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

the time against them. A fellow called Andy Baxter was one of the training
team. We went out for a run with him one day, stopping to do press-ups and
sit-ups. Andy took his shirt off and revealed that besides film-star good
looks he had a superb physique.
He should have been on the cover of Playgirl. I'd always been really
fit in the battalion, but I thought, There's no way I'm going to pass this;
I don't stand a chance here; how the hell am I going to be like him? Nothing
fazed him at all. We'd come back off the runs gasping for breath, and he'd
saunter back in, laughing and joking, and have a cup of tea. It annoyed me
that compared with some of these blokes, I was a bag of shit, sweating and
knackered. I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn't Baxter I was
competing against; it was McNab.
If passing Selection had been an obsession before I arrived at Stirling
Lines, it was now a pathological fixation. The longer I was there, the more
I wanted to stay.
The atmosphere was so different from an infantry battalion, so laid
back, so reliant on self-discipline. Everybody was on first-name terms. No
one hassled us; all they would say was "Parade is twelve o'clock" and just
expect us to be there. If we weren't, it must mean we didn't want to be
there, so we could go. Each night I said to myself. "I really want to be
here; this is the place I want to be."
If I didn't pass Selection, I'd get out of the army.
There was no way I could see myself fitting back in the battalion.
I'd seen how the other half lived, and I wanted my share. All the
facilities were there, everything from a library to a swimming pool.
The medical center was open for us every night when we got back.
I went there to get some bandages for my feet. it wasn't like going
into a medical center in the battalion, where I'd have been hanging around
so long my feet would have healed of their own accord.
They treated me as a person rather than a soldier; as I limped back to
my room, I said to myself again: I want to stay here!
All of us Green jackets got up to the third week; then Bob got binned.
His timings weren't good enough. He didn't seem too worried about it as he
packed his gear to leave.
Next day we had finished one march and were moving to a forestry block
to spend the next few hours sorting ourselves out and having something to
eat before a night tab. Dave was not feeling too good about it, and he had
already had a gypsy's. As we sat around a hexy burner and sorted our feet
out, waiting for dark, he said, "'That pisses me off is that they don't tell
us if we've failed straightaway. I might be doing this sodding night march
for nothing."
He was. The next day, almost the end of the third week, he was also
sent to Platform 4, timings not good enough. And Max, who was starting to
look the worse for wear, got a gypsy's.
"It was because I kept falling over," Dave said to me.
"And the reason I keep falling over is that my feet aren't big enough
to support me. I'v-e only got size sevens."
I shook his hand and watched him go. I'd miss the silly bastard.
A couple of days after that, in the final week, I was coming off
Fan-Fawr and saw Max still on his way up, water tube waving in the wind,