"Энди Макнаб. Немедленная операция (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автораtonight was ours to enjoy.
Raymond had been to Hong Kong before when he did an emergency tour with the Parachute Regiment in the New Territories. "No problems," he declared, "I know broke into a horrendous sweat and found it hard to get my breath. We had to cross a river. Logs had been positioned over it to make a small bridge, and as we started to cross, I caught my first glimpse of a palm-leaf shelter and, nearby, a group of tribesmen. The Regiment had enjoyed a long association with the Ilbans, dating back to the Borneo conflict. "They're good blokes," the DS said. "We employ some of them to help build all the atap [foliage-covered] huts for the admin area, including what is going to be your schoolhouse. They also help with a lot of the survival training." As we went past these boys, squatting on their haunches and smoking away, it hit me that we really had come into a totally different culture in a totally different part of the world. We were going to be self-contained in our own little world, miles and miles from civilization, for at least a month-whether we liked it or not. This was exciting stuff. Looking at the rain forest around and above me, I couldn't help wondering how people survived in the claustrophobic green-tinged semidarkness. The tall trees of the primary jungle, profusely leaved, blocked out the sun. Humidity must have been running at close to 90 percent. I was hot; I was short of breath; I was sweating; I was getting bitten to bits. It seemed every animal there wanted to have a munch out of me. I shorts on, as happy as sandboys. We got into the "schoolhouse," which was in fact little more than a roof over two rows of log benches. We put down our bergens, and the'DS came around for a brew and a chat. Each patrol's DS would stay with it all the time, we were told, though he lived in the admin area rather than with the patrol. Every time we were out on the ground, he'd be there as well. They spelled out a few golden rules. "Never go anywhere without your golack [machete]. Never go anywhere without your belt kit and your weapon. Even if you take your belt kit off to sit on during a lesson, the golack stays attached to you by a length of para'cord. It's your most essential item of survival kit: It gets you food; it builds you traps; it gives you protection. "You never go anywhere in the jungle on your own; you always go in pairs. It's incredibly easy to get lost. You can walk five or ten meters away from the camp area and there's a possibility of getting disorientated. So even if it's going down to the river to fill up for water, go in pairs. You might be relaxing, sorting your shit out, but if somebody's got to go down and collect the water, somebody else has got to go with him. The only place you don't have to go to in pairs is the shit pit, which is just off to the side of the patrol area." We had all arrived with as much extra kit as we could cram into our bergens-extra water bottles, loads of spare socks, all sorts of crap. Now we found out that we needed very little. |
|
|