"Энди Макнаб. Немедленная операция (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автораof coaches had turned up at two-thirty in the morning. It was the local
police, come to raid the battalion as a matter of course. They didn't find any illegal substances on this occasion, but they did find an officer who was engaged in an activity that was even more naughty in the eyes of military law. He was in bed with a corporal from the mortar platoon. We seemed to have the culture of the seventies but the army of the fifties. It felt as if I were living in one of the black-and-white movies I sometimes used to watch on a Saturday afternoon. Each morning we had to drink a mugful of "screech," the old army word for powdered lime juice. The colonel must have been reading a book about Captain Cook and thought it would stop us from getting scurvy. I heard about an officer who joined the Irish Guards. The adjutant pulled him to one side and said, "As a young subaltern, these are the rules. One, never wear a brown suit. Two, always call the underground the underground and not the tube. Three, never travel on a red bus. Four, always wear a hat and have an umbrella, and five, never carry a brown paper parcel." Nothing about how to approach the soldiers he was going to have under his command. Gibraltar in the summertime was packed with tourists, and because we were doing all the ceremonial stuff, we were God's gift to a pretty girl who liked a uniform. That was my theory anyway, and I set off one afternoon for the main street, wearing civvies and in my own mind very much our man in Gibraltar. I found a place called the Capri bar, with plastic palm trees inside and To be as suave as the surroundings demanded, I ordered a Southern Comfort and lemonade, a very international drink at the time. As I sat there listening to songs by the Stylistics and the Chi-Lites, I could see now and again blokes that I recognized from the battalion walking past, looking at me through the window. The fellow who owned the bar was a Brit. He came over to join me for a chat. He had perfect, graying hair that had been sprayed and looked to be in his forties but probably still thought he was seventeen. He was wearing a blue jumper with a big red star. "Hello," he said, sliding into the booth next to me. "What, are you in the navy?" "No, I'm with the battalion up the road." "Just got here?" "Yeah." It was all rather nice. We chatted away, and then this Chinese woman came in. She was absolutely stunning. Flared trousers, high heels, and my boy was off in raptures. She sat and joined us. "You in the navy?" "No, I'm with the battalion." After a drink or two she moved over a place, and I thought, I've cracked it, it must be the sight of my drink, a woman like this was bound to feel comfortable in the company of an international jet-setter. More people were coming in, and the bar started filling up. The jukebox started playing |
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