Category: You have to be kidding, right!?!
Americans love football. In fact, they love the gridiron game so much, they’re even ready to play (and watch) football in a combat zone. On January 1, 1945, American troops based in Italy did just that.
Now, this isn’t the story of some pick-up game played by a group of G.I.s during a brief respite in a rest camp or in some secluded area near the front. This is the story of the Spaghetti Bowl, a full-on, full-contact, football extravaganza with all the ceremony and celebration found with any major bowl game played on New Year’s Day.
The U.S. Army announced it and promoted it. Then, the German Luftwaffe heard about it, and threatened to find the stadium and bomb it. Teams from the US 5th Army and the US 12th Air Force played it. And by the time it was done, more than 25,000 officers and men enjoyed every block-and-tackle minute of it.
Really Away Games
As far back as 1918, football travelled with American troops when they deployed to Europe. As the ranks of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) began to swell during the summer of 1918, football teams started to form at American bases in Western France. By the fall of that year, American football was played in front of sizeable crowds of enthusiastic Doughboys, dismayed French and British allies, and some confused German prisoners.
After the Armistice in November, American units began to move into Germany for duty with the Army of Occupation. By late January 1919, U.S. troops were playing football in divisional grudge matches in several locations in Western Germany. Photos show the teams equipped with proper uniforms, including leather helmets and pads of the era.
In those days, before the birth of National Football League, the jerseys were without numbers — and helmets were optional. Even so, goal posts were erected, fields marked with chalk, and gentlemen officers enlisted as referees. In one game near Coblenz in early 1919, a Signal Corps observation balloon was anchored near the corner of the field and a camera crew filmed parts of the game from on high. In another game, a balloon featured in the halftime entertainment as a daredevil U.S. Air Service officer jumped out, landing safely on the field by using an early parachute.
Including several aspects of the game we take for granted now, American football kicked off in Germany in the winter of 1919 — long before the first NFL regular-season game in Germany (November 13, 2022, as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Seattle Seahawks 21-16). American troops even took a football with them to Northern Russia during their intervention there in 1918-1919. Hazy photos show the boys blocking and tackling in the receding snow near Archangel in the spring of 1919.
By the time the United States entered World War II, football had grown into an American institution. The college game was dominant, but pro football was advancing as the NFL picked up steam. Football was quickly becoming America’s favorite pastime.
Once America joined the war and the draft was fully enabled, the U.S. military was populated with athletes — high school, college, and professional football players traded their leather helmets and jerseys for steel pots and fatigues, and their cleats for Army boots. But it wasn’t long before American football games broke out in some of the most unusual places. The Marines played football in Australia. The U.S. Army Air Forces played ball in China. The Army and Navy fielded teams in England, North Africa, India, Italy, and by the fall of 1944 Americans were playing football in France.
The large concentration of American troops in England and Ireland before the invasion of Normandy led to multiple teams and several knock-down, drag-out grudge matches. In November 1944 an Army versus Navy matchup (featuring a wide range of former college players) was played for the “European Championship” (called the “GI Bowl”) drew nearly 50,000 fans to a London stadium. Army won that game, but big-time football was just getting started in the ETO.
The Spaghetti Bowl
As the calendar changed to 1945, the war still raged in Europe. By January 1st, even as American forces were steadily pushing back the German counter-offensive in the Ardennes forest, the war was far from won. In Italy, the fighting was a slow, bloody slog in the mountains. Germany still needed to be beaten on multiple fronts, and it would take a maximum effort in the New Year. Keeping up morale was critical. American commanders in the MTO planned a football event to equal the annual New Year’s Day bowl games played stateside. The result was the iconic Spaghetti Bowl.
Despite maintaining the game’s specific location as a military secret, the event was still promoted, and G.I. fans were recruited and given brief leave to Florence to attend. Media reports noted that a German broadcast said the Luftwaffe called it “a great opportunity to bomb Florence”. P-38 Lightning fighters patrolled the skies overhead, in case the German air force decided to drop by. In the end, no Nazi aircraft made it to Florence for the game.
