The northern edge of Fallujah, Iraq, was no place to be on Thanksgiving Day 2004.
Gunfire reverberated in the distance, and the "safe" ground occupied by Ed Malinowski and his crew of Marine drivers and mechanics felt anything but safe.
But these American men, forced to spend a holiday in a dangerous and distant land, thought of football.
If they couldn't watch the NFL with a turkey leg in one hand and a beer in the other, they wanted to play. Malinowski, who had played quarterback at the Naval Academy, remembered a game his linemen had created.
They would run through the team's plays but at walking speed so they could remain in a confined space. That seemed perfect for the conditions confronting the transport officer and his men, who were headquartered at an abandoned train station.
So they struck up a game of walking football - drivers vs. mechanics, with Malinowski, an obvious ringer, playing quarterback for both. The "field" was an asphalt parking lot, 30 yards long and 20 wide, with a line of Humvees forming one sideline and stacks of ammunition the other.
"I believe the mechanics won," Malinowski said. "They had this tall, skinny kid who could play a bit. And, boy, they talked about it for weeks."
Perhaps it's not surprising that a former quarterback who aspired to coach one day would maintain his connection to sports while at war. After all, he had brought a Terrible Towel, the ultimate emblem of a rabid Pittsburgh Steelers fan, to Iraq for luck.
But Malinowski isn't alone. From former Army and Navy football players to distance runners to aspiring mixed martial artists, athletes who go to war try to stay in touch with their sports. Sometimes, they do it by playing pickup games in unlikely settings. Sometimes, they organize intramural races, fights or basketball leagues. Sometimes, they call on psychology learned in sports to carry them through combat. Sometimes, they simply watch games, beamed to them at odd hours by the Armed Services Network.
Whatever the means, they hold on to sports as a way of holding on to themselves and to home. "Athletics is a release," Malinowski said. "It gives us a distraction from what the hell is going on over there. It's just one of those things that keeps you connected. It's like maybe you're missing Christmas, but you can't miss everything."
Parallel marathons
Maj. Rodney Freeman provided that release when his New Hampshire National Guard unit was mobilized and dispatched to Iraq in December 2004.
Freeman was stationed at a 5,000-man base near Tallil, which served as a stop for convoys in need of fuel and food. A military complex that size is a small town, with fire, police and public works departments. Freeman essentially became the director of parks and recreation. He set up softball, volleyball and basketball leagues, conducted road races and presided over a workout hall he described as "the best Gold's Gym I've ever seen in my life."
After seeing the Ben Stiller comedy Dodgeball, the troops requested a league for that old gym-class standby. "So I got them some balls, and sure enough, they started wailing on each other," Freeman said.
As Freeman watched troops rush back from convoy missions to play for one of the base's 50 softball teams, he realized he was doing important work. The troops couldn't choose between Olive Garden and Red Lobster for dinner, but when it came to recreation, they could pick a team and a sport, just as they might in Maine or Alabama or Oregon. "It was a way for these guys to touch home without going home," he said. "For seven innings, they could play softball and think about playing softball at home."
Before he deployed, Freeman had trained for a marathon that would give him a shot to qualify for the Boston Marathon in April 2005. He was never a great runner, but the routine calmed him to the point where his wife could see the stress if he missed three or four days.
One winter day, he and a few other distance enthusiasts dreamed up the notion of running a marathon in Tallil parallel to the one in Boston. Freeman dropped a note about it to the Boston Athletic Association. He did not expect it would offer official certificates, shirts and medals to those who ran in Iraq or that a crew from the Outdoor Life Network would be dispatched to shoot footage.
But that's what happened. More than 300 runners signed on, and the event became so big that Freeman had to give up competing so he would have time to supervise.
They began the race at 6:15 a.m. with an M-16 rifle instead of a starter's pistol. The runners had to be protected by armed trucks and razor-wire fences, but as the last runner finished five hours later and temperatures soared, no one minded much.
"The soldiers had an opportunity to share something positive from a combat zone with their families back home," Freeman said. "There haven't been a whole lot of positives like that for the people back home."
The idea struck a chord. Similar races parallel to marathons in Texas, Hawaii, Florida, Tennessee and New York have been held. Troops have run the Iraq-Boston marathons three times.
Freeman, who returned home in December 2005, was able to run the real thing in 2006. He didn't train hard or run his best time, but his mind drifted back to the race a year earlier. "At the three-mile marker, I thought, 'Oh, I'd be at the gates if I were in Iraq,'" he recalled. "And I kept doing that. I'd come up on a water station and think, 'Oh, our water stations were much better.' Stupid stuff like that. But as I was running Boston, I was running Tallil in my mind."
