It was an early start for me this morning as I rushed to make sure that I was going to be on time because, finally, the day of our school tour had arrived! We were going paintballing at DeltaForce in Enniscourthy, just outside Wexford. Having left the school at about 9:30, we arrived there at about 11 where we were given our combat gear and a quick rundown of the rules. We were split into two teams of 23 people each and then set off to the first combat zone. Capture the flag.
I was on the red team and for the first round we had the advantage of the cover of upright pallets and makeshift sheds being closer to us than it was to the other team. The whistle blew and we all ran straight to cover. For about 30 seconds we picked off the opposing team who had no choice but to advance using a thin tree line as cover. Once we had picked off those who were aggressive, we decided to abandon our cover and go for the enemies flag. On the first occassion I popped out though, a stray paintball from across the battlefield came at me and hit me on the arm! Thankfully it didn’t break though and I was okay to play on. I ended up capturing the flag and after a quick break in the safe zone, we were redeployed, where this time the roles were to be reversed.
I knew that we were going to have a hard time because we really were far away from cover. There were three routes that we could take. We could go left by jumping across the stream and negotiating our way through the bog to their base, go through the middle a long the path (which would have been suicidal) or climb the hill to our right and advance from there. I decided against going right because it was covered in thin trees which would provide very little cover while hindering any fast movements to the other side. The left side would have allowed me to peg it to the other side in relative ease as I could use the shed in the distance to hide me from the view of the other team until that is they reached the shed of course. That was the plan anyway.
The moment the whistle blew, I ran through the stream and towards the far lefthand side. Suddenly I felt my left foot sink! It was a sinking feeling (no pun intended), realising that I had run straight into a bog! My right foot was still free but while trying to dodge a barrage of paintballs, I lost my balance and my right foot plunged into the bog! I was well and truly stuck! I called my friend over to help me, but on his way over he was shot a few times in the stomach. Sorry Jackman! Eventually I was pulled free by a marshal but by this time the other team had made it to the sheds which suddenly made any advance up the left hand side incredibly risky! I kept low, but obviously not low enough as I was shot twice in the chest as I strayed towards the middle in a futile attempt to escape the attention of those who were manning the sheds. We ended up losing that round but we were one point ahead because the other team had ventured up to the out-of-bounds roadside during the previous round.
The third game on this battlefield was a variation of Capture the flag where both teams flags were in the middle of the battlefield and it was each teams goal to pick up their flag and bring it to the their enemies base. We started, as we had in the first round, with the advantage of the sheds as cover. Most of the other team went up the hill on the far side and were trying to shoot down into the shed. They were lying down which made it very difficult to see them through a fogged up visor. The only way to get a clear shot at them, I decided, was to try advance up the right side so I could get into a position where the bushes were no longer obscuring them from my sight.
There were already a few of my team trying to advance a long the side so I decided to join them. Just as we were making progress though, we were given the fright of our life as Gavin jumped out from behind a tree and eliminated one of us from point blank range. We were fast to react though and swiftly returned the favour! It was here that I was given a lifeline! I was crouched behind a tree trunk when suddenly a paintball hit me in the face with such ferocious force that it knocked me back into the mud! Once I regained my bearings though, I realised that I was in a perfect position to pick off people who were hiding behind the bushes on up the slope on the opposite side.
I spotted someone (who I later found out was Aaron) trying to descend the slope. I took aim and hit him once or twice on his gun, which counts as a kill! Then I spotted a group of 3 people behind the bushes. I took aim and carefully placed my shots in the their direction. I could see that I hit one of them in the face (which unfortunately doesn’t count as a kill). Then I hit him again. And again! At this stage he could see nothing, so he went to wipe his visor. It was then that I hit him again, but this time on his exposed fingers that were wiping his helmet! Ouch! The light bushes weren’t very effective in stopping the paintballs, which can travel at up to 100mph, from subsequently hitting his comrades who were hiding in similar positions. After about 4 minutes, there was very little enemy resistance so we were able to get the flag and bring it to the other teams base with relative ease.
