The All Americans

On November 29, 1941, Army played Navy in front of 100,000 fans. Eight days later, the Japanese attacked and the young men who battled each other in that historic game were forced to fight a very different enemy. Author Lars Anderson follows four players—two from Annapolis and two from West Point—in this epic true story.

Bill Busik. Growing up in Pasadena, California, Busik was best friends with a young black man named Jackie, who in 1947 would make Major League Baseball history. Busik would have a spectacular sports career himself at the Naval Academy, earning All-American honors as a tailback in 1941. He was serving aboard the U.S.S. Shaw when it was attacked by Japanese dive-bombers in 1943.

Hal Kauffman. Together, Busik and Kauffman rode a train across the nation to Annapolis to enroll in the Naval Academy. A backup tailback at Navy, Kauffman would go on to serve aboard the U.S.S. Meredith, which was sunk in 1942. For five days Kauffman struggled to stay alive on a raft, fighting off hallucinations, dehydration, and—most terrifying of all—sharks. Dozens of his crewmates lost their minds; others were eaten by sharks. All the while Kauffman wondered if he'd ever see his friend and teammate again.

Henry Romanek. Because he had relatives in Poland, Romanek heard firsthand accounts in 1939 of German aggression. Wanting to become an officer, Romanek attended West Point and played tackle for the Cadets. He spent months preparing for the D-day invasion and on June 6, 1944—the day he would have graduated from West Point had his course load not been cut from four years to three—Romanek rode in a landing craft to storm Omaha Beach. In the first wave to hit the beach he would also become one of the first to take a bullet.

Robin Olds. The son of a famous World War I fighter pilot, Olds decided to follow in his father's footsteps. At West Point he became best friends with Romanek and the two played side-by-side on Army's line. In 1942, a sportswriter Grantland Rice named Olds to his All-American team. Two years later Olds spent D-day flying a P-38 over Omaha Beach, anxiously scanning the battlefield for Romanek, hoping his friend would survive the slaughter.

The tale of these four men is woven into a dramatic narrative of football and war that's unlike any other. Through extensive research and interviews with dozens of World War II veterans, Anderson has written one of the most compelling and original true stories in all of World War II literature. From fierce fighting, heroic rescues, tragic death, and awe-inspiring victory, all four men's suspenseful journeys are told in graphic detail. Along the way, Anderson brings World War II to life in a way that has never been done before.

On November 29, 1941 Army Played Navy in Front of 98,942 fans. Eight days later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. This is the story of the players' journey from the football field to the battle field

Kirkus Reviews

Are we running out of WWII stories? Certainly some of the premises are getting a little thin, and this is a case in point. The setup is just right for Sports Illustrated reporter Anderson (The Proving Ground, 2001, etc.): On November 29, 1941, the Army-Navy game proved to be one of the most thrilling matches ever waged between Annapolis and West Point, with 100,000 spectators (including Eleanor Roosevelt) in the stands. By the end of the game, writes Anderson, "the undermanned Cadet players had fought as hard as Vikings, but the Midshipmen prevailed 14-6." Nine days later the US was at war with the Axis, and Anderson's Rockwellian evocations of prewar military life ("Just the name of the naval academy sounded glamorous to him; it conveyed some magical faraway place where everyone was smart and strong") give way to the hard realities of combat in episodes starring four of the game's players, now commissioned officers. Anderson's account of the game itself is first-class, and the lessons to be drawn vis-a-vis football and war will be familiar to anyone who's been inside a locker room: "We were officers in the war," one officer recalls, "but really, we were just kids in our early twenties. But most of us were put in charge of hundreds of soldiers. It's much easier to deal with that kind of responsibility once you've had the experience of playing football in front of 100,000 people." Anderson's war tales are pretty well done, too, though there's a been-there-done-that quality that will make some readers wish he had done a Seabiscuit and stuck to the game and others of its kind during the war years-as he notes, and most interestingly, the 1944 bout alone raised $58 million in war bonds, whilefor other reasons "never in the history of the Army-Navy game had the two service academies played each other with so much on the line." Surely enjoyable for a readership among academy grads and fans of sports history. Of less service as a window onto WWII. Agent: Scott Waxman/Scott Waxman Agency

A graduate of St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota., Lars Anderson earned a masters degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University and is now a staff writer at Sports Illustrated. He's also the author of the critically acclaimed Pickup Artist: Street Basketball in America and The Proving Ground: A Season on the Fringe in NFL Europe. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama, with his wife, Sara.