The World Cup

In previous posts, I’ve noted that we had four British soldiers attached to our unit, a Lieutenant Colonel, a Major, a Sergeant, and a Corporal. They were with us from the time we got to Baghdad in April until June 28, 2003. One fine, hot morning, they invited us to play a game of “football” – British code for soccer. We accepted and that morning a bunch of us headed out in gym shorts, T-shirts, armored vests, helmets, and pistols and drove three miles through the not-yet Green Zone to the Al Rasheed hotel. It was still early on and the Al Rasheed had not yet been placed back into operation. They had a large lawn area big enough for a game of baseball, football, or soccer that the Brits had scoped out previously. So we divided up into teams and got a few quick pointers from our “elder brothers” on how to play the game, kick the ball, etc. We think that this was a conspiracy on their part to show us up in SOMETHING, since we sort of represent to them the kid brother who grew up and got bigger and stronger than them. So the game started good-naturedly enough. They were kicking our butts and the usual nationalistic banter began. After about 30 minutes or so, we started to introduce American football rules to them: tackling. Being acquainted with rugby, they easily adapted to “tackle soccer” and the game started to get overly serious. I was tackled so hard that I bruised a couple of ribs – the most serious injury that I had in 13 months and 15 days in uniform. For the next couple of weeks I was in agony as I put on my armored vest to go on a mission. Every breath was excruciating. But I wasn’t complaining – didn’t want to be sent home and leave my buddies to carry my water for me. Fortunately, it healed on its own. Haven’t played a game of soccer since, and don’t think I ever will.