Viewers are perfectly safe, perched atop the woven synthetic fibers of a movie theater chair, but that’s how director Peter Berg intended the upcoming film The Mosquito Bowl to feel. The intimate violence thrusts the Marines from the 4th and 29th regiments, 6th Marine Division, as well as moviegoers, into “this barbaric madness,” said Berg.

The film, based on Buzz Bissinger’s 2022 book The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II, follows four of America’s top college football stars who traded a pigskin for an M1 Garand and who subsequently faced off on the “gridiron” of Guadalcanal before being shipped off to Okinawa. Yet the actual football game, dubbed the Mosquito Bowl, occupies just a small portion of the movie. That too, according to Berg, was intentional.

“This is not a football movie. It’s a war movie that happens to have football players in the middle of the war,” he said in a release.

“These young men — who are just sort of blazing in the apex of their youth and their vitality and their joy — you meet them as college football stars. Then you introduce them to a hell, a flavor of which they had no idea even existed.”

“I think it would have been a tragedy if you said, ‘Oh God, it’s Hollywood. … Let’s sugarcoat it a little,” Bissinger told Military Times. “People have to know what war is. They have to know. We sanitize too much, and it’s just not the way it is. Maybe they’ll watch, and they’ll say, ‘No more wars.’ I know that’s naive, but at least you know what we’re sending our men and women into, and I think that’s really important.”

“So many people were killed in World War II. This is just a story of four of those people, and my feeling was to make it as intense and experiential as I could around those four guys,” Berg said in a release.

“Make the audience feel as though they’re actually in it and they can’t escape it and they’re not even sure what’s happening at times, which I think is very true to the experience that so many of these guys went through. … That was our strategy as we approached filming it and editing it and scoring it and sound-designing it,” he continued. “I’ve had many people who watch the film now say afterward that they literally felt like they went through something, and that was kind of what we were trying to achieve.”

Berg and Bissinger, who happen to be cousins, collaborated on Bissinger’s bestselling book Friday Night Lights over two decades ago and have once again teamed up to deliver this gut-punch of a film.

“Pete has this ability to read a 400-page book and crystallize and seize on what he thought the emotional heart was. I’ve always admired that,” Bissinger said. “He wrote the script. There were several scripts written, but Pete just hit it. When I read the script, his ability to incorporate everything into a two-hour movie was phenomenal.”

For both men, the filming of The Mosquito Bowl was personal, as both their fathers were Marines. Berg’s father served in Korea, and Bissinger’s was a Marine in the Pacific — including Okinawa.

“I knew nothing about what he did,” said Bissinger. “He wouldn’t talk about it. He would joke about it sometimes, but it was pretty clear he had put up a wall. As his son, that was his privacy. I didn’t want to violate that. But as I was doing preliminary research for the book. I finally said, ‘Well, might as well figure out what the hell he did.’

“And I’m looking up the records, and there he is. Not only was he a rifleman on the line, but he was also in one of the regiments, the Fourth Regiment that is depicted in the book. It wasn’t like I wanted to write this book as a pay-on to my father, but he was there for every scene, particularly on Okinawa.

“I just wish I had said, ‘Dad, I’m really proud of you.’ But he died 20 years ago, and maybe he’s … I don’t know where the hell he is, heaven or hell. But I hope he’s listening, and I hope he’s watching because I did want to honor not just him, but all the men who served back then.”

The film is set to hit theaters on Oct. 30 and premiere on Netflix on Nov. 25. It features Nicholas Galitzine (The Idea of You) as John McLaughry; Bill Skarsgård (It) as Bob Bauman; Ray Nicholson (Smile 2) as Tony Butkovich; and Tom Francis (Broadway’s Sunset Boulevard) as Dave Schreiner.

Berg, who penned the adaptation alongside Mark L. Smith, produced the film with Alex Gayner and Brian Grazer for Imagine Entertainment. Grazer and Imagine Entertainment previously collaborated with Berg on Friday Night Lights. Ezra Emanuel is the executive producer.

That night, snow falls in heavy, wet flakes, coating Hancock Point in a thin, white blanket — the first snow of the season. Harvard Merrill Hodgkins, a high school senior and a Boy Scout, drives home from the Wednesday night dance at the Townsend Club. It’s just after eleven, and he’s navigating the winding, unlit road back to Crabtree Neck, as snow drifts down in near-blinding sheets.

