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

Crickhowell, the training depot for the Prince of Wales Division.
Early each morning I put the bergen in the back of the motor and
screamed up to the Black Mountains.
I had a rusty old black Renault 5. One of the wings was falling off and
had to be kept on with a rubber bungee. Some mornings it lacked the power
even to get up the hill to my start point. When the roads were icy, I ended
up more than once in a hedge.
I'd train hard all day up on the hills, then drive back down to
Crickhowell, have -my two pints of Guiness and a bag of chips, drink huge
amounts of electrolytes, and strap myself up for the next day.
On Christmas Day I treated myself to a few hours off, staying where I
was and watching all the old number ones on Top of the Pops. I had Christmas
dinner at one of the pubs and gave Debbie a call. There was no reply.
Next day I did the Fan Dance. As I tabbed hard.up Pen-y-Fan with this
big house on my back, sweating away, four or five blokes came sprinting past
with track suits and day sacks on. As they went piling past the bag of
shit-me-they said, "Trying for January, are you?
Good luck."
I was expecting the winter Selection to be more severe than the summer
one. Cold can be so debilitating; it would be tougher to wade through snow
than move over the ground, and poor visibility would make the navigation a
lot harder. People died on winter Selection.
Even senior officers in the Regiment had perished on the hills.
I'd heard that a major set off once with a bergen full of bricks rather
than warm clothing. The weather came down, and he failed to return.
The standby squadron got up onto the hill and found the body, but they
couldn't get down themselves because the weather was so bad. They had to get
the biwi bags out, and they used the frozen rupert as a windbreak. When the
weather cleared, they laid him on his back, piled their bergens on top, and
sledged him down the hill.
I arrived back at Stirling Lines in mid-January. I sensed that people
were more apprehensive than the summer intake had been. I knew I was.
As it turned out, the weather was a great leveler. In thick mist or
driving snow, everybody had to rely on his navigation. The elements slowed
us all down equally; it was just a question of cracking on with the
bearings, having confidence in the map and compass. Every day I felt better,
and my confidence grew.
Snow fell heavily for much of the second and third weeks. We were given
a six-figure grid that was accurate to within a hundred meters, which is a
big area when all you're looking for is a biwi bag in a snowdrift.
Visibility was down to twenty meters one day. I got to the vicinity of
my next checkpoint and was running around for valuable minutes trying to
find a hint of green Gore-Tex. Eventually I found it, tapped on the bag, and
the zip came down. I was a sweaty, dirty mess, starting to shiver because
I'd stopped moving. Even in the very cold weather I wore just a pair of
trousers, boots, and a T-shirt with a waterproof over the top.
I was hit by the waft of coffee fumes and a cloud of steam from the boy
in his sleeping bag. He was probably blowing the vents because he was so
hot.
I wanted to be out of there as quickly as possible, number one because