Then 9/11 happened. Deeds got the idea to start a company based on Airsoft that would help fill a growing need for more law enforcement training. In 2004, he opened a 30,000-square-foot indoor facility in Kent called Northwest Tactical. At first, it served only law enforcement officers, who practiced their skills with Airsoft weapons. Then it started getting requests from the general public to use the facility, including church youth groups who would say a group prayer before the shooting began. "They wanted to take the kids somewhere organized and controlled," Deeds says.
Deeds closed the facility two years ago due to financial problems, but he still participates, and he has observed a new crop of players: soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Coming from the deadliest conflicts since Vietnam, these soldiers find Airsoft "very, very therapeutic," Deeds says. "You can go back and redo the situation in your mind, but instead of people getting hurt and injured, everyone at the end of the game stands up and is OK."
steve davis
Aaron Wolfe enjoying a recent Vietnam War reenactment organized by Battlesim.
Details
Related Content
More About
Iraq and Afghanistan vet Josh Warren, who plays with Deeds in the Rhodesian Raiders as well as running Battlesim events, says the sport is a way to share the good parts of the military, "camaraderie and teamwork," without the bad part, "people actually dying." While he says he can't talk too much about his time as a Ranger team leader, which ended in 2004, he notes that Rangers are Special Operations troops who conduct raids "too important, too sensitive, or too rough for the regular Army." He allows that he participated in rescue missions for Jessica Lynch (though he never personally saw the young soldier captured by Iraqi forces), for a group of Italian soldiers, and for some Saudi truck drivers.
Back home and retired from active duty after eight years of service, Warren says he's noticed that he's adjusted better socially since playing Airsoft because he has an outlet to share his war experience with like-minded people. In other settings in which he finds himself in Seattle, revealing yourself to be a veteran of Bush Jr.'s war can bring conversation to a halt. Case in point: At a dinner party not long ago he launched into an anecdote about his time in Afghanistan. The story was meant to illustrate how Afghanis use "food and tea to welcome people, whether they like you or not." But the narrative broke down as soon as Warren said he was "on a mission."
"What does that mean, 'on a mission?'" someone asked.
"It's almost like being a porn star," Warren reflects as he recalls that dinner. "You can only use euphemisms for so long before you have to say, 'Well, I was killing people.'"
Airsoft's military bona fides are shored up by the presence of "military celebrities," as they are known, at large-scale events put on in southern California by a Los Angeles businessman named John Lu. The Taiwanese-born Lu more often deals with regular Hollywood stars, arranging private meetings for his Asian clients, who sometimes pay in the six figures. Six years ago, he says, on a dare from some friends in the Airsoft business, he called up retired Col. Danny McKnight and asked him to take part in an Airsoft event. McKnight famously led a perilous mission in Somalia that was immortalized by the movie Black Hawk Down.
McKnight accepted. So began the first of an annual event known as "Lionclaws," which Lu bills as the "Super Bowl" of Airsoft and draws up to 700 people. McKnight is joined at such events by, among others, Vietnam War veteran and historian Kenn Miller and Howard "Mad Max" Mullen, a former Ranger so renowned that he has a toy soldier named after him. Rather than reliving old wars, they lead mock military missions set in a present-day anywhere.
Some people get carried away with the game, Lu admits. Players with no military experience have been known to post their Airsoft exploits on Web sites for real soldiers, who react with disdain. Lu says one Airsoft player was even charged with "stolen valor" for impersonating an officer online. "Don't cross the line," Lu warns.
Yet soldiers and wannabes seem to play Airsoft alongside each other just fine. The soldiers have their memories, the wannabes have their fantasies. They meet somewhere in between, many acknowledging that what they're doing looks, if not scary, then a little silly. They're OK with that. Bert Cho, a 45-year-old systems administrator from Mill Creek who is fascinated by the military but never joined, laughingly quotes his 13- and 10-year-old daughters' view of his Sunday habit. "They say I play dress-up."
nshapiro@seattleweekly.com
