"Энди Макнаб. Немедленная операция (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автораThey'd obviously been reading too many James Bond books: by the looks on
their faces the three miles had come as quite a shock to them. For the next couple of days we did basic map-reading revision. "If you can't read a map and you're stuck on top of the hill, the weather comes down and it's freezing, you're going to die," the DS said. "We don't want you dying: number one because of the expense of putting people on Selection, and number two, we don't want the inconvenience of having to ask the standby squadron to get their arses up trying to look for bodies-and three, it isn't good for you as you'll have failed Selection." Unbelievably, some people had turned up just about knowing the difference between north and south. Part of this map-reading refresher was orienteering with the bergens ' on, which was prepping us for the time in the mountains. I was amazed at how many people were starting to get fed up with it already. Whatever their idea of what Selection was, it wasn't this. I didn't see much of Key and the others, except in passing. The occasional quick chat at mealtimes, however, revealed that everybody was doing fine. We did quite a lot of running, five-milers mostly, in groups of twenty to thirty. We'd do a map-reading class, then be sent off for a run; the people who had just come in off a run, leaking (sweating) and panting, would then do map reading. There were still people binning it and getting binned after these runs. They got progressively more arduous: five or seven miles in boots, followed by sit-ups and press-ups, then hundred meter piggyback races and fireman's carries up hills. More people jacked. I reckoned the DS were at the end of the week, the Fan Dance. Another of the regular runs was an eight-miler in boots in hilly country, to be done in under an hour. I reasoned that as long as I stayed tucked in behind the DS, I'd be fine, but for reasons best known to him everybody else seemed to want to be up the front. I couldn't see that it mattered. We did more orienteering, this time carrying bergens. I got to one checkpoint and sat by the wagons, having a brew. One of the DS was sitting nearby, watching the rest of the gang stagger in. One of them, a tall, smartlooking bloke I knew to be a cavalry officer, was wearing sweatbands on his wrists, a bandanna around his head, and, to top it all, a cravat. He looked as if he was going off for a game of squash. The DS got up and went and talked to other members of the training wing. They were all having a look at this boy and obviously discussing him. The thought struck me then that this was about being a gray man; getting noticed, I guessed, was probably only a few steps away from getting binned. The Fan Dance is a twenty-four-kilometer run with bergens, done with DS in groups of about thirty, with no map-reading requirement. It starts at the bottom of Peny-Fan, goes up onto the hill, and right to the top, which is the highest point in that part of the country. Then it's back down, around another mountain called the Crib, and along the Roman road, a rubbly old track, then down to a checkpoint at a place called Torpanto. Then it's the whole lot again, in reverse. One group started at Torpanto, mine at the Storey Arms mountain rescue |
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