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94th Infantry Football Pilgrims
Athletics was an important part in the military at the end of the war. There were many programs in the various units such as track, baseball and football. SGT. BUC is presenting some information about the 94th Pilgrims as told by, and material donated by, Dr. "Rey" Paladini, who currently is featured on this page. #17 is shown in true form and was enjoying his time on the team at war's end. As we collect more educational information, it will be posted.
American Football game in Prague, Czechoslovakia, (Currently CZECH REPUBLIC) was a historical event highlighted by the men of the 94th Pilgrims and the XXII Corps. This marked the first and only American Football game played in Prague. Note the program is written entirely in Czech. 94th Pilgrims won 6-0.
Many thanks to Dr. Rey (Medic, 302nd Regiment) and to the many others who added to the effort to preserve freedom.
The 94th Football Pilgrims played 8 games their first and only season. Due to the G. I.'s getting enough points to go home, the team soon fell short of enough players. Their record of 4-3-1 will live in the memories of the players forever. Below is an account of each game as told by Dr. Rey.
Hombres - 32
Pilgrims - 0
94th Pilgrims - 6
XXII Corps Hurricanes - 0
Red Circles - 20
Pilgrims - 0
Pilgrims - 0
Big Red One - 0
Pilgrims - 13
Blue Ridgers - 12
Pilgrims 8
4th Armored Div. 0
Pilgrims - 20
XXII Artillery - 0
42nd Div. 7
Pilgrims 0
The following programs and many other documents and artifacts are part of the exhibits that are on display with SGT. BUC MINI EXPO. We are trying to educate historical events in a way that brings them to live. With a hands on feature in the exhibit that allows an individual to experience a time period referred to as, "The Greatest Generation".
Each game below as recalled by Dr. Rey , will give you a chance of "being there" and some information on conditions and the players.
The following images are from a very historic event that took place on 22 September, 1945 in Prague, Czechoslovakia. The game between the 94th Pilgrims and the XXII Corps Hurricanes was the first and only American Football game played in this City. Notice the football program printed entirely in Czech and a few articles taken from the 94th Division ATTACK magazine and the STARS AND STRIPES paper. Program also written in English and Russian.
94TH INFANTRY DIVISION FOOTBALL TEAM AND SEASON 1945
In August 1945, about the middle of the month, the Japs surrendered and the war was finally over and everybody in the division started focusing on going home. Many of us had been in Europe for close to a year and a system of "points" had been devised to determine the priorityin which we would be eligible to return home. It was set at around 85 points to go home initially. I had about 60 at that time so I knew I was going to around for awhile.
The 94th had been stationed around Dusseldorf when the war ended but in mid-June we were slated to move to Czechoslovakia as occupational forces for awhile. We were scattered all over Sudatenland in small towns. It took me several days to finally find the name of the town we (H company 302nd) were in. It was called Vodnany. When the war ended the powers to be had to figure out ways to keep the GI's busy and out of trouble. They figured one way would be athletics. They formed a baseball team, track team, tennis, swimming and even horse racing. These were at all levels from Division, Regiment, Battalion, Companies and Platoon teams. Softball, volleyball and boxing were also included.
In early August they put an announcement in the ATTACK, the Division paper, that anyone interested in playing football at the Division level to send in an application, that was provided by the paper, stating their experience, weight and other information. Since I had played 3 years of High School football and one year of college ball at St. Mary's College in California, and I had nothing better to do except wait until they lowered the number of points to 60 so I could get home. So I sent in my application, along with about 350 others. With about 15,000 other men in the Division I didn't think I would be chosen to try out. They chose 65 of those applicants for the first tryouts. I was one of those chosen. After the first week of practice they cut that down to 45 and they would bring in others as they tried to find more or better players. I was able to survive and stayed with the team until it was disbanded in November. Susice was selected as the team headquarters. We stayed in the Fialka Hotel right on the Square in the center of town. It wasn't fancy, but was much better than I had been used to since joining the Army. We started out with 3 players in each room, but ended up with 2 per room. Jack Brannigan from C company 302nd, from Chicago ended up as my roommate for the season. I believe he passed away a few years ago. We had our own dining room with table cloths, napkins and waiters. We had three meals a day with GI cooks and GI food. Needless to say, we were in "Hog Heaven". I hadn't had it so good since joining the Army. We had a window of 2 hours for each meal, breakfast, lunch and dinner. We didn't have any military duties of any kind except to practice football twice a day the first couple of weeks and then it was cut back to once a day for 2-3 hours a day each practice. Other than that we had no other duties, militarily speaking. The only other requirement was that we had to wear our Army uniform whenever we were outside the hotel, including when we went to our games. A bus was obtained for travel to away games with "94th INFANTRY FOOTBALL TEAM" painted on the side. We had taken over a soccer field for our practices, which was a short walk from the hotel. It also became our home field during the season with bleachers constructed to hold as many as 10,000 fans. For the first several days we had no uniforms, except for football cleats. We practiced in shorts and T shirts until our practice uniforms finally came. Then we finally got to get into contact work.
