Events
Sheen Unit: Operation Jordan’s Head - Brought to you by The Woodsman -
Up in Harrogate in North Yorkshire there is a several acre area of land, in which is a village, a church, a checkpoint, a downed black hawk helicopter and Nazi pillboxes, and today, in this place, we declared war on each other.
Harrogate Paintball Centre contains several contained 'games', all set in different assault areas. For Heather's birthday she wanted to go Sky Diving in Nottingham, but she was talked out of it thank Christ. Youdy suggested paintballing, and so off we go. The Sheen Unit travelled in convoy to the HPC, but this is no ordinary Sheen Unit manoeuvre. We're joined by external soldiers on this operation, so Sheen Unit codenames are unsatisfactory. Therefore, each participant was designated with an Operation Jordan's Head codename.
Youd: Bald Eagle
Gazz: The Woodsman
James: Nightcrawler
Gemma: Sheer Blonde
Jordan: H-Bomb
Nathan: Velvet Fog
Claire: Green Ranger
Caleb: Hooligan's Run
Pete: The Sneak
Heather: The Scrims Reaper
Tom: Gunn
Several of The Reaper's boyfriend Borja's mates showed up too. Adam, Gary, Alex. I travelled in Velvet Fog's pimpmobile with Sheer Blonde and the Green Ranger. Most of us got to the HPC in pretty decent time. Most of us except for one car. A car captained by The H-Bomb.
They started following a car that wasn't any of us, ended up in Harrogate town centre. If only they'd wanted to get some shopping.
The facility is proper ace, there's no end of gaming areas in there and it's pretty cheap, for £15 you get the day, 100 paintballs and some lunch. Can't be bad. When we arrived we got numbered, no number no gun, and as it turns out the numbers correspond to the guns. They're randomly arranged so that you just end up on one team. In this case the teams were Blue and Green/Orange, because of the hoppers on the guns (which are the things on the top of the guns full of paintballs). I landed on the Blue team, alongside Bald Eagle, Hooligan's Run, Borja and Scrims Reaper. Not The H-Bomb. H-Bomb was on team Green/Orange, or what came to be known as Team Massive Losers Who Cheat, along with such cheating losers as Velvet Fog, Sneak, Sheer Blonde and The Green Ranger.
The first game involved protecting/attacking a village. The attacking side [blue's first] were to storm the village and raise the flags inside the little huts. The defenders just had to stop us. Myself, Hooligan's Run and Bald Eagle took the left side, during which time I took point. I was trying to get Hooligan's Run to take over a hut that I'd cleared (of Green Ranger) and raise the flag because I was pinned down in position [use of the lingo] but he just kept pointing his gun at it and nodding. Shit hot. when I finally did get him to listen he had to come over to me and ask, but then I got shot in the shoulder so I was out. Turns out we got two flags, not great but maybe the Green/Orange team would do worse.
As per our game plan, we filed out of the church and I took position in the same hut I had killed Claire in earlier. I waited for the Green/Orange's to come over the horizon, but they didn't. Rather than use our tactic of three either side, two up the middle, they'd gone for more of a 'Everyone Go Down The Right' strategy, much like they used in the Ardennes. I came out of my hut and joined The Scrim Reaper in another one, but she was pinned by Sheer Blonde, who had taken cover in an adjacent hut. I took aim, through the holes in the hut, and tried to lay down some covering fire so Heather could get over there and take her out, but Tom 'Gunn' Salter flanked me I was shot in the hand from about a foot away, leaving a cracking red mark.
During that game Bald Eagle managed to shoot Scrims Reaper in the leg, leaving her with what we later discovered to be a massive bruise on her thigh. He also bukakked Sheer Blonde with paintballs, shooting her no less than five times after she had been declared dead.
Winners - Blue Team
Next battle was Checkpoint Charlie, the aim of which is for the attacking side to kill as many of the defending side as they possibly can in ten minutes. On attacking, Hooligan's Run and Bald Eagle gave covering fire as the rest of us scarpered across the bridge and leapt to cover. I managed to leap into a thorn bush. Scrim Reaper, our intrepid leader, leapt in with me and we both leopard crawled to a bridge, where I managed to take out one or two people from a place of relative safety. After a time there was only H-Bomb and The Sneak left, but I soon ran out of bullets and then time ran out. We'd slaughtered all but two, leaving the Green/Oranges with a fair task a head. I didn't manage to catch them triumphing in this task, because I got shot in the leg within seconds of the start, learning a valuable lesson about cover and not being shit.
