Trust me, I’m sort of a doctor
Another explosion sends the bodies flying.
“Has anyone been here long enough to tell me what the hell is going on!?”
The field hospital is gone, probably blown to pieces.
Troops keep wandering north and disappearing from view, only to come flying back as airborne cadavers moments later.
As the only medic in a 500 metre radius, that means me.
It evokes the legendary battles ofEve OnlineorPlanetside 2, albeit in an alternate universe World War II.
That doesn’t mean throwing your life away at the front.
The logistics players in this game are so organised, they oncewent on strike.
But all that is very violent.
But I’m a doctor, not a fighter, as I have frequently yelled toward enemy lines.
That does not seem to have any effect on the number of bullets that whizz past my skull.
Nevertheless, I decide not to carry a gun as I play.
But those are just the basics of the battlefield.
There’s one other very fun medic responsibility - the saving of “critically wounded soldiers”.
They aren’t players at all, but little harvestable dudes almost indistinguishable from your online pals.
These shirts aren’t just clothes.
They’re used all over the map as respawn tickets for real life players.
But that’s only if you spot such downed troops.
And in my current predicament, I have bigger concerns.
We have overextended into a new region, and everyone is running on fumes.
The Wardens, our grey-uniformed enemy, have leaked through our porous lines and around our forward encampment.
A host of 10 or 20 players are now dangerously close to being cut off.
As I speed south, I pass a quiet Warden scout lying prone by a bridge.
More signs of our impending encirclement.
“NEED WINTER CLOTHING,” yells one note pinned to a sector near our front.
They’re not wrong.
There is no way I can fit everything we need in one ambulance.
I hop out and start piling everything I can from headquarters into my ambulance.
Happy, that is, until I run straight into the arse end of a Warden transport truck.
It works, but only for a moment.
The armoured bulleteer zips around and fills my engine with lead.
I die alone, my mission a failure.
They will not survive the day.
Not every medical emergency has been so ill-fated, though.
Don’t they know a man is dying here!
I need to harvest his linen!
A medic, especially, is a gratifying job.
It is actually a game about recycling.
Some time after the urban battle I find myself on another medical run.
This time I have a bigger truck as the ambulance just won’t carry what I need.
It’s full of clean shirts and medical kits - badly needed in another village to the north.
The map looks clean, there’s no reason to be afraid.
But out of the blue four Warden partizans appear by the roadside and shoot out my tires.
I yell: “I surrender”.
I clamber out of the truck and do a “hands-on-head” emote.
They slowly approach me without firing.
I invoke the Geneva convention and tell them everything.
I am a doctor, I don’t even carry a gun.
They are doing a fine job, I insist, and are upstanding gentlemen.
The truck is open.
They inspect the contents and seem satisfied.
It is an airy question, perhaps directed at his friends, or perhaps to a passing cloud.
The Wardens aim their guns and fill my torso with bullets.
You broke the rules of war."
I chose a life as a medic this time.
The unionised logistics players will no doubt be squinting at the cost of building and supplying such war machines.
