ON THEIR FIRST day in Berlin the Gents had visited the Olympiastadion, silent and stately in the summer sun rather than the cauldron of baying fanaticism it had been the year before. The sheer scale of the stadium took the team’s breath away. At the time there was nothing like it in the world. A limestone amphitheatre sunk forty feet below sea level so that the exterior didn’t give a hint of the vastness within, it was capable of holding a hundred thousand spectators. The Gents toured the stadium and walked the track where Jesse Owens had won gold before crossing the vast Maifeld to climb the 247-foot bell tower and view the colossal 30,000lb bell which had tolled to summon spectators and participants to the Olympic Games.
If that filled them with a sense of awe and admiration, their tour of the Langemarckhalle beneath the bell tower created a sense of unease. The hall had been built to honour the German dead who fell at the Battle of Langemarck in Flanders in 1914. In Mein Kampf Hitler recounted the story of soldiers, all reservists or students straight from school, advancing on the enemy singing ‘Deutschland, Deutschland Über Alles’ as bullets and shellfire burst around them. It was pure myth: there were no songs and little glory, just the usual senseless slaughter. But in Hitler’s narrative they were transformed into martyrs – the flower of German youth who had laid down their lives for the glory of their country only to have their memory betrayed by the surrender of their cowardly, craven leaders. Carved on the wall were some words from a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin about the ‘fallen’:
Live above, O Fatherland,
And don’t count the dead.
For you, dear,
Not a single man has fallen in vain.
The Nazis believed that sporting and military spirit were symbolically linked. Sacrifice on the field of play was a preparation for sacrifice in battle. But the Gents thought a sports stadium a curious place to erect such a shrine. Many of them had witnessed and survived the horrors of the First World War and believed in more sober tributes.
On 10 August they returned to the Olympiastadion to play the final match of their tour. It had originally been scheduled for the Maifeld, but was moved. The reasons aren’t clear, but as the city was about to celebrate its seven hundredth anniversary it’s likely the field was needed as a rehearsal ground for parades, processions and military drills. The match was moved to Schenkendorfplatz, one of several grounds that made up the German sports forum within the Olympic site. These grounds and fields surrounded the Haus des Deutschen Sports, which hosted the fencing events in the Olympics and then became the offices of the Reichssportführer and his ministry. From the pitch, the Gents would have been able to see the two large columns that stand outside its main entrance, crowned once again by the ubiquitous gold eagles and swastikas. The two previous matches had been played on sports grounds that were owned by the state, like all sport facilities, but which had retained their own character. The only evidence of Nazi control had been swastika flags fluttering from the clubhouses. Here there was no doubt. If the old trees, pergolas and tennis courts of Hasenheide Park had proved an idyllic backdrop to the second match, the columns, statues, memorials to the war dead and the vast stadium here were designed to strike awe into the hearts and minds of onlookers. It was the state’s ideology written in stone.
Cyril Smith was still in hospital and his illness threatened to cast a pall over the final few days of the tour. Captain Berkeley was also absent. It’s possible he was keeping Smith company in hospital, or it could have been that he had found a new garden to inspect. Whatever the reason, to prevent the Gents taking the field with ten men they were given Kuno Lehmann. The son of Fritz Lehmann, who had been one of the leading figures in German cricket before the Nazis came to power, Kuno had proved the best fielder in the Berlin side and the safest pair of hands. He was also a keen student of the game and a budding writer. In 1931 he had penned a piece ahead of the tour by Dartford CC in which he tried to interpret the rules of the MCC for budding umpires.
Given the thirty-degree weather the Major was glad of another pair of youthful legs, though, as in the previous two matches, the Gents batted first. The lush uncut grass on the Schenkendorfplatz outfield and its sheer size meant that boundaries would be hard to come by. That didn’t stop the Major opening with Dickie Williams and it didn’t prevent them putting on a half century as the German fielding wilted as quickly as their spirit. Once the openers had seen off the Menzel brothers, runs came easy and tempers started to fray in the Berlin side. The Major attempted a lofted drive off a seaming Gerhard Thamer delivery but succeeded only in skying the ball to mid-off where the youngest player on the team dropped it. Thamer had spent the entire series castigating his players for misfields and screaming his frustration whenever a chance went begging, much to the Gents’ amusement: they had come to dislike him immensely, a feeling shared by a number of Thamer’s teammates. This time Thamer seethed in silence. In his next over the same young player dropped an identical chance. Surely Thamer would explode? Again he said nothing. He simply walked over to where the young player was staring sheepishly at the grass and knocked him to the floor with a right hook. Then he picked up the ball and prepared to bowl the next delivery as the poor fielder writhed on the ground. The game continued.
This story became the most famous one of the tour. It was told time and time again. George Chesterton, Peter Huntington-Whiteley’s childhood friend, referred to it in his letter; Phil Mackie mentioned it to me in an email. However, it’s likely that the incident happened in a Berlin League game and not in this match, even though Thamer was still the culprit. James Coldham spoke to four members of the team and they all said they were told about the incident, presumably by someone like Felix Menzel, rather than experienced it. In their version, Thamer’s team, BSV 92, were a man short for a match and he refused to start unless they had eleven. They managed to recruit a passing youth, gave him some whites, and Thamer placed him on the boundary at long off, out of harm’s way. But in the first over he dropped a skyer. When it happened again in Thamer’s second over, he walked over and punched him on the chin.
