Irish Echoes: The Great Lakes Naval Station provided opposition for ND
When Notre Dame renews its rivalry with Navy Nov. 6, it will mark the 175th game the Fighting Irish have played against the three service academies.
The Irish and the Midshipmen had met in 93 consecutive seasons, from 1926-2019, before the pandemic knocked last year’s game off the schedule. Notre Dame holds an all-time advantage of 79-13-1 in the series.
Army, which first played the Irish in the classic 1913 battle, has been ND’s opponent in 51 games, with Notre Dame holding a 39-8-4 mark. The Irish have met the Air Force Academy on 30 occasions and have a 24-6 record against the Falcons.
Despite Notre Dame’s all-time record of 142-27-5 against the service academies, one thing is certain: you can always expect a four-quarter, all-out effort from these spirited teams.
But there is one military opponent against which Notre Dame has a losing record. The Irish are 1-2-2 all time versus the Bluejackets of the Great Lakes Naval Station, located on Lake Michigan near Waukegan, Ill. The five games include four during World War II (one each in 1942-45) and an epic showdown during World War I.
The Nov. 9, 1918 game at Cartier Field brought together four of the biggest names in the history of football: Notre Dame icons Knute Rockne and George Gipp, and NFL pioneers Curly Lambeau and George Halas.
A year unlike any other
Rockne took over the reigns as head football coach and athletics director at Notre Dame in the spring of 1918, at age 30. Many of his contemporaries had their first college head coaching job in their early 20s, right after their playing days ended. Rockne had only become a college student at 22, graduated at 26, then spent four years as Jesse Harper’s assistant.
Finally, he was in charge — just as the world seemed to fall apart. The dual challenges of war and disease created unprecedented difficulties. Notre Dame men who had been on the football teams of 1916 and 1917 were now fighting on the battlefields of Europe. Other Notre Dame families were burying loved ones cut down by the worldwide influenza pandemic.
Putting together a football team and scheduling games became a low priority, and a difficult chore, on many campuses. In particular, wartime travel restrictions made it nearly impossible to plan trips. Games were postponed, rescheduled and often canceled altogether. Notre Dame’s scheduled trips to West Point, N.Y., and Lincoln, Neb., were among the casualties.
Notre Dame managed to play one game in September, a 26-6 win at Case Tech in Cleveland, then none at all in October. For most of October, all public gatherings in South Bend were banned due to the influenza outbreak. Meanwhile, the mood on campus was somber as reports of the deaths of former students and alumni came in as the Great War raged on.
Finally, in November, things seemed to improve. An end to the war seemed imminent and the largest crest of the pandemic eased. Rockne’s team was able to make a day trip to Crawfordsville, Ind., and defeated Wabash 67-7 Nov. 2. Next up was a scheduled visit from the Great Lakes Naval Station team, the Bluejackets.
Rockne was determined to make the game happen, proclaiming “the game will positively be played if they have to battle behind closed gates, although everything now indicates that the ban will be lifted and the public allowed to see this contest.”
The Great Lakes Naval Station, dedicated 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 military. Legendary band leader and march composer John Philip Sousa led the Great Lakes Naval Station Band starting in mid-1917. And the base fielded baseball and football teams comprised 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 Emmet Keefe and Deak Jones, who were the starting guards for the Bluejackets
The Bluejackets had a challenging schedule, and already owned victories 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 couple of new linemen Gipp helped bring in from his home base in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula — Hartley “Hunk” Anderson 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 quarterback Bill Mohn broke off tackle for a touchdown run and a 7-0 Notre Dame lead. That held up until the third quarter, when Driscoll got loose on a 35-yard touchdown run and Great Lakes tied it 7-7. The teams battled through a scoreless 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 good fight. The 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 celebration 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 season 6-0-2. In the Rose Bowl game before 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 country, and football came back strong. Gipp again played for Rockne and led an undefeated 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 Packers. 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.
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