This weekend is the Army-Navy game in Baltimore, one of the best traditions in all of college football. To begin a week of trash talking spirit spots between the two service academies, Annapolis is striking first by releasing a video that was shelved last year after West Point’s annual pillow fight tradition made national news for being particularly violent. As Paul wrote last September:
When I think of a pillow fight, I think of busty hot chicks playfully striking each other with pillows until they roll around on the bed, then passionately kiss each other. What? I have a vivid imagination. But the cadets at the U.S. Military Academy have a less sexy, more bloody version of a pillow fight.
Every year at West Point, the freshmen cadets have an all-out pillow fight war. The warfare drill is organized by first-year students as a way to build camaraderie and to let off some steam after a tough summer of training. However this year they took the annual harmless battle to violent bloodshed. Some of the combatants packed their pillows with hard objects and people get fucked up.
During the August 20 clash, at least 30 cadets were injured, including 24 who suffered concussions. The upperclassmen required the plebes to wear helmets during the “fun” exercise, but it appears that some of the cadets stuffed their helmets in their pillowcases to weaponize them.
The New York Times found one cadet who tweeted, “4 concussions, 1 broken leg, 2 broken arms, 1 dislocated shoulder, and several broken ribs. That’s one hell of a pillow fight. #USMA19.”
Another first-year cadet told the paper that an upperclassman told him, “If you don’t come back with a bloody nose, you didn’t try hard enough.”
Since a pillow fight is still a pillow fight at the end of the day, the midshipmen seized an opportunity to troll West Point by more or less calling them wimps.
Your move, West Point.