When the team was first organized, we had seven footballs, one towel (crying?), two hopeful coaches and several aspiring football players. Our first practice field was a pasture in Prachatice until we moved to Susice to our permanent practice field and residence. After weeding out candidates for the team, we ended up with about 32 or 33 players. Since in those days, players were on both offense and defense and there were no special teams. Of course injuries and other factors, such as redeployment, would require additional players, which they could bring up from the Regimental teams.
We had several players on the team who had college experience prior to entering the Army. Among them were; Lt. Bob Cone, Co. C 301st, from the University of Wisconsin, a triple-threat tailback with good size, (185 lbs.), speed and talent; Sgt. Murray Fein, F Co. 376th, a 215 lbs. lineman who had played for the University of Illinois for three years, the last two years as a starter and played 43 minutes in the then-famous Illinois-Michigan game in which Illinois upset Michigan and Tommy Harmon 19-6; Pfc. Jim "Bull" Maloney, Co. I, 301st, a 220 lb. guard and Captain of the team, played college ball at Temple University three years and Semi-Pro ball; Lt. Bob Burke, Co. G 376th, played 3 years at the University of Washington; Pfc. Bob Mulligan, Co. M 301st, a 210 lb. end from Xavier; Pfc. Paul Weaver, Co. H 301st, 190 lb. back who played football at Western Michigan; Cpl. "Rey" Paladini, Medic Co. H 302nd, 155 lb. "scatback" played one year at St. Mary's College before entering the Army. There may have been others on the roster who played some college ball but I am not aware of that. All the others had at least 3 years of High School football experience.
Our team colors were silver and black and had black and silver trim helmets with the 94th logo on the front of the helmet. These uniforms didn't come until after the first game so we played that game in Krumlov with our practice gear, which were green jerseys with white shoulders and numbers with khaki colored pants. We played without face masks or mouthpieces. The nickname got our team started out as "The Pilgrims" but as the season progressed, we were called, "The Black Knights" or "Switchmen".
When we started, the Head Coach was Capt. Bill Calloway who played football at Presbyterian College in SC. His assistant was Vannie Albanese, an All American fullback at Syracuse in 1936, and subsequently played 3 years of Pro Football for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the NFL. Apparently, after a short while, there developed some wrangling and disagreement amongst the coaching staff. The players were not involved in any way, but we sensed some kind of turmoil was going on. As it turned out, Albanese became the Head Coach and Calloway his assistant. Calloway, as I recall, didn't stay with the team through the whole season. He may have left through re-deployment, but not sure. Capt. Dudley Pillow was our line coach. He was an outstanding lineman for LSU before the war. The Sportswriters for the team were Stan Kunzman and Jim Rosenberg. They wrote articles for the ATTACK and for the football programs.
