risk of heat-related injury that often plagues mid-summer
major paintball events.
After the National Anthem played and the briefings were
completed, excitement began to build as the Germans
made their way into the treeline to await the Allied forces
who shuffled into landing craft along the long swath
of grassy, bunkered no-mans-land that portrayed the
Normandy beaches. Then the ramps dropped. Hundreds
of Allied players at a time surged out of the landing craft as
ramps were dropped, running, sliding and diving through
waist-high grass into whatever bunkers they could find
to protect them from the hail of incoming paintballs that
seemed to fill the air. A piper wandered the beach playing
his Bagpipe through a JT Crossfire paintball goggle while
paintballs rained down around him, players bunching up
dozens at a time behind every bunker in sight. While the
paint in the air was cloudlike, slowly but surely the Allied
advance moved forward, inching ever-closer to the large,
grassy berms just in front of the tree-line that contained
hundreds of acres of legen dary Skirmish playing fields. If
the Allies had any hope whatsoever of gaining a foothold
and scoring points to win the game, they knew they had
to break through into the woods, while the Germans were
every bit as aware that they had to spend every ounce of
effort they could muster to keep the Allies out of the trees.
It was not to be.
Smoke grenades arced through the air, filling the alreadymisty and foggy Skirmish field with a purply-reddish haze
as the Allies advanced ever closer to the woods, battling
ball-for-ball with the Germans entrenched just yards away,
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