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

ground and what to expect.
I hadn't had a gypsy's, so I reckoned I could even screw up on one of
them and I'd be all right. Best of all, I had no blisters, which I was
really impressed with, but I was still strapping up my feet because the
ankles were taking a fearsome pummeling.
By now I was always landing up in the same wagon as another fellow,
George. I discovered that we'd both been in Crossmaglen at the same time. He
was in an engineer unit that was building the submarines; he then
transferred, and was now in 59 Engineers, the Royal Engineers attached to
the Commando Brigade. He was into mountain climbing and had all the kit. He
really annoyed me because every time I'd get there, he would already be in,
lying in his sleeping bag, eating oranges.
We'd sit together in companionable silence and wait for the wagon to
fill up. George was tall and lean, with varicose veins behind one of his
legs. It looked like a relief map of the Pyrenees.
The day came when it was time for Sketch Map.
There was no way I was going to cock up this time, and I didn't.
We got back to camp at about 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon after a 4:00
A.M. start. At 10:00 o'clock that same night we'd be setting out for
Endurance, so it was straight in, sort the kit out, and have a bath.
I'd always been a shower man, until I'd seen all the boys going in with
boxes of Radox,and I thought, Right, I'll have some of that for Endurance.
But I put far too much in. It was like floating in the Dead Sea. I didn't
know if it did me any physical good, but in my mind I felt that it did.
We drove to Talybont, one of the reservoirs. When I got off the wagon
and put the bergen on, I started getting pins and needles in my hands
because the weight on my shoulders was restricting the flow of blood. I had
that initial pain of getting it on, then even more pain as welts broke out
where it was rubbing. And then after about ten minutes, as soon as I got
moving, my skin started to tingle because I was starting to leak. I got the
wetness around my neck, and it started to get at the base of my hair. That
was always quite an uncomfortable time, that very first ten minutes or
quarter of an hour, because my legs were really stiff. Then I started to get
my second breath and everything started to loosen up.
After about twenty minutes I was into the swing of it again. My mind
was switched off; I was listening to jingles in my head. It was bitterly
cold, and the wind was getting in all the little gaps. Until I got a good
sweat on, it was a horrible feeling, especially after getting out of the
cozy sleeping bag I'd been lying in for the hour-and-a-half drive.
Most of Endurance was in darkness, and because it was wintertime, there
was even less daylight. Everybody looked quite excited but apprehensive. I
was feeling confident and fit. I had no bad injuries, just bergen sores.
They called out the names, and off we went. The bergen was the heaviest
it had ever been, about fifty-five to sixty pounds, because of the extra
food and water. I always took water from the camp because I knew it wasn't
contaminated. I didn't fancy drinking water from a stream, even with
sterilizing tablets, only to see a stinking dead sheep upstream; if you
start getting gut aches, it's going to slow you down.
The extra weight was worth it.
We were not allowed on roads. If the checkpoint was on one, we had to