KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The 1916 Summer Olympics never happened due to WWI. Once WWI came to an end and the Treaty of Versailles was signed, close to two million of soldiers were stuck, and in a holding pattern.
The soldiers couldn’t just hop on a flight and go home. There weren’t enough ships to them to take them back to their respective countries.
Since the games were canceled, the allies found a way to transition from combat to competition. It was an Olympic style series of events, and they called it the Inter-Allied Games.
It was held in the summer of 1919 in Paris, France at Pershing Stadium, named after Army General John Pershing of Missouri.
The Inter-Allied Games used Olympic rules and had sports you see in the current day Olympics. Sports like basketball, baseball, track and field, equestrian to name a few.
There was also a grenade tossing event, as Doran Cart, senior curator at the National WWI Museum and Memorial explains.
“I’ve always thought it was really interesting that he was a chaplain in the army,” Cart said. “So, a chaplain, he won with the hand grenade throw, and he wouldn’t have thrown a hand grenade in the war.”
The chaplain wasn’t in combat, but he was a baseball player.
Several of the soldiers played baseball but weren’t on the Team USA baseball team during the Inter-Allied Games. Black soldiers weren’t allowed to play basketball or baseball.
“They were primarily in the Track and Field events,” Cart explains. “The most famous fella, because he medaled, was a guy from Hutchinson, Kansas named Sol Butler.”
Butler would later compete in the 1920 Summer Olympics in track and field.
Butler and several other black soldiers would later go on to play in the Negro Leagues.
Negro League Baseball Museum President Bob Kendrick said four of the black soldiers from WWI are enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame: Wilbur Bullet Joe Rogan, Oscar Charleton, Louie Santop and Jud Wilson.
Kendrick adds Wilson came to be affectionately nicknamed Boo Juum.
“Because of the sounds his line drives made off the outfield wall. Boo Juum,” Kendrick said.
As news of the games spread, so too was a virus.
The 1918 Flu Pandemic was still rampant. Historians said if we can make it out of that, we too can be triumphant during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
“Almost eerily coincidental,” Kendrick adds. “We’re coming out of a pandemic at that time. But I guess the Allied Games were kind of structured as part of the healing process, and it brought these athletes together.”
“You’ve got 1500 people competing in sports competition, Cart says. “And they’re not shooting each other. Now there was a shooting competition, but they didn’t shoot each other.”
More than 100 years later, Kendrick said there are several lessons we could learn by revisiting the Inter-Allied Games.
“What it teaches us is if you dare to dream and you believe in yourself, your capabilities, you can do anything you want to be,” Kendrick said. “Even against all odds, and these athletes were going against insurmountable odds. But they refused to succumb to that, and I think there’s something that transcends time when you look at these kinds of stories.”
By the way, Team USA walked away with the most medals during the Inter Allied Games. Host country France came in second. Many of the soldiers also went on to compete in the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium.
—
Kevin’s Chronicles of KC is a year-long series looking at the history of Kansas City. You can read more about the project and other stories at kshb.com/chronicles.
Be the first to comment