The Mosquito Bowl by Buzz Bissinger
The popularity of collegiate football was at an all-time high when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. One branch of the military-dominated the hopes of collegiate football stars as the country prepared for all-out war: the United States Marine Corps. This is why the 4th and 29th Marine regiments had one of the greatest football talent pools ever put together on Christmas Eve of 1944 when they were training for what would be the bloodiest battle of the war—the invasion of Okinawa. Their ranks included former All-Americans, captains from Wisconsin, Brown, and Notre Dame, as well as close to twenty men who were either drafted or would eventually play in the NFL.
The Mosquito Bowl by Buzz Bissinger
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It was determined that the two regiments would face each other in a football game as authentically as possible on the dirt and coral of Guadalcanal when the rivalry between the 4th and 29th over who had the best football team reached a fever point. The ensuing gory match was dubbed “The Mosquito Bowl” for its brutality.
The biggest number of American athletes to lose their lives in a single fight was by far the 15 out of the 65 players in “The Mosquito Bowl” who would perish at Okinawa within a short period of time. The narrative of these courageous and attractive young men, both those who lived and those who did not, is told in The Mosquito Bowl.
It tells the tale of the families and the environment that helped to mould them. It is the story of the loss of innocence during a time when college athletics and country life were both much more innocent.
Buzz Bissinger takes us from the playing fields of American campuses where boys played at being Marines to the final time they were allowed to still be boys on that field of dirt and coral, to the darkest and deadliest days that followed at Okinawa, writing with the style and rigour that earned him a Pulitzer Prize and have made several of his books modern classics.