As he rounds a bend, his headlights catch two figures trudging through the snow. They’re moving slowly, heads down against the wind, dressed in long, city-style overcoats and slacks, clothes that look foreign here in the Maine woods. He slows the car, and the men turn their faces away from the light. It’s bitter cold, but they wear no hats, no boots. Hodgkins finds it suspicious. “You just don’t see folks walking without boots out here when it’s snowy . . . no one around here wears a topcoat in the winter.”

He considers offering them a ride; something about them nags at his curiosity. “Shucks, if they were crazy enough to be out on a night like this, maybe I’d let them walk,” he thinks, edging the car to the side as they pass. Their faces are unfamiliar—strangers, he realizes, and in a place where six families live year-round, everyone’s face is familiar.

Hodgkins watches them disappear around the bend, their steps trailing off toward the woods and the black sea. It’s a risky time to be out here alone, with recent whispers of spies landing on the Maine coast. He stops the car. He gets out and follows their footprints down the road, then down a little trail that veers off toward Sunset Rocks — a spot he knows well from rabbit hunting with his father, Dana Hodgkins, a deputy sheriff and local guide.

Their tracks vanish into the trees near Kent Crabtree’s house. They’d come from the shore, Hodgkins realizes. “There was no reason for them to be coming from down there,” he ponders, unease prickling as he scans the empty coastline. The cottages along Sunset Rocks are empty in the winter — no reason at all for strangers to emerge from that path.

Down the road, another local, Mary Forni, mother of three and the tax collector’s wife, is driving home from her weekly card game. It’s nearly midnight when her headlights pick up two men walking along the edge of the macadam highway, close enough that she can make out their thin, city-style coats, their shoulders hunched against the snow. She, too, feels that flash of unease. Forni tells her husband, who brushes it off with a laugh.

The encounter with those two strange men lingers in Mary Forni’s mind, keeping her awake long into the night. By morning, she can’t shake her misgivings, so she shares them with her neighbor, Harvard’s mother.

“They just weren’t like anyone you’d see here in November,” she said, the unease still fresh in her voice. “Honestly, it’s a wonder I didn’t stop and offer them a ride.” They quickly connect the dots to the two sightings.

— ✦ —

The strangers were German intelligence agents Erich Gimpel and William Colepaugh. On Nov. 29, 1944, U-1230 had delivered them to the Maine coast to gather intelligence in the United States.

Four days later, the same submarine torpedoed the Canadian freighter SS Cornwallis off the Maine coast. The ship sank in less than 10 minutes, killing 43 of the 48 people aboard. Only five survived.

Now, more than 80 years later, the Nomad Exploration Team has located the wreck nearly 400 feet beneath the Gulf of Maine. The discovery, made on July 11, 2026, followed seven years of research and expeditions to find the long-lost ship. It brings renewed attention to the lives lost and to the remarkable events ashore that wartime headlines would only partly explain.

When Harvard’s father, Deputy Sheriff Dana Hodgkins, returned from a hunting trip, Harvard told him about the strangers. Dana initially suspected burglars, but his investigation of the area’s homes revealed nothing amiss.

On Dec. 4, while in Bangor, he encountered an FBI agent he knew and mentioned Harvard’s experience. Within an hour, three agents arrived in Hancock to question the teenager.

Federal personnel had already been sent to the area following the sinking of Cornwallis. The attack established that a U-boat was operating offshore. Harvard’s account supplied the first evidence of a potential enemy landing. Investigators checked transportation connections and telephone records. But the strangers had moved on.

The decisive break eventually came from inside the operation. Colepaugh approached a friend who contacted the FBI on his behalf. Colepaugh surrendered, and the information he supplied enabled agents to arrest Gimpel.

In its Jan. 15, 1945, issue, TIME described federal agents following the spies “almost as soon as they landed.” The article reported their arrests but did not explain Colepaugh’s surrender or the roles of Hodgkins and Forni.

The effect was reassuring: enemy agents had arrived, and American authorities had been close behind. The fuller story gives civilian vigilance and a spy’s decision to surrender far greater importance. The FBI made the arrests, but that fact alone did not explain how the landing came to light or how the case broke.

