The Longest Day
Jul. 12th, 2004 10:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serindeBeing the adventures of three moderately-inexperienced paintball warriors in a 24-hour-long D-Day scenario at Skirmish.
We left a little late, maybe 7:15, and arrived onsite some two hours later. Mike's friend from Pittsburgh called to say he wasn't going to make it, so we didn't have to worry about coordinating with him. Driving up, it looked a bit like mini-Pennsic, that is to say, tent city (though much less organized in layout, unsurprisingly). It was a little disturbing that the first thing we saw as we turned in was a Third Reich war ensign surrounded by skinheads, but I will jump ahead a bit and note that we only ran into one or two small groups who seemed to be too far "into" their roles on the German side--by far the vast majority were approaching their roles with humor. We found a spot, parked, pitched the tent, and went to register. We knew we were on the German side; upon signing in, we were given our specific roles, to wit: Dave and I were SS corporals, and Mike was an SS sergeant. It also listed a "specialty", which for all three of us was "command". We never did figure out what that meant officially. (Most "specialties" were plain ol' "soldier", though there were also engineers and medics and whatnot.)
There was still a good bit of time before the festivities began, which we spent renting our guns (for Mike and me), buying paint, eating (Dave acquired a pile of MREs, which I'm here to tell you are actually pretty good, considering), and getting the lay of the land. Also we got a locker at the picnic area up the hill, which they had shuttle buses running to and from. Unfortunately it was while that was happening that they had the briefing, so we didn't learn things like where the German re-insertion point was, or where our HQ was, or the fact that being SS the three of us could go straight to HQ and get missions from our general. Ooops. So, we spent most of the day as regular grunts, and that was okay too. For the initial assault, since they lacked beaches and ocean and whatnot (this place is in the Poconos), they had the Allies coming in through a large field towards a forest, with the Germans emplaced in the tree line. They had some plywood structures kinda shaped like LSTs that the Allied troops had to funnel through. But I didn't really see much of that end of things; we were looking for more SS people to team up with and were directed towards the backfield, where a line was being formed along a stream to defend against Allied "paratroopers" which had been inserted before the commencement of hostilities. We found some good cover spots and set up...only to find, five minutes in, that Mike and I had been issued guns with empty gas cylinders. This means that when you fire, there is a pathetic "poof" noise and a paintball rolls sadly out of your barrel and drops on the ground.
We cursed loudly and headed to the border, whereupon we realized that our guns also took different kinds of gas; his was CO2, mine was N2. The fill station for the former is up top at the picnic area, and the station for the latter is back down at the main camp. We split up and arranged to meet at a particular place at main camp. I was done filling up fairly quickly, and waited some 45 minutes for Mike, but he never came; finally I gave up on him and wandered back into the fight. (It turned out later that he took so long that he assumed I must have given up on him and he just went back into battle.) I tagged along with a group of other lost souls and we followed someone who seemed to have a plan, who led us around through the woods for awhile before ending up at the Pentagon, excuse me, "Le Grande Forte" or something. The Germans had just taken it from the Allies and they needed reinforcements, so here we were. It came under heavy assault shortly after we got there, and after a nasty firefight they overran us and we ran for it. It was in many ways very like the last time I defended that damn undefendable piece of crap against the Uruk-Hai, but people generally did not keep firing at the dead, at least not on purpose. I got shot in the back on the way out, and did not realize at that point that refs could punch your card to get you back in the game, so headed for the field exit. Nearly out, I ran into Dave who was just coming back in, so we hooked up (and there was a ref there who educated me and punched my card), and after a trip for more paint and a bite to eat we re-entered the fray.
This time we were nobbled on the way in by a string of guys who were co-opting every loose German in sight. They had a plan to strike for the fuel depots along the north edge of the map, so off we went. This entailed yet more wandering around in the middle of nowhere with scarcely an opponent to be found--the occasional sniper, no more, and in fact most cases ended up to be other Germans--before realizing that the fuel depots must have already been looted, or something. So we started circling back southwards on the far eastern edge and ran into a firefight near the airfield in heavy underbrush (which at Skirmish means these immense thickets of rhododendron). It was pretty inconclusive and we couldn't get a good shot at anything anyways, but we seemed to push them back. At this point we went back to camp again but I forget why.
