Paintball and the lesson on war

The six of us braved the heavy rain this morning to Hemel Hempstead and joined force with twenty others for a paintball shootout against thirty others from the enemy side.

Our team

Members of our team include young children. Military gear provided.

Paintballing is basically shooting at each other with paintballs in military fashion. Had I been in a real war today, my neck, right arm, two fingers and the right leg would have been blown apart. That's right, these were the places I took the "bullets" from. I came home with mosquito-bite soreness and red spots on the neck, arm and leg. Two of my fingers bled a little on impact with the paintball. Nothing too serious otherwise.

Paintballs

I never had such an exhilarating fun for a while, where I had to run and hide like a kid. We hated the rain but later felt it made the "war" more exciting. The terrain was slippery and thus, more difficult to overcome.

The itinerary consisted of 12 games. We fought off our enemies until everyone was annihilated. Annihilation in the paintballing context means everyone in the team is shot.

Paintballing requires a lot of body movement, strategy and teamwork. These sounded like serious stuff for a Sunday morning but it was equally entertaining. One of the funny moments I could remember was in a game to protect the leader in our team. While defending our fort, a member in my team had several clean shots at an enemy but the enemy refused to die. Frustrated by the enemy's immortality, he shouted to the marshall, "Marshall! I've hit that lad like a million times on the shoulder and he's refused to die! Get him out! Get him out!"

In the midst of the hail of bullets exchanging between the enemy and us, the enemy surrendered. The man beside me shouted "What took you so long to die?!" Then he fired a cold-blooded parting shot at him.

Long story short, we won the game by a huge margin. On the way back to London we shared our experiences. There were important lessons to be learnt from an innocent game like paintballing.

It made me feel blessed that I am not living in a war-torn country. It made me appreciate that the pain I encountered today is artificial. I paused for a moment to think about the troops who have to take these for real and with live bullets. The outcome would be so much more different. I've learnt that in a war, no matter who's right or wrong, innocent lives will be sacrificed. I have learnt that for every troop who is still alive now could be at the expense of another troop's life who protected him. I have learnt the practical meaning of "curiosity kills the cat". I have learnt the importance of being calm in adversity. When our enemy was raining bullets on us, we stayed calm and assessed the situation before closing in on them. I learnt that in a war, there's no such a thing as a winner takes all. There will always be losses of innocent lives no matter who wins in the end. I learnt that no matter how hopeless a negotiation has turned, no one should ever go into war.