WWI A.E.F. Air Service Boxing broadside & match ticket, 2nd Aviation Instruction Center, Tours, France

Large orange broadside poster, 32 x 24 inches, promoting the “Brown v. Hennessy” YMCA boxing rematch exhibition at the A.E.F. 2nd Aviation Instruction Center on June 16, 1918

[with] 

a torn ticket stub from the first Brown v. Hennessy match on May 15, 1918. 

Large orange broadside poster promoting the “Brown v. Hennessy” YMCA boxing rematch exhibition at the A.E.F. 2nd Aviation Instruction Center on June 16, 1918. Printed by Deslis Freres and Co, Tours, 32 x 24 inches. Paper is translucent and nearly tissue-like, but remains in Very Good condition with faint creases from being folded with a few instances of the paper wearing through at the folds. The only major loss is a thumbprint-sized tear at the top edge (approx. 1" x .75") and small punctures in the other three corners where it may have been stapled or otherwise affixed for display.

The main event promoted on the poster was a rematch between K. O. Brown and J. Hennessy, who fought a 6-round draw the previous month—and would go another 8 rounds during this match. The event also featured windup matches Abie Bernard vs. Shorty Oliver (“two scrappy bantams”), Joe Driscell vs. Porkey Hanna, and four other matchups promising to “give you all the fun you want.”

The fights were chronicled in The Wing Slip, a weekly cadet-run newspaper: “Both fighters put up a clean scrappy fight. The crowd showed its sportsmanship by applauding impartially—a good blow being appreciated no matter who made it.” Such was the “fighting spirit” stoked within soldiers, who were further guided by publications like Hand-to-Hand Fighting: A System of Personal Defense for the Soldier, authored by a YMCA Army Camp Physical Director, which directly tells soldiers where the sportsmanship of boxing and wrestling yields to the savagery of war. “The soldier must remember that [wrestling] is a sport whose climax is the placing of a wrestler's shoulders to the mat while the subject matter of this volume constitutes a deadly system whose climax is nothing less than the destruction or crippling of the opponent. It should be further emphasized that many of the acts barred in clean wrestling are essential parts of the system and indeed are the most effective means of doing away with an opponent.” 

The YMCA is broadly credited for providing extensive welfare work both at home and to soldiers abroad during WWI, though their direct military influence may be underrepresented in popular histories. Woodrow Wilson eagerly availed the military of the YMCA’s assistance with physical training. Their programs of boxing instruction developed the skills and appetite for fighting, stoking an inherently savage “manly spirit” that was needed for hand-to-hand trench combat, but that military leaders were finding had been “civilized” out of the majority of recruits (Park, 399). In the meantime, the YMCA-led boxing matches changed attitudes about boxing amongst citizens at home, where the unsavory (and in some states, illicit) sport became transformed into a symbol of righteousness and patriotism in a renewed wave of popularity for “Muscular Christianity”--though the specific emphases on taking out your opponents’ eyes whenever possible, and being sure to stomp on their neck (“Don’t kick but jump on it with the full weight of the body.” Marriott 13) was left out of public appreciation.

Will ship rolled in a tube. May require additional postage.

References:
Cameron, Rebecca Hancock. Training to fly: military flight training, 1907-1945. Air Force History and Museums Programs, 1999.
Denfeld, Duane Colt. “Boxing for Combat and Entertainment During and After World War I.” HistoryLink.org Essay 20475, 2017
Marriott, Arthur E. Hand-To-Hand Fighting: A System Of Personal Defense for the Soldier. New York: Macmillan, 1918.
Park, A. (2019). “Fighting Spirit”: World War I and the YMCA's Allied Boxing Program. Religion and American Culture, 29(3), 391-430.