Third insertion, we got attached to a group who were determined to take Le Havre (that's the "Hood in the Wood" field, for you who've been to Skirmish before). It started as distance firing, and I think we were coming off the worse, when someone took the bull by the horns and got everyone to just charge in. We had at this point found a small platoon of SS that we hooked up with for the assault, and they were some crazy guys, which I don't really mean in the good way. If they didn't have a medic around (medics can "wipe off" a hit and declare you alive again), they just did it themselves, which is not kosher. Anyways, our force blitzkrieged the village and routed the Allies. Go Us. At that point some discussion ensued; an officer present needed people to find (not kill, but find) some French nearby, whereat the SS goons said "Screw that, let's just kill 'em" and went off to do so, whereat Dave and I decided we did not want to hitch our wagon to their star. Instead we attached ourselves to a lieutenant who was looking for people to help relieve some of our forces bottled up at the airfield. He was the first commander I'd had all day who seemed to know his business, and over the next block of time (I'm very fuzzy on how long any of these things took) I was very very happy to be serving under him. Also, his goal was to get to the airfield without going near the Pentagon, which made me extra happy. So stealth and speed were the order of the day, and our column of 20-30 (we kept gaining and losing people) moved up along the backfield--again!--those of you who were along for our first Skirmish adventure will recall the field we played kill-the-President in; I spent much of the day there--and circled 'round to the airfield. When we got there, we did not find our entrapped comrades, but we did find a bunch of Allies who were in the trees in the opposite side. Which is out of bounds.
We exchanged fire with them for awhile, as our commander was shouting at them to get the hell in bounds. Naturally there were no refs around; like cops, they're thick on the ground when you don't need them, and hard to find when you do. At that point, I ran out of gas (dammit!) so told the lieutenant I'd try and find a ref on the way back and send him along. I made it back to the picnic area where I found Dave, who had been shot not long before I left (I hadn't noticed in the heat of things). We refilled on paint and headed back to the main camp for me to tank up, after which we reinserted briefly but I was feeling really kinda oogy at that point so after not very long we headed back for a break. Stripped down, had some food, I asked for a glug from Dave's canteen (a Camelbak is good for continuous hydration but not for a major re-watering) and ended up drinking the entire thing. This made it fairly clear I was not hydrating as well as I thought I had. We had a half-hour catnap, rekitted, and headed back in. This time we found our actual insertion point, which was right by HQ. Ah, we thought! We can get a mission! They told us to hang out in the area and when HQ needed bodies for a mission, they'd send for us. However, things were in chaos at the moment. It seemed that, maybe 45-60 minutes previously, a spy had got into HQ and thrown a "satchel charge", blowing it up (which meant our comms were down; I don't know how that works so don't ask me, but the generals apparently have comms) and killing a bunch of high command. So, they were very security minded on the next insertion (which was when we came in), and also were frantically looking for an engineer, which you need to rebuild a blown-up structure.
Another SS guy (role, I mean, not nutjob who thought he actually was one) had on his own initiative started checking IDs of everyone coming through insertion (which was on a conveniently narrow trail), both to find an engineer and to check for more spies, and we pitched in to help 'cause it was a big job. I helped check IDs, and Dave stood athward the left-hand trail that led to HQ and kept anyone from coming down unless they had business there. (About 50' behind him was another checkpoint with two snipers who were told to shoot first and ask questions later. There were more on the other approaches, and there were numerous times throughout the evening when someone tried to come up on HQ without announcing themselves and got absolutely pasted.) As it turned out, I held that post for the rest of the evening, so from about 8pm to 1am. This I didn't mind, because my night vision sucks anyways, so I wouldn't've been much good wandering the woods, and it was a) a job that needed doing and b) a proper job for an SS corporal, really. A number of officers, including one of the generals, complimented us on our work. My fellow gate-guard, whose name was Jeremy, was a friendly and enteraining sort, and it was good to work with him. He also had an exceedingly bright hand-spotlight that we kept handy after sundown in case of assault; turn that on someone and not only is he nicely lit up for your fellow soldiers, but I guarantee he will be stunned for a few seconds. Didn't really need it, though we kept hearing rumors of Allied approaches. There was a guy with military-grade nightvision goggles (vastly better than commercial grade, let me tell you; the latter, some experienced fighters were telling us, really suck) keeping an eye on that from about 40 yards beyond us, and this was going well until some idiot kid coming up from insertion saw him and plugged him in the rear. We could hear the cussing-out all the way back at our post, and listened admiringly. Anyways, it was pretty quiet, though we did get to use the spotlight once; the ref had told us the last insertion would be at 12:30, and we could shoot anything that came in after that. Being the kindler, gentler SS, when someone came down the trail (having reinserted himself), I lit him up with the million-candlepower spot while Jeremy called on him to halt and show his hands or be shot. Wise lad, he did so, and upon being told that there were no reinsertions he backed up out of the playing area nice and slow. That was fun.
