"First Encounter" with Americans No. 3

It was in Giessen, Germany (where else) that this "third" encounter took place.

It was on a football pitch inside one of the American barracks, and when I say "football", I mean the American hug-a-lot-of-other-people-as-hard-as-you-can variety of the game and not the much more refined and manly game of soccer.

We (army again) were invited to partake in an afternoon BBQ and sporting afternoon with an American unit (the name of which I forget) which we accepted, already drooling at the thought of all that American food, in typical, laid-back British style ... "Course we'll come. We'll bring the booze!"

IT all kicked of at about 12 noon with a rousing cheer from our American hosts as we leapt from our vehicles, carrying our footy kit.

The BBQ itself was a long drawn out affair punctuated by sports, beer and banter.

The gauntlet was thrown down almost immediately after the first burger and chicken leg had been devoured;

"To Arms Men!" shouted our officer commanding.

American 'touch' football was on the cards.

They kitted us out with all sorts of padding.  They even gave us helmets to wear and after a very short, and to my mind inaccurate version of the rules, the game began.

Being somewhat naive and believing we were about to play a game of 'touch' football,  we failed to question the logic of them giving us all that protection.

Within the hour we had been beaten by a very large margin ... I think it was seven broken bones to nil!
God knows what the points tally was!

We had intended teaching them to play 'soccer' afterwards but, thanks to a quick dash back to base, we challenged them to a game of rugby instead.  After a quick explanation of the rules, we got ready to play a game of 'touch' rugby.  Our American hosts leapt into their protective gear and were very reluctant to take it off after we told them that rugby is a man's game and protective clothing isn't allowed.

The game lasted only fifteen minutes!

We crushed them!  We went in hard from the off and tackled with full body weight.  After the first try (score),   two or three of the yanks that had been particularly brutal during the American football game withdrew due to injury and several others tried very hard to be anywhere the ball wasn't.  I doubt very much if those guys will ever play rugby again.

As I said, the game lasted only fifteen minutes ... we ran out of opponents!

We all went back to the food and tried not to think of those still stuck in the infirmary.

The story of how we all jumped naked through the flames of the bonfire is something for another day.