At West Point, Syracuse’s Edward “Eddie” Doyle was remembered for his toughness.
Despite his diminutive size he was described by a fellow cadet as a “man who doesn’t know what ‘take it easy means.” He was at his best when the odds were against him.
“He is a scrapper,” the Pottsville (PA) Republican wrote of him in 1925.
Born in 1898, the son of a Syracuse patrolman, Doyle was a local high school football star, played and coached for the Army football team at West Point, was an NFL champion (briefly), appeared in a Hollywood film, and served in both World Wars.
His story seems like an appropriate one to tell this Memorial Day weekend.
Eddie Doyle
Eddie Doyle holds the football in the center of the first row in this photo of the 1916 football championship team from Syracuse's North High.Courtesy of the Onondaga Historical Association
Doyle first made a name for himself in 1916. He was chosen to be captain of the North High School football team which won the City Interscholastic Title that year.
“Captain Eddie Doyle has proved a splendid leader as well as a player,” The Post-Standard said on Dec. 2, 1916. “His work in the backfield has been on the sensational order in more games than one and he has led his men to victories which had seemed certain defeats.”
In the season’s final game, he scored three touchdowns against Syracuse Tech on a sloppy field at Archbold Stadium.
Head coach Walter Sullivan said Doyle was “one of the gamest players he has ever had under his wing.”
“Doyle never knows when he is licked,” he added.
Being the smallest of the city’s high schools then, it was perhaps fitting that no football team in Syracuse history to that point had been celebrated quite like North High’s 1916 champions. The team was feted with an elaborate banquet at the Yates Hotel, attended by 200 guests.
It’s not clear if Doyle graduated from high school. He was certainly smart enough, newspapers often reported him appearing on the honor roll.
Eddie Doyle
This early 20th century postcard shows Syracuse's North High School, where Edward Doyle led the 1916 city football team as captain to a championship.Post-Standard File Photo
On April 23, 1917, Doyle said he was not returning to school, which was reported as a blow for North’s baseball team, for whom he was a “first class” pitcher.
Seventeen days before, the United States had entered the First World War and Doyle was eager to enlist.
He joined the famous 27th New York Division and served with the 102nd Ammunition Train in France. He was mustered out of the service in April 1919.
Doyle, promoted to an Army Corporal during the war, was given a hero’s welcome when he returned to his hometown.
“Corp Edward Doyle was tendered perhaps one of the heartiest welcomes of any of the returning 27th heroes,” the Syracuse Journal reported. “He was surrounded by a bevy of North Side admirers, including parents, sisters, schoolmates, who rushed forward to grasp him by the hand.”
He briefly attended Syracuse University but, after having a taste of Army life, decided to enter West Point. He received an appointment from Congressman Walter Magee in 1920.
Doyle returned to the football field for the Black Knights playing defense, despite often being the smallest man on the field.
Doyle stood five-foot-eight and weighed 175 pounds, and played baseball, lacrosse, and boxed as a welterweight at West Point, in addition to football.
His academic career was sidetracked on the gridiron.
In 1924, after sustaining a concussion in a game against Yale, his grades suffered, and he was discharged from West Point.
The fledgling National Football League rescued him from a hated shoe clerk job in New York City.
In 1925, he joined the Pottsville Maroons in Pennsylvania.
He scored two touchdowns for the club which won the championship, despite the title being taken away from them by the league for rules violations.
While in Pennsylvania, Doyle met his future wife, Emily. The couple had two sons.
After two years in the NFL, he moved on. Football was never going to be his career. The Army was.
“Doyle lives, talks and dreams of the traditions of a soldier,” Pottsville Republican sports editor Walter Farquhar once wrote.
He left football, returned to his dreaded clerk job, then enrolled at New York University.
In 1926, he was granted a regular Army commission. Doyle served as a lieutenant at Fort Riley in Kansas and Fort Sill in Oklahoma.
Regarded as one if the finest horseback riders in the Army, in 1930, Doyle appeared in a Hollywood film, 1929’s “His First Command,” riding a grey horse in a steeplechase.
In 1934, he returned to West Point to be an assistant football coach.
He caught the eye of his superior, Colonel George S. Patton, who was impressed by Doyle’s dedication.
There was no role it seemed that Doyle could not do, Patton thought.
Eleven months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, 44-year-old Eddie Doyle was fighting in another World War, far away from the football fields of Syracuse, West Point, and Pottsville.
Eddie Doyle
As World War II’s Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa, gets underway, troops behind a large American flag, left, hit the beaches near Algiers, Algeria, on Nov. 8, 1942. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Public Domain Photographs, 1882 - 1962
When the war started, he was transferred from Texas to Air Force Intelligence in Scotland where he was stationed until the invasion of North Africa began.
On Nov. 8, 1942, Lt. Colonel Doyle was leading a charge into Algiers, Algeria when he was killed by a sniper’s bullet.
He was one of the first American casualties in the North African campaign.
Doyle’s death supposedly caused General George Patton, known as “Old Blood and Guts,” to openly cry.
Syracuse heard the news on December 10.
“Once more the war has come close to Syracuse,” a Herald-journal editorial printed the next day.
Doyle’s “soldierly qualities and his inherent manhood won for him promotion after promotion after he entered military service.”
“The loss of such a one is a part of the high price which the nation must pay for victory in this war of survival.”
This feature is a part of CNY Nostalgia, a section on syracuse.com. Send your ideas and curiosities to Johnathan Croyle at jcroyle@syracuse.com or call 315-416-3882.