 page)

TWO WEEKS LATER
I lined up again in the Coliseum, this time against college men, in the 1,500-meter, which is 119 yards short of a mile. The favorite was the Pacific Coast collegiate champion from USC. The winner would receive a gold wristwatch donated by movie star Adolphe Menjou.

At the starting line I heard other racers mutter sarcastically, “Hey, kid, you’re in the big leagues now; just keep out of our way,” and “Now you’ll find out what real competition is.” I kept my mouth shut and won the race, beating the Pacific Coast champion by twenty yards. My time was 4:00 flat, the equivalent of a 4:15 mile. And I didn’t even feel like I’d pushed myself.

I knew I was good, but I didn’t realize how good until I beat the college runners. Yet when I left the stadium with Pete, I felt down. The parents and friends of boys who had placed no better than third consoled and encouraged them. The backslapping and hugging only made me, the winner, feel lonely.

From then on I made sure I invited my parents to every meet. To have them with me made me proud. Winning, I had realized, wasn’t much fun unless I shared it with others.

MY SENIOR YEAR
I got elected student-body president and took it easier running, working on my style rather than trying to break records. Pete continued to coach me, and after I graduated in January 1936 I told him my heart was set on making the Olympic team in the 1,500-meter. It wouldn’t be a piece of cake. We both knew there were five great milers in the country, all college graduates, one being Glenn Cunningham, my hero. I’d read about how his legs were badly
burned as a child. (One day I’d see the scars for myself, in the showers.) That he ran at all inspired me and made me realize I also had a chance to be a champion.

But Pete said I’d probably have to be patient. “You’ll just have to wait for the 1940 Tokyo games. You’ll be in your prime by then.”

He was right. Cunningham had already run an indoor mile at 4:06:04 and had outdoor times of 4:09 and 4:10. I was still, on average, 8 seconds behind. Eight seconds might not seem like much in most situations, but in a race it’s a lot longer than anyone realizes—about seventy-five yards.

A week later Pete called to tell me that one of the country’s premiere distance runners, Norman Bright, would compete in the Compton Invitational in two weeks. His race was the 5,000 meter, which is just over three miles. “I’m going to enter you,” he said, “just to see how close you can come to Bright, who will most certainly make the Olympic team. But switching from fifteen hundred to five thousand meters is a big step, and you have only twelve days to condition yourself to that distance.”

To build up my strength and endurance, I ran five miles a day and had a fresh miler pace me for each mile. I pushed so hard that I wore out the tip of my toe and blood saturated my socks and shoes. Then I tapered down to shorter distances and finally speed work.

I had no idea what I could do against Bright. Pete had already watched him at a meet in San Diego and realized he ran to conserve energy, saving his strength for a final kick. Pete said he’d let me know when the last lap came so I could move out the entire quarter and, he hoped, take the sprint out of Bright.

During the race Pete miscounted and signaled me with
two laps
to go. I sped up, as did Bright. We passed each other five or six times in the stretches, and I found it hard to believe I could keep up. Eventually Bright lost his steam and I pulled away for the final two hundred yards. I could see him over my shoulder. The crowd was going crazy.

Then the officials made a big mistake. Instead of telling a runner we’d lapped to get off the track to the left (the inside), they motioned him to the right as I tried to pass him on the right. Maybe I should have cut to the left, but my momentum was already established and I was
forced out to the eighth lane, where we collided by the grandstand. I hitch-stepped, went down with one hand on the ground. By then Bright was well ahead of me. I recovered and ran at an angle for the inside lane. The officials got so excited that they goofed again, dropping the tape, then picked it up quickly as I caught Bright at the finish line. It looked like a dead heat, but he won by an inch or two.

I had lost my first race in three and a half years.

When I was a winner my friends would slap my back, my girlfriend would hug me, my parents would cheer, I’d be on the radio. Then I’d look at the other guys, friends and family patting them on the back in a different way. That always made me feel bad, especially because I knew someday it would be me. I promised myself to be upbeat when the time came, and now it had. Would I gripe? Be ashamed? Be resentful? No. I put my arm around Bright and congratulated him honestly. “That was a brilliant race, and you deserved to win,” I said, smiling. When I walked away I had more self-esteem than I’d gotten from all my winning. I knew I could always handle defeat gracefully.

