RIP Bert Trautmann

[mongers]

Some life.

Bert Trautmann

Bert Trautmann , who has died aged 89, became the hero of the 1956 FA Cup Final when, in one of the most famous episodes in the history of the competition, he defied the pain of an injury to continue in goal for Manchester City and clinch the trophy, unaware that he had broken his neck.

The esteem in which Trautmann was held in the blue half of Manchester, and indeed across English football, was all the more remarkable given that he had arrived in Britain 11 years before as a prisoner-of-war — and one regarded by the authorities as a hard-bitten Nazi because of his membership of an elite squad of Luftwaffe paratroops.

Trautmann had in fact lost the zeal that made him a sporting champion in the Hitler Youth after witnessing a massacre of civilians by the SS in occupied Russia, but he remained spiky and competitive. As a PoW he persuaded the camp authorities to let the inmates form a football team, which took on local sides in Lancashire as post-war tensions eased.

He converted from centre half to goalkeeper after taking a knock in one game and refusing to go off. After being signed by non-League St Helen's Town, in 1949 he went to Manchester City, who were seeking a replacement for the great England international Frank Swift.

The club's choice, just four years after the war, was controversial, and Trautmann was shocked by the hate mail he received; but the boos and anti-German chants turned to cheers as he excelled on the pitch. He made his mark as a keeper who dominated the penalty area, fearlessly snuffing out threats, instead of staying on his line.

City had reached the 1956 Cup Final — Trautmann's second — after a series of narrow victories, while their opponents, Birmingham City, had romped to Wembley despite having been drawn away in each round. The Manchester side had also been hit by injury, and were forced to recall their out-of-favour playmaker Don Revie from the reserves.

In the event, Revie proved the match winner — by the 70th minute a string of visionary passes from him had given City a 3-1 lead. But with 16 minutes remaining, Birmingham's Peter Murphy was presented with a chance.

Out rushed Trautmann (newly voted Footballer of the Year) and, with his customary courage, dived at Murphy's feet. He succeeded in clutching the ball, but could not prevent his head colliding with Murphy's leg. Trautmann was left dazed and reeling, but was determined to play on. As he rose to his feet after treatment, the crowd broke into For He's A Jolly Good Fellow.

At the end of the game, Trautmann was helped up the steps to collect his winner's medal, all the while rubbing his "stiff neck". He joined the team on the balcony of Manchester Town Hall as the crowd chanted: "We want Bert!"

Four days later his persistent headache forced him to attend a hospital, where X-rays revealed a fracture. The examining doctor told Trautmann that just one jolt of the bus back from Wembley could have killed him. He was forced to spend five months encased in plaster from head to hips, and thereafter played in a protective cap.

Yet Trautmann won back his place in the City team, and when he retired in 1964 (having made 545 appearances) the great names of football — Charlton, Law, Matthews, Finney — turned out for his testimonial match, in front of a crowd of 47,000 cheering him to the rafters. When the Inland Revenue told him to pay tax on the proceeds, he characteristically told them to get lost.

Bernhard Carl Trautmann was born in Bremen, Germany, on October 22 1923, the elder son of a chemical loader at the docks. He grew up during the hyperinflationary period of the Weimar Republic, and as a teenager joined the Hitler Youth. At 17 he volunteered for the Luftwaffe as a communications specialist, but failed his code exams.

When Hitler invaded Russia in 1941, Trautmann was maintaining military vehicles; and during a pause in hostilities, he disabled a staff car as a prank so that he and some friends could go foraging once the officers had found another vehicle. When sand was found in the engine, Trautmann was convicted of sabotage and sentenced to nine months in a squalid former Soviet prison at Zhitomir. Providentially, his appendix burst and after recovering from the operation he was allowed to rejoin his unit.

Early in 1942 he volunteered for the Fallschirmjäger, the Luftwaffe's crack paratroops. He spent the next two years in a small group fighting the increasingly active Soviet partisans — once narrowly escaping capture — as the German advance turned into a slow and bloody retreat.

Shortly before D-Day Trautmann was transferred to France to train new recruits. He fought in several desperate delaying actions across France, and then at Arnhem; by now he had been awarded two Iron Crosses and promoted to corporal.

While regrouping in the German town of Kleve, he was buried alive for three days when the Allies bombed a school where his unit was billeted; most of his comrades were killed.

In the confusion that preceded the fall of the Reich, Trautmann decided to make for Bremen. Briefly held by the Americans, he was finally taken prisoner by a British signals unit whose soldiers greeted him with: "Hello Fritz, would you like a cup of tea?" His lifelong love affair with Britain began at that moment.

Trautmann was dispatched to a PoW camp at Ashton-in-Makerfield, near Wigan, where the government (in contravention of the Geneva Convention) was using German labour to help rebuild Britain. His athleticism in the camp's football team (when he was not working with a bomb disposal unit) attracted attention, and before long he was turning out for St Helen's Town, whose club secretary Jack Friar took him under his wing.
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Rest of the obituary here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10191488/Bert-Trautmann.html

[Admiral Yi]

Nice story.

[The Brain]

The German retreat in Russia kept the same pace as the advance had.

[Syt]

A legendary player, but he never played on the German squad - then coach Sepp Herberger (whose team won the 1954 World Cup, and who had joined the NSDAP in 1933) refused to put guys who played abroad on the team.