Fight:170164

Pete Sanstol & Lt. Col. Arthur G. White

Maxie Berger 145 lbs beat Jerry Fiorello 150 lbs by PTS in round 8 of 8

• Date: 1943-05-08
• Location: Forum, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
• Referee: Pete Sanstol

The referee was former World Bantamweight Champion Pete Sanstol, then serving in the United States Army Air Corps. (Former World Lightweight Champion Benny Leonard, also serving in the American military, refereed the main event.)

By the middle of 1943, Sanstol had been considering requesting a discharge from the American Army Air Corps to enter the Canadian Army, according to a May 22, 1943 The Standard (Montreal) newspaper clipping in his scrapbooks. It is unclear why exactly he would consider such an odd request, shortly after becoming an American citizen. Maybe he thought the Canadians would give him a chance at combat service.

Also at this time, Sanstol had been invited by the Canadian military to come to Montreal to referee this semi-final to the Johnny Greco vs. Terry Young main event. (Sanstol had plans to become Greco's manager, according to that The Standard article, because Greco was then in the Canadian Army and "any contracts with civilian managers are out." Greco later signed up with the New York Elkin brothers management team on a recommendation from Sanstol. He would later be featured on the cover of the December 1946 The Ring magazine.) Sanstol had to get special permission from his commanding officer to attend. As Sports Editor Elmer W. Ferguson relayed in his May 7 article in the Montreal Daily Herald:

Little Pete Sanstol, slim and trim in his U.S. Air Force uniform, walked around an empty Forum yesterday [Thursday, May 6, 1943]. You heard about it, and knowing Little Pete well, you understood why. And you felt that this would be a story. It was, too. But the real story didn't come so much from Little Pete, as it did from a tall, quiet-voiced man who accompanied him. The real story was about Norway and about Little Pete's mother back in Oslo.

Let's tell the story as it developed, starting with the pilgrimage, as you might call it, that Little Pete made to the Forum. A lot of folks won't understand, perhaps, why a fighter should go to a great place like the Forum when it is empty and quiet, and stroll around with foot-steps echoing in the silence.

But that's the way Little Pete wanted it yesterday. So, after he arrived in the morning to referee on the Greco-Young fight card at the Forum tomorrow night, Pete went up there around noon, long before the hurly-burly of the afternoon training began. He was answering a nostalgic call to view, once more, the scene of his great ring triumphs, his epic battles of ten years back, and this rite, for that's what it amounted to, Pete wanted to perform alone.

"I must be getting sentimental in my old age," said Pete, which isn't exactly true, because this little blonde Norseman, a tough and gallant fighter, win or lose, was sentimental even in his toughest days. At nights, in those stirring times, he used to sit alone in his room playing a violin, relaxed after a day's training. He was like that. Ibsen wrote understandingly of such folk in the great Scandinavian countries.

"I just wanted to see again the place where I had my greatest triumphs. I walked up and stood by the ring where I fought Leitham, Al Brown, and a dozen more greats of my day. And I even got in the ring and went over and stood in the same corner I used when I fought Brown for the title. I could almost hear the crowd cheering. It seemed all so real after these years. What is the name for it? Nostalgia? Yes, that's the name."

Little Pete is proud to be back in Montreal, at the call of the Canadian Army. "I'm just a ground-crew private," said Pete, "because I had a kidney-stone operation and can't make the active service, nor even an interpreter's post. [Sanstol could fluently speak some seven languages.] At least I haven't been able to do so yet. So when humble private Sanstol took this telegram of invitation from the Canadian Army to his superior officer, you should have seen the superior officer's eyes open wide. He said, 'What did you do up there, Sanstol, that you should be given an honor like this?' And I told him, 'I didn't do anything but fight the best I knew, and give the Montreal people the best show I could every time I went in the ring.'

Pete Sanstol

Of course, there was no argument about my getting away. My superior officer was as proud to let me go as I was to come. And if Pete Sanstol, just a humble private in the army, and once a pugilist, can do something to better the feeling between two Allied nations--if it needs any betterment--he'll be mighty happy."

That's the first part of the story, except to add that Pete weighs not much more than when he was fighting, has thickened but little. And now comes the second part of it, the part about the mother back in Norway.

To Montreal with Sanstol came Dr. J. L. Ohman, always a personal friend and admirer of Pete's. Dr. Ohman is a native of Norway, but he has lived in America many years, and in Chicago over thirty years ago he became interested in golf, developing into a low-handicap player, and practically introduced that game into Norway. He won the Norwegian title five times in eight starts.

Dr. Ohman was in Norway when the Nazis came, was there five months under Nazi oppression, escaped by the underground. "How, I can't tell just now," said Dr. Ohman. "It would involve too many people, word might reach the Nazis, and more murders of our people would follow. If I were a Nazi in Norway, or any other presently-conquered country, I would shudder to think of the day the invasion really gets underway and the final crushing of Hitlerism begins. It will be hell for the Nazis. Europe is full of hidden weapons. Boulders, roots of trees, floors of barns and houses, cover knives sharpened to razor edge and stiletto point, cover guns, that will suddenly be flashed into the open when the signal comes, and the Nazis will pay a terrible penalty from an enraged people steeped in bitter hate. German blood will run in streams down the gutters of Europe. They will die by the thousands, just as they have slaughtered innocent peoples either by the rope, or by the rifle, or by sheer starvation. He who lives by the sword--the day of vengeance will come for the Nazis. It will be horrifying.

"Living under Nazi rule is something I am trying to forget. The Huns are inhuman. Human life means nothing to these animals whose human feelings have been stamped out of them from babyhood. They are barbarians, animals. They are starving Europe, stripping every conquered land of everything it possesses, except for one thing--the deep-rooted bitter desire for vengeance. And that they cannot kill."

"Yes," said Pete Sanstol, "the day will come. I hope I'll be there then. I was to have gone over as an interpreter. I speak Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and I know the country so well in Norway that surely I will be of some use when the big day comes. My mother is in Oslo--I hope. I haven't heard from her in a long, long time. I hope she is alive, but who can tell when the Nazis are there?"

"Who can tell?" echoed Dr. Ohman. "An old lady's life is nothing to a Nazi. They kill for the sheer pleasure of killing."

Little Pete went a bit white around the lips. "If anything has happened to my mother," he said, "ten Nazis will die for it if they don't get me first." And just then he looked like the blonde Viking with eyes of blue steel, and thin, grim lips, who tossed his endless fists against the greatest bantams of his day.