Fighting 78th

Outside of Manhattan's sweaty "Jacobs Beach," shrine of U.S. fisticuffs, the boxingest place in the U.S. is probably Camp Butner, near Durham, N.C. There every soldier boxes as a regular part of his physical training.

Promoters of this huge program are Major General Edwin P. Parker Jr., 52, who makes his staff desk-warmers go through a cross-country run and obstacle race once a week, and one of his battalion commanders, Lieut. Colonel James L. Grier. A onetime West Point boxer, Colonel Grier started the program by rounding up 800 pairs of boxing gloves, showing his troops how to use them.

One day in his "Trainasium"--a combination obstacle course and outdoor gym--he discovered that one of his rookies was pretty good. The rookie turned out to be Peter Domato Scalzo, recent world's featherweight champion. Before long Private (First Class) Scalzo, put to work as coach and referee, had the whole 311th Regiment dreaming of knockouts.

Daily Except Sunday. Every night except Sunday, Camp Butner's soldiers fight it out in elimination bouts, to contend some day for the Division championship. Friday night is the big night. With regimental bands tootling between bouts, an eleven-match card is staged in the camp's natural amphitheater on the side of a pine-rimmed hill. Fights are limited to three rounds (four in case of a draw).

The rules are strictly Camp Butner's. For instance, decisions are rendered on the following scoring system: 50% for aggressiveness, 25% for blows landed, 25% for generalship, defense and condition at the round's end. Because few soldiers can keep below 120 lb. on G.I. food, there are no bantam or flyweight matches.

At last Friday's fights the hottest bout was between two raw rookies, one from Philadelphia, the other from Detroit. Neither had ever boxed before, and they hammered each other with haymakers for four rounds to a draw (necessitating a return match this week). But the loudest yells were for a heavyweight, Private Clarence Bressett of the notoriously vociferous cannon company, who, though ten pounds lighter than his opponent, knocked him clear across the ring with a right uppercut that sounded like the explosion of a 60-mm. mortar shell.

Ambush With Gloves. Besides the nightly fights, the Division promotes mass boxing in two spectacular ways: battle royal (to stress individual combat), reconnaissance fighting (to stress group combat). In the battle royal, watched over by steel-helmeted instructors to see that no one is maimed, two platoons are pitted against each other--the members of one platoon fighting in undershirts to distinguish them from their opponents. In reconnaissance fighting, a squad, hands in gloves, is sent out on reconnaissance. Somewhere along the way two other squads, armed with gloves, ambush the patrol.

Says Lieut. Colonel Grier: "The mission of combat soldiers is to close with the enemy. Every man has a fear of the unknown and if he does not know what physical combat is he will fear it. Mass boxing overcomes this natural reluctance."

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