Bewitched, Bothered, Bewildered

Watch as the view closes on a woodland, dense with the thick foliage of summer and stretching far into the distance. Follow now as the eye closes on the center of the woodland, breaking through the trees to spy a thin river, crossed by a makeshift bridge. Here a squad stands, armbands of blue and preparing to run for their lives. Scan quickly up the hill on one side of the bridge, a straight line through woodland to a small encampment known only as ‘the village’ and containing one hut. The mission…the get three men into this hut, all alive.

Scan further along this line, almost the same distance as the blue are from the village lie the team wearing the green armbands. When the call goes up, it’s going to be a frantic dash from both sides to capture that village.

Flash forward, fifteen minutes and the green team have a solid wall of defence with the village as the centerpoint. Two of their men occupy the hut and hunker down, in the knowledge that they are safe. The blue team are failing again and again to get to forward positions and over-run the base.

Return to the bridge and the blue team’s starting point, and then follow the stream away from the sounds of gunfire and explosions. Down here on the outskirts of the action, more shots suddenly ring out. One blue armband goes down, and his backup uses the distraction to eliminate the opposition.

This is me, using an age old tactic that I am frankly quite surprised has never been opposed before. No matter how many times I do this, I still manage to pick my way around the outskirts of the action, only to attack from the least defended position. Today is no different as I drag my way up a hill, kneel next to a tree…and then I spot it.

The village is in front of me, and I’m out in the open. I’m safe. There’s no-one in sight, yet I could swear I’ve accidentally snaked my way right back around to the front and should be between the gunfire of two teams. Obviously my sense of direction has failed me again, and with that I break into a run. I jump a few mounds of earth, hurl myself into the confines of the village and round a hut…it’s the hut, the one that needs to be taken, but weren’t the green team just holding the hut. I come to a halt beside a guy taking cover, beside four other armed men all firing in the direction I came from. They haven’t fired on me…maybe this isn’t the village. The man now in front of me looks back and warns me that he’s about to attempt to get into the hut despite obviously heavy gunfire keeping him out. I look into the hut and that’s when I see them…

Two men, green armbands. I look up into the eyes of the other four men, they look into my eyes. I spy green…they spy blue. There’s a moment where we both look at each other…I wonder why I haven’t already shot them, they wonder (as I’m later told) how I had the audacity to carry out such a maneuvre.

If I had been paying attention, this would have been my moment of single handedly taking the hut from 6 armed men.

I wasn’t paying attention.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 11th, 2004 at 11:04 am and is filed under Airsoft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.