Football Fields and Battlefields: The Story of Eight Army Football Players and their Heroic Service

The 2003 Army football team achieved futility in major college play that might never be equaled, losing all 13 of its games. The squad that took the field on a frigid December 2003 day in Philadelphia for the celebrated Army-Navy game featured only eight fourth-year seniors, just a slice of the fifty energetic freshmen—“plebes” in academy vernacular—who reported to West Point amid the heat and humidity of the summer of 2000, hoping to land spots on the football team.

For most of the fifty, ...