Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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www.BLUEANDGOLD.com NOV. 6, 2021 61 The Great Lakes Naval Station, dedi- cated in 1911 by President William H. Taft, housed about 1,500 sailors prior to the war. Now, that number was closer to 50,000. A total of 125,000 sailors would be trained at Great Lakes during the course of the war. Not all activities were strictly mili- tary. Legendary band l ea d e r a n d m a rc h composer John Philip Sousa led the Great Lakes Naval Station Band starting in mid- 1917. And the base fielded baseball and football teams com- prised of some of the star athletes of the day, including: • George Halas, a three-sport star from the University of Illinois • John "Paddy" Driscoll, former star Northwestern quarterback who also played baseball for the Chicago Cubs in 1917 • Jimmy Conzelman, champion boxer and football star out of St. Louis • Charlie Bachman, the Chicagoan who was a star lineman at Notre Dame in 1915-16, lined up at center • Former Notre Dame standouts Em- met Keefe and Deak Jones, who were the starting guards for the Bluejackets The Bluejackets had a challenging schedule, and already owned victo- ries on trips to Iowa (10-0) and Illinois (7-0). They were coming off a scoreless tie with Northwestern when they were met by a boisterous crowd at Cartier, delighted to be watching Notre Dame football again. Gipp and Lambeau teamed up in the Irish backfield, running behind a cou- ple of new linemen Gipp helped bring in from his home base in Michigan's Upper Peninsula — Hartley "Hunk" An- derson and Ojay Larson. In the first quarter, Gipp and his backfield mates Lambeau and Pete Bahan "rounded the sailors' line with clocklike regularity, taking the ball up to the Great Lakes goalpost," where quar- terback Bill Mohn broke off tackle for a touchdown run and a 7-0 Notre Dame lead. That held up until the third quar- ter, when Driscoll got loose on a 35-yard touchdown run and Great Lakes tied it 7-7. The teams battled through a score- less fourth quarter. The tie was considered an excellent showing for Notre Dame against the more experienced military men. "I am satisfied with the game," Rockne told reporters. "We went into the game like underdogs and gave them a go o d f i g h t . T h e game shows we have as good a team as any in the West." Two days after the game, on Nov. 11, an armistice ended the Great War, causing eruptions of celebra- tion throughout South Bend and across the nation. The Bluejackets continued their season undefeated, winning at Rutgers (54-14) and Navy (7-6), then crushing Purdue, 27-0 to finish the regular sea- son 6-0-2. In the Rose Bowl game be- fore a crowd of 26,000 on Jan. 1, 1919 in Pasadena, Calif., Great Lakes blanked the Mare Island Marines, the Pacific Coast military champions 17-0, with Halas named the game's most valuable player. By the next fall, life had returned to more-or-less normal across the coun- try, and football came back strong. Gipp again played for Rockne and led an un- defeated Notre Dame squad. Lambeau returned to Green Bay, organized a team and persuaded his employer, the Indian Packing Company, to pony up $500 for uniforms, creating the Green Bay Pack- ers. He simultaneously coached Green Bay East High School, where his star player was Jim Crowley, a future Four Horseman at Notre Dame. Halas focused on baseball in 1919, advancing from the minors to play 12 games as a New York Yankees outfielder. In the fall, he played pro football for the Hammond All-Stars. By 1920, he had moved to the Decatur Staleys, a team he would lead as the Chicago Bears for decades to come. ✦ Jim Lefebvre is an award-winning Notre Dame author and leads the Knute Rockne Memorial Society. He can be reached at: jlefebvre@blueandgold.com "I am satisfied with the game. We went into the game like underdogs and gave them a good fight. The game shows we have as good a team as any in the West." KNUTE ROCKNE