Long thought to be Americans, it was actually Canadians who jumped the fence with terrorists at the 1972 Munich Games before the infamous massacre of Israelis in the Olympic village.

Canadian water polo players, who have lived with this for 40 years, revealed their story to the Star.

“They had to have come over with us,” said Robert Thompson, one of the men at the fence and at the time a 24-year-old member of the Canadian water polo team. “We would have assumed they were just other athletes.”

Eleven Israeli athletes and coaches were killed in the Munich massacre when members of Black September, a Palestinian terrorist organization, jumped the fence that protected the Olympic village and launched their deadly attack.

In his only full interview about the massacre, the last surviving member of the Black September commando recalled how easily they penetrated the village in the early morning of Sept. 4.

“As we were climbing over the fence, we ran into a group of American athletes who were sneaking in after a night out,” Jamal Al-Gashey said in the 1999 documentary One Day in September. “The funny thing is we actually helped each other to climb over.”

In the years since, Al-Gashey’s sneering suggestion that Americans unknowingly helped provide cover that made the attack possible has been repeated in every history of the event and become one of its key ironies.

However, the young men beside him weren’t American. They were almost certainly Canadian.

“We believe it was us. Definitely,” said David Hart, Thompson’s friend and teammate, who was also there that night. He was only 20. “It’s possible there was an American or two in the group, but the vast majority of us were Canadians. How would they have known the difference?”

In the hours to come on the Olympic movement’s darkest day, Thompson, Hart and other Canadians would be in a unique position to witness history. Within minutes, the terrorists would have invaded the Israeli rooms, killing two people. It would end with a firefight on the tarmac of a nearby military base, during which the remaining nine Israeli hostages were killed.

The witnessing of what led up to that final moment haunts them still.

The ’72 Games were an effort by Germany to dim the memory of Berlin ’36 and what came afterward. In keeping with the event’s motto — “The Happy Games” — security was a hands-off affair.

“If you had a (national team) jacket and you looked like an athlete, you could walk right in,” said Hart. Several of their friends from home did.

A 10-foot-high chain link enclosure surrounded the village. Rather than walk around to the front entrance, late-night returnees had gotten into the habit of hopping that fence and walking to the dorms at the back.

That’s where the Canadian men were staying, beside the Israeli residence in Building 31.

On that night 40 years ago, Thompson and Hart were in a large group of a few dozen athletes headed back from the CBC media centre, just outside the village. They’d gone there to watch the second game of the Canada-Soviet Summit Series, being played in Toronto. After getting trounced in the opening game, Canada had come back that night to win 4-1. The mood was festive.

It was around 4:20 a.m. The Canadians were the only ones with reason to be out quite so late. Al-Gashey recalled that the athletes he met at the fence had been drinking, as the Canadians had been.

Thompson and Hart were with two friends and teammates — Jack Gauldie and Rick Pugliese — in the midst of the larger group. All four were from Hamilton. After climbing the fence, they walked a short downhill pathway, then past the door leading into the Israeli apartments.

“I can still see that door,” Hart says.

They walked a few dozen steps further to their own dormitory and were undressing for bed when they heard gunshots. Perhaps five or 10 minutes had passed since they’d gone over the fence.

At the time, they mistook the shots for firecrackers.

“We thought someone had won a medal and was celebrating,” Hart said.

Those shots were fired just after the invasion of the Israeli rooms, killing two athletes who fought back.

None the wiser, the Canadians went to sleep.

When they woke up around 9 a.m., they were told to stay in their rooms. They were told “a tragedy is happening.” They only found out about the hostages by turning on the television.

Once caught up on the story, they didn’t need the TV to see what was going on. The focus of the world’s attention was now happening just outside the window.

The building housing the Canadians was parallel to the Israeli building. Many Canadians, including the water polo players, spent that day sitting on the roof or their balconies, watching the masked attackers as they wandered around inside the Israeli apartments.

“You could see the negotiator walking back and forth. You could see the guys in the room with their machine guns,” Thompson said.

Only 75 metres separated them. Nobody thought to evacuate the village or halt the competition.

In late afternoon, the Canadians were warned to hide under their beds. German security was about to attack. That assault never happened. They didn’t bother hiding anyway.

Shortly before 9 p.m., it was reported that the terrorists and their hostages would leave the village via helicopter. They would travel to the aircraft on a bus.

Thompson, Hart and several other Canadians moved to another building, one housing the Canadian medical and training staff. This structure directly overlooked the underground garage where the bus pulled in.

One of the other water polo players, Alan Pyle, ran to the roof of the building to get a better vantage. Pyle was spotted there by one of the attackers, who very purposefully took aim at him with his assault rifle, then motioned for him to leave. Pyle left.

Up until this point, both Thompson and Hart recalled the surreal nature of the day.

“Nobody really believed it was happening,” Thompson said.

Only 50 metres from where they sat watching out a window, it was about to get very real.

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A pair of attackers emerged slowly. After casing the bus, they brought out the Israelis, blindfolded and roped together.

“When I saw them come out, and the way they were being treated, it disgusted me,” Thompson said. “They were just pushing them like cattle . . . They were terrified.”

Hart, who was also in the room, said, “We were being told constantly not to lift our heads up, but it was just too compelling. It was as if you were watching a movie.”

As the bus left, Thompson sprinted out onto the roadway.

“I don’t know why. I just had to see that bus leave.”

He was surrounded by newsmen who’d run in after him. An interview he gave to BBC, in which he seems stunned by events, appears in One Day in September.

They knew the Israelis were gone when the helicopters lifted off, bound for a nearby military base. Most of the Canadians drifted over to the cafeteria to eat. Just after midnight, it was announced that all the hostages had been released.

After a short bout of cheers, the Canadians went back to bed. When they woke, they did so to another tragedy. After a gunfight broke out on the tarmac, all the hostages were killed by their captors.

There was a memorial attended by 80,000 people.

As a senior member of the team, Thompson went. For reasons he finds hard to define, Hart didn’t.

There was an athletes-only vote on whether or not to complete the games. The majority of the competitors wanted to finish the competition.

The entire Canadian team travelled home together once the games ended. Thompson recalls that the national obsession with the Summit Series overshadowed events in Munich.

Both Hart and Thompson used the same word to describe their feelings in the aftermath — “numb.”

“In my mind, it was over. Maybe I pushed it to be over,” Thompson said. “I didn’t really want to visualize that it had happened.”

From time to time, some of the members of that Olympic team will get together and relive the glory days. September 4th, 1972 is not something they talk about.

“We just carried on. We never let it affect us,” said Thompson.

Hart tried to do likewise. He went to two more Olympics.

Twenty-four years after he’d watched nine Israelis being marched out to their deaths, Hart was asked to speak to his daughter’s high-school class ahead of the 1996 Atlanta games.

He gave a short talk to 30 teenage girls. Afterward, there was a Q and A. One of the girls asked, “Mr. Hart, you were at the Munich games. Isn’t that where the terrorist attack was?”

“I just broke down in front of them,” Hart said. “It’s almost a feeling of guilt that I did not go to the memorial service . . . The reason I may have blocked it out at the time was that it was a dream to go the Olympic Games and someone destroyed that dream.”

Hart didn’t tell his old pals from Hamilton about that day in the classroom.

As he tells this story from his home in Ottawa, the phone line goes silent. Hart is crying softly at the other end.

“It really caught me off guard,” Hart said, struggling to keep his voice steady. “From time to time, it still does.”