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Show Camp Games Are No Sports for Mollycoddles Bob Edgren Visits Cantonments and Comes to Conclusion That Reformers Would Receive Rude Shock If They Chanced to Go There. By Robert EJgren CAMP GRANT. III.. Oct. 19 The "old army game" waa a relic of the Civil war, Hnd ia lont out of date. Hut every training camp haa a lot of new irmjr games running every day. To mere civilian th games offer an. interesting atudy. Aftr seeing a few "bTfnem plgyed I can't help wondering whera the "reformer" of a few yeara ago are now the gentlemen who simply aat up' and howled their Indignation over the roughneaa of football and boilng. It would amuse ma greatly to aee a few of these watching the new army gamea. Hut perhapa they no longer eylat as advocatea of milklike mlhJneaa In all port a, Var makea a changa In people. - At Camp Grant I have seen several thousand soldiers on a wide, level field, scattered about in groups and playing the gamea Invented for their use by Athletic Ath-letic Instructor Iewis Omer: also games Invented by the Ingenious members of the commission on training camp activities. , It was Ilka a summer afternoon In Central Cen-tral park, with hundreda of groups out playmg tennis, and baseball, and other ' ware In uniform, and the games thy played were not tennis and baseball. But the enjoyment of the game was there, and much laughter and good-natured "kidding" of the victims. For. there are Victims In these military porta. "You aee, Captain Omer explained, "every game Is Intended to harden mn for war. Thy ars acemtomwi to hard-' hard-' shin nam. roughing IIIIIUS tll 'll ml hack almost as quickly as the man In the middle could turn to aee It. Few lasted mor than fifteen or twenty sec- , onrts before being hit. Kach man in the i circle-had his turn. This makea the men skillful In throwing hand grenades and , In dodging them too (if course there are a few simple oldr time gams played too like leap frog and tug of war. Hut the games the soldiers , like the game they play with keen sest 1 anil Mil l I I ha I ar a complete rest from the strict disci- j pline of drill are boxing and competitive i sports that have a fighting turn. Thers are no mollycoddles in our army j camps. , And It Is the surest trflng In the world that a mollycoddle getting Into camp i would come out a better man. Copyright, l8. by the Press Publishing j Company.) I In actual service In the field. They Ilka It. It mskes better men of them I walked over to a large group of about lfg men, where there waa much shouting shout-ing and laughing. They were dividing into aides. Kach aide had a ball Ilka a baseball, but twico aa large, and presumably pre-sumably softer. At. the signal a ball waa thrown and the man who waa struck fell down and stayed down. Another man seued the ball and threw It back Into the thick of the enemy with all his might. Both balls were being thrown. Aa they bounced and rolled they were seised by the first o reach them and thrown as quickly as possible. Men In the rival groups dodged and ducked and avoided the flying missiles mis-siles aa much aa possible, but every few seconds there was another hit, and another an-other man threw himself down and waa out of -the fight. Aa the groups became thinner It wss harder to make hits. One side would get both balls, and then two throwers would direct a cross fire. An officer told me that the boxers were by i far the best players, because of their ability te dodge and aldestep. After ten minutes or ao all the men of one aide i were down, and the winners cheered and laughed Uke a lot of schoolboys. Immediately Imme-diately they lined up for another battle. NO SPORT FOR A MOLLYCODDLE. A llttls distance away there waa a cloud of dust. Here "circle wrestling" , wsa going on. People who think 7.hynsko and Iewia and Htecher and the rest of the "met artists" are rough ought to aee I circle wrestling In an army camp. Twenty-four men form a circle. Twenty-four more form an outer circle. The two circles begin revoKing ss rapidly aa possible An opposite directions. At the officer' a whistle the Inner circle men awing out and the outer circle men turn in. There la a crash of bodies, and each man "goea to the mat" right there with the fellow he happened to bump Into. Then they wrest la until one man of each pair la pinned down. Thla la one of the roughest of all the new army games. 'Football la a parlor game beside It," said is plain Omer. There was another gentle pastime going go-ing on In another part of the field. Thla waa called "No Man's I -and." Two rom--pan.ee wer lined up, thirty yards epart, At the signal they charged each other and th ensuing melee was like nothing else ever seen In times of peace. The ob. Ject hers was to take prison era. Take them by any possible method but take them. A prisoner dragged hack over the rival line waa eut of the fight. And. believe me. If these Yanks fight tooth and nail against being carried off by the Germans Ger-mans as they do In the gsme. there will be few Americana In the tlerman cages. WAR HAS NOTHING ON THIftl - "Horse and rider wrestling" Is soother nice little past I me for a dull afternoon. Fifty men enguge In it at a time. There are twenty-five men mounted on the shoulders of twenty-five of their comrades. com-rades. They are bunched, and at a aig- , nal every mounted man tries to drag I pull, throw or push some other mounted man down. The "mounts" charge and stsmp about, and there Is a cloud of , dust and a lot of noise and a generally lovely time until all of the men ars down but two, and these two ftaht it out single- handed untH one la thrown, when the i last man la declared winner. "A curious thing I've noticed about all of our con teats," said Captain Omer. "la that our men will fight harder for the honor of winning, or for a couple of days' furlough, lhan thev would for money. Our professional, boxers in camp don't want money when I her fight. At first some purses were offeree for tournament tourna-ment fights, but the boys didn't want the money. They'd fight their heada off for a couple of days leave. WHERE BOXERS ARE BEST. At (.rant they have what they call "games of alertnesa." These are unlike ths fighting gamea. One la "snatch the stick " A atK'k or stone Is placed on Ihe ground mtdw.iy between two teama of elaht men each. me man comes out from each aide. Thev fare each other over the stick. The object Is to setae the stick snd escape hack to the line with-out with-out being touched by the other man. The boxers are beat at this sport. A boxer will make several feints to get the stick, suddenly seise it. sidestep and escape without being struck. Another "alerinese" game la "Swat the Kaiser," In which fifty men stand In a circle, while one walka around behind and drone a heavy elt on the ground at some one's heels. Thla man seises the strap and rune after the one who drupped It. rhaaing him s round the circle and besting him with the buckle end of the atrsp until he reaches the vacant place where he started. 'Then the second man drops the strap and runs, pursued end beaten In turn. There Is some swift run-l run-l nlng here. It's great training for speed. The alertness Is shown In ssltlng the ! strap and pursuing before the other man can escape, snd ss everv man wants te giv a beating fnr the beating he Is at-I at-I most sure to receive In turn a moment I later be losee no time In starting Another circle gsme is plaved by hav. Ing one man stand tn the middle, swinging swing-ing a two-pound sandbag on a rone, knee high. The men in the circle have to Jump this bag. and any one hit Is out of ths game. MERE'S WHERE THEY TRY TO "IAN" VOU. And still another ctdcle sport that T saw seemed to b quite a favorite with the black troops. About fifty men stood te a wide circle and one In the center. There waa a ball a little bigger than a baseball which the men In the circle threw at the men In the middle, who dodged and wriggled and du-ked to escape, es-cape, being hit. Flying across the circle, the ball would be caught and thrown |
