On Christmas Eve 1944, on a coral-and-dirt field on Guadalcanal, two regiments of Marines played a football game. It was a few hours of joy for young men who knew what was coming, but put on the uniform anyway. Of the 65 players who suited up, 15 were killed on Okinawa.
This Veterans Day, this incredible story has a new audience. Netflix’s The Mosquito Bowl, directed by Peter Berg, is adapted from Buzz Bissinger’s nonfiction book, opened in select theaters on October 30, and will arrive on Netflix on November 25.
Wisconsin should pay close attention, because two of the men at the heart of this story wore the Badger cardinal and white. Dave Schreiner and Bob Baumann, teammates on the 1942 Badgers, played in the Mosquito Bowl. Schreiner, an All-American at the University of Wisconsin, came from Lancaster. He was a two-time All-American. In the film, Bill Skarsgård plays Baumann, and Tom Francis plays Schreiner, a defensive end and team captain.
Schreiner’s hometown has not forgotten him. Earlier this month, more than 100 people nearly filled the Grantland Theater in Lancaster to watch the movie. A small Grant County crowd gathered in the dark to remember one of their own.
That is how a community honors its veterans, and a reminder of how we should all remember our veterans today on Veterans Day, and every day.
This film is not filled with fictional characters. They were sons of farm towns and college towns who traded stadium roars for the roar of artillery. And for many, they played one last game, then went to battle to protect our freedoms and our right to play and watch football every Fall.
Veterans Day is the nation’s chance to say what a movie can help us remember: we thank them for their service. And today, especially across Wisconsin, we remember Schreiner and Baumann, and the thousands of Wisconsinites, in every war and peacetime, who answered the call to serve.
