Half a world away, the New York-New England rivalry thrives
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BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan — Soldiers with the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade traded friendly fire for hours here early Monday morning — not with bullets, but with words.
In the end, it was the score, not the verbal jabs, that caused the most casualties, as the Patriots fell to the Giants for the second time in fours years after another late-game miracle grab led to a touchdown from which the New England Patriots could not recover.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” said Pfc. Anthony Lupo, a 24-year-old from Boston, who spent much of the game haranguing his anti-Pats colleagues.
Fellow Patriots fan Sgt. 1st Class Shawn Joyce tried to rally troops to his side early, reshuffling the words President George W. Bush used to rally support for the U.S. after 9/11: “You’re either with us or you’re against us,” he said. “Either you’re a Patriot, or you’re not. Think about it.”
Those words didn’t mean a thing to Sgt. 1st Class Devon Henry, a 41-year-old Queens, N.Y., native who brought as a good-luck charm a football autographed by Lawrence Taylor from the Giants’ 1986 victory.
“Last time I was deployed … the Giants won the Super Bowl,” said Henry. “I got a good feeling.”
Superstition played a part as well in Joyce’s unease leading into Super Bowl XLVI. He was worried, he said, “because this is the first AFC championship game (in Foxboro) that I haven’t been to, and every one I’ve been to they won the Super Bowl.”
It turned out they were both right. Neither soldier stayed in the brigade’s dining facility past the second half, though, rushing back to their barracks at halftime to avoid a daily traffic halt on the base’s Disney Drive.
Close by in the brigade’s operations center, though, three types of people stayed for the whole game: Patriots fans, Patriots haters, and the people who had to work, regardless of whether the game was on.
There was, after all, still a war going on. But the game gave even those without a team in the championship a welcome diversion.
“I think there’s a little something special about it,” said Maj. Kevin Lovett, the brigade’s chief of operations and a self-described Dallas Cowboys “fan by default” from Panama City, Fla. “It gives you a sense of home.”
He guessed that most every U.S. troop in Afghanistan was either asleep or watching the game as his phone, which usually rings through the night, was mostly silent.
“Operations are still going on,” he said, “but the little administrative stuff that people tend to stress about, nobody’s calling about that.”
For Lupo, though, the sense of home Lovett described was somewhat absent.
“I’ve never been with any other sports fan but Boston fans,” he said. “That’s all that’s in Boston. You don’t go to Boston and find fans of any other teams other than Boston teams. That’s just the way it is.”
Missing as well were the Super Bowl commercials, replaced by standard American Forces Network messages, “we support you” shout-outs from players, and a smattering of more amateurish productions that left many scratching their heads.
“I’m telling you,” Master Sgt. Franklin Rodriguez, of Silver Spring, Md., said after a commercial about, well, absolutely nothing anybody could figure out. “They gave a camera to some high school kids.”
Rodriguez, a neutral party in the verbal clashes going on around him in the brigade’s conference room, was joined in his confusion by Sgt. 1st Class Heidi Miranda of Flint, Mich. Some of that confusion may have had something to do with the hour — nearly 7 a.m. by the end of the fourth quarter.
“I woke up at 2:30 in the morning to be here,” she said, taking a deep breath after her Giants scored late in the fourth en route to their 21-17 upset, “which really means something, because I love my sleep.”
Staff Sgt. Jose Rosario, from Guayama, Puerto Rico, didn’t care who won, and wore a fry-cook’s paper hat on which he’d written both “Patriots” and “Giants” in black pen to prove it.
“You know the real reason I’m here?” he said amid the trash talk of his peers. “I’m off tomorrow.”
Spc. Zachary Martin, a 25-year-old 49ers fan from Albuquerque, N.M., didn’t have that luxury, noting that no matter the game’s outcome, “it’s going to be a long day today, because I’m going to watch the Super Bowl, and then I’m going to have to go work a 12-hour shift.”
Martin missed the entire regular season, spending most of his deployment so far with a medical evacuation unit before moving over to help the brigade’s maintenance company. “Getting up at three in the morning, other than responding for a call, yeah, it’s not happening most of the time.”
“But I figure the Super Bowl’s worth it,” he said. “One game out of the year.”
But that one game can have big consequences for those with mouths bigger than their teams’ game.
Pfc. Nicholas Herrell, a 20-year-old aviation operations specialist from Muskogee, Okla., who is away from home on his first combat deployment, lamented that he was afraid he’d disappointed his parents in the lead-up to the game, and was afraid of showing his face back in his home state.
“I can’t go home,” he said as he reaffirmed his decade-long belief in his Patriots. “I talked too much (expletive) on Facebook.”
Twitter: @mattmillham