ON THE STRENGTH
of my performance I got invited to the Olympic tryouts at Randalls Island, New York. Torrance raised some spending money for me and the city merchants gave me a suitcase with
TORRANCE TORNADO
stenciled on the side. (I covered it with masking tape because I didn’t want the other athletes to give me a hard time.) They also contributed shaving gear, clothing. Since my dad worked for the railway, I got a year’s pass good for one round trip anywhere in America on the Southern Pacific.

Still, the thought of going to New York worried me. I kept saying, “Pete, it’s not fair that you can’t go with me. I might get lost.”

“It’s time you went out on your own anyway,” he said.

We left after dark. At dinner I sat in the dining car, eating off of fine china on a white tablecloth, and I remembered myself a few years earlier in the San Francisco train yard, freezing cold and miserable, looking through the windows of a departing train at the happy people, dreaming it was me.

Now my dream had come true.

I ARRIVED IN
New York during the city’s hottest week in many years. We stayed in Manhattan, in prerented rooms. The whole adventure excited me, except for the reaction of the local papers. I’d grown used to seeing my name in print back home, and I was annoyed that the East Coast press had never heard of me. I wrote a letter to Pete that read: “In the papers here they’ve have picked the place winners for Sunday’s 5000 meter. (1) Lash, (2) Bright, (3) Lochner, (4) Ottey, (5) Deckard. They don’t even know I’m running. But if I can cope with the heat, I’ll beat Bright and give Lash the scare of his life—and then I’ll make the print.” I signed it, “Brother headed for Berlin.”

I TOOK A
boat to Randalls Island, warmed up, and then lay in the shade—not that it mattered, it was hot there, too. Ten minutes before the event, I stretched, loosened up, and mentally reviewed my plan. I didn’t think I could beat Lash—he was the world-record holder in the two-mile—but I just had to get second or third place to make the Olympic team.

When the race started I did just what Pete had taught me: slip in behind the leaders as close as I could, stay on their inside, and relax. Being out in front can make a runner tense. You’re alone and can’t see anybody. I liked to run just behind the leader and look at his feet. If he ran a foot from the curb, I’d place myself three inches from the curb so that psychologically I’d run a shorter mile. Strategy was my game. I stayed constantly alert to who ran besides me, to who might box me in. If I competed against a guy everyone thought would beat me, I wanted to be clever, so when I trained I’d speed up for fifty yards on every lap and then slow down to the regular pace. When I did it in the real race, I forced my competition to catch up every time I pulled ahead. Eventually it bushed him, and by the final lap I’d have it going away.

At first we stayed packed together. I was maybe tenth of sixteen runners. Bright was in front of me. We had plenty of distance to cover, so I took it easy. After about a mile and a half some guy col
lapsed from the heat and we all jumped over him. Eventually, that happened to Bright; the intense sun was not kind to fair-skinned, freckle-faced, sandy-haired fellows. I pulled alongside and urged him to stick it out, but Bright had developed blisters from running a 10,000-meter race a week earlier, and his pain was unbearable. I admired him for trying. I desperately wanted to beat him, but not this way.

Just before the last lap Lash was out front, Deckard moved up on his tail, and I closed in on Deckard. We were all well ahead of the field. On the far straightaway, when I should have made my play and gunned for Lash, I mentally spaced out for a few seconds. My mind said, How can you pass a world’s champion, a guy who took the record away from the Finns? Instead of kicking, I stared at his back with admiration. Before hitting the final curve, Deckard moved out into the second lane, which forced me into the third. I woke up, passed him, and moved into the second lane, just behind Lash. Then we battled down the stretch as I closed in on him—me against the champion. But champions don’t give up. We hit the tape together.

Because I’d been gaining on Lash I thought I’d won, but the announcer called his name instead. I left the track without congratulating him. But I didn’t care. Nobody knew me, the West Coast runner; the announcer had even called me the “dark horse” because of my black tracksuit. I went to the locker room, but someone rushed in and brought me out again, and an official handed me a certificate that read “First Place.” The race film had confirmed a dead heat. That was great. But even better, most of the New York press finally learned to spell my name correctly.