Along another stretch of Maine’s coast, USS Eagle 56 offers a different example of why wartime accounts deserve careful examination. In April 1945, the patrol vessel sank after a violent explosion. Survivors reported evidence of a submarine, but the official inquiry attributed the loss to a boiler explosion. Decades later, persistent research prompted a reassessment. In 2001, the Navy recognized the sinking as a combat loss caused by a German U-boat.

The Nomad Exploration Team also located Eagle 56, finding the wreck in 2018 before its discovery was publicly announced the following year. These were separate events, with different circumstances. Together, they reveal how much the history of America’s wartime shores still rewards investigation.

They are among the stories explored in The Dangerous Shore: a war of merchant crews, intelligence officers, sailors, and ordinary Americans confronted with extraordinary responsibilities close to home.

For families of those lost aboard Cornwallis, the discovery establishes the ship’s final resting place. For the rest of us, it brings the war off America’s coast into sharper focus. These waters carried merchant crews toward home, enemy submarines within reach of shore, and secrets that would outlast the fighting.

Finding Cornwallis was no small undertaking. After years of searching, the Nomad team nearly missed the wreck entirely, finally detecting it in the last 100 yards of a sonar survey. Confirming the discovery required dives into cold, dark water nearly 400 feet deep, with strong currents and conditions that challenged even these experienced divers.

With Cornwallis and Eagle 56, the Nomad team has brought renewed attention to two ships whose histories reach well beyond the circumstances of their sinking.

In Hancock, that history also survives on an ordinary stretch of road. Before anyone knew the strangers’ names or their mission, a teenager noticed their clothes, and a mother refused to dismiss her unease. Neither knew the whole story. Both recognized something worth telling.

More than 80 years later, a team of divers has given us another reason to listen.

Sara Vladic is the New York Times bestselling co-author of INDIANAPOLIS and author of The Dangerous Shore, which explores the Americans who defended the home front during World War II.

Barrett was commissioned through Navy ROTC in 2000 and spent four years leading infantry and scout sniper Marines from 2000 to 2004.

When most of his platoon headed to sniper school, he went with them.

It was a “pretty unusual” move for a Marine officer, he told Military Times.

The Marine Corps has since trained its final scout snipers and moved sniper training into reconnaissance and Raider units under Force Design 2030.

After the Marines, Barrett built a business, sold it and started farming. When a friend asked him to join an aid convoy to Ukraine, he had four kids in school and a harvest underway. His first answer was no.

That night, he read about pastors killed and churches destroyed by Russian forces. As a Christian, he wondered how he’d missed it. He made the trip, then kept going back.

Now, despite declaring that he is “not a filmmaker,” Barrett has produced two series on the war in Ukraine: A Faith Under Siege and Faith in War. Within that series is Safe Ground, the story of a Green Beret who removes landmines in Ukraine.

During those trips, Barrett heard about a sniper with the call sign of Lektor, a special forces sniper from the Department of Active Measures with Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence, who, in December 2024, hit a moving Russian soldier at 2,069 meters using a single .338 Lapua Magnum round from a Sako TRG M10. He fired standing in a trench, nearly level with his target, and hit on the first shot.

Lektor is still running missions and only reluctantly agreed to press, Barrett said. Soon, however, Barrett’s time with Lektor will become a short documentary.

Barrett’s crew spent a morning on the range with his unit testing whether American M118 ammunition could match its costly hand-loaded rounds. Lektor said there was “practically no difference,” so the unit stuck with the M118 it already had.

“I was struck by just his humility,” Barrett said.

Lektor, a former gamekeeper, waved off the praise.

“Honestly, I don’t consider myself a super expert,” he told Barrett’s crew in an interview translated from Ukrainian. “This is my job for the duration of the war.”

Before the shot, his team had spent two weeks on the zero line watching for a Russian assault, under orders not to fire. When the situation changed and the team was set to move, Lektor asked for one more chance.

“So I simply begged the commander: give us a day or two for free hunting,” he said.

He spotted a soldier whose gear set him apart from ordinary infantry. The man was walking a tree line at a steady pace and a workable angle. As Lektor prepared to fire, his partner called a wind correction in the wrong direction.

