When Trumpets Fade

30-July-06

Its now Thursday as I begin to write this, and the big game was this past Sunday. To say we lost is generous at best, we got slaughtered. I have had a few days to think about what happened, how it happened and why. The reader is hereby warned, I hold no punches, and write about as bluntly as I speak.

We begin this paintball day much the same as every other. The alarm goes off at 04:45, and I snooze until 5. I wake up get showered, dressed and kiss my beautiful finance' goodbye. I take a 6:05 train to work every morning, so getting up this early for a day of slinging paint never really bothers me much. First stop as usual, is the QuickCheck near my house for the much required caffeine, as the field is an hour and half drive without even the least amount of traffic. I accelerated on the on ramp to I-80 in Parsippany near my house, and began to merge left, I don't normally drive slow, nor sit in the right lane. To my complete dismay I turned the wheel left, but the jeep just wasn't going there. I looked down, and noticed the left side was riding pretty low,. Feeling more than a little unsafe, I pulled over to the shoulder on the right. A simple glance showed me the front left tire was completely flat and resting on the wheel. Son-of-a-B^&*@. This did not bode well for the remainder of the day, and I probably should have taken it as a sign of some sort. I quickly shoved my gear out of the way, retrieved the jack, the tire iron, and the spare. I got the lug nuts off, and the jeep jacked up, but could not actually get the wheel off the lug bolts, somehow it had rusted on. I called AAA, and Dave to let him know i would be there just as soon as possible, but AAA quoted me an hour response time. I drank my coffee, sat down on the tail gate and began to let loose a string of expletives that would have made a even seasoned sailor proud. Eventually the dude showed, looked at the jeep and said, “dude that sucks.” He picked up my tire iron and banged the living be-jeeezus out of my rim After it was good and mauled over, the damn thing gave in and dropped off. I quickly put the new tire on, tightened up the lug nuts and was on my way about 5 minutes later. Note to self . . . get tire repaired . . .

I sped like hell down 80, across the GW to LIE and then the field – I made it in just about an hour fifteen, would have been faster if my bladder hadn't been screaming for a pit stop. I arrived on the field about 8:30, a full hour later than I had planned, but certainly early enough to still be ready to start on time. This was Dave and my first day on the Command Staff and we had no desire to let anyone down. Even at 8:30 it was hot, balls sticky hot. I was sweaty before I even had my gear unpacked. This was shaping up to be one of the toughest days we've played. We Loaded Crows had 4 men, 3 active players and one extra , Matt who has been playing with us since early summer. We even had a recruit I had met in my local paintball shop (Vision Paintball, small inventory but great people and great service: www.visionpaintballnj.com ).

I'll be the first one to admit, even with all of our planning, we seemed a bit disorganized during our morning briefing, but it was our first time doing it. The morning started out well enough. Due to the heat, we had a different type of start, both teams began in the woods, where we were able to enjoy at least a modicum of shade. We started out strong, our planning seemed to be paying off, NCOs were carrying out and implementing our orders, and we were holding our own with about 25 experienced paintballers and 125 walkons. Against the vast amount of experience on the Blue Horde, I was very impressed with ourselves, and began to think “wow, we actually have a fighting chance today.” As badly as I wanted to be on an undefeated command staff, I never really expected it. I played, as I expected to play – just as hard and fast as always . Well, shortly thereafter it happened, all hell broke loose. Blue somehow finally organized a push and began to break through our lines. Not really a big deal, we were fighting and fighting hard. Within 20 minutes they eradicated most of us out of the woods, but we were holding out in the trenches. Then the theme of the day began to show its ugly mug. LAZINESS. Complete and utter disaster. We could have held the trenches, we could have retaken the woods, and in fact would have, if anyone had actually bothered to reinsert. I was in the rear of the woods doing my job as XO. I organized push after push after push. Here it is Thursday afternoon and my voice is still hoarse. What happened? I was torn between wanting to run up the hill and get into the thick of it myself and shooting the foolish children in the back. I order a push, I even specifically choose players, tell them which bunkers to go to, in which order to get the best angle on our enemy and time it just right with alternating squads running and covering each other. What happens? We get clobbered and lose even more ground. Why? Because I count to 3 and 1 out of 10 guys run. I open up with my brandy new Apex shooting over the heads of the other fools who were supposed to run with him, covering that one brave soldier the best I can. Here is the sad part. That one guy got to where he was going over and over again unscathed. He single-handedly proved my plan worked. The six guys on the other side of the bunker lit him up. I didn't see this happen once or twice. This was 5-7 times in the span of 30 minutes while we lost the woods. Finally, I began to look around, the pansies weren't even at my feet or behind me anymore. There was me, and about 7 men left in those woods. We pulled back, we had no choice. I turned around to shout for more reinforcements, and got hit. The back of my boot, what a lousy way to go . . . As XO, I still had to turn in my badge and go back to the truck to retrieve it. In the five minutes it took me to get my badge and come back, we had lost the woods, the trenches and were fighting for dear life to merely hold onto the air force field, and the game had only been going an hour. It should be noted we were in fact holding at the airbase, and we were doing it with 30 out of 150 players, it was just a bit after 11am. Where the hell was everyone? I don't know, they sure as hell weren't on the field where they belonged. People came and paid good money to play, and instead were sitting the bench, some things I will simply never understand. Yes, heat equals more sweat which equals greater need to hydrate, but not to stop playing. I guess maybe that's why everything moves slower in the South . . .