CONGRATULATORY WIRES POURED
in from family and friends. Not only had I proven a point for Pete and myself, I’d made the Olympic team.

Those who didn’t qualify were gentlemen, congratulating us and bidding us a good time in Berlin. No emotion, just Godspeed. Today it’s different. Someone who doesn’t make the team might weep and
collapse. In my day no one fell on the track and cried like a baby. We lost gracefully. And when someone
won,
he didn’t act like he’d just become king of the world, either. Athletes in my day were simply humble in our victory.

I believe we were more mature then. Today’s athletes have more muscle and better physical-fitness programs, lighter shoes and faster tracks—but some still can’t win or lose cheerfully. Maybe it’s because the media puts so much pressure on athletes; maybe it’s also the money. In my day we competed for the love of the sport. Performance-enhancing drugs could be had, but no one wanted to win unfairly or damage his health. In my day we patted the guy who beat us on the back, wished him well, and that was that.

That’s not to say I had no emotions. I just kept them to myself as usual. But inside, the punk kid from California, the high school boy, was overjoyed at having prevailed.

THE NEXT DAY
I checked in with Olympic headquarters, where they measured and fit me for my official team dress wear: white slacks, navy blue jacket with an Olympic shield on each button. A straw hat, too. After I got my team tracksuit—satinlike pants, light wool shirt—I boxed up my lucky shorts and sent them home. I was allowed to keep my shoes.

Afterward we attended an orientation about how to comport ourselves on the SS
Manhattan
—our ship to Berlin—and at the Games. They talked to us as if we were children.

The ship left port on Wednesday, July 15, on its way to the Eleventh Olympiad. Everyone assembled on deck for a group picture that made many a front page. Overhead, airplanes and blimps soared and dipped. Well-wishers chanted, “‘Ray,’ ray for the USA! A-m-e-r-i-c-a!” With its two massive funnels colored red, white, and blue, the ship carried 1,064 passengers. Of those, 334 were athletes, and 354 were officials, coaches, trainers, newspapermen, chaperones, and relatives.

The athletes traveled second-class. I shared a stateroom with Billy
Brown, who did the hop, skip, and jump and like me was the youngest competitor in his event. The accommodations were impressive. I especially liked the big ballroom. Although no Fred Astaire, I was light on my feet, and the older girls—thankfully—gave me a break. I also liked to waltz, slow and smooth. But one night a storm hit and the boat pitched and rolled so much that everyone slid all over the floor. One of our shyest athletes careened headfirst into a female athlete, an embarrassing get-together. The rest of us held on to the superstructure and cracked up. As the ship rolled back he was released from the entanglement and ran blushing from the ballroom.

The food wowed me the most. I couldn’t believe the layout. The first time I ever went out to eat I’d had a sandwich with a toothpick and an olive at the drugstore—big stuff. The selection onboard was beyond words—plus it was free. At mealtime each table was laden with not just a basket of sweet rolls but with
six
kinds of sweet rolls. Here’s a partial list of the fixings, as reported in the
Los Angeles Times:
“Lunch: roast beef, baked potatoes, stewed celery, milk, tea, baked apple. We ate seven hundred pounds of beef. Supper: chicken soup, roast chicken, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, peas, ice cream, hard candy.”

I couldn’t control myself. I must have gained ten pounds before I got to Germany.

When I wasn’t gorging myself I went to first-class to work out with the other athletes. The deck went all the way around the ship, unbroken. On the port and starboard sides were cabinets stocked with beer. After a hard run we’d all stop for a glass from the tap and head back to second-class.

I spent some free time collecting souvenirs: ashtrays, towels, whatever. My training as a former juvenile delinquent and petty thief made it easy—and I noticed that almost everyone shared my collecting bug. I also tried to meet all my sports heroes and enjoy the camaraderie. The older athletes took me under their wing.

All the movie people—like Helen Hayes and Joe E. Brown, who became a close friend after the Games—traveled in first-class, as did the Olympic officials. The Committee was mostly wealthy guys; you
might say they were to the manner born and we were the serfs. Today our Committee is different. They respect the athletes and the athletes respect them.