“I managed to shout: recalculate, something’s wrong,” Lektor said. They fixed it in seconds while the target was still moving.

Barrett pointed to the longest confirmed .338 Lapua kill — British Cpl. Craig Harrison’s 2,475-meter shot in Afghanistan in 2009 — which came after several sighting rounds. Shots like that, he said, are “really more like competition shooting.” Lektor is skeptical of the rankings for the same reason.

“Two shots maximum: if you didn’t hit, that’s it,” he said. “That’s how you should compare.”

Within half an hour of the shot, drones were overhead.

“The only thing that saved us was that the enemy didn’t expect a shot from such a distance,” Lektor said. The Russians shelled an area about 500 meters out. His team waited a full day in a dugout before slipping out.

Now, thermal cameras hunt for heat.

“After a shot, a simple suppressor can give you away, because it’s hot, it glows,” Lektor said.

Early in the war, Lektor said, the walk to a firing position was about a kilometer. He now walks eight.

Barrett asked him whether snipers were even relevant anymore. Lektor admitted the role is “a little outdated” but not finished.

“Snipers, in my opinion, are the neurosurgeons,” he said. A sniper team can watch a sector almost continuously, he explained. “Drones have to return to recharge, they get shot down.”

Near Bakhmut, Lektor’s team killed a Russian sniper. A neighboring unit then told them he was the fifth one killed at that position.

“They have absolutely no regard for the lives of their own men,” Lektor said.

Barrett sees Ukraine’s regard for its own people as an advantage, along with its speed in adapting to new technology. Russia, he said, treats the war like a meat grinder: “If I just put so much meat into it, that it breaks the grinder, then we’ll win.”

Lektor’s son enlisted first, and the two have served together most of the war.

“He’s my child, I have to be there,” Lektor said.

Once, while Lektor was hospitalized with wounds, his son was fighting with another team in Chasiv Yar. He was the only one of four men in his group to come out unharmed.

On his own team, Lektor keeps one rule.

“I [am] the first to go in and the last to come out,” he said. “That’s our unwritten rule.”

Ryan Hendrickson spent 22 years in uniform learning to find the things buried in the dirt that are meant to kill people. When the U.S. left Afghanistan, he discovered he no longer knew who he was without that work.

“I had no identity anymore, because my entire military career had been wrapped up in Afghanistan or Iraq,” the retired Green Beret told Military Times.

That void, and what he eventually filled it with, is at the heart of “Safe Ground: A Green Beret’s Mission to Remove Ukraine’s Landmines,” a documentary now streaming on Prime Video in the U.S. and U.K.

The film debuted Sept. 12, the anniversary of the day in 2010 when Hendrickson stepped on an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan while trying to rescue an Afghan soldier.

The Special Forces engineer sergeant recovered and deployed to Afghanistan seven more times.

In 2016, he earned a Silver Star for leading an IED-clearing team through a Taliban ambush in Baghlan Province. After retiring from the 7th Special Forces Group, he went back as a contractor, leaving in July 2021, shortly before the final U.S. withdrawal.

He came home hurt, confused and drinking heavily.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Hendrickson felt a pull he couldn’t shake. He had no ties to the country. What he did have was his father’s longtime warning that regret is a miserable way to finish a life.

“I knew if I got to be an old man, and I didn’t at least go and try, I would regret it,” he said.

He flew into Poland in March 2022 with roughly 10 bags of donated humanitarian supplies.

Contacts on a Ukrainian missionary team asked him to bring body armor if he had it, plus two less tactical items: American Reese’s cups and beef jerky. Passing between drivers and safehouses, he reached Kyiv about three days later.

The process felt familiar. Hendrickson compared it to Robin Sage, the final exercise of Special Forces training, set in a fictional country at war.

“Well, everything went back to my training. It’s like, this is Robin Sage,” he said.

Volunteering with the missionary group Youth With A Mission, he was driving a bus into threatened areas the day he arrived, evacuating women, children and the elderly.

After Russian forces pulled back from around Kyiv, the team moved into newly liberated towns such as Bucha with food, medical supplies and shelter materials. He said the work “completely rewired my brain after Afghanistan, and now I had my purpose, and I had an identity back.”

