Back in the early ‘90’s, I was stationed with the Coast Guard at Air Station Clearwater. There were a group of enlisted guys (flight mechanics and rescue swimmers) who were avid paintball players. They would play most weekends and had all the high-end paintball guns, uniforms, and safety gear.
They seemed to want to get new blood involved and so were always asking other Coasties (including some of the pilots) to come out with them and play paintball.
After being approached a number of times, I felt it would be rude to continue to find excuses to not attend and so agreed to show up at their favorite outdoor paintball park the following Saturday. But, I also told them that I didn’t have any gear. “Don’t worry about that,” they said. “We have extra guns you can use and all the protective gear.”
At the appointed time, I showed up to the place, which turned out to be a large section of woods with a makeshift fort in the middle of it. It was explained that we would divide into two teams after which one team would defend the fort while the other tried to capture it.
The rules were pretty simple: If you got hit by a paintball, you were “dead”, had to raise your hand, and while holding your hand above your head (so you wouldn’t get pegged again), had to walk back to the starting point, essentially out of the game until the next round. Even though everyone had a transparent, ballistic-proof face mask, intentional head shots were prohibited for safety reasons. Also, point-blank shots, due to the pain involved, were also discouraged. Instead, if you had someone dead to rights, you were supposed to give them a chance to surrender first by saying, “Surrender or die!”. If they resisted, then you could shoot them point blank. Otherwise, they were supposed to raise a hand above their head and walk off the field as if they had been shot. Pretty simple.
These guys had all kinds of fancy gear. It was obvious they had spent hundreds of dollars on their guns and ammunition, camoflage outfits, protective gear, and most impressive of all, their fully automatic (read: machine gun) paintball guns! These guns had an attached hopper full of paintballs and could spit out hundreds per minute. Very impressive. I knew I didn’t want to get hit by one, but I couldn’t wait to get my hands on my own. This was going to be fun!
As we divided up into teams, I reminded them that I didn’t have a gun, so one of the guys walked over to his equipment bag, then turned around, handing me a pistol. A very small pistol. A single-shot pistol. Meaning that each paint ball had to be loaded individually, like a musket! I was like, “Huh? Where is my machine gun?” “That’s the only extra gun we have”, was the reply. I felt duped. Talk about unfair! But I was too far in to turn around now. I didn’t want to look like a quitter, so accepted the gun after the guy loaded a single paintball into it. He also gave me a handful of spare paintballs, which I put in my pocket.
The team I was on was chosen to attack the defended fort. After the other team had walked into the woods and occupied the fort, we were given the green light to begin the attack. The other members of my team exchanged a few quick comments (to which I was not privy), then just took off, fanning out through the woods, heading for the fort, and leaving me to stand there wondering what I and my formidable single-shot pistol were supposed to do.
Having played a lot of capture-the-flag as a kid, I decided to employ the same strategy I used during those games, and that was to turn 90 degrees to the objective, and start running way out and around (far out of sight) of the fort. I would go perhaps a ½ mile, circling around well behind the fort, then slowly sneak back into the playing area, but this time at the rear of the fort. This would hopefully catch the occupants off guard, or at least set up a crossfire for our team.
So, that’s what I did, using my naturl speed to make quick time moving through the woods, far away from and out of sight of any of the other players. It took me about 10 minutes to circle around to where I estimated I was on the far side and directly behind the fort, then I turned back in and began very stealthily heading toward where I hoped the fort was.
Eventually, I could hear some shouting far in the direction I was going so felt confident I was heading the right way. But, I was still intent on going very slowly, at least until I could find something identifiable and figure out what the situation was. Finally, through the trees in the distance, I spotted someone running, heard more shouting, and even began hearing some paintball guns firing. Onward I proceeded, even slower than before, sometimes on my hands and knees to remain behind cover.
Eventually, the fort itself came into view, and I could see the occupants in it shooting out at my team’s players who were darting from tree to tree in a frontal assault, trying to work their way closer to the fort. Sure enough, as I got closer, I could see that there was no one manning the rear side of the fort, so I began to feel that my strategy might pay off.
And then I noticed him. About 100 feet in front of me, kneeling behind a large, fallen tree, and about a hundred feet this side of the fort, was one of the other team’s players. He was obviously not in the fort at all, but craftily waiting to pick off any of our players who might circle around the back side of the fort. Smart! What he didn’t count on, though, was that someone would circle so far around to end up behind him! I felt sure I had him if I could get close enough to him without being detected!
So, I dropped on my belly and slowly, carefully, and as quietly as possible picked my way through the scrub, inching my way closer to him. It was fortunate that the battle around the fort was now picking up as my team got closer because those sounds helped mask my movements. After about five minutes, I had worked my way to within 10 feet of him, still undetected. Not willing to risk being caught on my belly if he should hear me trying to get closer, after first ensuring that none of his teammates were in sight, I jumped to my feet, ran right up behind him, and said in a subdued voice, “Surrender or die!”
As I stood towering down over him, with my gun’s barrel centered on his back, he slowly turned around to see who had been able to sneak up on him so quietly. Just as he faced me, with his gun at his side, the single paintball in my gun rolled right out of my barrel and plopped onto the ground. For a moment, we both just stared at the ball, then our eyes locked, and then everything seemed to go into slow motion for me.
As if in a dream, I slowly turned to start running away from him and his fully-automatic weapon while hearing myself say, “Ooooooohhhhhhh Sssshhhhiiiiiiittttttt!” It seemed to take forever to put one foot in front of the other, and indeed, I only made it a few steps before I felt my back get lit up with what felt like a jackhammer with nails in it. Fuck, it hurt! As soon as I felt the first ball hit me I raised my hand, and yelled “I’m out! I’m out!” but that didn’t seem to do much to change this guy’s behavior. It wasn’t until he was out of balls that the pummeling stopped. He must have emptied his entire hopper into my back! (I had welts all over my back for days.)
With one hand still raised, I walked past the ongoing battle at the fort, then right off the field, to my car, and drove home. I finally I understood why these guys had such a hard time finding people to play with paintball with them!
It was years before I played again (and it wasn’t with them!)