War Games

It’s been over a month since I last posted, and that’s because for the last four weeks my wonderful girlfriend of over four and a half years had been visiting.  Sarah left in February for Argentina to spend a month exploring with her sister and then arrived on March 19th to spend another exploring Evansville with me.  There was far less to explore here, but I like to think I made the trip somewhat worthwhile. Working all day five days a week and leaving Sarah at home to do just about nothing left me little time to devote to the blog as the last thing I wanted to do was have her sit around while I spent time on here.  Sarah left for home on Saturday and as my life returns to it’s boring routine without her here everyday, it’s time I showed my blog and my readers (however few you may be) some love.  While I didn’t have the most exciting assignments while Sarah was here, going back and looking over the last month, I actually did have some assignments worth writing about and the following posts will give you all what I can remember from each.  So, without further ado…

Back on March 16th, I went up to the Evansville F.O.P.A.L camp to shoot the University of Evansville and University of Southern Indiana ROTC groups participating in a military tactical simulation exercise.  The cadets each received specially made paintball guns that were made to replicate M-16 rifles and broken in to two squads, Alpha and Bravo.  The ROTC commanders from the schools created a battle plan for each group.  All the cadets knew was they were to head to opposite ends of the wooded camp and after a certain amount of time for the two groups to get into position, they were to seek each other out and engage. What they didn’t know was the commanders had planned for things to go differently than either expected.  One squad had orders to seek out the other at a certain position and attack in a certain manner, but what they didn’t know was that the commanders had instructed the other squad to set up an ambush.

I can’t remember which was which at this point, but for the sake of the story we’ll say Alpha was the ambushers and Bravo was getting ambushed.

As Bravo squad made their way through the bush, the reporters and I hung back with the commanders who had a position set up to view the eventual combat.  What they didn’t plan for was Bravo squad’s leaders having the eyes of a hawk.  From at least 300 yards away and through thick brush and trees the Bravo squad commanders spotted the Alpha squad troops setting up their ambush positions.  They thought on their feet and circled around to attack them from the side, something the commanders applauded, but readily admitted they hadn’t planned for.  The biggest problem now was that were were dead in the middle of the battlefield.

We hung back as Bravo moved in, but they were too loud.  The Alpha squad heard their hurried movement through the bushes and before we knew it paintballs were flying everywhere.  The commanders assured us we could move up closer to get better stills and video, but they hadn’t accounted for a few Alpha squad cadets that were waiting to pick off stragglers from Bravo.  As we went to hide behind a few trees closer to the action, we found paintballs flying past us from hidden cadets.  One cadet standing no more than two feet from me looked over to say something and took a paintball directly to the face.  A few seconds later the tree I was behind took a peppering of five to six paintballs as a Bravo cadet tried to make his way over the trail and went down in the middle of it.

When all was said and done all but two cadets suffered kill shots and the two that didn’t had still been hit.  In the heat of the moment many found themselves standing with no cover and firing away.  Their battle plans went out the window and it looked a lot more like live action Call of Duty.  The commanders critiqued their efforts afterward when they all gathered back at the main camp building, but a few took the media aside to have a little fun.  With a ton of bulk paintball ammo left, and nothing to do with it, we had the fun of firing off the remaining rounds into the woods while cadets were critiqued.  All and all, one of the more fun assignments I’ve ever had.

Here’sa link to the story with more photos as it ran on the 21st: ROTC members train at FOP camp for live combat

An ROTC cadet sets up in a parameter position as part of a joint University of Evansville and University of Southern Indiana ROTC training exercise at the Evansville F.O.P.A.L. camp on Wednesday afternoon, March 16, 2011.