C R U S A D E R
-------------------------- P A U L IR W IN ______________
( form er "Sunday E x p ress' Sports Editor)
— T a l k i n g S p o r t —
W h a t’s this ? The British Box
ing Board, battle-scarred from the
blows received from time to time
by this and other critics, earning
bouquets from its ban on the
Freddie Mills-Glen Moody fight
at London's Albert Hall.
Good work. W h y ? Because
Glen Moody has lost the first fine
rapture of his fistic youth and is
no possible match for the British
cruiser-weight champion.
Glen Moody was fighting —
and losing — to Len Harvey and
Jock M cAvoy when Mills was
still sucking lollipops and was
about as tall as sixpenny-worth
of coppers. I can also recall the
Welshman being beaten by one
or two boys right out of the top-
class; and this, in the years when
the world was much younger
than it is today.
The much-criticised Boxing
Board, as I say, has done the
fight game a real service. It has
also stopped a really fine fistic
proposition in Sergt. Freddie
Mills from making himself look
slightly absurd.
Nothing could have been worse
for the Boscombe battler than to
have crossed gloves with Moody.
There, slap in the middle of his
brilliant record — and I forecast
that Mills .is going to meet and
beat a lot of good men before he
quits the ring — would be that
shabby looking victory over a
pugilistic no longer young as they
count age in sport.
Indeed, had the champion failed
to put the gallant Glen away in
side a couple of rounds, he would
have done himself a lot of harm.
Nothing but a quick knock-out
would have done. And it might
not have happened, since Mills
would have been coming back to
serious scrapping after a long
lay-off.
W hat next ? I suggest that the
only fit opponent for the 12s 71bs
title-holder is Jock M cAvoy, the
Rochdale slug-iand-glover. Last
time they met, M cAvoy retired
almost before a blow was struck
when a sciatic nerve caught him
on one leg.
Now that isn't good enough. If
Mills is a real champion, ready to
go in there and throw his fists at
all comers at weight, he must
show the cash customers that he
has the beating of Jock M cAvoy.
Can he do it ? Yes, in the view
of Professor Irwin, that noted old
necromancer. Since coming under
the managership of Ted Broad-
ribb, shrewdest adviser on hand
in blighty. Mills has sharpened
up his defence more than some
what. As for his left hook, the
best seen around since Mickey
'W alker tagged punches on the
chin of Tommy Milligan in the
way back, it is better than ever.
So there it is. Let Freddie Mills
show us that he can lick Jock
M cAvoy when the Rochdale
thunderbolt is fit and in form.
Doing that, he will show us he is
no champion looking for easy
pickings.
And now say I didn't tell you.
At first I thought to flee the m ajor s em brace like a startled faw n
— but I was tired !”
THE GRIFF
N ERO O U T -N E R O E D
Even old Nero would turn pale
— perhaps with envy — at the
super-massacres carried out by
the modern Nazis.
The Turkish paper “Realite
has devoted a long article to the
subject of the German atrocities
in Poland, where a systematic at
tempt is being made to extermin
ate the education part of the na
tion.
The paper says that according
to conservative estimates 300.000
Poles have been executed by the
Germans in the past three years.
Scientists, artists and writers
have been shot, tortured to death
by the Gestapo, or flung into con
centration camps where most of
them die of starvation and mal
treatment within a few months,
“CA M PS O F D E A T H ”
At least 200,000 Poles are es
timated to have been sent to such
camps, which are known in Pol
and as “Camps of Death." The
name is well deserved, says the
paper, for of 85,000 prisoners in
the Cracow region at least 55,000
died in 18'' months. In addition
to this gigantic massacre, conclu
des the Turkish paper, some
1,200,000 Poles have been de
ported to Germany, where they
are kept to work as slaves
Our readers will remember that
“Crusader' recently published
orders captured from two German
regiments giving detailed instruc
tions and descriptions of mass-
executions carried out on villagers
in Jugoslavia and in Russia.
As W inston says, it will be a
“bloody account'' which will be
presented to Hitler and his ac
complices when the hour of reck
oning strikes.
FR IEN D IN N EED ...
The smartest bit of “first aid
we've heard about goes to the
credit of the Aussie pilot of an
ambulance transport plane who
spotted a truck blow up on a
mine just as ,he was flying over
a colum n.of British M .T.
He put his bus — a big De
Havilland bi-plane — down on a
patch of desert within a few hun
dreds yards of the wrecked truck.
An M.O. aboard the plane found
all the men in the truck had
been injured. He dressed their
wounds on the spot, put them on
board the plane and half an hour
later they were comfortably tuck
ed up in the ward of a C.C.S.
LOOK AGAIN
“Tripoli harbour is completely
out of commission owing to its
destruction before we evacuated
iGerman radio )
T h ose o f you not intimately acquainted with the w adis betw een
Stdi Barrani and A gheila will fin d my lecture, difficult to follow ,"
Crusader Cutie IM o . 29
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