As residents returned home, they began hitting landmines, booby traps and other explosive remnants left in the war’s wake.

Hendrickson started working with Ukrainian territorial defense units, doing what Green Berets do: train, advise and equip. He would fly home, raise money for detectors and safety gear, donate it to a unit and move on to the next one.

In October 2022, that cycle became Tip of the Spear Landmine Removal, a nonprofit he says has since carried him back to Ukraine 13 times.

Along the way, he came to believe the mission could help other veterans, arguing that “a lot of veterans’ mental health revolved around lack of purpose, service, and identity.” He began bringing veterans over as funding allowed.

At the organization’s recent gala, he announced an expansion, the Tip of the Spear Veterans Humanitarian Corps, which is meant to cover everything from mine clearance to reconstruction, agriculture, teaching and medical work.

“In the military we were trained to protect the people of America and our way of life through war. But now, we’re utilizing these same skills, but for saving lives and rebuilding. So you go from killing to healing,” he said.

When producer Colby Barrett, a former Marine captain, first pitched a documentary, Hendrickson said no. They talked for more than a year before he agreed, and Hendrickson said Barrett funded the production himself.

“Safe Ground” is part of Faith in War, a documentary series from the creators of “A Faith Under Siege.”

Hendrickson credits his faith as a huge driving force in his life and his work.

He added that Europeans often tell him he isn’t like a normal American. He pushes back. “I’m extremely normal. I am your normal American,” he said. “There’s Americans that are so much better than I am, and this is what we do as Americans, and this is what we do as veterans.”

The mission also gave him the courage to confront his own wounds. Hendrickson said suicide was once “on the table for me. I had that line in the sand that if things got worse than this, then I had my out.”

He later underwent ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT treatment at a clinic in Mexico, the same psychedelic therapy explored in the veteran documentary “In Waves and War.”

“But the fighting inside myself has stopped,” he said, adding that he isn’t sure whether he has reached a peace agreement with himself or just a cease-fire.

As a Green Beret, Hendrickson said, “I would have a very hard time looking in the mirror because all I would see is failure.” That has changed.

“I’m proud, you know, of the man that’s staring back at me in the mirror,” he said.

Now almost 50, he is exploring similar work in Nigeria and Burma. His final objective is the country where his story began.

“Before I’m finished with my mission, I will be back in Afghanistan, and we will be helping the people of Afghanistan,” he said.

For veterans who have drawn their own line in the sand, his offer is simple: “Let me take you on a mission.”

The cuddly red creature and his Sesame Street buddies have teamed up again with the Department of Defense’s Office of Military Community and Family Policy to continue their work for military preschool-aged children. The Muppets address topics and issues such as deployments, relocation, homecomings, transition to civilian life, stress, grief, the “new normal with a parent with physical or mental injuries,” and others.

All the resources are free and available at SesameStreetforMilitaryFamilies.org.

The new package promotes a whole-family approach to well-being. It includes the “Move with Elmo” game, which features choices at each stage of an animated walk in the park, where children can choose an exercise demonstrated by Elmo along the way, with periodic water breaks.

At each stop, they can choose an exercise and either exercise the entire body or move only their arms. Children get a dose of numbers with each exercise, too. The game provides digital stickers after each activity that children can drag over to their digital coloring pages at the end. Their grown-up can help print their coloring page.

Since its launch in 2006, Sesame Street for Military Families has provided research-based resources especially for military and veteran families.

Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind “Sesame Street,” developed the programs in partnership with DoD and military families. They’ve carefully researched how to relate sometimes complex messages in ways children can understand.

Videos, articles, digital tools, printable activities and provider resources have helped millions of military-connected families navigate the various aspects of military life.

“As we celebrate this milestone, we’re introducing new resources that make it easier for families to stay active, build healthy habits, and spend quality time together,” Rocio Galarza, vice president of U.S. Educational Programs for Sesame Workshop, said in an announcement. “Whether it’s moving with Elmo, trying new family activities, or creating everyday routines, these tools help children grow stronger, healthier and ready for whatever comes next.”

The Sesame Street programs specifically for military children are part of its long-standing educational work for the larger population of young children.

