War Games

I must first acknowledge the men and women overseas right now, especially in Iraq, Afganistan...doing their duty in hostile conditions...War is certainly not a game...it is Hell on Earth for those who experience it....Now that I'm older, I understand the seriousness and horror of War....it is something to be avoided at all costs.....
That said, when I was a kid in the 60's. War was cool....we didn't know about the horror, we just knew from movies like "The Great Escape" and "The Dirty Dozen", and TV shows like 'Combat' ... We played war all the time, but it was the World War Two scenario, when the bad guys were the Germans....and one group of kids would say, "okay we'll be the Germans, you guys go over there and we'll start..."
Where I grew up in San Jose, there were tons of open fields and orchards at the time, lots of hiding places and we would set up ambushes beforehand, like loading dirt into Baggie plastic bags and then climb some trees and Bomb the other guys...and then sometimes we'd get bombed, and you're sweating and it turns into mud...it was fun...I was always "Kirby" when we played Combat....
Bobby Novack always had the coolest toy guns, back then he had an arsenal of toy machine guns, the kind where you bring back the lever and just pull the trigger...dadadadadadadadoooow!
I wanted one of those guns! My parents were very speculative about the toys they would buy me, my dad was against toys, he thought I should just focus on working on the yard, he was strict...but my mom was more sympathetic, she would be generous and buy me certain toys, but she drew the line at the toy machine guns....
Aside from that, there were always the "Plastic Army Guys" in which I still have a fondness for, to this day they are sentries in my toothpick fort!
I think it was with THESE guys, that true creativity comes out....you can create whatever battle scenario you want, and it also can develop voice-over and sound-effect skills!
One of the funniest things, when me and my cousin Joe set up all these scenarios, we would dig these elaborate small forts in the ground and set up all these little army guys...."okay you ready?" then we'd turn the hose on and flood the army guys out, and the sound effects we would make!.....the machine-gun fire thusly:
Tommy Gun - "th th th th th th th th th th"....in small bursts...you have to make the noise from the tip of your tongue...
Large machine gun - "chuhcuchuchcuchcuchcuchcuc!"...this is harder, from the back of the tounge...
Rifles - "Panyo! Panyo!"
And then the War would be over when my aunt would walk out and say "Look at all this damn mud! What the hell are you kids doing?"