“Brotherhood: When West Point Rugby Went to War” tells the story of the West Point's class of 2002 Rugby team and the career trajectory of these fifteen officers through the war on terror and beyond.
Pengelly chose an interesting lens through which to view the war, one which hasn't been told before. At the time West Point rugby wasn't seen as a huge priority, but he became interested after playing a game against them with his own rugby club. These players went on to continue their studies at West Point during the 9/11 attacks and then graduated just as the invasion of Iraq was ramping up.
With the book just a week away from publication, Connecting Vets was able to catch up with the author, now a journalist at The Guardian in New York City to discuss Brotherhood.
“We played a game against the West Point cadets who played a kind of rugby that we'd never seen before because obviously, it's an American military,” Pengelly explained about his first meeting with the cadets in 2002. “It was a great game. We mingled with the cadets afterward, briefly, swapped mementos, things like that. Then they went their way and we went ours. That was about almost exactly a year before the invasion of Iraq.”
Going on to become a journalist, his experience playing against the cadets stuck with him and many years later while working in New York City, he took the train up to West Point to try to see if he could reconnect with the players and explore if there was a story there. He met the team's coach Mike Mahan on his very last day of work, finding him packing up his office into boxes.
Upon talking with Pengelly, the coach reached into one of the boxes and pulled out a picture the West Point Rugby team of 2002. “Mahan very simply pointed to the picture,” and said, “Three of the 12 or 13 players are on that and so these three guys are no longer with us.”
Pengelly knew he had to write about what turned out to be 15 players and their coach. It started as a news article and then as he collected material the project turned into a full-fledged book. At once both a book about sports and about war, it charts the journey of the rugby team as they graduate and serve in the U.S. Army. Two died in tragic accidents, another of cancer, and another in combat in Iraq. A few go on to serve in America's most elite special operations units. The last one to leave the military just recently retired after a career flying Apache attack helicopters.
“I had always wanted to write a book about what rugby is and what rugby means,” Pengelly said. “This book is obviously about many other things but for me, that is kind of what got me there in the first place and I find West Point to be a sort of concentrated example of the rugby spirit.”
However, when Pengelly was invited to the team's 2021 reunion the coach dully informed him that really what his book is about is something else.
“It's about how West Point makes leaders and of course, it absolutely is, that's why it's this strange hybrid book that's quite hard to describe,” Pengelly explained.
“It's not going to be like any other book, really but that's just how it is and that's why the cover is a rugby ball with dog tags thrown over it.”