Buzz Bissinger, author of The New York Times bestselling book Friday Night Lights, and its subsequent film’s director, Peter Berg, are teaming up to deliver the true story of The Mosquito Bowl, which saw 65 Marines of the 4th and 29th regiments, 6th Marine Division, facing off on the “gridiron” of Guadalcanal before being shipped off to Okinawa.

Based on Bissinger’s 2022 book The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II, the film follows four of America’s top college football stars, who traded a pigskin for an M1 Garand.

Netflix dropped the official teaser trailer Wednesday, featuring Nicholas Galitzine (The Idea of You) as John McLaughry, Bill Skarsgård (It) as Bob Bauman, Ray Nicholson (Smile 2) as Tony Butkovich and Tom Francis (Broadway’s Sunset Boulevard) as Dave Schreiner.

Berg, who penned the adaptation alongside Mark L. Smith, produced the film with Alex Gayner and Brian Grazer for Imagine Entertainment. Grazer and Imagine Entertainment previously collaborated with Berg on Friday Night Lights. Ezra Emanuel is the executive producer.

As the days of December 1944 passed on Guadalcanal, the island was beset with rumors of where and when the Marines would ship out. It also became the home to some lively trash talk.

Relief from the daily drudgery came over sips of beer and the promise that the “29th would kick the 4th’s ass if there was ever a football game between the two,” writes Bissinger.

That promise swiftly took shape into an all-American sporting event — some thousands of miles from home.

These men were not, according to Bissinger, run-of-the-mill former collegiate football players. Within the 29th alone came an “All-American running back from Purdue who had set a scoring record in the Big Ten; an All-Missouri Valley Conference end; starters from Cornell, Notre Dame, Illinois and Duquesne; and five former captains, including from Notre Dame, Illinois and Purdue.”

The 4th was no slouch when it came to its “roster” either. The unit touted a two-time All-American wide receiver from Wisconsin and another at center from the University of California; an Ivy Leaguer who had started with the New York Giants; and starters from Wisconsin, Michigan State, Fordham, Montana and Ohio Northern, according to Bissinger.

On Dec. 24, 1944, the 65 Marines strode out onto a “field” made up of dirt, pebbles and shards of sharp coral, wearing cut-off dungarees and T-shirts with numbers stenciled on the front. Roughly 1,500 Marines ringed the field with a broadcast on Guadalcanal-based Mosquito Network going out to various Navy and Marine units fighting across the Pacific. The score, according to Bissinger, was occasionally flashed to destroyers at sea.

Tragically, it would be the last game many of the footballers-turned-Marines would play. Fifteen of the 65 players who suited up for The Mosquito Bowl were killed during the Typhoon of Steel.

The film is set to hit theaters on Oct. 30 and premiere on Netflix on Nov. 25.

Carpenter earned the nation’s highest military honor for his actions on Nov. 21, 2010, in Marjah, Afghanistan. When a grenade landed near him and fellow Marine Nick Eufrazio during a firefight, Carpenter threw himself toward the blast to shield his teammate. He was unconscious for five weeks afterward and lost an eye and most of his teeth, along with sustaining numerous other serious injuries.

President Barack Obama presented Carpenter with the Medal of Honor at the White House in 2014, making him the youngest living recipient at the time.

The Valor Pack is the latest entry in a long-running tradition for the Call of Duty Endowment, Activision’s charity dedicated to helping veterans land quality jobs after leaving the service. Proceeds from the bundle will go directly to that mission.

It follows a similar release tied to Black Ops 7, which featured retired NASA astronaut and 9/11-era special operations veteran Chris Cassidy, and comes on the heels of the Endowment’s operator bundle honoring Army veteran and Purple Heart recipient Danielle Green, the first female combat veteran featured as a playable character in the franchise.

Since its founding in 2009, the Call of Duty Endowment has placed more than 150,000 veterans into civilian careers, funded entirely through Activision Blizzard’s overhead support so that all player donations go straight toward job placement.

Modern Warfare 4 launches Oct. 23 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, PC and Nintendo Switch 2. An open beta for all players runs Aug. 28 through Sept. 1, following a preorder beta already underway.

Roll Tide.

The inert cannonballs, which were — naturally — wrapped in paper towels, were discovered during the baggage screening process at Alabama’s Gulf Shores International Airport and later determined by police to have been stolen from the nearby coastal stronghold Fort Morgan.