At 1am, HQ emptied out, and our general (well, one of them, we had 4 as it happened) realized we'd been there the whole evening, and clapped us on our shoulders telling us we'd done a good and valuable, if unsexy job, and said that if we took first shift tomorrow, he'd find someone to relieve us and then send us on a black ops mission. w00t!
I headed back to the tent, where Mike (who we hadn't managed to find the whole day) and Dave were already asleep. I should note that it had gotten pretty darn chilly after the sun set, and was exceedingly humid--there was a thick fog o'er the land when I was going back. I stripped off my fatigues and crawled into my sleeping bag, where I spent the next block of time thinking I should be warm enough yet shivering so hard I thought my muscles were going to snap. Finally I gave it up as a bad business and put my fatigues back on before crawling back in, and then I was warm and fell asleep. I don't know how long all that took, or whether I snatched some sleep intermittently before that, but the sky was already beginning to lighten a little bit so I don't reckon I got more than two or three hours' sleep, as I was up again at 7:30.
Invigorated by the promise of black ops from my commander, I was lurking at the insertion point by 7:55. The game was supposed to start again at 8, but at quarter past it still hadn't. At this point some confusion ensued. The ref at our point started letting us in, so we could wait under the trees at HQ instead of out in the sun, but thought it was clear that the game hadn't started yet. Our command staff missed that bit, thought that the game was on, and started sending teams out on missions. Oooops. Refs further down saw them, booted them off the field and sent them back to insertion. Rumor had it that we were going to get penalized for that, but I don't know if we did. Anyways, things got moving again at probably 8:30 or so, and Jeremy and I took over gate security again, with Dave and Mike hanging out to pitch in and to be around when our promised op arrived. Excitement: we caught one guy who stupidly showed us his ID...his American ID. We held him at gunpoint and turned him over to the Gestapo, heh heh. After a while, it became clear that there was sufficient chaos yet in HQ-land that our op was likely to be indefinitely delayed, so Mike attached himself to an outgoing group and went to find the war. Around 9:45, Dave heard that they were going to evac HQ to the Pentagon (why? WHY??) and went to do likewise. This definitely seemed like the death knell of our promised op. Sigh.
Jeremy and I stayed at our post, redirecting everyone who inserted to the Pentagon, where they needed every available body. After awhile, there was no one coming in. We wandered down to HQ and looked at the emptiness, when a captain came in looking for bodies; it seemed that command had evac'd under what they thought were game orders, but weren't, and most of the refs were unaware, and chaos ensued, so they wanted to get back, but there was a large force of Allies between them and the original HQ. He had a perfect opportunity to Do Something about this but needed bodies. About then, a ref came up; she had a mission to give to German HQ, which was...not there. The captain took it; it was to capture a fuel dump at the airfield and bring it to the Pentagon (sigh) to defend for a certain amount of time. He led us back to the insertion point and told us to corral everyone who came in for this. We tried, and assembled probably a good 40 bodies (maybe half or 2/3 of those who came in--the rest went off to do their own thing. No discipline! We wanted to know if we could shoot the deserters) which the captain led up to the airfield. We got there and saw some tanks coming--I think I forgot to mention the tanks--so the captain detailed a force to stay there and fight rearguard while we got the fuel dump (which is very large plastic barrels) out of there. I grabbed a barrel and started moving. Let me tell you how hard it is to drag a 50-gallon plastic barrel through the woods while carrying a gun and being shot at. We came under moderate fire en route; the captain had to really shout to get everyone to keep moving and not engage. We finally got all the barrels to the Pentagon, which was locked down under heavy security, and none of us were allowed near it. No one came to give us new orders, either, but they said it was critical to defend this location, so I hung out. No massive assaults, though we could hear fire nearby, and there were several probing attacks as the Allies tried to find an undefended direction.
Somewhat bored by the lack of action, I worked my way up into some thickets by the main road to the P., moving with stealth and caution ( o/~ "Walk without rhythm, so you won't, attract, the worm" o/~ ), and found a nice spot. About 50' ahead of me, I saw two guys moving up...then saw they had Allied colors...I lined up my shot...the first one came around the tree and I got him with a perfect shot on his left shoulder; saw the burst pattern clear as day.
