#aif

Bradman Invalided Out — Fibrositis Ends His War, June 1941

Don Bradman, Australia's captain and the world's most famous cricketer, was invalided out of military service on 30 June 1941 with chronic fibrositis. He had enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force in June 1940, transferred to the Army School of Physical Training at Frankston, and within months was so debilitated by muscular pain in his back and right arm that he could not shave himself or comb his hair. The discharge — barely reported at the time under wartime censorship — kept him out of cricket for almost five years and shaped the legend of his post-war return.