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game or sniper paint. This year it was
purple for players, green for snipers
and orange for tanks and heavy gunners.
shots. The game came to a halt and
we exited the field to prepare for the
evening parade cleaning our equipment
and uniforms.
Disney was in the fourth slot of five in
rotation. As we started at the bottom
of Utah Beach moving on the roadway
to the left or southwest side of the
beach we crossed between the first and
second seawall area and a barrage of
paint flew into the air, as it bounced off
the netting covering the open window
areas of our tank. I emptied the hopper
of my G-3 chronoed at 250 fps onto
the Daz-Buzzard’s turret and left side
but failed to hit the side kill plate with
a quarter size dollop of paint. As an
experienced tanker I know at times I’m
20 feet away from players and 250 fps
is plenty of punch I also use a barrel
kit to match the paint to the barrel.
Then a referee was shouting cease fire
paint check!
I talked with Captain “Ozzy” of the
899th and asked his opinion of the
days play. “Ozzy” stated, “Historically I
don’t know if the Germans used tanks
on Utah Beach, had it not been for the
tanks we would have won today. However since we (Allied) used tanks it was
only fair for the Germans to use theirs.
This was just one battle, tomorrow
things will be different. Overall I give
the game today a thumbs up.”
A red AT had found our kill plate and
we were pronounced dead at the
scene. Up went our white flag and we
headed for our dead zone to wait for
the required 20 minutes before reinsertion. Our turret gunner “Jig Saw,”
driver “Cookie” and I discussed the
sequence of events and decided where
the AT gunner was located.
On our second run more red AT’s had
filled in the southwest flank. We unloaded on the seawall putting the red
army’s heads down but our tank was
gunned down at almost the same spot
on the roadway by a hail of AT paint.
This continued in succession for the
next 3 runs. We had 1 tank kill, and
way to many troop kills to count.
The AT gunner that had the most kills
for the red side was neatly tucked inside a large steel tube standing on
one end with a hole large enough to
place the warhead equipped barrel of
his Panzerfaust Type 30, which was
42” long and 2” in diameter up against
the hole and look out to make his kill
“Demo” another captain from the
899th stated, “It was very different
today, this was the first year for the
boats on the beach, basically I was a
battleship laying down paint. When the
tanks rolled by I ducked down till they
passed then continued to lay paint. The
German AT’s never figured out that
if they hit either me or the boat that
would take me out of play. I stayed
alive until I ran out of air and paint”.
At 1800 the player’s parade began at
the start of Main Street, traveling up
through the main row of vendors out
and along the roadway to the main
stage area, where the players and
participants were welcomed and addressed by the owners and staff. The
night festivities continued with a Valken Corps sponsored, participants BarBe-Que.
The long anticipated Game day was
upon us. At 0800 hrs. Troops were
placed in position for the start of the
game. The 899th was given the two
tasks. One was to secure the Pegasus
Bridge and keep the 3 points of the
triangle (roadways) surrounding the
bridge open for the allied armor and
heavy weapons to maneuver on. The
second task was for half of the AT gunners to help secure Sword Beach and
then Caen.
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