As we slept, athletes were machine-gunned
Harrowing dispatch from Mailman at Olympics as Israelis are murdered by Black September
September 6, 1972
NOBODY believed it at first. As we slept, the Olympic Games had been hijacked, a Jew had been machinegunned to death through a door and another lay dead among the hostages under the guns of Black September.
You’re entitled not to believe that when you file into breakfast, rubbing last night’s party out of your eyes and wondering whether to spend the day at the weightlifting or the equestrian dressage.
Yesterday was half-term holiday at the Olympics. A few minor sports were proceeding, but the track was empty as the big guns, the athletes, gathered their breath for the finale. Maybe that’s why the terrorists struck. The world’s television cameras, microphones and reporters were all there, kicking their heels.
The morning was hot and as you stepped into the sun you knew it was true. As your car turned into the dual carriageway towards the Village it was like driving into the opening shot of Hollywood’s conception of the next world war.
Army trucks were jammed nose to tail. Along the grass verge, at ten-yard intervals, stood greenuniformed troops.
They carried sub-machine-guns and fixed their stares on the rooftops of the Village quarters which, after Sunday, are to be transformed into luxury flats.
Late the previous night I had driven in there with John Verrier, Britain’s swimming manager, as easily as I could have driven into
Northampton or Bournemouth. By morning Munich’s welcoming smile had been wiped off its face. Now you face a solid line of gun barrels.
This is how it happened, of course. Germany’s anxiety to throw off its militaristic image, to the point where it dressed up its security police in fancy light blue uniforms with white golf hats, had relaxed security to the point where anyone could stroll into the Village housing 12,000 athletes.
The Palestinians simply climbed over a 7ft, meshed wire fence unchallenged. Inside there is a clock directly outside the Israeli headquarters. Its hands took on a new significance as the successive ultimatum deadlines came and went.
Outside the Village they stood in their thousands. Workers, extending the BMW plant, downed tools and lined the fences as more troops, screaming police cars and helicopters moved in to save not only the hostages held in one room, but these and perhaps future Olympics.
Thousands of troops and police bent on rescuing the Israelis in Munich was not without irony.
Eight guards surrounded one figure as he was hurried out of the American HQ and driven away. It was Mark Spitz, winner of seven gold medals for swimming. He, too, is a Jew.
Everyone inside had his how-Iwas-nearly-involved story to tell.
Among them was boxer Terry Spinks, the cheerful chest-high Cockney with a nose flattened across his cheekbones, who in the 50s was a British Olympic Gold medallist.
Improbably, Spinks is here as coach to South Korea’s boxing squad, and, as such, had his quarters not 20 yards from where the two Israelis were murdered.
‘I went to sleep and heard nothing. When I opened my door in the morning there was a soldier pushing me back with a gun.’
An official with the British boxing team opened his door to see the previous day’s international Village turned into a barracks. ‘I couldn’t believe it needed all those troops to protect a Prime Minister,’ he said. Edward Heath was due to pay a visit to the British quarters yesterday.
When they cleared the concrete boulevards round the Israeli headquarters so that the guns could train, the place to go was the United Press International headquarters where they were monitoring the television output to all points of the world. RUMOURS flew, Press conferences were convened hourly, fat middle-aged journalists bought track suits and hired athletes’ passes to cajole their way into the Village.
As the sun moved across the sky, the heart stayed in the mouth.
For me, one thought remained dominant. Eleven days earlier, I had seen the Israeli Olympic team including both the men now dead and all the hostages, standing motionless before a monument to their dead in Dachau concentration camp.
Yesterday was the day when violence came the full circle.