I got your back!

Our pastor's son from G.A. came down this weekend to stay through the holiday. It is tradition that we play paintball every time he comes down and we did not break the streak. We brought in some new recruits as well. W.Daniels and K.Burk joined us. They are some of the newest members of our church. G.Rogers was also going to play for the first time but he had a job dropped on him for Saturday so he had to miss. But overall we had six players. K.Burk, W.Daniels, D.Otis, B.Otis, my brother and my self. We were going to play three on three, but when we got to our battlefield, we found it already in use. Eight other paintball players were just about to rape things up when we showed up. The "Battlefield" was and old abandon cotton gen. It is by far the coolest place I have ever played at. When we showed up however the players that had been playing before decided to stay if we wanted more players for our game. We were glad for the extra people, we knew that it would be rather lack luster with only three on three. We agreed and the teams were slit up.
We stuck together as the six of us went up against six of them. Sounds fair? Well they had been playing at this place every weekend for the past year or so. We were on their home turf. It was rough. The first game started and we all split our own ways. Two to the left, two down the middle, two to the right. I had played here before so I moved quickly up along a trench I knew of, staying under cover to the right side. At the end of the trench I got up and ran for the bunker. I got behind it without drawing fire. Moments later I felt a hand on my shoulder and W.Daniels said "I got your back." A three count later and I took off for the next bunker as W.Daniels put down covering fire. We had already spotted two foes and W.Daniels had one pined down. The other one was on the move by the time I had stopped. Three shots later from my M98 and we had a one to nothing lead as the target was hit. W.Daniels then asked for covering fire as he moved up. I did so and he made it safely. We spotted one more of the enemy moving far out to the right in tall grass. W.Daniels asked me to continue the covering fire and he moved up again. And then I blow it. The man in the tall grass could not get a shot at my teammate but the guy who had been pined down before could. He started fire at W.Daniels' feet that were out of cover. However that gave me a chance at the man's head that was fire at W.Daniels. I guest that it would take longer for our foe to hit my guy's feet, then it would take for me to hit my target's head. I was wrong. There was a bush that had small branches hanging over into my line of shot. My paintballs broke on them and never got close enough to make the other guy pull his head down. He hit my man in the foot, and he was out.
I had used my own man as bate so I could get a shot at a foe and I had failed. I could have shouted out a warning to my man, to pull his feet in but I did not. Now I had two foes to deal with. However that changed. I started taking fire from my left, where I thought my men were. I moved and the guy in the tall grass saw my. He started opening fire on me so that I could not raise my head to see where his two other teammates were moving to. But they did not have to move to get me. A shot from the other guy in the grass came through a crack in the bunker and hit my leg. Later I learned why I had been flanked when I got back to my base. Three others besides W.Daniels of my team had been taken out already. That left one other guy and he followed us soon after. In the end, we lost 6-1.
We avenged ourselves in the next game. I started by moving into the tall grass that my former foe had been in. I was some what separated from the rest of my men, with the closet being my fellow Ghost Squad member, my brother. It was not long before I had crawled on my stomach so that I had a good shot at my first target. My M98 did all the talking and she only needed two shots to conclude the conversation. However I was then in turn fired upon. The grass parted around my head as shots mist me, coming from a man that was taking cover behind a small bush. I crawled backwards as fast as I could. A shot glanced off my shoulder, but upon my inspection it had not burst, thus I was still alive. I roll behind a large bush, which turned the tables on the man that I was having a fire fight with. I found a nice hole to shoot from, so that my shots would not break on the branches. I put 10 shots into the other mans bush before he called out "hit".
By the time I fineshed working my way around to the main battlefield, my team had cleaned up on the rest of them. My old buddy W.Daniels and B.Otis, (our two military guys) were still standing. We won 6-3.
I sat out the next round so B.Otis could use my gun, as his had stopped working. I finished by playing the final round as we were out numbered five to four. We lost that one, 4-1. I got the only kill, and added a death to my total, to end the day with, 4 kills and 2 deaths. I was proud of that, as I was playing at the other teams home filed. Overall we did okay.

Later we played basketball that evening, and that was not so pretty. I was fifth string in those games. And it showed. I made one shot in three games, and only tried three times. But I did have the most steals, I just never had the ball past my way so I could take more shots. But then the other players on my team were better options, to get the ball to. The team I was on won all three games, but I had very little to do point wise with that. By the way, did I ever mention that I do not like basketball. :)

Robert L.

P.S. I know I promised another Christmas post, but that will come later.