Sport: The Specialist

(5 of 7)

When it came time for Bob to go to college, Chappuis Sr. said he didn't care where Bob went so long as it wasn't Ohio State. Dad just didn't like Ohio State. Bob chose Michigan, which is only 56 miles from Toledo.

Danger Is Relative. The morning of a game, when the squad gathers around the training table at 10:30 for their pre-game lunch, Chappuis manages to swallow a cupful of beef broth, but he only nibbles at the filet mignon put before him. Football is still a deadly serious and unnerving game to him, even though he has faced, as have many players on 1947 squads, worse menaces than an onrushing tackier. On Christmas Day, 1944, Sergeant Chappuis rode in a B-25 as radioman and gunner, on his first mission. The target: a railroad bridge in Italy's heavily fortified Brenner Pass. After that, in the next seven weeks, there were 19 more missions. The 21st time, he got it.

The B-25 had been assigned to bomb a mountainside, so that rocks would fall and seal a railroad tunnel below. Over the target, a burst of flak knocked out one engine, then the other engine went out. When the order came to bail out, the tailgunner went out first, and got stuck in the escape hatch, pinned against the rear of it by the wind pressure. Chappuis kicked him in the only accessible place—his head —and knocked him loose. Then he jumped.

Bob and the plane's top-turret gunner landed just 20 yards apart. They buried their parachutes under the snow. Chappuis guessed that they were about 160 miles behind the German lines, and just north of the Po River. The day was foggy.

Uncle Tom's Cabin. The date was Feb. 13, but their luck was in. The first person they saw was an Italian peasant on a bicycle, a member of the Partisans, who led them to a house where they got a meal of noodles and pig's liver, met the tailgunner (picked up by another member of the local underground) and experienced their first bombing: some P-47s dive-bombed a nearby bridge. As days went by, Chappuis & Co. were moved from house to house, and village to village, towards the Swiss frontier. Once they walked right past a German sentry, without being detected. They were dressed in shawls and farmer hats—but they were still wearing G.I. shoes.

They got only as far as the town of Asola (pop. 2,304) and there sweated out the rest of the European war, on the second floor of a pink stucco house at No. 30 Via Toresano. The German headquarters was at No. 35, two houses away. Because the Germans' drill ground was directly across the street, they could not walk near a window. They never talked above a whisper.