The AP’s Sid Feder wrote before the game, in a syndicated column coming from “Spaghetti Bowl Headquarters, Italy”:
“In a modern stadium that would make a lot of graduate managers back home green with envy, the Fifth Army “Krautclouters” and the 12th Air Force “Bridgebusters” today tangle in what is billed as the “first and last” Spaghetti Bowl game. The name of this town, where between 25,000 and 35,000 assorted soldiers and WACs are going to hold down benches is “unmentionable”, because Jerry hasn’t been invited — and isn’t wanted. It’ll be a battle of two undefeated clubs for the simple reason neither has yet played. It all started with a challenge the 12th Air Force tossed at the 5th Army…”
Teams were drawn up from the deep football assets of the 5th Army (the “Krautclouters”) and the 12th Air Force (the “Bridgebusters”), with proper uniforms provided. The Army team was coached by Lou Bush, who had starred for the University of Massachusetts, while the 12th Air Force was led by George “Sparky” Miller, who had played and coached at Indiana University. Both rosters were full of experienced players, many from major colleges and a handful with pro experience.
Captain for the Army team was former Philadelphia Eagles tackle Cecil Sturgeon. Ultimately, the star of the Spaghetti Bowl had pro football experience, but not in the NFL. John “Big Six” Moody had been an All-American at Morris Brown College, and had played professional football as recently as 1943. Moody played for the Los Angeles Bulldogs in the highly-regarded Pacific Coast Football League (1940-1948) — which featured black players while the NFL was segregated until 1946.
Moody, a 230-lb. fullback/linebacker was a powerful force throughout the game — scoring two touchdowns (one rushing, one on a long interception return) and kicked two extra points to lead the 5th Army in their 20-0 victory. A New York Times account of the game described Corporal Moody (of the 92nd Infantry Division) as a “one-man army”. After the war, Moody played for a short time with the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League. In 2022, he was inducted into the Black College Football Hall of Fame.
Conclusion
For the more than 25,000 U.S. troops in attendance (plus a few interested locals), the Spaghetti Bowl delivered everything one would expect from a stateside bowl game: there were two bands, several military vehicles were dressed up as parade floats (carrying cheerleaders and two bowl queens), Broadway performer Ella Logan was on hand to sing, Brooklyn Dodgers’ manager Leo Durocher gave a speech at halftime, and lovely majorette Peggy Jean twirled her batons. Meanwhile, the USO was on hand to provide coffee and donuts. By any measure, the Spaghetti Bowl was a successful operation for the U.S. military.
Five months later, five long and awful months, World War II in Europe would be over. G.I.s like John Moody would return home as winners, but their lives would be forever changed by the things they had seen and done. Football would continue to grow in popularity, reaching unprecedented levels of media exposure and fan interest with each passing decade. And for one afternoon, in the midst of a world war, in an ancient Italian city, a modern American gridiron tradition would play out to raise the morale of young men so far from home.
From Splendid Isolation:
If you’re anything like me, you’ll be wanting a cigarette after reading this lovely little story — even if like me you don’t smoke.
An intruder who used brass knuckles to beat against a front door and break a window just before midnight Friday in Missouri was shot multiple times by the homeowner and killed.
KFVS 12 reported that the homeowner, Austin Glastetter, was in the house with his wife at the time of the incident.
Glastetter told the suspect, 31-year-old John Fisher, that he was armed, but Fisher allegedly responded by saying, “You’ll have to kill me.”
Wait, wait, hold it in for just a minute…
Glastetter then shot Fisher multiple times.
And:
The Scott County Sheriff’s Office issued a release noting that deputies arrived on the scene to find Fisher deceased.
Smoke ’em if you got ’em…
LEE’S SUMMIT, MO — As people across the nation prepared to celebrate the 4th of July holiday, one sorry excuse for an American revealed he had yet to blow off a single finger with fireworks.
Sources close to 39-year-old Ben Malick said that they were unable to confirm whether or not he was actually a citizen of the United States due to the fact that he had not lost any of his digits in a horrific fireworks accident.
“Can anyone with all 10 fingers really consider themselves an American?” asked one of his friends. “It just calls everything into question. I’ve known him most of my life, but I hadn’t taken the time to look at his fingers. Once I noticed that he’s not missing any, it really made me wonder just how ‘American’ he can be. No self-respecting American makes it through the 4th of July without losing a phalange or two.”
Malick remained adamant that he was as American as baseball and apple pie, despite having not lost a single finger to fireworks. “I promise I’m a real American, ok?” he protested. “I have a birth certificate. I’ve voted in every election since I turned 18. I’m a business owner, for crying out loud. Just because I enjoy fireworks responsibly and haven’t permanently maimed myself doesn’t mean I’m not an American.”
