Nearly two decades ago, Dwayne Convirs put a passionate interest and an astonishing WWII artifact collection to good use.
He and his mother, Marilyn Convirs, run D-Day Adventure Park on their property in Wyandotte. Their crown jewel is Oklahoma D-Day, a weeklong attraction billed as the world’s largest paintball game.
At its height, Oklahoma D-Day attracted more than 4,000 players in 2008. Convirs said the economy has hurt the paintball industry dramatically, but he was encouraged to see numbers exceed expectations this year.
“People really want to play this year,” Convirs said. “They’ve been cooped up and it’s been really a rough winter, so they want to get out and spend some money on some new gear.”
Every year, this event attracts a growing number of regulars. Paintball is fun, they say, but this is addictive.
“Absolutely, this is the next level,” Jeff Jensen said.
Jensen and his son Kyle, 16, drove 11 hours from Colorado Springs, Colorado just for the game. The commitment to realism is strong here; the Jensens play as part of the 4th Infantry Division, a group that was based in Fort Carson near their home.
Vendors love the event, too. After years of good business, Convirs was able to accommodate vendors with permanent buildings for them to occupy during the week. Jason Fertig, events coordinator for Real Action Paintball 4, said this is the biggest event RAP4 has all year.
“We’re out here an entire week,” Fertig said. “A large chunk of our sales staff and event staff comes out. With it being the tradition of D-Day, it has a lot of military influence. Our current market lineup is designed to simulate military play, so we love this.”
First Hand Experience
From my experience as a participant in Saturday’s battle, I can say this is an
Dwayne Convirs’ nostalgic paintball wonderland doesn’t just fuel childish fantasies of playing war in the backyard, it revives an appreciation for our heritage. It doesn’t matter whether someone is a history buff or completely unaware of the strategy behind the Allies victory against the world’s greatest evil, a few hours in Convirs’ adventure park can spark an interest.
After touring WWII sites for a month in Europe, Convirs was inspired to reinvent parts of his battlefield.
“These guys were just unbelievable,” Convirs said. “So I tried to put stuff together that was really hard. And these beach landings are hard, there’s nothing harder in paintball. It’s absolutely the most profound, tough gig ever produced in the paintball world.”
I spent a day playing as a member with the 1st Infantry Division. I fraternized in the camp, trucked out to the battlefield, and collected bruises with my new camo-clad friends, who all had battle names. It was a regular M.A.S.H episode. I was Hawkeye.
Running up the hill simulating Utah Beach in Convirs’ nightmare adventure park, I thought back to the stories I read and the pictures I saw. I was gassed. My legs were swollen. To take the hill, we had to first get past a three-foot Styrofoam wall and mad dash to the nest area of cover.
Every time I hopped the wall, I got hit either in the air or on the ground as I lied stuck in the mud. I’m agile, but this was mission impossible.
The action was fun; I had a great time. But, when I imagined the fear those soldiers must have felt approaching the beach, the pride they must have had for their country, and the longing for their family… well, that was powerful.
“It is powerful,” Convirs said. “By design.”
Paintball Pete Russell saved my life.
We were four hours into the two-hour battle and I knew I would make it to the end. By now, at least a dozen paintballs had been wasted on me. I say they were wasted because if the people who were pretending to be Germans knew my pretend battle plan, they never would have pretended to kill me with pretend paint bullets. This whole thing was so real.
I wiped the paint out of my eyes, but as poor timing would have it, wiping is a sign of cheating in real pretend paintball wars. My friend Michael “Point Man” Hagerman, 34, had warned me of it earlier in the day; I had a headache and I couldn’t remember anything.
“They’re the dishonorables, the bad eggs,” Point Man said. “You’ll have guys out there who don’t take themselves out of the game when they’re shot… you’ll see people wiping, you can’t stop all of it.”
For the sake of my honor and the honor of Dog Company, in which I never officially enrolled, I did not wipe. I let purple paint drip into my eyes; I closed them and began to blind-fire.
When I could take no more, I kneeled down behind the landing craft and took off my mask to remove the paint. That’s when I felt Paintball Pete Russell’s hand on my back.
“You had better not do that here, mate,” he said
Paintball Pete Russell is a three-star general from Australia and the leader of the self-proclaimed greatest paintball militia in the world, the Commonwealth.
This year, for the 17th edition of Oklahoma D-Day, the Commonwealth had members from countries such as New Zealand, England, France, Norway, Brazil, Holland and Scotland to name a few.
I put my mask back on and thanked Paintball Pete for his discretion. I died in the game about eight more times after that, and I thanked Paintball Pete each time with my dying words.
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