Scott Radley: Five Hamilton men were accidentally entwined in the Munich massacre. Here’s their incredible story

It was shortly before the 1996 Atlanta Olympics that he was asked to speak to his eldest daughter's high school class about his experience at the Games.

Twenty-four years earlier, David Hart had been a water polo player for Canada in Munich. Remarkably, one of five Hamiltonians on that team. That afternoon at her school, he told the story of the competition, the other athletes and generally explained what the experience was like.

Then he opened the floor to questions.

Mr. Hart," one student said. You were in Munich. Isn't that where the terrorist attack happened?"

He'd never really talked about the assault on the Israeli athletes. Not for years, anyway. So he wasn't ready for what happened as he began to answer. In front of 30 teenage girls, he unexpectedly began sobbing deeply.

Yes, he managed to say, those were the Olympics with the terrorists.

The same terrorists he'd unwittingly helped get into the village.

Labour Day in 1972 was shaping up to be one to remember for the boys from Hamilton.

While Bill Vanderpol hung back at the athletes' village in Munich, David Hart, Robert Thompson, Jack Gauldie and Rick Pugliese (all who'd made the Canadian Olympic water polo team after learning under Thompson's legendary dad, Jimmy) headed over to the pool to watch Mark Spitz claim his record seventh gold medal.

From there it was a 15-minute taxi ride to the Hofbrauhaus, the country's most famous tavern, where they spent a few hours with 500 or 600 other joyful Olympians, locals and tourists hoisting giant steins of ale and taking full advantage of Munich's night life.

We were feeling no pain," Thompson says.

But the main event of the evening remained.

Game 2 of the Canada-Soviet Summit Series was beginning at 1 a.m. The Olympics were big. Yet for Canadians - even a bunch of 20-somethings dancing to oompah music in a rollicking beer hall half a world away - this was bigger. Far bigger.

As the clock slipped past midnight they headed to the CBC control centre just outside the athletes' village, which was the one place they knew they could find a TV showing the action. Then saw exactly what they'd hoped to see.

(Canada) won the game so we were happy," Thompson says.

More like euphoric, Hart says. They were still buzzing as they made the short walk from the studio to the back entrance of the village. Where they discovered the gate was unexpectedly locked.

The decision that followed wasn't difficult. The compound was enormous. It was approaching 4:30 in the morning. They were tired. Walking to the front entrance would take forever. Their room was only about 50 metres from where they stood.

We're supposed to be athletes," Gauldie remembers thinking. We can vault a ... chain-link fence."

Especially with no guards around.

The last time the Games were in Germany was 1936. Those were the Nazi Olympics, a mix of propaganda, militaristic muscle-flexing and more than a dash of racism. Three and a half decades later a concerted effort was being made by organizers to paint a completely different picture. Security was light. There were no visible guns, few uniforms, not even any barbed wire around the perimeter.

Despite all that, Hart worried hopping the barricade might get them in trouble. That concern wasn't shared by the 10 or 15 Canadian athletes in their official gear who were now standing with the Hamilton guys. They were all ready to give it a go. As were the other athletes mingling with them and also clearly looking for a way in.

The ones wearing generic track suits and carrying duffel bags.

No, the Canadians didn't know them. They didn't recognize the men or their outfits. They weren't sure which country they were from. But who else would be trying to get back into the village at this time of night besides other athletes? They had to be members of some other team also returning from their own fun night on the town.

So together they all started climbing.

We were boosting everybody up," Thompson says. And then falling over (the other side)."

Everybody was helping everybody get over the fence," Hart adds.

They helped us," one of those unknown men would later tell Time Magazine. Hey man, give me your bag.'"

It seemed like the very epitome of the Olympic spirit. The brotherhood of man and respect for your opponents and all that. Giving a stranger and a fellow competitor a hand was a friendly end to their night.

Seconds later in our room, Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!'" Hart says. Like firecrackers going off."

The world quickly came to learn that eight heavily armed members of a Palestine Liberation Organization faction calling themselves Black September had stormed the Israeli residence, had already killed two members of the team and were holding nine others hostage. These captives would be released when a couple hundred Palestinian prisoners were set free, the guy in charge announced.

The Hamilton guys knew none of this. Little, anyway.

There may have been 900 million people following every development on TV, but with no set in their room, the people closest to the scene knew the least about it. Whatever information they were getting was coming by word of mouth. And by what they could see.