At publishing time, though family and friends remained skeptical, Malick said he intended to enjoy the Independence Day celebration with some fun fireworks — and hopefully come away unscathed once again.
This might be an obvious statement, but armies like to drink. That’s true now, and it was true nearly 250 years ago when the Continental Army fought in the American Revolution.
It’s the Fourth of July weekend and soldiers, veterans and Americans around the country are celebrating the founding fathers, the revolution and all of the related elements tied up in the holiday. But it’s also worth remembering that the original American soldiers liked to drink. A lot. So much so. This isn’t an exaggeration.
The Journal of the American Revolution looked into the documented cases of the Continental Army not only getting its hands on booze, but going overboard and getting into trouble thanks to it. That ranged from enlisted soldiers beating an officer, drunken gambling on days of rest and other forms of insubordination. The soldiers were considered “ungentlemanlike” for their actions. Soldiers would raid captured officers’ stores of alcohol, threaten store owners for more than their daily ration and get into fights with one another while plastered.
At the time the American Revolutionary War started, alcohol was both a part of military life – alcohol rations were a common practice – and booze such as beer was considered safer to drink than many sources of water. George Washington himself tried to make soldiers avoid alcohol with threats of punishment, but an army of young revolutionaries gathered together and away from home found ways to not only get their hands on alcohol but get large amounts of it, as part of the fight against the British. And it was a wide range of drinks. The Continental Army and Patriot militias might not have Navy grog, but it had regional beer, pilfered wine, cider, whiskey, applejack and other spirits.
Hey, Samuel Adams was a brewer, remember?
It wasn’t just the camp activities the Continental Army engaged in that were “ungentlemanlike.” The soldiers even factoring in the universal love soldiers have for booze into tactical plans. As War on the Rocks notes, George Washington’s army expected the British-employed Hessian mercenaries in Trenton to drink heavily for Christmas celebrations. American beer being different and more potent than that in Europe, Washington was counting on the Hessians to be utterly wasted and hungover, if they were even awake at dawn. When the Continental Army attacked and routed the Hessians at Trenton on Christmas Day, the soldiers were unexpectedly sober.
It might not be cases of cheap beer on base to wash down a day of Rip Its, but for a hard-scrapped army often struggling with morale, supplies and funding, and going up against the much more resourceful British army, the Americans’ ability to source and consume booze is impressive.
And if you’re thinking this was just the enlisted soldiers, it went up to the commanders as well. In 1787, George Washington and several of his friends from the Army were celebrating the signing of the U.S. Constitution and decided to, what else, get drunk. At least 55 people, but definitely no more than 100, bought dozens of bottles of wine, jugs of beer, alcoholic punch and cider for good measure. Seriously, there’s the receipt to prove it. According to adjustments, that bill today is more than $17,000.
It’s unlikely that the call of “Remember Valley Forge” was to bring up memories of a bad hangover. But a few revolutionaries probably had those thoughts. So if you’re enjoying a drink this Fourth of July weekend, know that the original American army also liked its drink. And could likely drink you under the table. Drink responsibly – the revolutionaries apparently didn’t.
There is no practical difference between these two firearms. The top weapon is registered under the National Firearms Act. The bottom is an uncontrolled handgun.
Drunk people should never get behind the wheel of a car. Likewise, angry folks should eschew keyboards. Spock, not Kirk, should forever be your role model. The most successful people control their emotions. However, I am going to willingly violate that axiom today. As I settle in behind my trusty MAC, I am absolutely livid.
This is the reason short-barreled weapons need to be removed from the purview of the NFA. The Pistol Stabilizing Brace is on top alongside a conventional M4 buttstock.
Quiet Power
The Senate Parliamentarian is an unelected woman named Elizabeth MacDonough. Ms. MacDonough is 59 years old and a breast cancer survivor. She earned her JD degree from Vermont Law School in 1998. She took her current job in 2012. She was appointed by Nevada Democrat Harry Reid.
The Parliamentarian’s job is to interpret the Standing Rules of the United States Senate. What makes her so important is that the parliamentarian has sole discretion concerning what can and cannot be done under the Senate’s budget reconciliation process. The details of this process stem from something called the Byrd Rule. Subjecting budget legislation to this scrutiny is colloquially referred to as the Byrd Bath.