THE SEASON AND GAMES
After several weeks of practice and hard work, we were anxious for the season to be played. Our first game was to be played against the XXII Corps Artillery at their home field in Krumlov, Czechoslovakia. Not much was known about them except that they hadn't started practicing until two weeks prior to the game and had only about 22 players on their team, lost several to re-deployment prior to the game. We outweighed them about 20 lbs. per man at the line and 18 lbs. in the backfield, so we had been established heavy, heavy favorites for the game. Bob Cone was touted to be our "big gun" as a triple-threat tailback. The game was to be played on September 15th, 1945, a Saturday, which happened to be the 3rd anniversary of the establishment of the 94th Infantry Division. The whole day was scheduled to be celebrated with a Division baseball game against the 83rd Division. Other sports events and parades were also scheduled but the football game was the highlight of the day. They expected 5,000 spectators to attend. By the end of the first half, we had a 13-0 lead. Cone lived up to his hype with his running and passing and scored 1 TD. Fullback Bob Burke scored the other TD. Cone suffered a minor injury to start the second half and I replaced him and ran the ball several times, averaging almost 6 yds. per carry. I passed the ball to Jack Hollister for another TD and we ended the game winning 20-0. It was a very successful start to the season as we completely outplayed them, allowing them only 2 first downs the entire game.
Our next game was undoubtedly the most memorable and significant game of the season for us. We were to play the first American Football game ever in Prague, the Capitol city, on Thursday, September 27, 1945 in the Olympic sized Svobodka Stadium that held 50,000 spectators. It was a gala event with a morning parade thru the city of Prague with bands and a lot of hoopla prior to the game. The President of Czechoslovakia, Eduard Benes, was in attendance along with General E. N. Harmon of the XXii Corps and the U. S. ambassador was also present. Generals Patton and Eisenhower were invited, but never came. The game was scheduled against the XXII Corps again, but this was an entirely different team than we played in the first game. Their roster was almost entirely revamped with bigger players and more talented than in our first meeting with them. This was a good news - bad news game for us. The good news was that we did win the game 6-0 when we scored early in the 1st quarter on our first possession when Jack Hollister scored on a run after a 39 yard drive. The bad news is that star tailback and sparkplug or our team was seriously injured late in the first quarter and was lost for the remainder of the season. I replaced him but was unable to get on track, and except for some nice punt returns, was not able to produce any more scores. But a win is a win, and our record stood at 2-0. We were treated royally while in Prague. We traveled to the game in our bus and stayed in a nice hotel (Flora Hotel) in a nice suite for two players. That evening the hotel put on a nice spread for both teams in their banquet room and we "socialized" with the players from the XXII Corps. The next morning we returned to Sucice to prepare for next game against the 90th Division, "The Tough Hombres" on October 2, 1945, in just 5 days.
After only 3 days of practice and one day of travel to Amberg, Germany to play our third away game. We just didn't seem to be ready for this game and lost 32-0. Even after losing our "star" player, we were over confident and thought we could just walk on the field and win. What a rude awakening we got. They hadn't played any games as yet so we didn't know what to expect and they probably scouted in our first games and seemed to know what was coming. Needless to say, we were devastated. Enough said about that game.
The fourth game of the season was played on Sunday October 7, 1945, our third game in 11 days. that's a lot of games in a short period of time and we were pretty well beat up at that point. The game was against the 1st Infantry Division (Big Red One) in Susice. It was our first home game. The 1st Division had played two games and were undefeated at that point. They had several college players (9) on their team and one, George Rado, who played professional ball for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles. Their star player, however, was Fowler Welch, triple threat halfback from Texas A&M. I started the game and would have played the whole 60 minutes had I not injured my side when I was kneed with about 4-5 minutes remaining. I had been injured in the same area at the game in Prague, but was able to play OK until re-injuring the same spot. At any rate, we ended up in a defensive battle with a 0-0 tie. I guess you could call it a "moral" victory. With our spark plug, Cone gone, we lacked offensive punch. We hadn't scored a point since we lost our star player.
The next game was against the 71st Division team, also called the "Red Circles". This game was also played in Susice, our second consecutive home game, on Sunday October 14, 1945. They also were undefeated after four games, but had one tie against the powerful 36th Division, 13-13. That was the only team to score against them. They had an all college starting lineup and their star tailback was Monk Gafford from the University of Auburn, who had received All American mention. So we knew we were in for a rough afternoon with this team. I didn't play in this game since I was sill nursing a sore flank from the previous week. Furthermore, we lost 3 lineman, 2 starters, to re-deployment because they had enough points to go home. They were two of our best players weighing over 200 lbs. Nevertheless, we held them scoreless for the first 3 quarters, only to succumb to them 20-0 in the 4th quarter. We still hadn't found our scoring punch.
