Bobby Styles, Auburn Boxer, is back from France, The Auburn NY Citizen, 27 Feb 1919
Bobby Styles, Auburn Boxer, is back from France, The Auburn NY Citizen, 27 Feb 1919, p. 2, col. 7
Added Laurels to his Fame in Bouts Over There. Bobby Who Is Popular With Local Fight Fans Will Soc[…] Show in Garden Arena. Sergt. Robert Styles of the Forty-ninth infantry, Eighty-third Division has returned home after having put in just one year of the army routine partly on this side and partly in France. Sergt. Styles gained reputation in the boxing game prior to his enlistment and continuing along the pugilistic lines while in army. A year ago he enlisted when the call came for volunteers and was sent to Camp Merritt where helped train a number of the dou[…] boys in this sport and also took wrestling for his own interest. After a few months of duty at Camp Merritt. and Camp Upton, he was sent across with the Second Division […] to be transferred to a training school after two months in France. Sargent Styles participated in 12 entertainments at various camps in France and had the record of defeating every lightweight he opposed. Keeping training while encountering numerous hardships he had not lost gained in avoirdupois but is in shape to continue boxing. Undoubtedly he will appear at the Gentlemen’s Boxing Club bouts in the near future still maintaining a lightweight ti[…] around a 130 pounds. In his period of the army life France he has traveled in all parts of the war scarred country and has seen the havoc caused by the Hu[…]. During the days of the hostilities at Chateau Thierry he was engaged assisting replacement troops and was but a short distance within the ran of the big guns. Previous to the number of weeks he spent at the army training school, he had taught many of the heroes of the war the game of self defense. By the teaching of boxing, the soldier perfect himself in the art of bayoneting. While in France he saw a few the Auburnians two of whom we the McDonald Brothers. The report that Joseph McDonald had lost part of his hand while fighting with Company M, 108th was false as Corporal McDonald received but a slight wound in the hand and was looking fine Styles stated. He met other Auburnians but most have returned to this country. Had the war lasted three more weeks, Sergeant Styles would have been commissioned and sent to the front, the one desire that the young pugilist had hoped for. As he Plugged in the boxing game, he also did likewise in the army and make fast progress toward receiving a commission. Sergeant Styles also had an Auburn ‘bunkie’ with him from the time he left Camp Merritt who was Sergeant Richard Cole. Cole was sent the same time Styles was to the training school, and so both Auburnians returned together, last Saturday.