Armed forces games are the sports competitions engaged in among branches of the military with the goals
of entertainment, training, and morale-building. The
games themselves include such staples as track and field competitions, boxing and wrestling, various forms
of football, and baseball.
History
Members of armies have long practiced various sports
to hone their warrior skills or break the monotony of
camp life. By the mid-19th century most military leaders in industrializing nation-states thought modern
soldiers needed athletic competitions to practice their
military craftsmanship, to teach the essentials of
“teamwork, and to inculcate nationalism. Modern
armies began to sponsor sporting competitions during
the Industrial Revolution. In the midst of one of the
first “modern” wars in world history, the U.S. Civil War
(1861–1865), troops played sports for diversion from
combat, and the intermingling of soldiers from various
regions played an important role in making baseball
the United States’“national pastime.”
Following the Civil War, sports retained an important connection with the U.S. military. Advocates promoted them both as morale-builders and means of enhancing military preparedness. National Guard units
helped to spread modern sports throughout the United
States, and armories served as centers of the new
sporting life. In the active services, sports had become
a central feature of military life. A baseball craze swept
the U.S. Navy during the 1890s. By the end of that
decade every ship in the North Atlantic Squadron had a
baseball team. Armed forces teams also competed in
boxing, fencing, football, track and field, rowing, and
other sports. In 1897 the armed services created a Military Athletic League.
Other industrialized nations also employed sporting competitions to inspire martial nationalism in their
armed forces. The major imperial powers of the late
19th century—Great Britain, France, and Germany—
used sports to train their armies and navies. Japanese
sailors learned baseball from U.S. naval crews. The
colonial powers, including the United States, also used
sports in efforts to impose Western styles of civilization
on the peoples of Asia, Africa, and the Pacific.
The outbreak of World War I entrenched sporting
competitions in the military practices of the major
powers. The armed forces athletic competitions during
World War I wove sports even more firmly into the fabric of American life. Indeed, in the wake of the war, the
United States attempted to re-create through sport
some semblance of a community of nations by reinvigorating the tottering Olympic movement with an armed
forces competition, believing that an athletic festival
could help restore war-ravaged Western civilization.
The Inter-Allied Games of 1919 initiated by Elwood S.
Brown, a leader of the YMCA movement and the director of athletics for the American Expeditionary Force
(AEF) were modeled on the Olympic Games.
The games brought nearly 1,500 athletes from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, France, Great Britain, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti,
Italy, Japan, Liberia, Montenegro, Nicaragua, New
Zealand, Panama, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia,
South Africa, and the United States to Paris to compete.
No athletes from the defeated Central Powers—Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire—
were invited. The success of these games kindled a
resurgence of the modern Olympic movement in the
wake of the “Great War.” The “Military Olympics,” however, was never repeated by the Allied armies.
In the years since, national armed forces competitions have continued to be an important institution in
many countries. In the United States the military service academies compete in intercollegiate sports, and
the Army-Navy football game has historically occupied
an important place in the national fascination with college football. Well-organized sports programs play a
prominent role in the U.S. military. Many other nations
also use sports as training devices and morale builders
for armed services.
Sports with important warfare components, such as
shooting contests, the modern pentathlon, and the
biathlon have remained a part of the Olympic program
and been dominated by military competitors. Since
World War II armed services in many nations have
adopted sporting competitions and served as training
grounds for world-class athletes.
The end of the century has brought change to the
military, with the end of the Cold War and the rise of
international peacekeeping efforts. The role of the military and of soldiers is no longer as clear-cut as it once
was. This suggests that armed forces games will retain
their importance in maintaining cohesion, identity,
and morale, but matter less as a means of sharpening
combat skills.
—MARK DYRESON
Bibliography: Baker, William. (1982) Sports in the Western
World. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield. Guttmann,
Allen. (1994) Games and Empires: Modern Sports and Cultural Imperialism. New York: Columbia University Press.
Mrozek, Donald. (1983) Sport, an American Mentality,
1880–1910. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Pope, Steven. (1995) “An Army of Athletes: Playing Fields,
Battlefields, and the American Military Sporting Experience, 1890–1920.” Journal of Military History 59 (July):
435–456. Wythe, Major G., Captain Joseph Mills Hanson,
and Captain C. V. Burger, eds. (1919) The Inter-Allied
Games of 1919. New York: Games Committee.