The Heartbreaking True Story of War and Football in The Mosquito Bowl

In the wet heat of a Guadalcanal afternoon on Christmas Eve 1944, two regiments of the 6th Marine Division met on a football field of packed earth and broken coral. They had come to settle a question argued over beer: Which of them had the better team? The island where the Pacific War’s first major American offensive was fought had been quiet for nearly two years, a staging ground of tents and supply depots where men trained and waited and swatted at the insects that gave the island’s Armed Forces Radio network its name. The game was a serious to-do: There were printed programs, numbered T-shirts, goalposts the Marines built themselves, and an announcer whose call went out over the Mosquito Network to men on ships and islands across the Pacific. At least 1,500 Marines lined the field, some with money on the outcome. Neither team scored. Three months later, the division sailed for Okinawa, an island on Japan’s doorstep, where 15 of the 65 men who played that day were killed. That game is the short reprieve at the heart of Peter Berg’s The Mosquito Bowl, in select theaters Oct. 30 and arriving Nov. 25 on Netflix. Directed by Berg, who wrote the screenplay with Mark L. Smith, the film...