On our way over to the next combat zone, I found myself accidently talking to Danny on numerous occassions. He must have been in heaven though, because the visor not only concealed and hid his ginger hair, but also his ginger teeth! This seemed to have been a regular occurance though and afterwards many people were complaining of that same thing and in retrospect maybe it would have been a good idea to have forced him to wear a cow bell!
When we reached the next area, we were greeted to a sea of barrels and pallets. In the middle there was a hut, which was surrounded by barrels and somewhere near this there was a flag. It was one teams objective to get this flag and bring it to the capture area while the other team was to start in the hut and prevent the other team from getting this flag. The only catch was that they couldn’t move outside the rough ring of barrels surrounding the hut! They also couldn’t move back into the hut! We were to defend first and to add insult to injury, we were told that the other team had infinite lives and only had to run back to the start point whenever they were shot. We, unfortunately, were subject to the one shot, one kill rule!
Once the whistle blew, we emerged from the shed to see what looked like a platoon of enemies running towards us, guns blazing! I instintively dived for cover as paintballs zoomed by overhead. I threw myself behind a barrel and was pinned down. The sound of the paintballs exploding against the barrel in front of me was almost deafening! I spotted a few people trying to flank us and opened fire. I didn’t have much space to work with to aim as I risked showing a bit of my body to which the savages on the other side of the barrel would have no problem shooting at. Once the people who went for the flank came into view, I knew that my time had come. I was just a sitting duck and eventually a paintball splattered against my chest!
I raised my arm and started walking towards the safe zone. Suddenly, a few metre’s away from it, *spludge!*. I had been shot by a “wayward” paintball and straight into my right nut at that! I immediately hit the ground, convinced that it had just been cleanly removed from my anatomy! I threw away my helmet, which was probably a bad idea because people were still firing around me! Immediately a marshal scrambled to block my head with his hands and told me off. I had to sit out for the next round, where the roles were reversed, during which I just spent the time checking that my nut was still intact! We ended up completing it in 2mins 50secs, which was 5 seconds longer than they spent doing it. On the sideline, if felt like nothing but out on the field it feels like it’s a lot, lot longer. You’ve gotta love those adrenaline rushes!
I was allowed back in for the next game which saw us being handed out baloons which we attached to our ammunition belts. The object of the game was to burst your opponents baloon. The team with the most baloons remaining after 5 minutes was to be declared the winner. I was a bit cautious when it came to me protecting the baloon but right at the end I spotted someone near the safe zone with their baloon inflated and they were still shooting. I fired about 7 bullets into their ass before finally hitting and bursting their baloon. The game ended a few seconds after that when it was observed that there was no one from the blue team remaining!
We thought it was all over, but there was to be a last man standing round where there were no teams, just players with guns and a pain barrier. I bought an extra 2 tubes of paintballs for this, bringing my total amount of paintballs used up to 900. I tried to be sneaky and jump into the middle of a stack of overturned tyres but decided against it because they aren’t the easiest things to get out of in a hurry! When the whistle blew, it was on! There were people everywhere and bullets were coming at me from all angles. It was merciless close quarters combat and people were being absolutely destroyed! At one point I found myself in between two people resulting in me taking a lot of hits to my arms, legs and one to the back of my neck which I imagine would have hurt more, if it wasn’t for the already excruciating pain I was experiencing in my right nut! At the end of it all, my visor was covered in orange paint which I couldn’t remove although I’d like to think that I got everyone else better than they got me!
Once we had made our way back to the base camp we were served a burger, a sausage and about 24 baked beans! When we had finished that and settled our accounts for paintballs that we had bought out on the field, we walked to our bus which was to draw a close to our day of drama. Or so we thought.
At the top of the road there was a corner that was about 180 degrees that even a nimble car would have trouble cornering, yet our bus (a bus full of 46 people) decided to step up to the challenge instead of just going straight on and turning at the end of the road! The result was a bus that was hillariously stuck in a ditch for about 20 minutes before a farmer came to the rescue with his tractor and demanded €20 in return for the favour! The bus drivers non-sensical behaviour was the talk of the bus on the way back and when we finally got back to Waterford, the first thing I did when I got home was check and make sure that I still had 2 pieces of Veg to supplment my big slab of meat! One things for sure though, it’s a battle scar that I won’t be showing everyone!
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