Slowly, more reenactors started joining Campbell’s group. So the club asked them to come back the next week. But fans of the club liked having them around. It could’ve ended right there, with that small group relegated to being a footnote in the history of the Revolution. Their request was straightforward: could he round up a few reenactors to help with the presentation of colors during the pregame ceremonies? He obliged, bringing along members from his local regiment. In the era of Heineken Rivalry Week™, when the league itself seizes upon and commercializes even the tiniest bits of its own personality, it’s easy to forget that that’s even a possibility.Ī few weeks before the first match the Revs ever played, Geoff Campbell, the “captain” of the crew nowadays, got a call from the club. Yet the End Zone Militia are that rarest of breeds - American soccer unicorns, an entirely organic chunk of U.S. Many (including myself) assume the militia are a byproduct of the New England Patriots, the NFL team that’s shared a stadium with the Revs since day one. And in ‘96, a few of those “living history reenactors,” as they call themselves, got a call from the aptly-named New England Revolution. They regularly took part in reenactments across the country, called into action every time an elementary school needed a crew of soldiers to help bring history to life. But a select few never abandoned their passion. Most of those kids laid down their arms in the ‘80s, with the fervor of the bicentennial behind them. Swept up in that patriotic frenzy - or maybe it was just the lack of video games, internet and cable television - a swarm of teenagers chucked aside their Stretch Armstrong dolls and Pet Rocks and picked up muskets. was preparing to throw itself a giant 200th birthday party, and New England’s youth caught a particularly vicious case of bicentennial fever. The militia has been a fixture at Revolution games since the team’s inception in 1996, but their roots go back further, to the mid-’70s. “I forgot my musket at home and had to go back to get it.” They’re dead ringers for the colonists who battled for this country’s independence, but they’re also relics of a different time in American soccer, one where the game felt less like an exercise in European imitation and more like a celebration of American innovation and gimmickry.Īmidst the deluge of football clubs, right there in the middle of the push to make the sport of soccer in the United States very, very serious, the Militia has soldiered on, blasting away after every Revolution goal. The End Zone Militia is an icon of a bygone era of American history. Rations, you see, are plentiful on these front lines. One by one, the members of the New England Revolution’s End Zone Militia make their way over to the Lighthouse Grill behind section 138 at Gillette Stadium and place their orders. The quiet is broken first by a sound - a grumbling stomach - and then by a single soldier’s voice. When there’s nothing left to talk about, they simply stand in silence.
They trade war stories, remembering battles from years prior, some won, some lost. Our band of brothers makes small talk, prattling on about the families they’ve left many miles away, the jobs they’d done in another life. With their arms at the ready, there’s little else to do but wait. This regiment is short on numbers but possesses a wealth of experience, and as they ready themselves for the invading horde - a well-trained unit approaching from the south - they like their chances. Carefully they load their weapons, a collection of finely-crafted flintlock muskets. There is a stillness in the air, but they know that battle is only hours away.
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