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Show mm j 'TPHIS fighting game in the wai now going on isn't handled en- tirely by athletes or famous com- petitors. These have certainly done theii 1 share but they are not the only ones in the big show, i A few days back I happened to run into a pair of old friends "Blondie" , .- Saunders and "Ros- FT": ie" O'Donnell, two ! I .f of West Point's best ' M y football players. K : Jl When the Japs at- i f TgS j tacked peari Har- I i'-'Jw o kr' "Blondie" and j I .Vyfrgs." "Rosie," now a gen- I , sv -" ' era and a colonel, I happened to be in r- i e aiT al50ve Pear' r Harbor when the t;.l vdteaaiariJ Japs came overt GrantlandRice The were UP foer shooting. Later on they had an even greater record in the South Pacific. They did a few incredible things which they refused to talk about. Both are stout believers in football foot-ball and all other forms of competitive competi-tive sport in the way of war training, train-ing, whether it be land or sea or air-fortress air-fortress or tank or bayonet. But both believe that too little credit has been given to the clerks, the fellows from the farm, the kidi from the city streets, he sporting unknowns who have been handling guns or planes over the South Pacific, Pa-cific, or over Italy or Germany, with the coolness and courage n4 star could overmatch. Most of these fellows have played games of some sort and have the right spirit of competition. But yon never heard of them in sport. The Bigger Job ""Some fellows," General ("Blondie") ("Blond-ie") Saunders said, "have the im pression that only great athlete have starred in this war. I believe in football and all body-contacf sports. But I don't believe these men have deserved the credit thQ clerks and the soda-water jerkera and the mechanics and the farm kids have earned, who have gond through hell without batting an eyelash. eye-lash. "They were not good football players play-ers or good basketball players or good baseball players or prize-ring fighters. They were just about 80 per cent of the kids of this country, so far as any headlines were concerned. con-cerned. But when the showdown came, along the ground or in the air, they were still- America, willing will-ing to give their lives away to win.' "But don't you think," I asked Blondie and Rosie, "that football and other such man-to-man or body-pressure body-pressure games are a big help?" "There's no question about that," "Rosie" O'Donnell said. "In an all-out all-out war you go all out. And that includes everybody. The trained competitors from sport have the call. They know what it means to be under fire, even college fire. But I've been in spots when kids, who never had this chance, were just as ood as any great sporting star could possibly be. I've seen them look right in the face of death and even laugh. I've seen them look into almost certain human destruction and carry out their jobstothefinish." How Youth Feels The grip that football has on the youth of this count 15 in an amazing thing. For football is also a grind and hard work. It isn't all glory. For example, this last season, due largely to army regulations. Harvard, Har-vard, Boston college, Vanderbilt and Tennessee had to abandon football. At least that was the early plan. It was the young football players, many of them minus coaches, who picked up and got going again, at least with informal games. "At Ohio State," Paul Brown told me, "we had no navy trainees. We had to depend on 4-F's and kids under 18. Yet we had 45 men out to play one of the hardest schedules of the year. We finished with a total squad of 35 men. The kids knew in most cases there wasn't even an outside chance to win not against such teams as the Scahawks, Purdue and Michigan. But they were keen to try it out. "I think 1943 has been football's toughest year. We have the chance now to do some better matching for j 1944 a chance we never had this ; last season. I think you will see j games much more evenly played, ! just as Ohio State and Illinois were ; matched in one of the most exciting excit-ing games of the season. There 1 should be more civilian games. There will be quite enough service teams and navy trainee teams to build up first-class schedules all around the map." Letter From India Captain Zimmerman, who a year o was sporting editor of the L05 'neclcs Times, writes from India: 1 "We are a long way from home," he paid, "but ail service men I've seen are keen about gelling the sporting news. We had the World Series replayed for us a day late I jver the air, but it would have been . just as welcome a week or a month aier. I have talked to many of t hern about the sporting programs . lack in the states, especially ba.-e-j -all and football. They are all for it I |