GEOFF BENNETT: Also on this Veterans Day, the themes of service to country and reflection on humanity are at the center of a new film.

AMNA NAWAZ: Special correspondent Mike Cerre caught up with some of the forces behind the film "Mosquito Bowl" and the real historical event on which it's based for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

MIKE CERRE: Purdue's "Touchdown Tony" Butkovich was the country's leading rusher in 1943, and a first-round NFL draft choice.

He is portrayed in the film by Ray Nicholson.

RAY NICHOLSON, Actor: I want to play for the New York Giants.

I want to live the hell out of my life.

Ultimately, that's what this movie's about.

It's about this invincibility of youth, feeling like you're on top of the world, the world's at your fingertips.

MIKE CERRE: World War II forever changed the world for many college football stars like Tony Butkovich, who put their promising careers on hold to serve their country.

PAT MCAFEE, Actor: I have heard some of you have vacated your football dreams to chase a higher glory and serve in the United States Marine Corps.

Is that accurate?

RAY NICHOLSON: Sir, it is this recruit' desire to protect and defend my country, sir!

MIKE CERRE: The Mosquito Bowl was an actual football game played on Guadalcanal on Christmas Day, 1944, between two Marine regiments loaded with top college and pro football players.

The film is based on the bestselling book by Buzz Bissinger, the celebrated author of "Friday Night Lights."

BUZZ BISSINGER, Author, "The Mosquito Bowl": I'd like to think that "Friday Night Lights," when I wrote it, and also "Mosquito Bowl," it was never about football as football.

It was about football as a vehicle for something else.

ACTOR: Gentlemen, the hopes and dreams of an entire town are riding on your shoulders.

MIKE CERRE: Like their previous "Friday Night Lights" collaboration, Bissinger and director Peter Berg use football in this film as a microcosm of American life and the times.

PETER BERG, Director: It's a reflection on humanity, on life, on love, on death that has combat in it, that has football in it.

MIKE CERRE: The film refers to their new Marine teammates as the greatest American offensive line in history for the Marines' island-hopping campaign in the Pacific, starting with their terrifying landing on Tarawa, and eventually reuniting his former college teammates and opponents on Guadalcanal for that Christmas Day football game to boost morale.

BRENT COMER, Actor: I think there's a time in everybody's life, hopefully, where someone feels called to lend themselves to something that's bigger than themselves.

MIKE CERRE: Brent Comer plays George Murphy, the tight end and captain of Notre Dame's 1942 team and captain of the 29th Marines Team on Guadalcanal.

CPL.

NEAL MCCALLUM (RET.

), U.S.

Marine Corps: In my company, we had five football standouts.

MIKE CERRE: Former Corporal Neal McCallum was only 18 when he was on Guadalcanal.

Now 99, he is believed to be the last surviving spectator of the Mosquito Bowl.

CPL.

NEAL MCCALLUM (RET.

): But they were not playing touch, they were tackling.

And this is what the commander of the Fourth Marines was afraid of, because that football fail was manicured from coral.

It was coral.

So if you hit the deck there, yes, you were pretty well bloodied up, you know.

MIKE CERRE: Director Peter Berg first learned about the Marines' ethos, central to the film, from his father, who was a Marine in Korea.

Author Buzz Bissinger is also the son of a Marine.

He only discovered through his book research that his father was on Guadalcanal and probably at the Mosquito Bowl.

BUZZ BISSINGER: Knowing my father, he loved football, he loved the drink, which they allowed them to do for the game, and he loved to gamble, so it was the trifecta.

But this was never intended as a football film.

MIKE CERRE: Director Berg also plays the part of their commanding general.

PETER BERG: I would love to tell you there will be no more casualties, no more deaths.

That's not true.

There will be more deaths.

MIKE CERRE: The last major battle of the war on Okinawa in 1945 was one of the costliest.

More than 12,000 American soldiers, 100,000 Japanese soldiers, and 100,000 civilians died on Okinawa.

Nearly a quarter of the Mosquito Bowl players, including Purdue's "Touchdown Tony" Butkovich and Notre Dame's George Murphy, were killed in action.

PETER BERG: I don't quite understand how war could be glorified if you really take a look at it.

I mean, I guess there is glory in brotherhood and in sacrifice, but the barbaric nature of what happened to so many young men, women, children, soldiers, Americans, Japanese, it's hard to be pro that.

CPL.

NEAL MCCALLUM (RET.

): I remember that very well there.

MIKE CERRE: Corporal Neal McCallum returned to Okinawa last year for this documentary film on the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Okinawa.

CPL.

NEAL MCCALLUM (RET.

): The ones that died are the real heroes.

Their lives were cut short.

They never had opportunities like I had to get married, raise a family, get an education, prosper a little bit in the world, and to have a full life.

MIKE CERRE: Peter Berg and cast members spent time with today's Marines before the filming and for a special screening for them at Camp Pendleton, California, before the theatrical release.

SGT.

ALEXANDER PETERSON, U.S.

Marine Corps: Honestly, it was kind of surreal because you're watching Marines on the screen in the past, and then, like, every now and again I'd find myself looking around the theater, finding realizing that I'm in the room with the same people that are going to be doing what they're watching.

MIKE CERRE: Would you like to screen it for your fathers?

BUZZ BISSINGER: Oh, God, yes.

I mean, we talked about it.

We talked about it last week.

PETER BERG: Yes.

BUZZ BISSINGER: We were walking out of a screening, and Pete said: "Could you imagine our fathers sitting together watching this, watching something that was a part of their experience, and then realizing that their kids had made it, and, in a sense, made it to honor them?"

MIKE CERRE: For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Mike Cerre at Camp Pendleton, California.