As a camper I only participated in one camp Raid. I was never able to guess the right period to attend camp. However for whatever reason I was in camp for three of the Girls Camp raids. Just lucky, I guess.

The one raid that I remember the best though is the one that happened the night before an all camp switch- the girl’s counselors came to the Boy’s Camp and vice versa. I don’t know who was in charge of scheduling this, but as far as the senior boys were concerned, it was “getting even” time. I suppose we really did try to be gentlemanly at first, but we got off to a bad start by refusing to use utensils at breakfast.

It only got worse after that. I remember that one of the morning programs was swimming. Naturally the girl’s counselors who were sentenced to spend the day with us had to wait outside the cabin while we changed. What they did not expect was for several of the more adventurous boys to take the opportunity to go streaking around the outside of the cabin, literally.

I am sure that their clothes dried out during the next week or so of camp, but the poor girls definitely spent more time in the pool than out of it during swim program.

Somehow they managed to regain control, at least for a little while heading into lunch. I am guessing that they threatened to cancel a dance or something, but that didn’t seem to deter us much.

Rest period that day on the hill and in the senior cabins could only be described as mayhem. The girls had made their own little Raid flag, and run it up the flagpole. Naturally, that was the first thing to come down. We wore it as armbands, or headbands, or whatever sized strips we could tear it into. Then we found the dirtiest pair of underwear we could, and ran that up the flagpole, daring the girls to take it down.

The afternoon program pretty well degenerated into chaos. I sometime during the afternoon we had sports, and the girls decided to try and civilize us with tennis lessons. Can you imagine 30 rowdy senior boys on an asphalt court with tennis balls and rackets, and something to prove?

A new game was invented that day called War Tennis, based naturally on Warball. By that time, the girls could do nothing but stay on the sidelines and hope we didn’t kill each other. Our rebellion pretty much came to a halt when one of the girls had the nerve to try and stop the War tennis game. She was stuffed into the racket bag and taken to the Boy’s lodge to be mailed to Australia.

Mark Maxwell took a pretty dim view of the whole idea, and put a stop to the whole thing by bringing our counselors back from the Girls Camp.

I wish that I had the comedic writing ability to relate just how funny all of this actually was, but I guess you had to be there. However, rest assured that everything that I have said is true.
Have a great weekend

Bob