Of course he ducked around the tree and started firing back. Fucker.
I yelled at him and told him I saw he was out, and after a minute or so he got up and left (probably just to wipe off and fight somewhere else). I think I actually got his buddy, too, but didn't see it clearly so didn't yell, and a minute later he tagged me with a glancing shot to the arm. Sigh. I went back to the P. and got my card punched by the ref. Allied probes were getting stronger, so I stuck around and formed part of the defensive perimeter. At about 11:30 they started a serious push, and I spent the last half-hour in a defensive firefight, which took several minutes of whistleblowing at noon (that is, "game over" time) for the refs to break up. But we did hold them off, and pretty handily. But it was all over, and we headed back to break down our camp and get a move on.
As it turned out, the final score was: Allies, 20050 points; Germans, 20000. Argh. So close. (One fuel barrel is worth 100 points, so we lost by half a barrel.) I'm not real clear on what else one gets points for, other than killing generals; I think there's some amount for holding certain locations (like the goddam Pentagon) for certain periods of time, and no doubt for completing missions, but don't ask me for specifics 'cos I don't know. Anyways, we packed up our troubles and were on the road by 1:20 or so, arriving back at the house at 3:15. It goes to show what the body can do at need that I was awake and alert for all the fighting on Sunday in spite of the less than three hours' sleep I'd had on both of the preceding nights, but then I had to fight to stay awake on the drive home. I got us back safely, crawled (literally) upstairs to the shower, then took a quick nap. The pooky hunted and gathered gnocchi bolognese for me, and we watched a whole bunch of TiVo'd Beavis & Butthead while dumping it to videotape; then hot bath, then bed before 10. I should've left off the bath and gone to bed at 9. I'm still pretty wiped-out today.
A look at the numbers that shape our world, as the Onion said:
3 deaths, 5 non-exploding paintballs (two on my crotch. Crotch! of! Iron!!), though one on my head hurt enough that I wondered if it was actually a rock, 1 impressive welt (plus a goose egg from the above--it may be an impressive welt but I'm not going to shave my head to look), 2 absotively posilutely confirm kills, 1 American spy captured even if he was an idiot, 4 MREs consumed, a little under 3 cases of paint consumed, many blisters, many wrecked cuticles; 0 pictures taken in spite of having carried around a disposable camera in my pocket the whole time, *duh*.
Notes to self:
- If you intend to stick with your buddies, you must must MUST have those little two-way radios. Lots of people did and I see why.
- It seems you can request special roles, like engineer or medic or demolitions or spy. Must try that.
- Hanging around HQ is the way to get missions. Must try that, too.
- I need to get over my obsession with being clean when I go to bed. (I've also run into this problem at Burning Man.) I must accept that I will neither die nor go to Hell if I am sleeping in icky clothes.
- Better hydration is key.
- It was good to have a locker, but bad to have all the paint there and all the water back at the tent. Should split so that there is some of each (and anything else one might need, like power bars or other snackies) at each location.
Other observations & thoughts:
- I am deeply pissed at the guy at Paragon Sports, to whom I showed my Camelbak and asked "what size new reservoir should I get for this", and he gave me one that turned out to be half the size of my old one. The more so as it was $25 and non-returnable.
- Paintball players seem to be the selection of men least able to handle their penises. I am not saying this as a sprightly jest related to guns being penis substitutes, mind you; I base this judgment on the fact that every single time I went into a porta-potty, there was pee all over the seat. And I do mean all over. Also, it was wise of us to bring our own bog roll, as by Saturday evening most of the portas were out of it.
- On the other hand, paintball players listen to better music than you find in most tent cities.
- Even good anti-fog masks fog up in X-TREEM humidity and temperature changes. Accept and deal.
- Having either a lanyard to sling your gun over your back or the gas cylinder strapped to you rather than just stuck on the end of your gun is handy in a regular paintball outing, but approaches "critical" in a long scenario. Ow my poor arm.
- The Something Awful guys were there with their own tank. That was cool, in a cognitive-dissonance way.
- Strapping a flashlight to your gun, a la the Theron Marks Society, may be the way to go for night combat (if you can't afford military-grade nightvision).
- Our MREs seemed to be "MRE Light". Didn't include all of the things that an army-issue one is supposed to, which didn't really bother me, but what DID bother me was the fact that they had decaf coffee. No tea, no regular coffee, just decaf. I can't believe that this is what they serve the troops; we would have had a palace guard revolt ages ago.
