INTERLUDE
On the Monday afternoon before the Yale game, nine men were out for practice. On Tuesday, enough had returned from their inter-term' leaves to make almost two full teams. That was the maximum expected by the coaches, barring act of DuPers, which efficient organization was not expected to deposit anything very exciting in our laps in the way of football players. Then on Wednesday, things began to happen. Large and unfamiliar young men began to drift down to the field house and ask for uniforms, the vanguard of those who had been transferred from other institutions and were now going to give their all for Dartmouth for the rest of the season. By Thursday afternoon, things were definitely looking up. Earl Brown held a special session that evening with the new arrivals to give them at least a nodding acquaintance with some of the Dartmouth plays before they took the train for New Haven. Defensively, the problem was not so difficult, for a few minutes of scrimmage on Thursday demonstrated conclusively the bone-crushing capabilities of the new operatives along this line. Offensively, that was something else again. The complicated gyrations of the T formation are not to be picked up literally overnight, no matter how skilled the player may previously have been at other systems. But there was nothing to do but give the newcomers a few of the more fundamental plays and hope for the best in this oddest of all football seasons.
The roster of these new candidates for the Dartmouth varsity is as variegated as the Navy itself. One of the most valuable of the novitiates for the Green is a broth of a boy named Kinney, who spent the first part of the fall playing a great deal of center for North Carolina Pre-Flight, the team which startled the football world by beating Navy in the opening game of the season. Kinney is a rangy red-headed lad who stands well over six feet and weighs in around 200 pounds. Fortunately, PreFlight employs the T formation, so this boy was a gift from the gods to Earl Brown, who had seen his entire center squad wiped out by transfer and injury. Another arrival who was welcomed with open arms was a tall Marine halfback named Braatz, who had just checked in from Camp Lejeune. This boy looked like a streak on the ground and seemed just the type of breakaway runner so sorely needed all fall. He had never played college football, but had played some big league high school football in Wisconsin two years before.
A quartet of suitably stocky guards appeared from, respectively, Rochester, Miami of Ohio, "informal" Harvard, and Colgate to bolster this department which at that time was strictly one deep, with nobody but the water boy behind Youngling and McKinnon on the first team. The end squad, such as. it was, had .been seriously depleted by one thing and another, including the transfer and ineligibility of several of its most talented performers. The coaches were accordingly delighted at the appearance of a sturdy character by the name of Albrecht, who announced that he had played end at Bucknell before his transfer to Dartmouth. This same Pennsylvania institution also contributed a fullback named Swanson, who was desperately needed to take over from the injured Hal Clayton. All things considered, we did not do as badly as we had expected in the gigantic human raffle conducted continually and with such scrupulous fairness by the Bureau of Naval Personnel. The traditional order of mysterious ministrations was, however, reversed in this case. First the powers took away, and then they gave.
RAMPAGING GROUND GAINER for Dartmouth in the Brown game was Harry Bonk (23) who set up one touchdown and scored the other in his last game for the Big Green. Here he is shown in action behind McKinnon's blocking. Fusilli (61 ) and Fritts (44) are also seen.
NEWLY ACQUIRED STAR of the Indian eleven this term is "Smiley" Braatz, former Mar- quette back, who is pictured ripping off a ] 5-yard gain in the third period at Yale.