After a bye week and a deserved rest, we played our next game on October 28, 1945 in Landshut, Germany against the 4th Armored Division, a team that had won only one game so far. So we felt that we had a good chance of beating them. Even though my side was much better and had returned to practice, the coach decided not to play me. It didn't make much difference anyway since we won the game 8-0, scoring a safety in the first quarter and a TD late in the 3rd quarter on a pass from George Pavlick to Bob for the final score. We completely out played them and they didn't come close to scoring.
After another bye week, our next game was played Saturday November 10, 1945 in Susice against the 42nd Infantry Division, the "Rainbow Division". The unique thing about this game was that it started snowing early that morning and we played in about 6 inches of snow. It was a new experience for me as I had never played in snow before. I believe many of the 94th players from the east coast had played in snow. It wasn't too bad as it didn't seem that cold when your' re actually playing, but the field was wet and the ball slippery making it difficult for the offense. It snowed throughout most of the game until late in the 3rd quarter when it started to let up. The 42nd from Salzburg, Austria, had a couple of outstanding college players, Tommy Roblin, a flashy tailback from the University of Oregon and Eugene Sherwood a big fullback from Kansas University. They also had the whole 66th Division team that was transferred into the 42nd as that division was deployed back to the States, although the football team had low points and merged with the 42nd. It was primarily a defensive battle most of the game until the 3rd quarter when Sherwood broke loose on a cut back play on his way to a touchdown when I was able to run him down from behind and make a TD saving tackle to preserve the scoreless game until that time. We stopped them on that drive but it was short-lived because late in the quarter, Sherwood plunged over from the 2 yard line for the only touchdown of the game and converted to win 7-0, our third defeat of the season.
Rumors were going around that we may play a Bowl Game in the Riviera on Thanksgiving Day and that we would fly there. It was rumored that we would play the 9th Infantry Division there. That was really exciting to think we might get to the Riviera for a game. Another rumor was that we might play a Thanksgiving Day game in Munich, Germany instead, which would have been OK but I would have rather gone to the Riviera. As it turns out, neither rumor panned out since we had to leave Czechoslovakia by the 22nd of November and return to Germany. Consequently, our last game was to be played on Saturday November 17, in Susie against the 80th Infantry Division, "The Blue Ridge Division". Their record was so-so but they had a couple of lbs. overall. So we knew we had a tough game ahead of us. We scored early in the game when Novel Hansen intercepted a Blue Ridge lateral and ran 85 yards for a score and Mulligan kicked the extra point for a quick 7-0 lead in the 1st quarter. That extra point proved to be significant later in the game. The 80th came back and scored TD's in the 2nd and 3rd quarters to take a 12-7 lead. We had been bottled up for about three and a half quarters by a bigger 80th team, but with about 9 minutes left in the game, the 94th Paul Weaver threw a pass to Hansen for the score. This proved to be the most exciting game of the season and we won the game 13-12. Hansen proved to be the star of this game, scoring both touchdowns. That ended the season for us as we went 4-3-1, a winning record at least.
THE FIFTH QUARTER
The game had been played on a Saturday and we were to return to our outfits on Tuesday, November 20, 1945, two days before Thanksgiving. It was somewhat depressing to see our world change so suddenly. For three months we were in hog-heaven, enjoying life as virtual civilians, except for wearing our Army uniforms. While living in a comfortable hotel with dining room facilities and waiters, we had it made. Unfortunately, it had to come to an end as everything does. I never heard from any other members of the team for many years. Other than Norvel Hansen, who went on to play for the University of Utah for a few years, I don't know if any of the other players ever went back to their colleges and played ball again. I returned to St. Mary's and played one more year of football, but gave up the game to focus on my studies because I wanted to attend Medical School and football and studies don't mix.
(as told by Dr. "Rey" Paladini)
"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest." (Mark Twain)
One day they were boys living life not worrying about tomorrow. Then they became men, wondering if tomorrow would even come. This game of football so valiantly played without deadly weapons proves soldiers do have passion. (Bruce Buczkowski-Solldiay)