All the chaos stems from the fact that Left and Right cannot agree on anything at all these days. In the past, everybody acknowledged that Mom, apple pie, and America were awesome.
The philosophical differences between the two political poles were nuanced at best. Nowadays, however, thanks to such hot-button topics as abortion, gun control, trans surgeries for children, and the like, the two sides might as well come from two different planets. That’s fine, except that nothing gets through the US Senate without a 60-vote majority.
That used to be two-thirds. The Founding Fathers, bless their hearts, knew that human beings were rambunctious, emotional, and chaotic. That’s the US House of Representatives in a sentence. Stuff passes the House via a simple majority.
The requirement for a two-thirds majority in the Senate was a safety valve of sorts to ensure that the tyranny of the majority did not unfairly target the little guy. However, the unintended consequence nowadays is that nothing ever gets done. You couldn’t get sixty senators to agree that the sky was blue or that puppies were cute.
The one gleaming exception is the budget reconciliation process. Knowing that nothing as partisan as the budget would ever pass the 60-vote threshold, budget bills move out of the Senate via simple majority.
However, not before Ms. Elizabeth MacDonough gives her seal of approval. Ms. MacDonough, with the stroke of a keyboard, can edit out anything she feels does not comport with the budget process. This is designed to keep our idiot lawmakers from levying a transfer tax on spitballs or replacing the Bald Eagle with the Archaeopteryx as the national bird, all by falsely claiming it was budget-related.
Possession of the bottom semiautomatic rifle is uncontrolled in most places in the US. If unregistered, the top gun will get you ten years in federal prison. That seems pretty stupid to me.
The rifle on top has a 14.5-inch barrel and therefore currently demands registration with the government and a $200 tribute. Everything else is cash and carry.
Erasure Legislation?
Now fast forward to the Year of Our Lord 2025, and Donald J. Trump, the most disruptive person in all of human history, takes his mail at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Miraculously, language got inserted into the 2025 Budget Reconciliation Act (the Big Beautiful Bill) that rights a grievous historical wrong, removing both sound suppressors and short-barreled weapons from the purview of the NFA. This was going to be American history’s first meaningful pushback against the inexorable juggernaut that has been a century’s worth of gun control. And Elizabeth MacDonough just scribbled it all out.
So, there we are. Forget that the entire issue orbits around a tax statute. That’s the only way they got it passed back in 1934. For the first time in my lifetime, both houses of Congress would have agreed to grant Americans a little bit more firearms freedom. Now that’s gone. Senator Thune and Vice President Vance have the option of either firing or overruling Ms. McDonough, but they won’t. They have bigger fish to fry. American gun owners don’t matter. We never have.
The gun on top has to be registered with the government. The shorter version on bottom does not. It never did make any sense.
Lasting Impacts
This seems a niche issue. However, Randy Weaver’s wife Vicki, his 14-year-old son Sammy, and a Federal Marshal named William Degan all died because Weaver cut the barrel on a shotgun down to 13 inches. Google Ruby Ridge siege if you’d like the details. This is a big deal.
You can walk out of an American gun shop with a handgun that will fit in your jeans pocket. However, cut the barrel on your favorite AR15 back to less than sixteen inches, and that’s a felony good for a $10,000 fine and ten years in the Big House. It’s simply asinine, and we came within one keystroke of finally making that right.
We American gun owners have lost every legislative fight we have ever waged. Every single one. The 1986 Firearms Owners Protection Act sounded great, but that was when Uncle Sam banned machineguns.
If the bill does pass in its current form, it does remove the onerous $200 transfer tax. That is no small thing, and I am sincerely grateful for the legislators who squirreled that bit of prose into the beast.
While all of the superfluous registration requirements still remain, abolishing the transfer tax will open up a fresh new market in used cans and short-barreled guns. It should also supercharge the suppressor industry as a whole. However, it should have been so much better.
I once wore the uniform and was both willing and available to die for this great nation if that was what it took. I love my country.
However, I am profoundly disappointed with my government. What was originally supposed to be of the people, by the people, and for the people simply isn’t any more. Who knows, perhaps in another fifty years we’ll have another shot at it. I will, of course, be dead by then, but at least somebody else will be the Parliamentarian.