Football on the rocks
Former college athletes such as Malinowski were among the soldiers who took advantage of the opportunities provided by Freeman and others.
Malinowski grew up in Canonsburg, Pa., and was a three-sport star in high school, though he stood just 5 feet 10 1/2 and weighed 185 pounds.
"I was just a slow white guy, but football was my burning passion," he said.
He played quarterback and free safety, but given his physical limitations, he was recruited mainly by Division I-AA schools such as Harvard and Colgate. He had dreamed of the Naval Academy since ninth grade, and though he didn't get in at first, the football coaches helped him once they saw his abilities. Over four years, he balanced life as a reserve quarterback with difficult courses such as physics and calculus.
"The guys who went to school with me were just like me," he said. "They were from middle-class families. They maybe got a break because they worked their butts off. It was nice to be around guys I could trust like that."
He loved the experience enough that he stayed for a post-graduate year as an assistant to new football coach Paul Johnson. Coaching fit Malinowski, and he considered it a possible career. But first came his service commitment, a reality that seemed more ominous once terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
Malinowski did two stints in Iraq, one as a motor transport officer, carrying food, ammunition and other supplies to battle sites around Fallujah, and the second as a logistics officer who helped plan the transportation for such missions. He was stationed overseas from June 2004 to January 2005 and from September 2005 to March 2006.
He quickly discovered that his ties to sports would not disappear in the face of war. When his Marines discovered he had played quarterback at Navy, they gave him the call sign "Heisman."
"I'm not even close to that good, and here they are calling me it all the time," he said with a laugh.
He took a decal from his high school football helmet and slapped it on the side of his Humvee. The lifelong Steelers fan also packed his Terrible Towel, "just for luck."
Once overseas, he noted Marines would often grab a football in free moments and play catch or get a fierce pickup game going on the sand and rocks. "Guys would be jumping on rocks, coming up all bloody, but they didn't care," he said. "These are competitive people. That never goes away."
When they weren't playing, many Marines kept the discipline of athletes, lifting weights in a tent at headquarters every morning. When Malinowski was stationed inside a hydroelectric dam during his second stint, he and others would go to the spacious bottom level to run. They played volleyball, too, until someone warned that a ball could get stuck in the dam turbines and crash the whole operation.
The Marines also found release by watching football on the Armed Services Network. A big game such as the college national championship or the Super Bowl could pack the chow hall, even though the broadcasts began in the middle of the night.
For the epic Southern California-Texas game in January 2006, the hall was split. "On one half, you had all these California boys with the surfer look," Malinowski said. "On the other, you had all these roughneck boys with cowboy hats. War is a violent clash of cultures, and it's the same with sports, really."
Malinowski's Navy teammate, linebacker Justin Jordan, didn't have as many opportunities to play sports in Iraq. But the Marine leaned heavily on the psychology he learned as a football player.
"Leading a group of Marines into battle is like walking into a game," Jordan said. "Maybe you go into a game with a plan to run the option, but that doesn't work, so you have to try some reverses. You're just looking for that adjustment that works. Well, it's the same thing when you're reacting to what the enemy does. Nothing prepares you for combat, but the closest I've come is feeling those butterflies in the tunnel when you're waiting to run out for a game."
He didn't make that connection while serving but now sees it clear as day.
"It's hardwired into my thinking - that tendency to approach everything as a competition," Jordan said. "I think the most successful Marines I know are those with some sort of competitive outlet in their backgrounds."
Navy football players often feel isolated from the rest of the student brigade. They play for the honor of the academy but face resentment because they're not always subject to the hazing and drilling imposed on classmates. "You're on an island, and you have to depend on your teammates for everything," Jordan said. " ... I have 25 friends from football where, if they picked up the phone and needed something, I'll be there, and the reverse is true."
That mentality prepared him to command an engineering unit, isolated in the desert 35 miles from the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border. "You can't really relate to the needs in that situation unless you've been part of a team," he said.
Staying sane
Steve Suhr walked on as a pitcher at Army. He didn't have the fastball to overwhelm Division I hitters, and his curveball was downright suspect, but his control saved him. Like his Navy counterparts, he found a preview of military life in his college team.
"It's a perfect microcosm of what you're going to see in the Army," he said. "The best units I've been in most closely relate to sports teams. Guys are always picking each other up, and even when there's ribbing, it's good-natured."
Suhr went to flight school after graduation to learn to pilot a Kiowa Warrior reconnaissance helicopter. Eventually, he commanded eight choppers and 30 men, based near Mosul. They provided quick pickups, support fire and eyes in the sky for ground combat units.
