"Aim for the back, it's easier!"

[gotspy]

So I'm playing at the local field with my son and 4 of his friends. As we're waiting to go on I'm trying to talk strategy with them, and give them some pointers on how to stay alive...

This one kid, Neal, is so scared of getting pegged by a ball, he camps out in the rear every game and just sits there. He ends up with an empty hopper, but I never see him shoot.

So we're standing around and I'm telling them that you need to fire and maneuver, and keep moving so you don't get zeroed in. And they're all saying, "Yeah, yeah, I'm going to move up with you..."

Well the whistle blows, I make a mad dash to the right and up to the middle of the field. I'm bobbing and weaving, picking a couple of people off, when all of a sudden the world goes bright as I'm getting lit up from three different directions!

I look around me to see if anyone can lay down some suppressing fire so I can move up and get an angle on a bunker and NO ONE IS THERE!!! In fact, no one was ANYWHERE to be seen!

So I'm yelling for cover fire, and trying to get them to come out, and I see 5 people all huddled together behind the main rear center bunker...

So I yell that they better start moving or I'm giong to come back there and shoot them all myself. Well that worked because a couple popped out and started running.

Well because I had to get my team motivated, I didn't notice the kid getting the angle on me, and SPLAT! I take one to the mask. Now i get pretty upset at myself when I take it in the mask because that means I obviously missed SOMETHING...

So I'm walking out, and one of the kids that finally ran up with me is walking out too, cursing a bit, but really jazzed at the adrenalin rush of running up.

We get back and he tells me he was shot in the back... I tell him it had to be Neal. I don't know why, I just knew it was...

Well the game finishes (We lost, of course) and Neal comes out saying he got someone in the back! Our guy says, "oh, did he look like this? " and he turns around and crouches down; a big paintball mark on his back.

Everyone laughed, and I went to the other team for the next round. For that round we communicated, gave each other cover leap frogging up, and killed them in about 1.5 mins.

The last game of the day though, Neal is hiding in the back (As usual) and we're standing there watching him. I look away for a second and I hear this YEAAAAAA! and what sounds like a marker going on full auto.

I look back to see Neal charging the line. He made it half way, and I watched as he pegged this one kid as he stared up in amazement that neal had moved. Afterwards Neal comes out and goes, "That was AWESOME! I'm moving up from now on, and the paintballs don't really hurt that bad!"

DUH

[Cadet2005]

I can relate to that story but there is a little sidenote about you're getting shot trying to motivate your team: never watch to see if your words are sinking in unless your front and sides are guaranteed secure, in other words you have flankers...Assume the worst but listen for the best: they listen. The moment you lose focus on your own precarious situation is the same moment you will get flanked.

One other note, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Audie Murphy, etc, were all credited with being great leaders for one reason primarily: when you encourage others to move forward, MOVE FORWARD, lead by example...if you're sitting there saying "move up" but hiding behind your own bunker, they might think you aren't thinking straight or are wanting to watch them get hit...just an observation...

[Crash Danger]

If you move forward far enough in paintball eventually you're gonna have to turn around and move back :)

[AK47]

I was shot in the back on t he break of a speedball game, before I got to my bunker! thank god it didn't break, usually if someone is running toward the other team, they are on ur team:laugh:

[Magpi]

Julius Ceasar led from the rear, he commanded from the back. The main reason his troops followed him was the because of the fact that he made them rich with captured bounty. Alexander The Great did lead from the front and always fought alongside his men. But the message remains the same, movement is the key to victory.

Take Dessert Storm, The Blitz Crieg(sp?). The best movement is forward, generally speaking. About the only time where being more mobile didn't win the war was Vietnam.

[Cadet2005]

Actually, if you read some of the ancient writings from Rome on Julius Casear, he led his men early on from the front but it was decided that his generalship was not needed later on when he assumed command of larger campaigns, yet he was there with his men never far from the front.

As for the Blitzkrieg, it only succeeded because the opposition was still stuck in a day where mobility was a new concept...the idea of fighting without definite frontlines was a new concept and as such was the elemental feature to allowing German forces to advance with the ase of which they did.

As for Vietnam, we actually weren't all that mobile in comparison to our counterparts...they manuevered without being harassed on trails and unerground tunnels enabling them to strike BEHIND our lines, so in technicality while a different aspect of the idea of mobility, they won the war by being able to be more mobile than us.

Anyway, those are some technicalities, but generally yeah it is true, move forward as much as you can but NEVER let yourself get so far ahead that you cannot keep a flank support. If you tell/order your comrades to advance, don't neccessarily assume that they will...advance only so far before you stop and reassess the situation because as is demonstrated alot at my local field and from my own experiences, you will try and get as close as you can to the opposition and lose the fact that your teammates may not be on the same page...One thing that works for me is to make yourself the last to go...If your teammates are always reliable to listen then you can go first but really it doesn't matter so long as you don't keep your butt hunkered down and order them to move. Step out, give cover and make them go. Best way to do it.

[Magpi]

Blitz Crieg was a new type of war fare. Everyone else thought that the tank was on the battle field to support the infantry, where germany realized that the infantry was there to support the tank. They thought that just about everyhting was there to support the tank. This made them create new ways to make the infantry more mobile, they did this with early APC's.
You are might be right about Ceasar, I saw somehting on the History Channel that said that he led from the rear, although I could be rigt aswell. I mean he was the emperor and as such could have had history re-written. On the History Channel they never said anyhting about him taking up sword and shield and fighting in hand to hand comabt with the enemy.
In Vietnam the Viet Cong and Norhtern Vietnamese troops were very harrassed. We put monitors on the Ho Chi Minh trail that let us know when they were on the move. When these things went off they scrambled bombers to the area and bobmed it. The vietnamese were known to be terrified of the bombers. We also had/have an airplane that has really big guns all on one side, when we got word of an encampment of Viet Cong we flew in and fired at them all night. I was thinking of the helicopter and 1st Air Cav and like units, who could be flown anywhere in the country in a short amount of time. There also weren't any lines in Vietnam. What you could see was what you controlled. Thats why we patrolled so much. And the tunnels were very dangerous to the Vietnamese. There were snakes, cave-ins, floods, all sorts of nasty things.