Looking out their window, Hart, Gauldie, Thompson, Pugliese and Vanderpol had a clear, live view of what was happening just across a small pathway. They watched the terrorist with the balaclava - the one in the photo that became the signature image of the crisis - come out on the porch. They saw the leader with the white hat come out in the open. Thompson recalls thinking he had control of the entire world at that moment.

We're 100 yards from him," Hart says. We're staring right at him."

Security forces that had been invisible the night before were now everywhere. A German sniper situated himself in their room with his gun pointed out the window at the terrorists. Gauldie remembers thinking he'd never seen a weapon pointed at anyone before.

By 5 p.m., it was clear a squad of police officers was preparing to stage an assault on the terrorists. This worried Gauldie. If this situation was going to deteriorate, it was now. Everyone was told to get off the roof, where some had been watching, and take cover, even under their beds.

Then, as suddenly as the warning came, the assault was called off.

As the men talk of peering over the window ledge to see what was going on and share other details, there are a number of tiny, irrelevant differences in their stories. It's the reality of different people seeing things from slightly different perspectives. But there was one moment each remembers exactly the same way.

Late in the day, after the Hamilton crew had moved to a new spot a floor or two below their room, the terrorists started to move their prisoners. Using the barrels of their machine guns as prods to direct the bound Israelis toward a bus, the entire caravan passed directly in front of the Canadians.

We watched this from point-blank range," Hart says. They were all blindfolded. You could see them. They were shaking. They were just terrified."

It was horrible. Half a century later, it still bothers him.

But then it was over. As the bus left for the airport and the crisis became mobile, the Canadians who'd been locked down all day were allowed to leave their dorms. Most went to the cafeteria to get some food since they hadn't eaten. As they did, they silently watched a TV that was covering the story.

The place erupted in cheers when the announcement was made that the standoff hand ended and the athletes were safe. Then went absolutely silent a few hours later when they learned a gunfight on the tarmac and a grenade thrown into a helicopter had led to the death of all nine remaining Israelis, a German police officer and five of the terrorists.

They're all gone," ABC broadcaster Jim McKay solemnly told the world.

As the world's media began to piece things together over the next few days and lay out how it all happened, reports emerged that the terrorists had come over the fence with a bunch of Americans who'd unwittingly helped. In a story that was already entirely shocking, this was a stunning detail.

Yet, as he sat and read the dispatches and noticed where and when they said this breach happened, Hart quickly realized one key fact was wrong.

Oh my God," he thought to himself. We came over with them. It was us."

Each man came to that same conclusion. And had to wrap their head around what it meant.

Gauldie - who went on to become Dr. Jack Gauldie, a professor of pathology and molecular biology at McMaster University and vice-president of research at St. Joseph's Healthcare System - says he never struggled with it. Beyond the sadness for the murdered athletes and the disappointment in humanity, that is. There was absolutely no possible way he or any of the others could've known what those men at the fence had planned.

Same with Thompson, who went on to work for Frost Fence and Wire (yes, he's considered the irony that he ended up working for a fence company). He's never felt guilt for the same reason as Gauldie. How could he possibly have known?

Hart, on the other hand, has struggled with it. He was only 20 in Munich. His hall-of-fame career as a water polo coach and innovator was years off. For a while he questioned whether there was something he could've done. There wasn't, but carrying this weight felt like a post-traumatic stress disorder, he says.

When he returned to the village with his wife and daughters in 1998 - it's now an apartment complex - and stood outside the Israeli rooms, he felt a pang. And when he got up in front of that classroom ...

Holy crap," he thought to himself once he found his composure. Where the hell did this come from?"

Fortuitously, it didn't take long for them all to have a chance to cleanse their Olympic palate. Pugliese and Hart competed in Montreal four years later. Vanderpol was an official at those 1976 Games, while Gauldie did colour commentary for TV. Thompson coached in 1984 in Los Angeles.

But the Games had changed. They had become an armed fortress. There were now checkpoints and guards and suspicion and fear. Something beautiful had been ruined, Gauldie says.

The whole experience didn't tear them apart, though. To the contrary. For five decades, the five remained incredibly close. Pugliese - who died in 2020 - was in Hart's wedding party. Gauldie and Thompson were hanging out earlier this week. Both attended Vanderpol's funeral last month.

And what did they say over the years when they talked about that day in 1972?

Among the five of us," Thompson says, we've never, ever talked about it."

Scott Radley is a Hamilton-based columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: sradley@thespec.com