The 1945 season of Pfc Harrison Dillard

It was on may the 14th 1945 that the Special Service Office of US troops in Italy made known its intention to organize sport competitions for the months to come for the 5th Army, the main Allied military contingent stationed in Italy, and permission was given to begin training sessions. On april the 25th the war had definitely ceased even in the north of Italy, and the Allied military authorities could at last grant some amusement to the servicemen who had been under pressure for a very long period of time. The intention was also to increase mutual understanding among troops who were anything but homogeneous. This policy had already been practised in Italy in 1944, but only for the southern half of the country, with various military competitions culminated, so far as track and field was concerned, with the first edition of the Allied championships, held in Roma on july the 15th and 16th.

In 1945, selections to choose teams to compete in the final championships began in early june. The afro-american 92nd Division of the 5thArmy, better known as Buffalo Division, held its trials in Genova on saturday the 10th, but not all of its best athletes had been able to start training. Thus Harrison Dillard, who had starred at the Penn Relays and at the Ohio Athletic Conference in 1943, and was one of the top rated athlete of the track team of the Buffalo Division, did not appear, and 100m, 110m hs, 200m hs, went respectively to John Myles, James Strong and Noel Williams. Harrison, drafted into the army in may 1943 and sent to Italy in september 1944, was nevertheless allowed to compete in the 5th Army championships, staged in the big Milano Arena on the following week-end. More than 400 athletes belonging to twelve different teams representing seven Divisions and two Corps for USA, two Area Commands for Great Britain, and one Combat Group for Italy, gave their best, and at the end the 92ndDivision came out the winner, with second place going to the 10thMountain Division. As the track was not perfectly set, and owing to a shortage of spiked shoes, athletes competed in tennis shoes, and it is quite amazing to discover that in this meet no less than 6 Mediterranean Theater of Operations (MTO) records were broken; two of them were set by Dillard, with 15.3 at 110m hurdles and 25.2 at 200m low hurdles. The 5th Army track team coach Michael Kosteva arranged another couple of tune-up meetings for his athletes, with Dillard running a little bit faster (15.1 and 24.2) and thus becoming a heavy favourite to win both hurdle events at the Mediterranean Theater of Operations championships, to be held in Firenze (Stadio Comunale) on july the 21st and 22nd, with two entrants per team in each event. In Firenze, where 5th Army team arrived on july the 12th, «the combined squads, including coaches and trainers, are billeted in the U.S. Army Rest Center and have booked practice sessions throughout the week. The track is closed in the afternoons. Five civilian masseurs, all trainers and rubbers for Italian Olympic Teams, are in big demand at the end of the workouts. The track is in fair condition; about 30 workmen are toiling daily to prepare the red cinder paths fot the title meet after the first use of spikes tore numerous holes in the lanes»1. Harrison, a Pfc (Private First Class) master sharp-shooter of the Buffalo Division and former Baldwin-Wallace College ace, set another pair of MTO records, with times of 15.0 and 24.1, but didn’t go all out as the second place finishers, George Foster at high hurdles and Zemer Cox at low hurdles, didn’t press him: «If a hurdler can walk, that’s what Dillard was doing at the last two hurdles of each race. He was so far ahead he casually strolled across the finish line»2. Besides pacing the 5th Army to team success and winning 3 gold medals (the third one in the medley relay), Dillard pocketed three wrist watches, as a prize for each one of his victories.

The series of military competitions was concluded with the Allied track and field championships, to be held in Frankfurt, Germany, on august the 26th in the form of a match between the Mediterranean Theater of Operations and the European Theater of Operations, with 3 entrants per team in each event. The MTO squad set off for Frankfurt on august the 20th by plane. Head coach Richard Bahme, a 27 years old captain whose unit service was the 403rd anti-aircraft artillery gun battalion, ordered Dillard to compete also in the 200 meters flat as points were strongly needed. And Harrison didn’t disappoint his coach: «Pfc Dillard, a powerful legged speedster from Cleveland wearing the blue striped shirt of the MTO team, kept the visiting team in the running for the team title and staked them to a four-point lead with three events to go, but the ETO had strength two-deep in the jumping events, and made up the winning margin»3. He had successive wins in high hurdles, 4x100m relay, low hurdles and 200m dash with times which were all Service records, but that wasn’t sufficient, as ETO team won 69-54 over the visiting tracksters from MTO, giving its commander, the famous General George Patton, plenty of satisfaction. In his comment of the day after, M. Whittlesey of The Stars and Stripes, wrote that «Dillard’s future possibilities in the dash and hurdles events are virtually unlimited».

In september Harrison returned to compete in the Milano Arena (this time with spiked shoes) and in Firenze, then concluded his season in France, always giving evidence of his inimitable talent. On the eve of Milano meet, he was interviewed by a journalist who wrote: «As a civilian, he attends Baldwin-Wallace college in Cleveland, Ohio, and hopes to become a teacher. In the national championships he finished second behind Charles Hlad4, but he is probably going to become number one as he is 3 years younger than Hlad. His form and style are perfect. Dillard likes Milano very much, as he finds our city bigger but more restful than Cleveland. He says that italian athletes are really good and have a great future, and he is impressed above all with discus throwers Consolini and Tosi»5. Dillard was probably surprised to be interviewed outside of the United States, but it was just the first one of many others to come. His performances during the afternoon at the Milano Arena excited great admiration from the crowd: «Everybody was talking about him, wondering at his exhibition of speed and coordination. They asked themselves: how can this man fly that way? His running is a skimming along the surface of the track, his hurdling is like a perfectly oiled springing system»6.