SPORTS
ILLUSTRATED
SI.COM
JUNE 2022
75It was, of course, preposterous on its face—the
World War II equivalent of, say, The Rock suddenly
showing up at basic training as an instructor. Then
again, the entire tableau was already a study in
surrealism, a straight-out-of-Hollywood conceit.
Camp Ritchie had been a vacation resort, framed by
the Blue Ridge Mountains, just under the Pennsylvania
state line. After the war broke out, though, it was quickly
morphed into a military intelligence training center.
The U.S. Army recognized the need for translators and
interrogators who spoke f luent German and understood
the culture of the enemy. What better location to train
than this, nestled unassumingly in the countryside but
easily accessible to D.C.’s decision makers?
Camp Ritchie’s soldiers, such as they were, did not
exactly cut the figure of G.I. Joe. Many of the recruits
were not only new to the United States military, they
were also new to the United States. And a large subset
were German immigrants who now were preparing to
fight in and against their country of origin.
The Ritchie Boys, as these outsiders were quickly
shorthanded, were mostly intellectuals, more likely to
have reported for duty equipped with musical instru-
ments and books than with guns and knives. And now
they were going to be trained by a pro wrestler?
That rumor crossed the DMZ into truth one after-
noon when a few cadets walked by the camp’s phone
booth. There they saw a man, shorn of his famous
beard, per Army rules, but instantly recognizable for
his sheer girth. He was roughly the size of one of the
bluffs that sprung up behind the camp, and here he
was, on the exterior of the glass cube, extending onearm inside, yanking out the receiver. Unable to squeeze
in his 320-pound frame, this was the only way that
Frank Simmons Leavitt—Man Mountain Dean, as he was
widely known outside of Camp Ritchie—could place a call.
As the name implied, Man Mountain was a consider-
able physical specimen. He doubled many of the other
soldiers in weight. Though he stood a modest six feet tall,
he still had eight inches on the median Ritchie Boy. And
while Leavitt’s precise age remains a source of debate,
he likely arrived at Camp Richie in his early 50s, making
him a full three decades older than many of his trainees.
When World War II broke out, Man Mountain had
been coming off the height of his popularity. Not much
earlier, he was pinballing around the country—and then
the world—as a bearded babyface, theatrically tossing
opponents out of the ring, f lattening them on the canvas.
For this he could command upward of $1,500 a night,
which was more than the annual per capita income in
the U.S. at the time. And when Leavitt wasn’t inside the
squared circle, he was on the silver screen, starring in
movies and working as a stuntman.
For all of these surface differences, though, Leavitt
was, by all accounts, beloved by the Ritchie Boys. He had
charisma to burn, and the kind that rarely intimidated.
Soldiers listened raptly to his stories about wrestling romps
through venues familiar to them across Europe. They
gawked as he put on heroic eating displays. Here was an
American celebrity dispensing Americanized nicknames—
every Gustav became a Gus—and teaching them slang.
Man Mountain, though, wasn’t just the equivalent of
the cool camp counselor. He was also a brutally effec-
tive teacher. According to K. Lang-Slattery, who wroteFOR A FEW DAYS IN 1943, THE RUMOR ROCKETED
AROUND THE CAMP RITCHIE MILITARY TRAINING CENTER
IN THE MARYLAND HINTERLANDS.
THE SCUTTLEBUTT WENT SOMETHING LIKE THIS:A FAMOUS AND CARTOONISHLY
MUSCLED PROFESSIONAL WRESTLER,
WHO LATELY HAD BEEN MOONLIGHTING AS A MOVIE STAR,
WOULD BE GIVING THE NEW SOLDIERS A CRASH
COURSE IN HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT BEFORE THEIR
DISPATCH TO THE WESTERN FRONT.AL
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