In sum, yes, I think I would definitely go again next year.
We left a little late, maybe 7:15, and arrived onsite some two hours later. Mike's friend from Pittsburgh called to say he wasn't going to make it, so we didn't have to worry about coordinating with him. Driving up, it looked a bit like mini-Pennsic, that is to say, tent city (though much less organized in layout, unsurprisingly). It was a little disturbing that the first thing we saw as we turned in was a Third Reich war ensign surrounded by skinheads, but I will jump ahead a bit and note that we only ran into one or two small groups who seemed to be too far "into" their roles on the German side--by far the vast majority were approaching their roles with humor. We found a spot, parked, pitched the tent, and went to register. We knew we were on the German side; upon signing in, we were given our specific roles, to wit: Dave and I were SS corporals, and Mike was an SS sergeant. It also listed a "specialty", which for all three of us was "command". We never did figure out what that meant officially. (Most "specialties" were plain ol' "soldier", though there were also engineers and medics and whatnot.)
There was still a good bit of time before the festivities began, which we spent renting our guns (for Mike and me), buying paint, eating (Dave acquired a pile of MREs, which I'm here to tell you are actually pretty good, considering), and getting the lay of the land. Also we got a locker at the picnic area up the hill, which they had shuttle buses running to and from. Unfortunately it was while that was happening that they had the briefing, so we didn't learn things like where the German re-insertion point was, or where our HQ was, or the fact that being SS the three of us could go straight to HQ and get missions from our general. Ooops. So, we spent most of the day as regular grunts, and that was okay too. For the initial assault, since they lacked beaches and ocean and whatnot (this place is in the Poconos), they had the Allies coming in through a large field towards a forest, with the Germans emplaced in the tree line. They had some plywood structures kinda shaped like LSTs that the Allied troops had to funnel through. But I didn't really see much of that end of things; we were looking for more SS people to team up with and were directed towards the backfield, where a line was being formed along a stream to defend against Allied "paratroopers" which had been inserted before the commencement of hostilities. We found some good cover spots and set up...only to find, five minutes in, that Mike and I had been issued guns with empty gas cylinders. This means that when you fire, there is a pathetic "poof" noise and a paintball rolls sadly out of your barrel and drops on the ground.
We cursed loudly and headed to the border, whereupon we realized that our guns also took different kinds of gas; his was CO2, mine was N2. The fill station for the former is up top at the picnic area, and the station for the latter is back down at the main camp. We split up and arranged to meet at a particular place at main camp. I was done filling up fairly quickly, and waited some 45 minutes for Mike, but he never came; finally I gave up on him and wandered back into the fight. (It turned out later that he took so long that he assumed I must have given up on him and he just went back into battle.) I tagged along with a group of other lost souls and we followed someone who seemed to have a plan, who led us around through the woods for awhile before ending up at the Pentagon, excuse me, "Le Grande Forte" or something. The Germans had just taken it from the Allies and they needed reinforcements, so here we were. It came under heavy assault shortly after we got there, and after a nasty firefight they overran us and we ran for it. It was in many ways very like the last time I defended that damn undefendable piece of crap against the Uruk-Hai, but people generally did not keep firing at the dead, at least not on purpose. I got shot in the back on the way out, and did not realize at that point that refs could punch your card to get you back in the game, so headed for the field exit. Nearly out, I ran into Dave who was just coming back in, so we hooked up (and there was a ref there who educated me and punched my card), and after a trip for more paint and a bite to eat we re-entered the fray.
This time we were nobbled on the way in by a string of guys who were co-opting every loose German in sight. They had a plan to strike for the fuel depots along the north edge of the map, so off we went. This entailed yet more wandering around in the middle of nowhere with scarcely an opponent to be found--the occasional sniper, no more, and in fact most cases ended up to be other Germans--before realizing that the fuel depots must have already been looted, or something. So we started circling back southwards on the far eastern edge and ran into a firefight near the airfield in heavy underbrush (which at Skirmish means these immense thickets of rhododendron). It was pretty inconclusive and we couldn't get a good shot at anything anyways, but we seemed to push them back. At this point we went back to camp again but I forget why.
