Bohemia Historical Society
The Suicide Squad
The Bohemia Fire Department’s undefeated racing team, 1934–1938 — from the memories of Bishop Emil A. Wcela
In the 1930s, the pride of Bohemia wasn’t found only in its cigar factories, its potato fields, or the Saturday-night sound of the Wcela Brothers’ Orchestra. It was found in the blistering speed and bone-jarring nerve of the Bohemia Fire Department’s racing team — a band of young men known across Suffolk County by an ominous nickname: the “Suicide Squad.” Between 1934 and 1938, they were undefeated. And on summer afternoons, the whole hamlet would turn out to watch them run.
The Origins
A Long Island Sport Born of Necessity
The “Suicide Squad” was not unique to Bohemia. Across Long Island in the 1920s and 1930s, volunteer fire departments fielded similar drill teams, and “Suicide Squad” was a common early nickname for these outfits — the East Meadow Fire Department’s racing team, for example, used the same name before rebranding in later years as the Meadowlarks. The sport itself, today known as firematic racing or drill team racing, traces its roots to the late nineteenth century, when volunteer companies began competing in tournaments to show off the speed and precision of their hose work and ladder drills.
For a hamlet like Bohemia, where the Bohemia Fire Department had been formally organized on January 30, 1893, these competitions served real, overlapping purposes. They sharpened the volunteers’ skills under pressure. They built camaraderie between neighboring departments. And — perhaps most importantly in an all-volunteer service — they gave young men a reason to stay involved, a way to channel athletic ambition into the protection of their own community.
The Setting
The Track in the Woods
The races were not held in a stadium. They were held right in the heart of Bohemia, on a dedicated practice track with a wooden ladder-target structure, located midway between Church Street and Union Street. Today the area is fully residential, but as Bishop Wcela remembered, in his boyhood “the area was wooded then, no residences on either side.”
For the young Emil — the future bishop, then a boy of three or four when the squad’s streak began — these were unforgettable afternoons. He, his sister Lorraine, and his father would walk down to the track to take in the spectacle, “rooting for the team” and “enjoying frankfurters” while uniformed neighbors barreled toward the wooden structure at full sprint.
The Events
A “Dangerous Sport”
Bishop Wcela did not use the squad’s name lightly. He called it “a dangerous sport at times,” and the description holds up. The events demanded a mixture of foot speed, upper-body strength, and pure nerve.
The signature event was the three-man ladder race. The team’s race truck — “especially equipped to carry the ladder,” the bishop recalled — would race down the track with the squad aboard. At the structure, a “spiker” would anchor the ladder as it was hurled against the wood. Three climbers would then scramble up. Two would reach the top to hoist a “man-sized dummy” over the rungs. A fourth man waiting below would catch the dummy, “slide down as fast as possible,” and sprint with it to a designated finish line. A single bobble — a slip on a rung, a missed hand-off — could mean a broken arm or worse, all of it happening at full speed in front of a cheering crowd of neighbors.
The hose events had their own complications, especially for Bohemia. The hamlet did not yet have municipal water lines or street hydrants in the 1930s, which meant the team’s practice runs at home were necessarily dry. Their tournament performances — where they had to actually connect to live hydrants, charge the hose, and hit a target with a stream of water under strict time limits — were thus genuine performances under unfamiliar conditions. That they were undefeated despite this handicap says something about both their skill and their grit.
Fall 1934
The Same Young Men Played Football, Too
These were not specialists. The young men who ran the ladder races for the Fire Department on summer afternoons were the same men who pulled on cleats in the fall for the Bohemia Steamrollers, the village’s club football team. The Suffolk County News of November 9, 1934 — the same edition that carried news of the Wcela Brothers’ Orchestra playing at the Sunrise Hotel — reported on a Steamrollers game against the South Shore A.C. Bears of Bay Shore. The Steamrollers’ lineup that afternoon included a backfield of Reichel, Stejskal, Magnussen, and Hartman, and a line that included Ripak, Kovanda, and G. Huml.
Read those names against the Suicide Squad roster below and the overlap is unmistakable. Reichel, Stejskal, Hartman, Magnusson, Ripak, Kovanda — six of the same men, in the same village, in the same year, on two different teams. In the spring and summer they ran ladder drills in the woods between Church and Union. In the fall they ran pass routes against Bay Shore and Amityville. A small Czech hamlet had built itself a complete athletic culture out of about twenty young men, and they wore every uniform in the village by turns.
The Team
A Roster of Legends
Bishop Wcela’s memoir highlights two figures in particular. Frank “Babe” Tmay was, in his telling, “the fastest ladder climber” on the squad — and possibly in the county. The driver of the race truck, Joseph Navratil, was the bishop’s own uncle.
But it was a third name that the bishop returned to with the most feeling. Richard Charles Souhrada, a member of the squad, tried again and again to make the ladder climb work — and, in the bishop’s frank assessment, “with no success.” What Souhrada lacked as a climber, however, he made up for in a quieter, deeper courage. A 1939 graduate of Sayville High School (the nearest secondary school for many Bohemia youngsters of his generation), Souhrada went to war in the 1940s and was killed in action in Italy during World War II — a death tied in family memory to the long, costly months of the Anzio campaign of 1944.
Richard was brave enough to protect us in World War II.
Bishop Emil A. Wcela
The full squad roster, preserved in a photograph in the Society’s archives, captures the broader fellowship.
Front Row William “Scoby” Schovanec, Rudolph Kosatko, John Reichel, Andrew Reichel, Harry Kovanda, Victor Huml
Middle Row Joseph Navratil, Frank Satava, Jack Heitman, Emil Cejka, Frank Tmay Jr., William Hartman, Barney Stejskal, Harry Magnusson
Back Row Robert Ripak, Joseph Tmay
The Legacy
Five Glorious Summers
They were the sons and brothers of the village — Czech surnames mostly, with a few neighbors of other backgrounds folded in. By day they worked the cigar benches, the farms, the local shops; by evening and weekend they trained on the wooded track between Church and Union. For five glorious summers in the middle of the Great Depression, they were the undefeated champions of Suffolk County.
A few years later, that same generation would be scattered across the world fighting in the Second World War, and some — like Richard Souhrada — would not come home. The undefeated streak ended where so many local stories of the 1930s ended: on the beaches and hill towns of a continent at war. But on the wooden ladder racks between Church and Union, on those summer afternoons before the world changed, the Suicide Squad of Bohemia was as fast and as fearless as any team Long Island ever fielded.
The Squad at a Glance
1893
Fire Department Organized
The Bohemia Fire Department is formally organized on January 30, laying the groundwork for the volunteer culture that would produce the racing team.
1934
The Streak Begins
The Suicide Squad starts its undefeated run on the wooded track between Church and Union Streets — and the Steamrollers take the field that fall.
1934 – 1938
Champions of Suffolk County
Five straight summers undefeated — even without hydrants at home to practice the hose events on.
1939
A Squad Member Graduates
Richard Charles Souhrada graduates from Sayville High School before shipping out with his generation to the Second World War.
1944
Killed in Action, Italy
Richard Souhrada is killed in action in Italy, his death tied in family memory to the costly Anzio campaign. “He was brave enough to protect us.”