From the Army to Wimbledon

My eyes were good enough to be number one in Northern California, but not good enough for the Air Force.

In my senior year at Cal, at the age of twenty I enlisted in the Army for service in World War II. I would have preferred to join the Air Force, but the examining optometrist said my depth perception was lousy and that I could never land a plane, let alone, and I'm quoting him, "play an eye coordination sport like tennis."

I didn't enlighten him that at that very time, in 1943, I was the reigning tennis champ of Northern California. The Army assigned me to complete my college degree and even get in a first semester at the University of California's Boalt Hall law school before calling me to active duty.

I packed my tennis racket, in case--one never knows--there might be a chance to use it. And, sure enough, on weekend leaves from basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia and Camp Campbell, Kentucky, there were opportunities. As Pfc. Brown, I won the state tennis titles of Kentucky and Alabama.

Among my former tennis buddies, Vie Seixas was in the Air Force, piloting replacement planes across the Atlantic; Gardnar Mulloy was in the Navy doing heroic stuff as an L.S.T. commander; Jack Kramer was in the Coast Guard; and Bobby Riggs was conning his fellow sailors in various betting games while stationed mostly in Hawaii.

Among players I was to come up against after the war's end, a number welt on the other side, fighting for their own countries, Germany or Japan. Some endured years in prisoner of war camps. The Brits lost many players in the flower of their youth, as did all the countries in continental Europe.

Many top players, like my friend Gardnar Mulloy, spent the war doing heroic stuff.

For nearly a decade following the war, prewar champions like Fred Perry had no chance to touch a racket and never fully regained their potential. The great citadel of Wimbledon, itself, took sixteen hits from bombs.

Amazingly, the tennis courts were never closed for the members. In 1944 the Armed Forces played there too. Wimbledon's parking lots were converted to farmland, including a piggery. And the grounds were used for military drilling.

I truly believe in tennis as a way to world peace. In head-to-head confrontations, you can have games with allies and former enemies and nothing matters but the match of the moment. That was my thinking when I took along my racket for the invasion of Southern Germany. After all, there might be a chance to play somewhere along the line, as there had been in basic training. I also stashed in my duffel a French grammar book. (Never got to use the racket, but the phrase book sure came in handy.)

I was trained to be a mortar gunner, and on February 6, 1945, I shipped out from Boston, Massachusetts with the 20th Armored Infantry Division of General George Patton's Third Army. The ship that took us across the stormy Atlantic that winter was a small converted freighter. It had several levels and the interior of the ship contained vertical rows of hammocks with not much room in between. If you wanted to turn over in your hammock, you had to ask permission of the guy above as well as from the guy below you.

Great players like Fred Perry never fully recovered from the time lost during the war.

The division's band played "Sweet and Lovely" for us as we descended toward the bottom of the ship, but somehow this cheerful and sentimental love song did not calm our nerves.

The Atlantic was rough, and the small freighter rolled both side to side and up and down. Naturally, everyone got seasick. The ship's doctor got on the loudspeaker. "Men," he bawled, "you must eat, no matter how bad you feel." I'd been deliberating whether or not to attempt the orange I'd taken from breakfast. My stomach told me no. But the doc should know better, right? Wrong.

Somewhere in the middle of the crossing, the ship shook violently from what we feared was an explosion from a torpedo. "Now's the time to pray to Gawd, men," I remember a southern boy yelling. It wasn't a torpedo, we gratefully learned, but depth charges laid down by our protective convoy to scare away German submarines.

I was a fortunate soldier. The war in Europe was already beginning to wane as we tramped through Southern Germany, Austria, and France.

From Cal tennis to a mortar gunner for George Patton.

In France I was assigned to one of the half-tracks, personnel carriers that covered the flanks of the tanks. Nosing beneath the floor boards, where we kept ammunition, spare guns, and such, I found enough space for my tennis racket. There it sat throughout my stint in the war, protected and ready for action.

Only once was I personally involved in a battle. My unit rolled into a small town near Munich and made haste to occupy it. I was riding on the back of a tank when all hell broke loose--Germans were opening fire with their 88s. We jumped off and took refuge in the just-captured town, leaving it to the tanks to duke it out. Some of our boys were hit by shrapnel.

Looking back on it, it seems as if the Germans were less upset by our invasion of their town than by our taking away their local supply of beer. The town had an active brewery.

My half track had to be the only vehicle carrying a tennis racket across western Europe.

One day, patrolling alone with unaccustomed rifle over my shoulder, I came upon two very young and scared German soldiers and herded them back to camp.

"Aw, turn 'em loose. We got too many," said my sergeant. I have often wondered if one of those boys was the future Pope. I've since read that as a boy forced into the "Hitler Youth" movement late in the war, Pope Benedict was captured and released by friendly Americans.

In the French countryside, a buddy and I used to forage about, trading candy and cigarettes for hard apple cider. I learned a good bit of conversational French that way. We enjoyed watching schoolchildren trudge to school in the mornings, solemn-faced and quiet, canteens filled with hard cider hanging from their shoulders along with their schoolbooks. At the end of the school day, they would pass us again, their little faces by now rosy-pink, their step springy their voices very animated--and their cider canteens obviously empty Vive la France!

In war, there's a lot of hanging around waiting for things to happen. There were times for occasional poker games with my buddies. My winnings were enough to send home double my paycheck most months.

Did we capture and release the future Pope?

During my army days, the higher-ups were scared to death of venereal disease. "Boys will be boys," was their way of thinking. "We can't let them loose on leave without giving them a good supply of condoms."