To make a tough day harder, we eventually lost the air field in the morning, and were pushed all the way back to our insertion point. As Dave and I began to see this unfolding, I went back to the staging area and spent the next 30 minutes making rounds though it ordering, then asking, then pleading with players to retrieve their armbands out of the (sizable) pile at the truck and get back in the fight. After 30-45 minutes asking and re-asking the same lazy jerks to come back on the field and play, I retook the field myself. I scored a few kills long-balling, and again tried to organize a few pushes to retake ground. It was beyond hopeless at this point, but through some magical act of G-D we were able to stay alive long enough for the lunch whistle. I truly believe we were only minutes away from losing our own insertion point and having to call the game anyhow. A dismal way to begin a day of paintball.

Dave and I compared notes with our NCOs, slugged some water, and began to discuss what were going to do. Obviously having one to three experienced players leading squads of up to 20-30 walk-ons wasn't doing it for us, and we needed a new organizational structure and quick. I had a brainstorm. From what I saw in the woods in the morning, the wimps didn't really become wimps until after they saw kids in front of them get shot. New plan forming. Lets put all the experienced guys (with the exception of a few NCOs) together. We can have them spear head the assaults, and with a little luck, some of these fool children might fall in behind them as they take some ground. Well, it sounded pretty good in my head.

So a little before 2 the afternoon session begins… Armed with a new organizational structure, we receive our marching orders. We were so far behind on points that OrionTPT decided to give us an advantage on the restart. They brought the entire Blue Horde into the center of the field, the trenches to be exact and held them there. Then they inserted the entire red team around them, had everyone setup into defensible positions before restarting the game. It was great, we were given a huge advantage and had every intention of exploiting the hell out of it. Dave and I took command of one side, the WW2 field, and had all our NCOs commanding the Airfield side. It was beautiful, we held those hated pinned in the trenches for at least 20 minutes. Worse off, they couldn't even reinsert for the first 10 minutes. Again, my faith was restored in our team. We had experienced players leading charges and assaulting the trenches, we had all the walk ons backing them up, and actually PLAYING, and FIGHTING. People were having fun. People were getting painted, it was a paintball game once again.

Once again, however our greatest enemy was the heat and inexperience. Our lines again began to falter, and eventually cave. Again we were pushed back. This time, we only had experienced players left . This time, as orders were given, they were followed. This time, we were outnumbered 3 or more to 1. This time, we gave ground far more grudgingly, and took nearly an hour and a half to push us back. This time, we played paintball and we made those hated Blue fight for every lousy inch they took from us.

We were once again forced to give up most of the playing field. We finally ended the game fighting to retake (unsuccessfully) the flag over the World War II field. The game was called over at 16:00. We lost this one, but are fondly looking forward to crushing the life out of the Blue infidels in October. The final score was about 6500 to 5500. Believe it or not, we had actually erased Blue's devastating lead by the early afternoon, and had we been able to hold our ground, we could have won the day. This is one paintballer who vows to not accept defeat again.

I got home by 6:30, traffic really wasn't too bad. By 8:30 I was climbing into bed with a dehydration headache. My body ached, my ego hurt, my paintball obsession was satiated for one more day.

Next Time We'll: “Blast those yellow (Blues) to HELL!” (Billy Joel, Leningrad )

Note from Webmaster (Dave): Over the past year, many people have commented on how much they enjoy reading these after action reports, and how they look forward to them. I know Aaron spends a great deal of time writing them, and all the positive comments are great to hear. In response to those comments, the Loaded Crows are proud to announce that we will be creating a “CrowNews” distribution list to keep people informed of when new content is added to our site, as well letting everyone know where the Crows will be in action in the future. If you'd like to be included in this distribution list, please send and email to Dave@loadedcrows.com and let me know.