Crazy Paintball Battle and Friendly Fire

Crazy Paintball Battle

It felt like I had been lost behind enemy lines for hours. I was tired, hungry, losing light fast and my ammo was dangerously low but I refused to give up. I had to complete my mission. However, my luck was about to come to an end.

I ran through the foliage into a clearing and everything suddenly changed. I was surrounded. Guns were pointed at me from all directions. I counted at least eight of them. There was no way out, no escape, no hope. My mission had been a failure. I had been defeated and I was about to get covered in a lot of paint.

Caught in a Crazy Paintball Battle

There are a few things I have discovered when playing paintball:

1) Do not eat the paintballs.
2) I am not Dirty Harry, Neo, John McClane or John Rambo (but it is fun to pretend).
3) The Matrix slow-motion double back flip while shooting two guns is not as easy as it looks.
4) Never ever get surrounded. Especially by members of my own team.

After I found myself surrounded the events that followed probably took place with-in a single second but in my mind the scenario played out in slow motion with ‘Barbers Adagio for Strings‘ playing in the background to highlight the tragedy.

There was the moment of sudden panic when I burst through the foliage into the clearing and realized I was surrounded. Then, quick relief when I saw the blue arm bands which indicated that these fine soldiers were members of my own team. I had not been defeated after all. I had found my way back to friendly territory. I could relax. I was safe. I was going to survive this crazy paintball battle.

Friendly Fire

Unfortunately, it seemed that my entire team was colour blind and they did not notice that I was also wearing a blue band around my arm. By the time I realized something was wrong it was already too late. There was a confused moment of silence which was suddenly broken by my rather loud and long screams of painful colourful language as my brothers in arms opened fire upon me from all angles (some hitting me in ‘sensitive’ areas). One shot was not enough either apparently and my trigger happy comrades continued to fire until I was completely covered from head to toe in bright green paint.

Even when they realized their mistake and finally stopped firing I continued to do the ouchy dance of pain and sing the non-edited version of the, “You dam idiots!” song which probably gave our position away to every enemy with in a 10 mile radios in the process.

I like to think that even John Rambo would have reacted in the same way had he been in a similar situation.

Stuart

Stuart is an accident prone Englishman who has been living in the Netherlands since 2001. Even his move to the country was an unintentional accident, the result of replying to a cryptic job advertisement he found one day in a local British magazine. Since then he has learned to love the Dutch (so much so that he married one of them) and now calls the country home. He started the blog Invading Holland in 2006 as a place to share his strange stories of language misunderstandings, cultural confusions and his own accident prone nature.

12 Responses

  1. Jake says:

    You’ve been watching ‘Spaced’ again, havn’t you.

    Back in my teaching days an end of term treat for the GCSE year was a paintball day. I was days away from leaving the supply placement so I’d never have to see the buggers again (kind of like finishing your tour of duty in ‘Nam). One of the worst boys in the class ambles up to me with this big grin on his face and says “Sir, are you going paintballing with us?”.

    Not bloody likely – bets are off as to where every gun barrel (and possibly survival knife) would be pointing. I pitty the poor teachers who were conscripted to go on that ‘field trip’.

  2. Tess says:

    Ouch! Next time better stick to the lasers instead of the paint although it would’ve been cool to see you covered in green… did you become so angry that you started to grow immensely large, tearing all your clothes, wearing nothing but purple trousers? :9

  3. be.bart says:

    In real war they call this ‘friendly fire’ incidents

  4. Tommy says:

    @be.bart
    Funny how friendly fire never really feels quite so friendly ;)

    Everyone must dance the dance-of-sheer-anguish-and-terror at least once in a paintball game. Otherwise it won’t have been a good one :)

    Either that or I’m just pretty unlucky at playing paintball… I vividly recall being struck not once but twice in the “reproductive area” the last time I played PB. I did the dance rolling on the floor that time, the song was pretty much the same as yours though ;)

  5. Dragon lady says:

    Yes but Jake think of the sheer delight at GETTING one of the little (buggers) as you call them. I have many more names for them and their are a few at our school that I would like to get. I did have the unimaginable joy at getting one of them full in the face with a snowball one (don’t tell the head) bliss.

  6. Maikl says:

    If I were you I’d have shooted the teammates too. At least than their firing would have had sense.

  7. Invader Stu says:

    Jake – I might have been watching it again yes :p

    You should have played but using a paintball mini gun (yep, they do exist).

    Tess – No, I mainly held the painful areas and whimpered :p

    be.bart – It didn’t feel friendly.

    Tommy – War is hell.

    Dragon lady – I wont tell them.

    Maikl – If I’d known what was about to happen I would have taken them all down with me in a blaze of paintballs.

  8. Tenakalaz says:

    Did you have anyone to stand next you screaming “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” whilst looking upto the sky?

  9. ChickyBabe says:

    War games?! And I thought you were a mild mannered Englishman! :P

  10. Invader Stu says:

    Tenakalaz – I wanted to re-enact Mikes death scene from spaced but there was no one around to do it with:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shHh4Ju7kXA

    ChickyBabe – Not when it comes to the great Red vs Blue battle :p

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  12. Parker J says:

    Love that music!

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