Regardless of when it happened, the right hook was used to highlight a genuine problem in Berlin cricket: the younger generation were reluctant to take up the sport because of the retributive justice handed out on the field if they made a mistake. In a report for The Cricketer once the tour was over, Captain Berkeley addressed this problem. ‘The young German players in Germany require coaching and encouragement,’ he wrote, ‘and some of the rather drastic punishment that is on occasions meted out to them when catches are missed could, with advantage to the game, be discontinued. A dropped catch, after all, is a mistake which anyone would avoid if possible, and is never done on purpose!!’
Williams’ and the Major’s opening stand continued. By this time the Reichssportführer had arrived to watch a few hours’ play before hosting a tea for the participants. Gottfried von Cramm was also in the crowd, though Tschammer und Osten was probably the last person he wanted to see so soon after his epic defeat to Don Budge. Alongside him was his protégé and German number two, Henner Henkel.
Felix Menzel bowled Williams shortly before lunch for 43, and in the next session also picked up Peter Terry for 17. Even though the Berlin team were being outclassed, Felix was the one bowler who was able to contain the Gents batsmen. Thamer collected the wickets of Whetherly and Young Maurice, Parnemann accounted for Deeley, and the Berlin team were once again back in it. Not for the first time, Geoffrey Tomkinson strode to the wicket to stop the rot. At the other end, perhaps inspired by the illustrious guests in the crowd, the Major was rolling back the years. He went past his fifty and managed to reach his century before tea. It was a remarkable achievement, not least of stamina: the slow outfield and long boundaries meant he scored only three fours and had to run most of his runs, in searing heat.
If he thought he might have a chance to rest during the tea-break he was mistaken. The Reichssportführer was hosting his reception for the players at the Reiterhaus, a building on the other side of the Olympic complex near the stables. After four hours of batting under a hot sun the Major had to take off his pads and walk the best part of a mile in order to sit in a stuffy room for an hour (not the usual twenty minutes), and then give a short speech about how grateful his team was for the opportunity to demonstrate the English national game to the German people. He also offered his heartfelt support to the Berlin team and German cricket in general.
According to Captain Berkeley’s son and one of Peter Terry’s sons, Joseph Goebbels, the notorious Nazi Minister for Propaganda, also attended the match that day. By their accounts, Goebbels asked the Gents to pose for a picture with him but they refused. Their unease at the atmosphere in Nazi Berlin, perhaps reinforced in private conversations with non-Nazis such as Felix Menzel, had reached the stage where they didn’t wish to be seen endorsing the regime.
But there is no documentary evidence that Goebbels was at the match. There is no record of it in his exhaustive diaries, no mention of cricket, nor any reference to his presence in the newspapers that reported on the match and usually acted as Goebbels’ mouthpiece (though there is an argument which suggests that if Goebbels was snubbed it’s unlikely such a discourtesy would have been reported). It is interesting to note that even though Tschammer und Osten watched the match and hosted tea, there are no photographs of him either. Perhaps the Gents refused to have their photo taken with him, or engineered a situation where it became impossible, then over time the subject of the snubbing was changed from the Reichssportführer to Dr Goebbels.
Once tea was done and the players had trudged back across to the ground, the Major carried on where he’d left off. He was eventually out for 140, which meant that Dickie Williams’ German record had lasted just forty-eight hours.fn1 He was given a rousing ovation on his way off the field, though he was too exhausted to raise his bat. He headed straight to a deckchair where he promptly fell asleep, still wearing his pads and batting gloves.
The Menzel brothers whittled away the lower order, with Felix taking five wickets. Kuno Lehmann scored 13, more in one innings for the Gents than he had managed in two innings for the Berliners, before the side were all out for a princely 265. There was enough time in the fading light before the close of play for Huntington-Whiteley and Deeley to test out the Berlin top order. With the luxury of a high first-innings score, the Major attacked with four slips and a gully. The pressure paid off: Parnemann ran himself out for 2, while Maus nicked the Etonian behind for 4. In the last over of the day Rietz, who was having a torrid time with the bat, became Huntington-Whiteley’s second victim, clean-bowled for 5, to leave the Germans perched precariously on 19 for 3 when stumps were drawn.
That evening the Major managed to shake off his fatigue and accompany his team to Haus Vaterland for a final time, though once they had bathed and dressed their departure from the Adlon was delayed. As dusk became night on the Unter den Linden, the traffic ceased and thousands of people gathered on either side of the street, scores deep. A murmur of excitement started to ripple through the crowd. Almost in unison they raised and extended their arms in the Hitler salute. The Gents, observing from a hotel window, looked west towards the State Opera House. A glowing river of light was approaching, accompanied by an underlying percussion of boot on stone. Soon the Gents were able to see that the river of light was a mass of flaming torches held by endless columns of uniformed soldiers, SA and SS officers. The procession was so long that it took nearly an hour to pass the Adlon and head across Pariser Platz towards the Brandenburg Gate, draped for the occasion with swastika flags. The entire event took place in almost total silence – ‘alarming and eerie’ according to Young Maurice Jewell.
This time there were no early curfews for the team. The tension in Berlin was tangible and the pleasures of their favourite nightspot offered welcome respite.
fn1 The Major’s record would stand until it was surpassed by Shakoor Ahmed in 1955.