So, when we signed our leave papers, we did not get our dismissal from the supervising sergeant until we verified that we had been given condoms. There was an ample supply of them. They may not have been of top quality but none of us back then knew enough to know the difference.

There was no limit on the number of condoms we could take. So I built up a supply. I don't know why. I certainly was not very adventurous with women. I just thought they might come in handy some day.

The LaJolla Invitational was big after the war.

And sure enough, they did. Sooner than I could have imagined. While war in Europe was winding down, I went to check on my racket stashed away in the half-track. It looked okay but then I looked closer. Two strings had popped. So though it had survived the war, it wasn't going to do me any good. With regret, I tossed it away.

In late summer of 1945, our unit was sent home, pending redeployment, we all expected, to the war in the Pacific. But the atomic bombing of Hiroshima accelerated the end of World War II. While still in uniform, I was permitted to engage in various tournaments and was able to win back my titles in the San Francisco singles and the Pacific Coast singles and doubles, and regain my ranking as number one in Northern California.

I had one final assignment before discharge from the service in February 1946. The army transferred me to JAG, and promoted me to Lieutenant to organize a nationwide tennis tournament for the armed forces. It was held at my boyhood courts in Golden Gate Park.

Defeating Bob Falkenburg at La Jolla was a key step to being chosen for Wimbledon.

No well-known players entered, but the atmosphere was very special. The Army Band from San Francisco's Presidio strutted their stuff playing Sousa marches before the matches began. Following my release from the army in February 1946, I wasted no time in getting back to tennis. Law school could wait a few more months.

The La Jolla Invitational Championships near balmy San Diego were big in those days. They were held at the exclusive La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club, and hosted by its owner and avid tennis booster, William S. Kellogg. He would invite the top players of both Northern and Southern California, personally greet us at the airport, and see that we were put up in sumptuous accommodations.

We players loved that February event. It kicked off the tournament season grandly, especially that winter of '46, when it was rumored that the winner might be sent by the United States Tennis Association to the first postwar Wimbledon in June.

Bob Falkenburg was the favorite to win the singles, but, by golly, I did. A second win in a subsequent tournament, also over Bob, cinched it for me. Jack Kramer and I were tapped to go to Wimbledon. The world's top tennis tournament would also condition us, we were told, for possible consideration for that year's first postwar Davis Cup team.

Perry T. Jones took me aside. "Now, Tom," he said, "you'll be playing doubles at Wimbledon with Jack. He's had a lot of experience, so you listen to him."

Advice taken. I realized I was a second-fiddle choice. Jack was a shoo-in to go, and the other established players of the U.S.--Billy Talbert, Gardnar Mulloy, Frank Parker--were not available for Wimbledon, being committed to play qualifying Davis Cup matches that spring and summer.

The doyen of Southern Cal tennis Perry Jones informed me I would play doubles with Jack Kramer at Wimbledon.

The USTA's appointed means of transportation was a ship from New York to England. I remember starting my trek on the back of a San Francisco streetcar in the middle of rush hour to catch a plane to New York for the sailing. Although I was excited, I didn't forget a thing.

My first packing priority was my rackets. I was carrying five or six of them, all strung with the highest grade gut. Gut was expensive in those days--maybe fourteen dollars per racket--but no way was I going to Wimbledon and play with inferior stuff. Synthetics of that time were terrible; no matter how tightly they were strung, they would never pull taut enough for a ball to rebound firmly.

I was worried that the wet sea air might get into my rackets. Voila! I remembered all those condoms I'd been given in the army, and the good use I could put them to now. A friend helped me pull them over my racket heads, stretching them to their very limit. They fit tightly, and some of them broke, but I had a good supply so I could afford some breakage.

In my luggage were also eight little white hand towels to use on the Wimbledon courts. I'd been forewarned that everything you wore on court had to be white.

In New York, I leaned that Jack had already left. He'd flown over, so he could have more time in England for practice. So be it; he had far more clout than I.

The rest of us did as we were told and sailed on the SS Uruguay. I was in the group along with Budge Patty (who was Wimbledon-bound on his own), and the women's U.S. Wightman Cup team comprised of Pauline Betz, Margaret Osborne, Louise Brough, Pat Canning Todd, Doris Hart, and Dodo Bundy.

The SS Uruguay; from conveying troops to conveying tennis players.

Compared to my army transport experiences, the Uruguay was quite a nice ship. Although not fully converted from carrying troops, it had honest-to-God bunks, and separate staterooms. Men and women were segregated, though--there not being enough private bathrooms. Didn't do much on the six-day crossing but walk decks, read, sleep, and get to know Budge pretty well.

At last we arrived, took the boat train to London, and checked into the Rembrandt Hotel. The first thing I did was to strip those condoms off my rackets. They pulled off easily, and had done their job. The wooden frames and gut strings were just fine.

Next: Center Court at Wimbledon! Click Here to Read the first installment from Tom's book!

	As Tom Goes By	Tom Brown
	Want to read the whole story of life in the days of big time amateur tennis? Order Tom Brown's book, As Tom Goes By. A native San Francisco who grew up at Golden Gate Park, Tom went on to win at Wimbledon in both the men's and mixed doubles. Click Here.

A native San Francisco who grew up playing at legendary Golden Gate Park, Tom Brown won the first post war Wimbledon doubles title in 1946 with Jack Kramer. He won the mixed doubles that year as well. Later, he was a singles runner up to Big Jake at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Nationals at Forrest Hills. A successful San Francisco attorney, Tom continued his amazing competitive career at events around the world, with a longevity matched by virtually no other seniors player, including numerous number one world rankings.

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