Third insertion, we got attached to a group who were determined to take Le Havre (that's the "Hood in the Wood" field, for you who've been to Skirmish before). It started as distance firing, and I think we were coming off the worse, when someone took the bull by the horns and got everyone to just charge in. We had at this point found a small platoon of SS that we hooked up with for the assault, and they were some crazy guys, which I don't really mean in the good way. If they didn't have a medic around (medics can "wipe off" a hit and declare you alive again), they just did it themselves, which is not kosher. Anyways, our force blitzkrieged the village and routed the Allies. Go Us. At that point some discussion ensued; an officer present needed people to find (not kill, but find) some French nearby, whereat the SS goons said "Screw that, let's just kill 'em" and went off to do so, whereat Dave and I decided we did not want to hitch our wagon to their star. Instead we attached ourselves to a lieutenant who was looking for people to help relieve some of our forces bottled up at the airfield. He was the first commander I'd had all day who seemed to know his business, and over the next block of time (I'm very fuzzy on how long any of these things took) I was very very happy to be serving under him. Also, his goal was to get to the airfield without going near the Pentagon, which made me extra happy. So stealth and speed were the order of the day, and our column of 20-30 (we kept gaining and losing people) moved up along the backfield--again!--those of you who were along for our first Skirmish adventure will recall the field we played kill-the-President in; I spent much of the day there--and circled 'round to the airfield. When we got there, we did not find our entrapped comrades, but we did find a bunch of Allies who were in the trees in the opposite side. Which is out of bounds.
We exchanged fire with them for awhile, as our commander was shouting at them to get the hell in bounds. Naturally there were no refs around; like cops, they're thick on the ground when you don't need them, and hard to find when you do. At that point, I ran out of gas (dammit!) so told the lieutenant I'd try and find a ref on the way back and send him along. I made it back to the picnic area where I found Dave, who had been shot not long before I left (I hadn't noticed in the heat of things). We refilled on paint and headed back to the main camp for me to tank up, after which we reinserted briefly but I was feeling really kinda oogy at that point so after not very long we headed back for a break. Stripped down, had some food, I asked for a glug from Dave's canteen (a Camelbak is good for continuous hydration but not for a major re-watering) and ended up drinking the entire thing. This made it fairly clear I was not hydrating as well as I thought I had. We had a half-hour catnap, rekitted, and headed back in. This time we found our actual insertion point, which was right by HQ. Ah, we thought! We can get a mission! They told us to hang out in the area and when HQ needed bodies for a mission, they'd send for us. However, things were in chaos at the moment. It seemed that, maybe 45-60 minutes previously, a spy had got into HQ and thrown a "satchel charge", blowing it up (which meant our comms were down; I don't know how that works so don't ask me, but the generals apparently have comms) and killing a bunch of high command. So, they were very security minded on the next insertion (which was when we came in), and also were frantically looking for an engineer, which you need to rebuild a blown-up structure.
Another SS guy (role, I mean, not nutjob who thought he actually was one) had on his own initiative started checking IDs of everyone coming through insertion (which was on a conveniently narrow trail), both to find an engineer and to check for more spies, and we pitched in to help 'cause it was a big job. I helped check IDs, and Dave stood athward the left-hand trail that led to HQ and kept anyone from coming down unless they had business there. (About 50' behind him was another checkpoint with two snipers who were told to shoot first and ask questions later. There were more on the other approaches, and there were numerous times throughout the evening when someone tried to come up on HQ without announcing themselves and got absolutely pasted.) As it turned out, I held that post for the rest of the evening, so from about 8pm to 1am. This I didn't mind, because my night vision sucks anyways, so I wouldn't've been much good wandering the woods, and it was a) a job that needed doing and b) a proper job for an SS corporal, really. A number of officers, including one of the generals, complimented us on our work. My fellow gate-guard, whose name was Jeremy, was a friendly and enteraining sort, and it was good to work with him. He also had an exceedingly bright hand-spotlight that we kept handy after sundown in case of assault; turn that on someone and not only is he nicely lit up for your fellow soldiers, but I guarantee he will be stunned for a few seconds. Didn't really need it, though we kept hearing rumors of Allied approaches. There was a guy with military-grade nightvision goggles (vastly better than commercial grade, let me tell you; the latter, some experienced fighters were telling us, really suck) keeping an eye on that from about 40 yards beyond us, and this was going well until some idiot kid coming up from insertion saw him and plugged him in the rear. We could hear the cussing-out all the way back at our post, and listened admiringly. Anyways, it was pretty quiet, though we did get to use the spotlight once; the ref had told us the last insertion would be at 12:30, and we could shoot anything that came in after that. Being the kindler, gentler SS, when someone came down the trail (having reinserted himself), I lit him up with the million-candlepower spot while Jeremy called on him to halt and show his hands or be shot. Wise lad, he did so, and upon being told that there were no reinsertions he backed up out of the playing area nice and slow. That was fun.
