A Bridge Too Far

It was a beautiful day for paintball. Partly cloudy, low humidity and a high about 80. Two hundred and fifty people had registered, but only a handful didn't show...ahem. I arrived at the opening of registration, 7am.

The first game started about 9:45 and by that time I had already given up hope that other Minnesota Militia members would show up. I was invited to join forces with about 25 Farmland members, but seeing the General from the Big Game in Hudson was there (yelling orders again) I politely declined and joined a rag-tag squad of 5 others. We ended up playing against Farmland. The game was done the same as the last time we played at Special Forces; 5 colored chips go in to 5 colored buckets scattered across enemy terrain. But, on this day, there were three designated bridges that were the only means of crossing into enemy territory by land. As you can imagine these bridges were the scenes of intense combat. There was two other means of crossing, by boat of course, and by a floating barge that you had to pull across the water with a rope. Oh, did I mention mortars and automatic weapons in machine guns nests guarding all the crossings?

Our landing craft broke down. We were stranded in the middle of the pond for about 45 minutes. My new A-5 w/Flatline took out 8 hostiles. Our squad took out about 20, while floating helplessly, without loosing a single man. The gas line was leaking and the motor kept stalling. When Jeff finally got it running he backed into a shallow area, caught the lower unit in the dirt, and ripped the transom and motor completely off. He's really quick though and grabbed the motor before it sank to the bottom. Jeff radioed for help and one of his judges bailed out the other boat then came and got us. We had to climb over the sides and jump into the other boat.

We dominated today. In an attempt to reinsert behind enemy lines, the opposition was air dropped into an open field close to my base camp. Little did they know that me and my squad had seen the approaching planes and took a defensive position at the tree line. With nothing but a couple hay bales to hide behind, we had them running in no time.

The best action of the day was when my six man squad met up with 34 friendlies within spitting distance of the enemy's reinsertion point. Forty of us dropped our green chips in the bucket. My squad stayed back to ambush the enemy's reinsertion point while the other 34 went to find the blue bucket. There wasn't good cover around the reinsertion point, so 4 took cover while two stood in the open, even chatted with the 30+ "Willies" walking in to be reinserted. We just kept our distance and kept our armbands away from their view. When the ref said go, the hostiles started walking toward the three of us. (the other three were behind them). Here they came, not a care in the world, markers at their sides. We lit them up!!! The ref started screaming, "they're orange, they're orange!!" thinking we were on the same team...the ref didn't even realize my squad was green. My squad took 3 casualties...we annihilated all of the reinsertion team. The entire reinsertion team...which included about 10 Farmland players.

So, all in all, it was a good day....Final score of the first game was about 340 (green) to 30 (orange). I'm not sure what the score was for the second game, but I'm sure it was about the same as the first one. By the way, I'm 3 for 3 in prizes at Big Games. I won a 98 Custom....just kidding. (I did win a banana grenade though).

June 21, 2003 - A Bridge Too Far
Special Forces Paintball
As told by Wolverine - Corporal