"Andy McNab - Bravo-Two-Zero" - читать интересную книгу автора (McNab Andy)

now, nearly fifty years later, here we were back where we'd started. As
far as I could see, the biggest restrictions in Iraq were likely to be
the enemy and the logistics: running out of bullets or water. I felt
like a bricklayer who had spent my entire life knocking up bungalows and
now somebody had given me the chance to build a skyscraper. I just
hoped that the war didn't finish before I had a chance to lay the first
brick.

We didn't have a clue yet what we'd have to do, so we spent the next few
days preparing for anything and everything, from target attacks to
setting up observation posts. It's all very well doing all the exciting
things--abseiling, fast roping, jumping through buildings-but what being
Special Forces is mostly about is thoroughness and precision. The real
motto of the SAS is not "Who Dares Wins" but "Check and Test, Check and
Test."

Some of us needed to refresh our skills a bit swiftly with explosives,
movement with vehicles, and map reading in desert conditions. We also
dragged out the heavy weapons. Some, like the 50mm heavy machine gun, I
hadn't fired for two years. We had revision periods with whoever knew
best about a particular subject --it could be the sergeant major or the
newest member of the squadron. There were Scud alerts, so everybody was
rather keen to relearn the NEC (nuclear, biological, chemical) drills
they had not practiced since being in their old units. The only trouble
was that Pete, the instructor from our Mountain Troop, had a Geordie
accent as thick as Tyne fog and he spoke with his verbal safety catch on
full automatic. He sounded like Gazza on speed.

We tried hard to understand what he was on about but after a quarter of
an hour the strain was too much for us. Somebody asked him an utterly
bone question, and he got so wound up that he started speaking even
faster. More questions were asked, and a vicious circle was set in
motion. In the end we decided among ourselves that if the kit had to go
on, it would stay on. We wouldn't bother carrying out the eating and
drinking drills Pete was demonstrating, because then we wouldn't have to
carry out the shitting and pissing drills--and they were far too
complicated for the likes of us. All in all, Pete said, as the session
disintegrated into chaos, it was not his most constructive day--or words
to that effect.

We were equipped with aviator sunglasses, and we enjoyed a few Foster
Grant moments, waiting outside the hangar for anybody to pass, then
slipping on the glasses as in the TV commercial.

We had to take pills as protection against nerve agents, but that soon
stopped when the rumor went around that they made you impotent.

"It's not true," the sergeant major reassured us a couple of days later.
"I've just had a wank."