"Энди Макнаб. Немедленная операция (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора The second week started. I reached the wagon after a particularly
grueling run and took stock. My feet and legs ached; my thigh muscles were killing me. My shoulders were badly sore and felt almost dislocated, as if they had dropped. I had a pain in the small of my back; as I carried the bergen uphill, I leaned forward to push against the weight. When I finished and dropped my bergen, it felt as if I was floating on air. I pulled my tracksuit on and got all nice and warm drinking my flask of tea as we were driving back. As we relaxed on the wagons, our muscles seized up. Getting off again, we looked like a load of geriatrics as we stumbled off the tailgate and hobbled back to our rooms, dragging our sleeping bags along the ground. I looked in the mirror. I looked just how I felt. My hair was sticking up where I had been sweating, and it was covered in mud and twigs. We kept our bergens by our beds. There was a drying room for all the wet clothing, but it was pointless washing it; it was only going to get soaking wet and filthy again, so we put it in the drying room for a while, then rested it on our bergens for the next day. After a while we did start talking to one another, but the only topic was Selection. Every time I came back off a day's tabbing I wanted to find out how many people had been binned. The more people the better. I was chuffed that thirty people failed the Fan Dance. Great, I thought, it made me feel as if I was doing well. The daily tabs now ranged from fifteen to sixty-four kilometers, and night marches were introduced. Day after day it was the same routine. We'd going to start, do it, and get back at night. Then the Darby and Joan Club would go shuffling back to the rooms, dump their kit, put their stuff in the drying room, have a bath or a shower, have something to eat, and get their heads down. The days of Guinness and chips were over. Nobody told us the timings for the day, so we didn't know how far we were going, where we were going, what route we were taking, or how long we had; we had no option but to go as fast as we could, and that was where the map-reading skills came in. If I came to a reentrant (valley), I didn't go down and then up; I'd see if it might be worth contouring around the longer distance. Discipline was uncalled for. All they'd say was "Be in the quadrangle for six o'clock." We'd turn up; they'd call out our names and tell us what trucks to get on. The majority of people were getting in their sleeping bags or putting their bobble hats on, resting and drinking flasks of tea. Then, all too soon, we'd get to the checkpoint, clamber out, and they'd call us forward one by one and send us on our way. The training team told us nothing. We were the ones who wanted to be there; they weren't soliciting for our custom. Their attitude seemed to be: The course is here if you want to do it. "Red fifteen?" I went over to the DS. "Name?" "McNab." |
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