“My first thought was, ‘I couldn’t see a fuse and need to get some help quick,’” TSA officer Justin Dupree recalled in a release. “I couldn’t see the entire item but was scared I might have been holding a live explosive.”

Dupree noted the antique artillery projectiles ranged in size, with the largest comparable to a grapefruit.

“I had never seen anything quite this unique,” Dupree said. “I’ve seen inert grenades and training munitions but never an Indiana Jones-esque stolen artifact-type situation.”

A TSA explosives specialist and the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office were subsequently notified and determined that the cannonballs posed no threat.

Law enforcement investigating the incident stated the passenger claimed to be unaware of how the projectiles were acquired. The cannonballs were later returned to Fort Morgan, the release added.

Passenger attempts to transport illegal items, including outlandish weaponry, through the screening process are, of course, nothing new.

In a more glaring example from 2019, a Florida man traveling through Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley International Airport set off alarms after his bag was found to contain a disassembled rocket-propelled grenade.

The individual was subsequently taken into an inspection area, where he told airport security he was under the impression he could bring the checked RPG on the plane, CBS Philadelphia reported.

Inspection of the weapon itself revealed that the launcher was not in working order, and the grenade was a realistic replica.

The items were confiscated by security, and, miraculously, the individual boarded his flight on time.

But as America celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it is easy to forget that independence was not guaranteed. As they shivered at Valley Forge in the winter of 1778, George Washington and his troops would have scoffed at the notion that victory would come on a silver platter.

For the American Revolution to succeed, the colonists had to create an army. Whether the Continental Army was defeated on the battlefield — as it frequently was — mattered less. As long as the United Colonies could keep an army in the field, Britain would be forced to continue what seemed like a forever war.

“American Revolutionary War” is a computer wargame that depicts the battles of the American Revolution, or what the British call the War of American Independence.

With 148 scenarios, from small engagements like Hubbardton and Kettle Creek, to larger battles such as Princeton, Brandywine and Saratoga, American Revolutionary War is part of publisher Wargame Design Studio’s Musket & Pike series. These games depict warfare from the 15th through the 18th Centuries, an era where polearms were gradually replaced by gunpowder weapons, such as muskets.

By the 1770s, the pike had been replaced by the bayonet, and the primitive arquebus by more reliable flintlock muskets including Britain’s “Brown Bess.”

With a 114-page user manual, American Revolutionary War is not exactly casual entertainment. It is a highly detailed simulation not just of 18th Century European-style warfare — but also how difficult it was to conduct armies’ European-style warfare in the 18th Century North American wilderness.

The game depicts battles at the grand tactical scale, with battalions and companies of infantry, as well as batteries of artillery and the occasional horse soldier (cavalry was much rarer than the later Napoleonic and American Civil Wars). The American have Continental regulars and local militia, while the Crown fields a polyglot force of British regulars, German mercenaries, Loyalist troops and Native American allies.

These units maneuver across a 2-D hex-grid map of eastern North America in its pre-industrial glory. The terrain is studded with forests, fields, marshes and streams.

Units are rated for how many troops or guns they have, and their weaponry (musket, 3-pounder artillery, etc.). Most important is a quality rating from A to F, which affects combat proficiency and movement. The British regulars tend to be quality As and Bs, while the Continentals tend to be Cs and Ds, and the American militias Fs.

Players alternate taking their turns, with each turn representing about 15 minutes of real time. Each player conducts movement and fire combat, followed by a melee phase to resolve assaults. Combat inflicts casualties as well as “fatigue,” which saps morale and effectiveness until units break or rout.

Western battlefield tactics in the 18th and 19th Centuries centered on assuming the right formation in an era when troops fought shoulder to shoulder. Column formation was used to expedite movement, though at the cost of firepower and presenting a juicy target. When engaging in a firefight, infantry would assume line formation, standing in two or three ranks.

Units in line that move through rough terrain, or obstructions, such as walls, run the risk of becoming “disordered,” with movement and fire penalties. On the other hand, a densely packed column can take heavy casualties from enemy troops deployed in line. Dispersing troops into open order makes them less vulnerable to enemy fire, but penalizes them in melee.