At 1am, HQ emptied out, and our general (well, one of them, we had 4 as it happened) realized we'd been there the whole evening, and clapped us on our shoulders telling us we'd done a good and valuable, if unsexy job, and said that if we took first shift tomorrow, he'd find someone to relieve us and then send us on a black ops mission. w00t!
I headed back to the tent, where Mike (who we hadn't managed to find the whole day) and Dave were already asleep. I should note that it had gotten pretty darn chilly after the sun set, and was exceedingly humid--there was a thick fog o'er the land when I was going back. I stripped off my fatigues and crawled into my sleeping bag, where I spent the next block of time thinking I should be warm enough yet shivering so hard I thought my muscles were going to snap. Finally I gave it up as a bad business and put my fatigues back on before crawling back in, and then I was warm and fell asleep. I don't know how long all that took, or whether I snatched some sleep intermittently before that, but the sky was already beginning to lighten a little bit so I don't reckon I got more than two or three hours' sleep, as I was up again at 7:30.
Invigorated by the promise of black ops from my commander, I was lurking at the insertion point by 7:55. The game was supposed to start again at 8, but at quarter past it still hadn't. At this point some confusion ensued. The ref at our point started letting us in, so we could wait under the trees at HQ instead of out in the sun, but thought it was clear that the game hadn't started yet. Our command staff missed that bit, thought that the game was on, and started sending teams out on missions. Oooops. Refs further down saw them, booted them off the field and sent them back to insertion. Rumor had it that we were going to get penalized for that, but I don't know if we did. Anyways, things got moving again at probably 8:30 or so, and Jeremy and I took over gate security again, with Dave and Mike hanging out to pitch in and to be around when our promised op arrived. Excitement: we caught one guy who stupidly showed us his ID...his American ID. We held him at gunpoint and turned him over to the Gestapo, heh heh. After a while, it became clear that there was sufficient chaos yet in HQ-land that our op was likely to be indefinitely delayed, so Mike attached himself to an outgoing group and went to find the war. Around 9:45, Dave heard that they were going to evac HQ to the Pentagon (why? WHY??) and went to do likewise. This definitely seemed like the death knell of our promised op. Sigh.
Jeremy and I stayed at our post, redirecting everyone who inserted to the Pentagon, where they needed every available body. After awhile, there was no one coming in. We wandered down to HQ and looked at the emptiness, when a captain came in looking for bodies; it seemed that command had evac'd under what they thought were game orders, but weren't, and most of the refs were unaware, and chaos ensued, so they wanted to get back, but there was a large force of Allies between them and the original HQ. He had a perfect opportunity to Do Something about this but needed bodies. About then, a ref came up; she had a mission to give to German HQ, which was...not there. The captain took it; it was to capture a fuel dump at the airfield and bring it to the Pentagon (sigh) to defend for a certain amount of time. He led us back to the insertion point and told us to corral everyone who came in for this. We tried, and assembled probably a good 40 bodies (maybe half or 2/3 of those who came in--the rest went off to do their own thing. No discipline! We wanted to know if we could shoot the deserters) which the captain led up to the airfield. We got there and saw some tanks coming--I think I forgot to mention the tanks--so the captain detailed a force to stay there and fight rearguard while we got the fuel dump (which is very large plastic barrels) out of there. I grabbed a barrel and started moving. Let me tell you how hard it is to drag a 50-gallon plastic barrel through the woods while carrying a gun and being shot at. We came under moderate fire en route; the captain had to really shout to get everyone to keep moving and not engage. We finally got all the barrels to the Pentagon, which was locked down under heavy security, and none of us were allowed near it. No one came to give us new orders, either, but they said it was critical to defend this location, so I hung out. No massive assaults, though we could hear fire nearby, and there were several probing attacks as the Allies tried to find an undefended direction.
Somewhat bored by the lack of action, I worked my way up into some thickets by the main road to the P., moving with stealth and caution ( o/~ "Walk without rhythm, so you won't, attract, the worm" o/~ ), and found a nice spot. About 50' ahead of me, I saw two guys moving up...then saw they had Allied colors...I lined up my shot...the first one came around the tree and I got him with a perfect shot on his left shoulder; saw the burst pattern clear as day.
Of course he ducked around the tree and started firing back. Fucker.
