D-Day Commemorated With Paint, Balls

“The field sorts out the men from the boys. The adrenalin is just cranked. It’s stressful.”
 — “Andy Van Der Plaats, a 64-year-old marketing consultant from North Fort Myers, Fla., and a high-ranking officer in the Allied paintball chain of command,” discusses the paintball tournament in Oklahoma in which “some 3,000 people will relive the events of June 6, 1944, D-Day, when German-occupied France was invaded by Allied Forces, marking a turning point in World War II. This year’s Oklahoma version will mark the 14th time a D-Day-style paintball game has been staged. There’s an Allied side and a German side, of course, and even the French Resistance is represented, but it’s not just a paintball free-for-all. Instead, in a rugged, 800-acre park, Allied Forces and the Third Reich will compete to achieve certain goals based on the many individual battles that occurred 67 years ago.”