Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 174, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1917 — BOXERS TACTICS WIN A SKIRMISH [ARTICLE]

BOXERS TACTICS WIN A SKIRMISH

Soldiers Remember How Feeny Got Out of a Tight Corner in Ring. TRY IT ON THE GERMANS At Close Quarters Count Enemy Out— When Feeny Goes on Leave He Gets Token of Appreciation for Lessons in Self-Defense. London. —How the tactics of the prize ring got two little groups of British soldiers out of a tight corner, and eventually gave them the victory in a lively “scrap” with superior numbers of the enemy, is told in an interesting story communicated by “a correspondent” to the London Times.

The story opens with a glove contest In a room lit by four large acetylene lamps; on tiers of benches and boxes sit hundreds of khaki-clad men. They have most of them been fighting all through the week, and now they are going to watch other men fight—with gloves. Two men in overcoats step through the ropes. As the gloves are being adjusted an officer steps into the ring. He is loudly cheered. “A six-round contest,” he says, “between two Irishmen. (Cheers.) Sergeant Kennedy Macdona, eleven stone two, and Quartermaster Sergeant Tim Feeny, eleven stone.” Both boxers are fine specimens. Feeny, although he gives away only two pounds, looks much the lighter. His body glistens in the white light. As he closes his gloves his muscles ripple from wrist to shoulder, and his chest is flanked with a padding of muscle to back up either hand. Macdona is older. His frame looks almost rigid. There is not the same subtle play of the muscles, but he seems made of Iron, and he has abnormally long arn\s. His ears look as if they had been punched flat against the side of his skull. The referee calls, “Seconds out!” _..

Exchange Blows From the Start. The two boxers step into the middle of the ring and shake hands. There is no noise save that of the slip, slip of the soft kid boots over the resined canvas. Feeny feints with his left, but the other draws back, a pace warily. The feint has told Feeny something, and there is the quick phut-phut of leather on flesh as he leads a left and right to the head. As he steps out the other man steps in and lands a hard one on the junction of the ribs. The blow has told. Still circling. Feeny gets his man into the salient of the ropes and rushes in with a wellmeant but badly planned attack. He has the shorter reach by Inches, and he knows he must fight to the body and come inside the long-range blows of Macdona. Then he gets home again and the older man is sent hard back fd the ropes, but, being a master of ringcraft,, comes back from them as if thrown from a catapult, and his left comes round with full shoulder weight behind it. Feeny takes It ducking, but too late; the glove comes home over one eye. The round is over. Once more the boxers face each other, but they now know each other’s tactics. It is a good round, but when It finishes it shows that the man with the shorter reach must get in close to his opponent, who has the range of him. He knows this, too, so he fights hard, tunneling into Macdona’s defense with jabs and short-arm hooks, clinchtag when hard pressed and smothering in the break-away. Fedhy attacks with a flurry of quick in-fighting. “Go

Inagaim” _ "Keep at him the crowd shouts. And Feeny does as advised. ’ Macdona, unwary, has allowed hlmself to be backed Into a corner, and, quick as a terrier, the shorter-armed man' steps inside his guard and gets home with two full-power punches on the solar plexus. Macdona sways, makes a step Into the ring, and then falls In a heap with one arm relaxed over the lower rope. The referee reaches the count of “Ten” before the fallen man moves at all. “Good scrap,” says the machine-gun officer to a fellow lieutenant, “but Feeny would never have won if he hadn’t got to close quarters.” A Week Laterflhe Trenches. A week later. Two little groups of men are sheltering in two shell holes far out amid the German wire. The trenches two hundred yards ahead of them are occupied. A spray of ma-chine-gun bullets plays across the lips of the holes, and two men who were making a “look-see” are sitting groaning in the bottom of the trench. The two "parties are twenty yards apart. Presently the machine gun stops its patter and there is comparative silence. There Is an isolated thud in the distance apd the crescendo of an approaching shell. It bursts like an elder powder puff, high and to the left, but some of the shrapnel reaches one of the shell holes. The men have been out since before dawn, for they were an advanced patrol. They were discovered by the Boches only an hour ago, however, and their position Is now made unenviable. The ground behind slopes and they would be exposed tb machine-gun fire all the long way to their trenches. Now the artillery Is beginning to search them out.

They Try Out Feeny’s Tactics. From the right shell hole there is a flutter of white, and slowly a Morse message is sent with a leaf torn from a notebook. “Try Feeny’s tactics,” it spells out. “How about it?” The officer who receives the message smiles to himself. “Yes,” he answers, “we will start when you signal. Give us ’ five minutes.” The signal is given. Both groups dash forward and only one man falls. Breathless, but _ revengeful, they fall into the machine-gun emplacement. There is some quick work with the bayonet, the gun is wrecked, a dugout is bombed, four prisoners are taken. Ten minutes later,-leaving two parties of Germans bombing each other industriously over a traverse, the raiders streak across the No Man’s Land. They are seen, but the machine gun is out of action and rifle fire is all that they have to fear. Then our men see them and a heavy covering fire is kept up. They fall over the parapet, bounce off the firing step and lie panting on the duck boards in the bottom of the trench. And Feeny, who went on leave the next week, found an envelope waiting for him before he left. There were two" 1 hundrqd-franc notes in it and a message of eleven words: “In payment for lessons received in the noble art of self-defense.”