Civil War
By: Integrity
This battle was hosted by my school a couple of years ago when I was in my late elementary school years. It was a recreation of the American civil war. The entire grade ( compromised of around 70 kids) was divided into the "confederacy" and the "union". I was in the confederacy.
Each team was required to bring their own "equipment" aka water balloons. Each team must have had hundreds of rounds of ammo. Rules were that once you were hit, you had to go down and stay down. Not to mention that the battlefield was the size of a football field- wide open too, with our ammo carrying coolers at the very ends of the field.
The battle kicked off with a whistle from our teachers, and all the students had to start at the center of the field unarmed. At the signal, everyone broke into a run to arm themselves and gain as much ground as possible. At first, it was a pure artillery barrage. No one had the guts to charge such a large number of enemies. I remember grabbing a water balloon in each hand and charging forward in unison with my whole team, as did our opponents. That first salvo was- it's hard to put into words. Everyone roared a battle cry and when the balloons impacted onto the ground, it looked like one of those films of world war two. A lot of people got hit then. After that awesome first engagement, I ran back to get more ammo, lucky for me a girl with crutches who couldn't fight was handing out balloons with her friend. It helped remove any crowding. So I remember the second engagement as being more warlike, as the balloons began to fall more irregularly and constantly. A balloon smashed into the chest of one guy I was talking to as we ran forward to throw, another missed me by about a foot and hit the ground so hard that I felt the spray it kicked up. I in turn threw both of mine as hard as I could in the general direction of the union side, I almost nailed a girls who was running back.
Slowly, the "cannon fire" converged into water balloon musket volleys, at this stage, we had about 25 or so out of 35 left on each team. But the losses soared when we started playing a dodgeball style war. Balloons flew thick and fast, I remember constantly looking left right forward and back spinning circles to try and stay alive. There was this one guy who was nearly invincible, I forgot to mention that you were allowed to catch balloons and live, and also if one of your limbs got hit, you couldn't use it. So I got pretty excited when I hit the guy I was talking about earlier in the leg. It should have been an advantage, but it actually made it harder to kill him.
The musket volley stage was the longest, and the awesomest. One of my friends sacrificed himself to destroy most of the enemy ammo. After that stage, only about 10 guys left on each team. So came the bayonet charge. So during the fight, it's worth mentioning that the two sides never stopped advancing. So the ranged water balloon fight quickly dissolved into an all out melee. We ducked, pushed, and tackled to get an opportunity to soak our opponents. The melee lasted for only like 10 seconds. After that it became obvious who was going to win, us. We had abou 6 people left and our enemy, 4. These were all the underdogs, as the weaker people were eliminated early In the battle and the strong even earlier.
So the union could do nothing but chuck their last few balloons at us and run, I ended up chasing this one guy but I didnt get to kill him cause my balloons would either not pop, or would just bounce off of him and pop on the ground. We were winning- until somebody on the union team thought of the idea of using the water in the coolers used to store the balloons in. The tables were quickly turned on us, and we ran for dear life. I just managed (true story) to dive out of the way into dry grass and avoid a massive payload of ice cold water. (whew!) then, me and my team were able to finish off the battle with no trouble.
The victory was a very costly one, only three members of the confederates including me survived. And I was the only one who came out with all four limbs intact. All in all, it was a pretty accurate portrayal of war, just add more drama and replace all that water on the field with the wreckage of war. It was almost sad seeing 67 or so students lying there in the field pretending to be dead.
There was only one problem, we still had 50 or so balloons left, what to do? We turned on the teachers!
Note: all events described in this report are 100% true.
Thank you for reading my first battle report!
Posted: 20110705
