August 21, 2023
Journalist Pengelly debuts with an intimate portrait of the members of the West Point Military Academy’s rugby team of 2001–2002—the first academic year following the September 11 attacks, whose graduating class entered a military at war. In the U.S., rugby is found mostly on college campuses and “very few arrive at rugby in a straight line,” according to Pengelly: “At West Point, the rugby team were proud outsiders, cut from football, drifted over from lacrosse, wrestling, or track.” In one of the oldest academic institutions in the country, where cadets are taught to live by the motto “duty, honor, country,” rugby was a “sport of the outsider, the eccentric, the nonconformist.” The teammates, along with their classmates, were fired up to serve following a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, and three members of the team later died during active-duty service—two were killed in stateside accidents within months after graduation and one died in Iraq after an IED attack. A fourth teammate died of cancer after leaving the army. Drawing on his own love of rugby, personal reminiscences from the cadets, and in-depth reportage, Pengelly provides a vivid snapshot of his subjects and their experiences of war, combined with an elegiac meditation on the sport. It’s a poignant account. (Oct.)Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly stated that two of the teammates were killed in Afghanistan.