The sound of ear-shattering gunfire emanated from an inflatable tent on the grounds of the St Lucia Barracks in Omagh, Co Tyrone as a group of young secondary school students pondered a military career.
A blond-haired girl giggled and said she would be attracted to a career in one of the Irish regiments in the British army because of "the men". Then she and her friends walked into the darkened tent, took hold of their rifles and opened fire.
But these were virtual wargames, the gunfire accompanied by excited shrieks whenever a soldier moving across the computer screen was shot.
Last week marked the first time all four Irish regiments of the British army visited Northern Ireland together in a campaign to swell their ranks.
According to Lieut Col John Moody, who heads the British army's recruiting team in the North, one of the best ways of giving young people a taste of the 140 job opportunities in the army was for them to talk to local soldiers about their experiences.
So they were here, soldiers and officers from the family of Irish regiments: the Irish Guards, the Royal Irish Regiment, the Royal Dragoon Guards and the Queen's Royal Hussars.
It was a curious scene. Girls and boys, aged 14-15, clambered in and out of a tank while others tried some deactivated weaponry for size. There was target practice and abseiling while some students slipped into camouflage gear and jogged a few metres with 50lb of kit on their backs.
In the square of this Victorian barracks, soldiers from Northern Ireland, England and the Republic stood behind trestle tables laden with guns and ammunition, describing trips to Kosovo and Canada, Germany and the Caribbean. Join the army, was the message, and see the world.
The message, however, was only getting through to certain sections of Northern Ireland youth. Of the 1,000 or so students that took part in this weeklong recruitment exercise only a small percentage were from Catholic or integrated schools.
"You don't get a lot of Catholic students coming," said Cpl O'Hagan from Banbridge, Co Down, a member of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment. A Catholic himself, he said some schools didn't want to be seen to be supporting the British army. "As a result the students don't get that sense that there are Irish Catholics in the regiment." While he claimed there was no sectarianism within the army, he had experienced adverse reactions from outside sources because of his chosen career.
His regiment had done tours of Northern Ireland where he had been spat on and called a loyalist. For those from the South, joining up was often a pragmatic decision.
The long waiting-list to join the Irish Army in the 1980s was one of the reasons Colour Sgt Geraghty from north Co Dublin joined the Irish Guards in 1984 and is now stationed in Munster, Germany.
It was also a long-standing family tradition. "My father and grandfather were both Irish Guardsmen," he said, adding that it was a historic time to be in the Irish Guards, who celebrated their centenary on April 1st this year. The regiment was raised in 1900 by Queen Victoria to commemorate the bravery of Irish soldiers who fought in the Boer War.
The fact that he was a Catholic from the Republic was never an issue in the army. "We are all doing the same job. My best friend happens to be a Protestant from the Shankill Road. The only difference is he supports Rangers and I support Celtic and we have a bit of crack about that," he said. Although the British army is prohibited from recruiting in the South, Lieut Col Moody said that about 30-40 of the 500 that join the Irish regiments each year come from the Republic. The booming economy and the high employment rates were making recruitment more difficult, he said.
"Over the last couple of years with the peace process we have been able to achieve greater penetration. I hope as it proceeds we can get greater acceptance," he said.
One area where acceptance will be slow in coming is Sinn Fein, which said last week it would discourage nationalists from having any involvement in the army, given its record in the North. It was "inappropriate" that school children were visiting barracks, a spokesman added.
Back at barracks one soldier, a 29-year-old corporal from Dublin who didn't want to give his name, said the camaraderie was one of the best things about his job. He had a message for any of his countrymen considering a career in the British army:
"Don't think you are giving up your passport, your religion, your history or your heritage because you are not. You are still an individual and you are in the army to do a job, in the way only us Irish can do," he said.