"Энди Макнаб. Немедленная операция (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

"Where are you?"
I had to show him on the map where I was. If you put your finger on a
map, you're covering an area of five hundred or six hundred meters-unless
you've got big stubby fingers, in which case it might be a kilometer.
You've got to point exactly where you are with a blade of grass or a
twig.
"You are going to Grid four-four-one-three-five-three.
Show me where that is."
I showed him.
"Show me what direction you are going in."
I took my bearing and showed him.
He said, "Well you'd better get started because the clock's running."
There, was one bloke in my group, Trey, who was so hyper and revved up
that he ended up doing everything the wrong way around.
Instead of going north, he would go south. He got off the wagon one day
and got called over by the DS.
He said, "Where are you?"
He showed him on the map.
"Which way are you going?"
He pointed the way he was going, which was correct, then went off in
totally the wrong direction.
The DS turned around to us and said, "Where the hell's he going?"
He let him go for about a hundred meters, then shouted: "Oi, dickhead,
come back here! For fuck's sake, where are you going? Show us your bearing."
Trey showed him, and the DS said, "Then fucking go in that direction.
You've already wasted three minutes."
A lot of the time, if I was going for a high point, I could see it, and
it never got any closer. My mind would start wandering off on to different
things. Sometimes I'd start singing stupid songs to myself in my mind, or
little advertising that I'd always hated anyway.
I'd get to the checkpoint and lean forward, my hands on my knees to
rest the shoulders.
The DS'd say, "Show me where you are." Then: "You are going to Grid
three-four-five-six-seven-eight. Show me what direction that is."
Off I'd go.
Sometimes I'd get to a checkpoint where they'd have a set of scales.
For that day's marches, perhaps the bergen had to weigh forty pounds. They'd
check the weight, and if a bloke was under, they'd put a big rock in his
pack, sign it with a lumicolor, and radio on to the next couple of
checkpoints that Blue 27 had a rock in his bergen because he was a snidey
bastard. It meant that instead of carrying forty pounds, he would now be
humping around with fifty-five pounds for the rest of the day. When measured
in sweat and blisters, fifteen pounds is a lot of difference.
The big mistake was to take forty pounds as the all-in start weight of
the bergen, including the water. As soon as you'd drunk one pint, you'd be
under;weight. When they said forty pounds, they meant forty pounds at the
end of the day, not the beginning.
When we came in off the hills, we'd be sorting ourselves out. The
training team would come around, calling out names. These, we soon learned,
were the people who were getting binned.