A German paratrooper was once named English footballer of the year ? In 1956 Bert Trautmann won the Football Writers Association Footballer of the Year Award. That year he had helped Manchester City win the FA Cup final while heroically playing with a broken vertebra in his neck. Trautmann was a paratrooper during World War Two, serving on the Russian Front and at Arnhem, before being captured by the British. A holder of the Iron Cross first class, he was sent to a POW camp near Manchester where he remained when the war ended ........... I didn't know that !! :noidea:
Bert Trautmann Remember watching the match where he had the injury quite well. Bert was a great Goalkeeper and well thought of by the Man City Fans. Something tells me the injury was caused in a collision with the L.H. Upright. Couldn't be positive though.
And this ... Second World War In 1941 Trautmann joined the Luftwaffe, initially as a radio operator. During training he did not show much aptitude for radio work, and so he transferred to Spandau to become a paratrooper. He served first in occupied Poland, though a station far behind the front line resulted in boredom for his regiment, which resorted to sports and practical jokes to pass the time. One such practical joke involving a car backfired on Trautmann, resulting in a staff sergeant burning his arms. Trautmann was court-martialled, and received a three-month prison sentence. At the start of his confinement Trautmann came down with acute appendicitis, and spent the remainder of his sentence in a military hospital. In October 1941 he rejoined the 35th at Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, where the German advance had halted due to the early onset of winter. Over winter hit and run attacks on Soviet supply routes were the main focus of the unit, and in spring Trautmann was promoted to corporal. Gains were made in 1942, but the Soviet counter-offensive hit Trautmann's unit hard, and by the time it was withdrawn from the Eastern Front, only 300 of the original 1,000 remained. Trautmann won five medals for his actions on the Eastern Front, including an Iron Cross First Class Promoted to sergeant, Trautmann was part of a unit formed from the remnants of several others which had been decimated in the east, stationed in France in preparation for the Allied Invasion of Normandy. In 1944 he was one of the few survivors of the Allied bombing of Kleve, and with no unit left he decided to head homeward to Bremen. By this point German soldiers without valid leave papers were being shot as deserters, so Trautmann sought to avoid troops from either side. However, a few days later he was captured in a barn by two American soldiers. Deciding that Trautmann had no useful intelligence to give them, the soldiers marched him out of the barn with his hands raised. Fearing he was about to be executed, Trautmann fled. After gaining enough distance to evade his captors, he jumped over a fence, only to land at the feet of a British soldier, who greeted him with the words "Hello Fritz, fancy a cup of tea?" Earlier in the war he had been captured by the Russians and later the French Resistance, but escaped both times.With the war drawing to a close, Trautmann did not attempt a third escape. He was initially imprisoned near Ostend, then transferred to a transit camp in Essex, where he was interrogated. As a volunteer soldier who had been subject to indoctrination from a young age, he was classified as a category "C" prisoner by the authorities, meaning he was regarded as a Nazi.Trautmann, one of only 90 of his original regiment to survive the war, was then transferred to a prisoner-of-war camp in Northwich, interned with other category "C" prisoners. He was soon downgraded to non-Nazi "B" status, following which he was taken to PoW Camp 50 in Ashton-in-Makerfield, a small town between St Helens and Wigan, where he stayed until 1948. Football matches were regularly held at the camp, in which Trautmann played outfield. However, in a match against amateur team Haydock Park, Trautmann picked up an injury while playing centre-half. He asked to swap positions with goalkeeper Gunther Luhr, and from that day forward played as a goalkeeper. It was during this time he became known as "Bert", as the English had trouble pronouncing "Bernd", the abbreviated version of his name.
Burt Trautmann Annie it looks as though my memory was leading me astray as the injury was clearly caused in the collision. Great Game, just as the Mathews Final was. Heard that one on the Radio(Wireless). Old B***er