The aviation life allowed Suhr and his men routines that regularly included watching and playing sports. Their base featured hangars large enough to house well-outfitted gyms and basketball courts.
"It was just a great release from getting shot at," Suhr said of playing pickup ball on those courts. "It does give you a taste of being normal. When you're in a pickup game, talking trash, you could be anywhere."
On special occasions, he would take his men to a separate hangar at night for marathon Wiffle ball showdowns. Suhr jokingly calls himself "the greatest Wiffle ball pitcher of all time."
For morale boosts, he would give his men chances to hit off him.
"It was like, 'Hey, we get to make the commander look stupid,' " said Suhr, who is from New Jersey. He also tried to learn the ins and outs of NASCAR, the chief sporting passion of his troops.
Suhr left combat believing sports had helped many men keep their sanity.
"The guys who handle it best are the guys who worked out and played," he said. "You have to find some way to channel all that boredom and anxiety."
'That urge to fight'
For Brian Stann, those chances became fewer and further between.
Stann, another Navy linebacker turned Marine, was stationed on patrol bases deep in enemy territory. In May 2005, he and his regiment fell under heavy assault from machine guns, explosives and suicide bombers as they attempted to secure a bridge along the Euphrates River.
At one juncture, Stann and his sergeant rescued four wounded Marines from a bombed-out tank, an act of bravery that earned him a Silver Star.
If Stann's experience was more harrowing than those of some classmates, his athletic ambition also burned hotter.
Growing up in Scranton, Pa., Stann found his way into plenty of scraps.
"I really had that urge to fight, even when I was in middle school," he said. "I got picked on a fair amount by the older guys, and I guess I was just a kid who fought back."
In high school and at Navy, he channeled his aggression into football excellence. Once he moved on to Marine training at Quantico, Va., he found martial arts.
He had toyed with karate and related disciplines as a teenager but found them impractical. That changed with the Marine system, which pulled from many disciplines and focused on simple, brutal moves that could be used in combat.
"Everybody has a hobby they like to do outside of work," he said. "I figured if I was going to lead Marines into battle, mine might as well be a combat sport."
Stann's fast, powerful strikes made him a natural, and soon he moved to fighting as an amateur mixed martial artist. He won his debut contest in May 2004 and fought several more times before deploying to Iraq in February 2005 as an officer in a mobile assault battalion.
Though he led his men into firefights every week, he found time to lift weights and fire punches into pads every few days. He had little opportunity to keep his technique sharp but tried to stay in decent shape. He missed fighting, the way "you might miss your favorite food."
Stann said leading troops is different from fighting because it's more unselfish. "But there is this overall mind-set of accomplishing your mission no matter what ... with both," he added.
On the other hand, he found his combat experience immensely helpful when he entered his first professional fight after returning from Iraq.
"Only the guys in my corner really realize it, but they always comment on how calm I seem," he said. "I've been there, done that. Nothing that could happen in a cage would make me nervous or excite me, given the things I've seen, the chaos I've been in the middle of."
Stann won twice before returning to Iraq, this time as a patrol leader in enemy-controlled areas. But he had even less opportunity to work out during his second deployment. He managed to keep track of the mixed martial arts world, reading clippings mailed by his family and catching the occasional event on the Armed Services Network.
He yearned to get back to the cage. "Everyone needs something to look forward to when they're over there," Stann said. He agreed to his next fight on a phone call from Iraq and stepped into a difficult match just two months after returning.
It's not easy striving to become an elite fighter while remaining a Marine officer. He has only one high-level training partner at Camp Lejeune. He squeezes in lifting and running before dawn and technical work in the evening. He flies to elite camps run by pros on some weekends and is lucky to see his wife an hour or two a day.
Stann's Web site shows a fighter with the rippling abdominal muscles, serious eyes and closely cropped hair one might expect from a combat leader. He uses the nickname "All-American" as a combatant for World Extreme Cagefighting and says he hopes his story will bring attention to the courage and decency of Marines in Iraq.
"It's a chance to show people what Marines are doing," he said. "If you really want to see people doing great things, think about these 20- and 21-year-old guys making decisions every day that are harder than any a CEO ever faces. If I can get that positive across, it's an honor."
childs.walker@baltsun.com
About this series
Every spring, many of Maryland's young athletes graduate from high school and embark on military careers. While they enter military service having performed on teams and are in excellent physical shape, there is uncertainty about how an athletic background prepares them for war. Nothing can steel these former athletes for everything they encounter on battlefields. Some come home with lost limbs, lost hope and other disabilities. Some don't come home at all - except to be buried.
Tomorrow: Those soldiers who didn't return home showed courage on and off the field.
Wednesday: Being injured or disabled doesn't keep some from getting back in the game.