I yelled at him and told him I saw he was out, and after a minute or so he got up and left (probably just to wipe off and fight somewhere else). I think I actually got his buddy, too, but didn't see it clearly so didn't yell, and a minute later he tagged me with a glancing shot to the arm. Sigh. I went back to the P. and got my card punched by the ref. Allied probes were getting stronger, so I stuck around and formed part of the defensive perimeter. At about 11:30 they started a serious push, and I spent the last half-hour in a defensive firefight, which took several minutes of whistleblowing at noon (that is, "game over" time) for the refs to break up. But we did hold them off, and pretty handily. But it was all over, and we headed back to break down our camp and get a move on.
As it turned out, the final score was: Allies, 20050 points; Germans, 20000. Argh. So close. (One fuel barrel is worth 100 points, so we lost by half a barrel.) I'm not real clear on what else one gets points for, other than killing generals; I think there's some amount for holding certain locations (like the goddam Pentagon) for certain periods of time, and no doubt for completing missions, but don't ask me for specifics 'cos I don't know. Anyways, we packed up our troubles and were on the road by 1:20 or so, arriving back at the house at 3:15. It goes to show what the body can do at need that I was awake and alert for all the fighting on Sunday in spite of the less than three hours' sleep I'd had on both of the preceding nights, but then I had to fight to stay awake on the drive home. I got us back safely, crawled (literally) upstairs to the shower, then took a quick nap. The pooky hunted and gathered gnocchi bolognese for me, and we watched a whole bunch of TiVo'd Beavis & Butthead while dumping it to videotape; then hot bath, then bed before 10. I should've left off the bath and gone to bed at 9. I'm still pretty wiped-out today.
A look at the numbers that shape our world, as the Onion said:
3 deaths, 5 non-exploding paintballs (two on my crotch. Crotch! of! Iron!!), though one on my head hurt enough that I wondered if it was actually a rock, 1 impressive welt (plus a goose egg from the above--it may be an impressive welt but I'm not going to shave my head to look), 2 absotively posilutely confirm kills, 1 American spy captured even if he was an idiot, 4 MREs consumed, a little under 3 cases of paint consumed, many blisters, many wrecked cuticles; 0 pictures taken in spite of having carried around a disposable camera in my pocket the whole time, *duh*.
Notes to self:
- If you intend to stick with your buddies, you must must MUST have those little two-way radios. Lots of people did and I see why.
- It seems you can request special roles, like engineer or medic or demolitions or spy. Must try that.
- Hanging around HQ is the way to get missions. Must try that, too.
- I need to get over my obsession with being clean when I go to bed. (I've also run into this problem at Burning Man.) I must accept that I will neither die nor go to Hell if I am sleeping in icky clothes.
- Better hydration is key.
- It was good to have a locker, but bad to have all the paint there and all the water back at the tent. Should split so that there is some of each (and anything else one might need, like power bars or other snackies) at each location.
Other observations & thoughts:
- I am deeply pissed at the guy at Paragon Sports, to whom I showed my Camelbak and asked "what size new reservoir should I get for this", and he gave me one that turned out to be half the size of my old one. The more so as it was $25 and non-returnable.
- Paintball players seem to be the selection of men least able to handle their penises. I am not saying this as a sprightly jest related to guns being penis substitutes, mind you; I base this judgment on the fact that every single time I went into a porta-potty, there was pee all over the seat. And I do mean all over. Also, it was wise of us to bring our own bog roll, as by Saturday evening most of the portas were out of it.
- On the other hand, paintball players listen to better music than you find in most tent cities.
- Even good anti-fog masks fog up in X-TREEM humidity and temperature changes. Accept and deal.
- Having either a lanyard to sling your gun over your back or the gas cylinder strapped to you rather than just stuck on the end of your gun is handy in a regular paintball outing, but approaches "critical" in a long scenario. Ow my poor arm.
- The Something Awful guys were there with their own tank. That was cool, in a cognitive-dissonance way.
- Strapping a flashlight to your gun, a la the Theron Marks Society, may be the way to go for night combat (if you can't afford military-grade nightvision).
- Our MREs seemed to be "MRE Light". Didn't include all of the things that an army-issue one is supposed to, which didn't really bother me, but what DID bother me was the fact that they had decaf coffee. No tea, no regular coffee, just decaf. I can't believe that this is what they serve the troops; we would have had a palace guard revolt ages ago.
In sum, yes, I think I would definitely go again next year.