Winners - Green/Orange Team
Free tea and coffee, some orange juice for The Sneak at our first break. Load up on tissue paper, [to stick between your visor and head, creating an air pocket which will stop your goggles from steaming up] and we got right back out there.
One a piece and it's all to play for as we go into game three. Enclosed area, two Scottish Flags and two Welsh flags on either side, with a Pirate flag in the middle All you gotta do is raise both your flags, then raise the Pirate flag, and you fucking win. Easy.
No. The end result for this game was a bunch of ours getting leathered and myself, Hooligan's Run and Bald Eagle being forced to surrender. [The surrender rule comes into effect when an opposing solider is within 3 feet of you. They can't fire, for safety reasons, but they can demand that you surrender. You don't have to, you can scarper, but soon as you're far enough away they will shoot you.]
Winners - Green/Orange Team
We're 2 - 1 down at dinner time. Sandwiches, crisps and a mars bar each. Green Ranger wanted the vegetarian option, which turned out to be tuna. About as vegetarian as beef really. Not much good. Got a bit more coffee in us and then we get our bad ass mother's back out onto the battlefield for game four, Saving Private Ryan. The object of which is for one team to get up the massive hill and raise the American Flag, all the while being fired upon by Nazi's [the team in pillboxes at the top of the hill]. I got down on my belly and got in position behind a barrier, along side me was Bald Eagle. I'm not even sure that I got anyone on this game, because they had lots of barriers and where I was turned out to be a shitty vantage point. Either way, they didn't get the flag raised. All we had to do was get that flag up and we win. The plan was for Adam and Borja to drop weapons and just fucking peg it up the hill while the rest of us give them cover. They actually got pretty far, Adam got right next to the flag before he got gunned down. Shortly afterwards I ran out of bullets, almost. You see if you've got no bullets left you are officially dead, but if you have one bullet left you're still in the game. I checked my hopper and, seeing only 3 paintballs, I made the call. Shouted to the team to gimme some cover, fired twice and run my white ass up the hill. I intended to dive behind a tree, but the combination of mud and me being about as graceful as a brick off a cliff, I stacked the leap and just rolled nastily into the trunk, about killing myself. Borja was in the bunker next to mine, and he signalled to me that he was on the go. He got about 3 feet from the flag before being mown down by opposing fire. It was all up to me.
I got shot a fucking bunch.
Caleb did make it through, even though he got shot it didn't burst, so it didn't count, taking the tally up to two a piece.
Winners - Blue Team
Black Hawk Down is H-Bomb's favourite. Two players get a tabard on and play as medics, sitting inside a helicopter [a wooden one] and waiting for one of theirs to come and rescue them. The medics can fire, but they can't move unless they are being held on to by one of their team. The object is to get both your medics back to your base. We chose to attack first, and the Green/Orange's elected H-Bomb and Gunn as medics.
This one is a toughy, because I ran out of bullets I had to declare myself dead. Before that I definitely shot one of their team, I saw it explode, and waited for them to put their hands up and move to the Dead Zone. Did they? Did they fuck! I tried to call over a Marshall [one of the refs] but neither were around so the bastard got off scott free. Didn't even own up once the game was finished.
Round two and we had to get our medics out faster than they did for the win. Alex and Adam took place as medics and myself and Bald Eagle took the right flank. There was no one there, for ages, but eventually I saw what turned out to be Gunn. I fired, I missed. Bald Eagle fired, he missed. Gunn made a valiant run for new cover, only to be viciously pelted with numerous paintballs by myself and The Bald Eagle. He was dead, and we made fucking sure of it. Meanwhile we got our medics out, not before I advanced on the helicopter and shot the living shit out of Nightcrawler, who was ensconced in the downed Black Hawk. None of the paintballs burst, so it doesn't count, but still. I got him.
Winners - Blue Team
We won by virtue of time. They got their boys out in just over 7 minutes, we got ours out in a little over 4.
Finally we sheen on to the Flag Game. We're all pretty low on ammo at this point, and I've scavved no end off of Gunn, so once I got out into no man's land I run out of paint fairly sharpish. I got stuck behind a tree, a thin one, with Gary. We considered just running for the flag, but we were surrounded in seconds and dispatched without much effort. Lucky for us Hooligan's Run doesn't know the meaning of the words 'Don't capture the flag and end on a 3 - 2 win for your team' so he did just that. We hammered.
WINNERS OVER ALL - The Mighty Blues
For a laugh at the end, we had a couple of duels. Ten paces, turn and fire. H-Bomb kept up his sparkling record for the day by hardly getting shot at all, firing all of his remaining paint into Gunn, if you will.
Excellent day that ended in aching for days and more than one bruise for all involved.