American Valor Quarterly Issue 11 - Fall 2014 | Page 7

As the Marines went
ashore on island after
island across the
pacific, the Seabees
followed, clearing
land for baseball
fields in such exotic
locales as Tarawa,
Guadalcanal,
Saipan and Guam.
(According to Bob
Feller the best field
was on the island of
Ulithi.)

After parachuting to the ground he was
rescued from an angry mob of German
villagers by a German medic who
amputated the leg and saved Shepard’s
life.
Following the American liberation
of the camp Shepard came home and
was fitted with a prosthesis. Shepard
had been a pitcher in the Washington
Senators farm system and he returned
to the minor leagues and was soon
called up by the Senators. Amazingly,
Shepard pitched a game on his artificial
leg. Repeated surgeries, however,
sidelined him as a major league player
although he did continue to pitch in the
minor leagues.
As the youths advanced across
Europe, baseball went with them and
rudimentary fields were hastily built
along the way, from the low countries
of Holland and Belgium to the
Bavarian Alps.
Among the millions of British
subjects who were exposed to baseball
was a young lad by the name of Gary
Bedingfield. The boy fell in love with
this strange and wonderful Yankee
import and has continued to be a fan
ever since. Bedingfield now maintains
an internet web site “Baseball in
Wartime” – the only one exclusively
devoted to baseball in World War II.
Of the war’s aftermath Bedingfield
writes:
“On May 7, 1945, the day after the
German surrender, engineer units,
formerly engaged in building combat
bridges and airfields, enthusiastically set
about transforming the battlefields of
Europe into ball fields, while hundreds
of athletic officers set in motion the
administration and organizational
requirements. Never before had there
been an athletic program of such
magnitude. The amount of equipment
required was colossal, and shortly
after VE Day, the War Department
in Washington, DC, made available
an inventory of sporting goods that
included 85,964 ball gloves, 72,850
baseballs and 131,130 bats. By midFALL 2014

SURROUNDED BY PALM TREES,
TROOPS PLAY BALL IN THE
PACIFIC THEATER
OF WAR.

summer 200,000 troops were playing
in competitive leagues, military duties
were scheduled around games and
combat units temporarily put aside the
emotional and physical scars of recent
battles in their pursuit to be the best
team in their region. While the Cubs
and Tigers battled for the World Series
crown back home, the GI’s World Series
in Europe took place before 50,000
servicemen in a stadium in Nuremberg,
Germany. Just six years earlier a similar
sized crowd had reached a deafening
tone as they cheered a vast array of
Nazi armament that