What keeps you going during dark times?
For many of the young men America sent to France in World War I, it was sports.
Football, basketball, baseball, volleyball, boxing, and track and field.
The War Department had a bureau which helped to organized things and the YMCA was involved, too, especially in promoting boxing.
Base and company commanders set up athletic competitions, too.
Some did this because they were concerned about keeping these young men ‘on the straight and narrow.’
They worried about the lure of gambling and prostitution on their guys, especially those who were ‘straight off the farm.’
Others believed that sports training — especially boxing — could teach skills which could be helpful in close combat.
And sports could be a morale boost.
It filled empty hours and the physical exertion alleviated anxiety.
World War I sometime gets lost in the shadow of its younger brother, World War II, which is still a part of the national memory.
But World War I was awful and these young guys knew it at the time.
It introduced to world to large-scale mechanized killing with machine guns, tanks, aerial warfare and chemical weapons.
And subjected millions to the Spanish Flu pandemic.
Most of the Americans sent to France had never set foot outside of the country before.
So, France might have seemed the other side of the Moon.
But a couple of hours at a baseball game could bring it closer to home.
That was something nearly everybody agreed on.
I’ll see you tomorrow.
— Brenda
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