American can't forget 1972 Munich terrorism

By Keith Jarrett

Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times

LINVILLE, N.C. - It's been nearly 32 years, but Tommy Burleson still gets chills when he talks about having a machine gun at the back of his head. He can still feel it against him, remembers distinctly facing a concrete wall, praying that he wouldn't die.

And most of all, he will never forget the sounds of men and women shuffling along on the way to their deaths, sobbing and frightened, of Black September terrorists shouting orders in Arabic.

It was near dusk on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 1972, in the Olympic Village in Munich, Germany.

Burleson, then a 20-year-old member of the U.S. Olympic basketball team, had unwittingly stumbled into the middle of the most tragic event in the history of the Olympics, a moment he wishes he couldn't remember but will never forget.

A sophomore at North Carolina State in 1972, Burleson earned a spot through tryouts on the Olympic basketball team at a time when the United States never had lost a game in international competition.

He was enjoying the experience of a new country and his first Olympics in the village that housed the athletes when he heard some noises near dawn on a Tuesday morning.

"Our barracks were just two buildings down from the Israelis, and we heard the pops," Burleson said. "I thought it was firecrackers, but (teammate) Kevin Joyce - who was from New York - said it was definitely weapons, gunfire."

Coaches gave the players the grim news - the barracks housing the Olympic team from Israel had been taken over by Arab guerrillas.

Two men had been killed in the initial takeover and several had escaped during the confusion. Terrorists from an Arabic group called Black September held nine Israelis hostage and threatened to kill them all if 200 fellow guerrillas held by Israel weren't freed.

The Olympic Games shut down, and the world watched chilling live television shots of masked men peering outside curtains and walking on a deck with a machine gun.

Later that day, Burleson and his fiancee went out to dinner. Upon returning to the village, they and two Italian basketball players decided to take a shortcut, a back entrance that was not often used.

"We were getting ready to enter a parking deck when some German soldiers stopped us and said we couldn't go any farther, that they were bringing the hostages through there," Burleson said.

After a few minutes, Burleson saw a terrorist in a hooded mask stick his head around a corner, nod at the soldiers, who helped clear the way as part of a plan negotiated with the terrorists, and disappear.

"The German solders told us to face the wall," Burleson said. "They stuck guns pointed at our backs.

"As the Israelis started walking past - it was a driveway about 40 feet long - there were two terrorists and I heard them shouting instructions in Arabic.

"I turned around to look, and a German soldier put the gun in the back of my head and said, `Face the wall. Put your hands on the wall and face the wall.'

"As the hostages walked by us, I could hear their feet shuffling. The women were crying and whimpering in low tones, and the terrorists were snapping commands."

After the hostages and terrorists left the village, they were flown by helicopter to a military airfield 20 miles from Munich. The negotiated plan was to take a plane to Cairo, Egypt.

German officials, convinced that allowing the plane to leave would be a death sentence for the Israelis, tried using sharpshooters to pick off the guerrillas as they exited the helicopter.

That military attack failed and nine Israeli hostages, five terrorists, a German policeman and a helicopter pilot died at the airstrip.

The Games resumed the following day, and the U.S. team would go on to lose the gold medal to the Soviet Union in a game that is controversial to this day.

But for Burleson and many other athletes, sports didn't mean much in the aftermath of tragedy.

"It was such a different feeling after what happened to the Israelis," he said. "A lot of us voted for the games not to continue. There was no enthusiasm and excitement left."

And Burleson is left with vivid memories.

"I can still see that concrete wall with all the blemishes in it, and I remember praying, with that gun to my head, that I wouldn't die," he said. "I've had a few bad dreams over the years. I'll always hear those women crying, their whimpers and their feet shuffling, that gun to my head. I can close my eyes now and see it all very clearly.

"At age 20, you don't realize that people can be so cruel and vicious, that kind of hatred. But now, when you see what's going on in the world, you understand that there is a lot of evil. I saw up close that evil."