One myth is that the conflict “was fought by the British in a strictly linear fashion, while the Americans were primarily in skirmish,” Mike Cox, designer of American Revolutionary War, told Military Times. Both sides were capable of assuming a variety of formations, though this presented challenges for under-trained Continentals.

“The Americans often tried to fight linearly, too,” added Cox. “It just didn’t often work out well.”

Particularly useful are the detachments of light infantry.

“Learning to master your light troops is extremely important,” Cox said. “When to deploy as skirmishers to delay or scout, or recall and use them to effectively melee to push back the enemy and take and hold ground.”

Command and control has always been the glue that binds armies, but especially so in the pre-radio era, when commanders personally led their troops.

American Revolutionary War features historical commanders, rated from A (George Washington) to F, that form chains of command in each army. Leaders can rally broken troops and provide morale bonuses, though they can also be felled by enemy fire.

“Keeping units in range of their leader and their leader in range of the next higher echelon makes an army work well,” Cox explained. American commanders will need to stay close to their militia: “Keeping them in command and preventing their disruption and breakdown is an art.”

One fascination of playing historical wargames is seeing how they model the little things. For example, the British Army’s Scottish Highlanders are given a bonus during melee combat “to reflect their impact on the minds of American troops, and their reputation for relishing close combat,” the game manual notes.

But ultimately, the question comes down to: How accurately does the game depict the battles that determined the fate of the American Revolution? And, how well does it capture the essences of a professional army versus a more amateur — but also more inspired — citizen army?

American Revolutionary War fares well on both questions.

The unit quality, morale and command systems model the capabilities of both sides, including how the Continental Army improved over time due to combat experience, as well as the tutelage of European instructors like Baron von Steuben.

“British forces are often outnumbered,” said Cox. “They need to learn to stretch their lines or get outflanked. They will usually have some high-quality troops and have the advantage of picking the point of attack.”

“The Americans usually have a high number of units. However, quality and strength can vary wildly. The Americans need to know when to give ground and when to hit hard.”

Perhaps what is most striking is the theater of war.

WDS has published almost 120 historical wargames that cover gigantic battles, such as Waterloo, Gettysburg, Kursk and the Battle of the Bulge. In these games, the maps are packed with masses of troops.

In American Revolutionary War, the maps are often big, while the armies are small. One can begin to appreciate how British soldiers and colonial settlers must have felt about fighting in a vast, untamed land.

As Americans mark the Declaration of Independence, this is a reminder of how far our nation has come.

Joseph Lavar Davis, 47, was convicted of stealing over $1.1 million worth of the military’s pre-packaged Meals-Ready-to-Eat, or MREs, in El Paso, Texas, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Texas, said Tuesday, in a scheme involving three other co-defendants and more than 200 pallets of the shelf-stable rations.

MREs, typically sealed in distinctive brown branding, are used to feed troops basic nutrients in austere situations and training exercises.

Known for their energy content as opposed to their taste, the emergency rations can be eaten hot or cold and are notorious for producing foul flatulence and blocked bowels — oftentimes contributing to the MRE’s other moniker of Meal, Refusing to Exit.

According to a statement from the office, the group used false paperwork to acquire MREs from Fort Bliss and Davis created false requests, rented vehicles to move the calorically dense provisions, fixed prices and collected compensation in the operation.

The FBI and Army Criminal Investigation Division agents executed a search warrant on a civilian warehouse in August 2020 and found scores of pallets of MREs that an investigation showed was a holding facility for a company that purchased the rations from people who had pillaged them from Fort Bliss, the statement said.

Davis was named in the February 2025 indictment — along with the three others — for conspiracy to commit theft of government property and a substantive count of theft of government property between Feb. 4, 2020, and Aug. 12, 2020.

The office said that Davis learned the Army’s food procurement process while working in food service supply in the service. When he retired, the statements said, he got a job as a civilian contractor in a similar position.

“Joseph Davis betrayed the very country he once swore to protect in an effort to satisfy his own selfish ambition and a jury of his peers held him accountable for it,” said U.S. Attorney Justin R. Simmons.

Davis served as a culinary specialist in the Army from May 1998 to May 2018, according to an Army spokesperson. He left the service at the rank of sergeant first class.