The West Potomac RFC, from Rugby Magazine May 2001

By Buzz McClain

With the exception of, say, the Combined Forces squad, we've never come across a team so loaded with active, reserve or retired military personnel as West Potomac RFC of Washington, D.C.

The roster includes 34 players - about half of the team -- who wear or have worn service uniforms when not in their red and white West Pot hoops. Their ranks include a Rhodesian special forces officer and a member of the Royal Australian Navy, as well as a few Yanks with significant decorations for battle.

It's almost anticlimactic that Scott McCallum, who played with West Pot in the late 1960s and early '70s, last month was sworn in as governor of Wisconsin.

Even though this disproportion of military-to-civilian ratio is high, "It's not as many as we've had in the past," says Jake Jacobson, a retired lieutenant colonel in the United States Marine Corps. "We've had more."

The team practices at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, but other than "a few strays we've picked up there," says Jacobson, that's not the reason why West Pot's nickname should be the Patriots.

SAIS What?

"We started out as the Sayas," says Ed Smith, who signed on with the club in 1977. Smitty is known wide and far in the international rugby community simply as Smitty.

The Seeas? "No, SAIS. It was a bunch of Brit Naval Officers who were enrolled in the International Diplomacy course at Johns Hopkins (School of International Studies) in D.C."

According to Smith, most of those original players were military, as were their American counterparts, and a few civilians got caught up in the mix as well. The year was 1963 and SAIS RFC and Washington RFC were the only teams around.

They Like Wives

Since those days, West Potomac has always had more than its share of men in uniform. And while there are some club presidents right now counting the military reps on their own club roster to see if this is an exaggeration, while you're at it, try to top this West Pot statistic: There are more than 320 Campaign Medals among club members -- and 17 divorces.

"I compare rugby to the military," says Jacobson, who flew 400 combat missions in Vietnam in the back seat of F-4 Phantoms as an Intercept Officer. "The fellowship and camaraderie in the rugby club is the closest thing you can have in a small unit organization like a squadron or company in the military, where you work together and play together.

"Particularly with our side. It's not just a team, it's a club. We have bachelor parties, baby showers, parties for the wives -- it's a family affair. There were more kids than adults at our Fat Run, the first practice of the spring, in February."

Jacobson, who plays wing forward and second row, didn't discover rugby until he was 36 and in grad school in California. (his first team was the Monterey RFC). Now he plays with the West Potomac Old Boys and with the Washington Area Rugby Traveling Side (WARTS), which is headed to the Golden Oldies Tournament in Toulouse, France, in May. "And I still whore a game with B-side when I can," he says.

Rugby Is Hell!

Ed Smith's career as a second row began in Hawaii in the '70s, when he was selected to be sponsor to an Australian company that spent time with his battalion. "Which meant I spent two weeks with a bunch of crazy Australians," he says. "And one of the things they did was play two rugby games while they were there. The company sergeant major said, 'Hey Smith, get over here and play second row.' I said, 'Play what?'"

Smith, who plays with the West Pot team, the Old Boys and the WARTS, agrees with Jacobson that rugby and the military share attributes - especially the camaraderie aspects - but he adds that rugby "is as close as you can get to combat. Your adrenaline starts pumping just like in combat. It challenges your courage every other second."

I double-check the remark. Smith, after all, made three tours of Vietnam. Are you sure about that combat comparison? "Yes, it is similar," Smith says. "And I've seen a lot of action."

For those of us who have never been exposed to the "action" Smith refers to, you have to appreciate what it says about our favorite sport. Let's turn to the book "Seven Firefights in Vietnam," a publication of the Army.

"Suddenly materializing from their jungle concealment, fifteen to twenty of the enemy, their AK47s firing full automatic, rushed at the 2nd squad. Two paratroopers were hit; then the squad leader took a fatal round. Sergeant Smith rallied the squad and kept the perimeter intact. It was the first bitter taste of things to come. . .

". . . (T)he sleek F-100s hit an area just outside the 2nd squad . . . with 250-pound bombs, napalm, and 22mm cannon shells. Crouching behind a log in front of the squad, Sergeant Smith and his companions in the outpost felt the concussion of the bombs roll over them. It was very close, almost too close for the sergeant. 'That second air strike was right in there,' Smith recalled. 'If we'd been on the other side of the log, we wouldn't be here now.'

"(Two others) who had been wounded in the firefight moved back from the outpost after the last bomb landed, leaving Smith, who was rapidly expending the last of his ammunition. Sergeant Smith was becoming a favorite target for enemy snipers concealed in tall trees. Spec. 4 Grady L. Madison dashed forward, bringing him badly needed M16 and M79 ammunition. Smith reloaded and fired into some trees to his right. A sniper who had lashed himself to a tree limb tumbled out of his perch; head down, his body swayed grotesquely."

The Sergeant Smith in the book is Ed Smith of West Potomac RFC, but this is as much as you will get out of him or most of the others when it comes to war stories. Smith - who did not send me the "Firefights" book - declines to describe his military decorations.

"It doesn't matter whether or not anyone served in a frontline combat unit - and many have," he writes in an e-mail. "What matters is that they were willing to put their lives on the line for this, the greatest country in the world, in a time when they were needed. They also serve who only do the daily unit manning reports. In Vietnam the men in the rear probably had a worse time then the men in the bush. At least the men in the bush could shoot back at the people who were shooting at them. The men in the rear most times had to hide in bunkers during mortar and rocket attacks."

But get Smith talking about the George Washington University women's team, which is being coached by West Potomac members, and he happily gives a blow by blow account of the weekend's tries.

West Potomac's Men in Uniform

U.S. Army

Edward J. Smith
Marty Chazen
Charlie Pringle
Dallas Weaver *
Don Phillips
Ali Traish
Todd Tarnoff *
Brian Smith *
Ed Hooks *
Jason Peterson

U.S.M.C.

C.R.(Bill) Kinsey
Jake Jacobson
Lou Kobus
Denny Morgan
Ric Peregrino

U.S. Navy

Chuck Creedon
Marvin Ferguson
Rich McNamara
Phil Dixon
Pete Dundas *
John Masotti
Josh Williams *

U.S. Air Force

James Armstrong *
Dain Bentley *
Lou Danner *
Bob Max
Neal Dill

U.S. Coast Guard

Paul Gessner
Paul Potter
Jon Lewis *
Shad Scheirman *

U.S. Maritime Service

Matt Shanley

Rhodesian (SAS)

Murray Kruger

Royal Australian Navy

Oliver York

* denotes current active duty or reserves.