The CM Miracle

[Der Kuenstler]

March of 2005 was probably the lowest point in my life. For the past five years I had been struggling - my wife of 17 years divorced me and married another man. I had lost my job and was forced to change careers. I lost my daily relationship with my children. Child support garnishments forced me to live with friends and relatives - a church even let me stay in their basement for five months. I was plagued by depression and suicidal thoughts - I spent 11 days in a mental hospital, with no belt or shoestrings so I couldn’t hurt myself. Still, I learned how to make a hangman’s noose on the internet and kept it hidden as a comfort - just in case things got worse. As far as I could see I my life was dead in the water - adrift - going nowhere with nothing good in sight. I finished off many a bottle of port wine alone during those dark nights, drifting off to sleep in a drunken fog, hoping morning would not come.

Computer games helped me to escape during this time, and one day I brought home a ten game “wargame” pack I pulled out of a store bargain bin. One of the games was “Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord.” I loaded it up and tried a scenario - it was interesting. I particularly liked the minute by minute orders you could give - cycling through the different units and giving them orders seemed to be kind of a comfort, “you do this - you do this.” I enjoyed it. Before long I had purchased CMBB and CMAK, with their more advanced infantry options, and was playing those regularly.

Soon nightly I was loading up the game and looking over purchase screens, studying unit stats, and playing scenarios. I was amazed at the realism - the units behaved, moved, and fired far more realistically than in any WWII game I had ever played in the past. I was amazed at the variety of fronts you could fight on, units you could choose, weather, time of day - the variables seemed infinite. And it was all on a 3d map of terrain I could pan through - I could truly imagine I was there on the battlefield.

After a couple of weeks against the AI, I was beginning to wonder what it would be like to play another human. I started looking at different websites and eventually settled on the Blitz. I found the quality of the ladder rules and number of players to be far above any other site I could find. And oh - the excitement of playing someone for the first time! Does anyone remember that? I found it incredible that I could play a game with a guy in Germany or Korea or Australia - anywhere in the world. How did they make all of this work? I didn’t know, but I was enthralled that for the first time in my life I was able to be a commander and immerse myself into a WWII battle against another real person. It was wits vs. wits - this man from another country is now my “enemy” and he intends to destroy my forces - and I intend to destroy his. How cool is it to be able to fight the Germans - when by PBEM they have an actual German commanding them? Is that awesome or what? Only one guy will walk out of the carnage and smoke alive. Who is it going to be? I had only dreamed about doing something like this in past years.

I soon realized it wasn’t easy being a noobie - after eight losses in a row I sensed that I was being hunted. For some reason this thrilled me. I determined to learn more and more about the game, reading every tactical post I could find while experimenting with the game myself. Every game I played I would learn a little more, taking notes on what I could have done better. Here was a field in which lawyers and ex-wives couldn’t beat me down - if I could master it I could win there - and I eventually did - a lot.

Something else was happening while I was throwing myself into this game and this ladder. My mind was occupied. Not with pain, grief, or suicide. But with strategy and tactics and battlefield goals. They say the suicide rate goes down in nations during time of war because the people have a purpose to fight for. Many a night I was able to brush aside the darkness with the thought “Not tonight - I have all these turns to do.”

I wrote a poem during that dark time:

“I never thought I’d get this low
Never felt this pain I know
death whispers to me and tempts to his lair
Stumbling through these cold dark woods
Walking hurts and sleep sounds good
But I’ve decided that I won’t lay down and die here
So I try whatever gets me through the night
Cause every dog will have his day
And this world still owes me my 15 minutes of fame
So I’m on whatever gets me to the dawn
Whatever keeps me holding on
I may be wrong and I may be right
Whatever gets me through the night.”

I can say that it was CM and the Blitz that got me through many of those nights. Some days are only a success in that they get you to the next day. Today, thank God, I am remarried and have my own house and a better paying job than I’ve ever had. I’ve put away the hangman’s noose for good, but I may not have made it to this day if not for the miracle of CM.

Now guys - here’s the point of all this. Can we who remain here set aside all of the bitterness that has damaged this CM message board and get back the wonder of this game? It may be an old game, but it’s still the best game out there in its genre - the CM trilogy still rules - despite the disturbances here on this MB, more CM games get reported here than any other game. Can we make this place a safe place again to go and escape real life? Enjoy World War II, enjoy the tactics and strategy - enjoy the struggle on the battlefield. Indulge the warrior in us - the soldier inside with the eye of the tiger that gets smashed down daily by utility bills, traffic jams, and honey-do lists.

I would like to help in any way I can to make it that way. I’m not faultless - but who is? Jesus wasn’t available for the job, so you have Wigam and I.

We still have 360 guys on the active ladder here. You aren’t going to find that sheer number of competitors on any other CM ladder I know of. In addition to that, we have almost 1250 guys who are considered inactive - they haven’t reported a game in the past year. I hope they come back. There are another 46 in Bootcamp. I hope they finish a game. Let’s just play! Somebody out there may be going through something like I went through, so I for one feel it’s important that we keep the light on here.