"Энди Макнаб. Немедленная операция (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора That struck a chord with me; my dad's brother had been killed by the
Japanese in a prisoner of war camp, and even forty years later Dad wouldn't buy anything made in japan. "How did you cope?" somebody asked. "I don't know. All I knew was that I didn't want to die." "Would you have signed all the confessions and so on if they'd asked you?" "Bloody right I would have. If it had meant getting food or getting shoes, I'd have confessed to being jack the Ripper. We sat there getting indoctrinated, and we nodded and agreed. Of course we did; it meant we got food." One speaker told us what a large part religion now played in his life, having found God during his time of capture. Another fellow had been a risoner of the Vietp cong for four years; when we asked him, "Did God play a part in your life?" he replied, "Yeah, it played a big part. Because when we had dysentery and I was shitting myself, the Bible was something that I could clean my arse with." We started going out on trips and visits. We went to see an old woman near Ross-on-Wye, a country person all her life, who knew every plant in creation. She had a beautiful garden and had tables covered with trays and trays of different flora. It was a funny scene, this frail old lady running around the fields and forests with a bunch of big boys towering over her and hanging on her every word. We were sent out on two- or three-day exercises to make our shelters, light a fire, forage about, put a few snares out. The non-Regiment they'd ever be on. Once they had passed they'd be qualified as combat survival instructors and could go back to their own units and train people in the techniques. All I wanted to do was get through it. One of the instructors, a massive old country boy with big red cheeks and hands the size of shovels, had been on the training team for years. He did the firefighting demonstrations and got to the one where he was rubbing two bits of wood together to start the fire. It was,quite a big thing for him; he obviously prided himself on his skill. So he's there and he's rubbing away, and nothing is happening. "Any minute now, lads, just you wait." Nothing. "Right, we'll give it another five minutes." He rubbed furiously, but still he couldn't do it. We had to move off to the next lecture, but about ten minutes into it he came running down the field, shouting, "It's started! Come and see!" We all had to troop back up the hill to save his pride. During these periods when we'd be going out and building shelters and living in them for two or three days at a time, we started roducing the stuff that we were p going to use on the last week of combat survival. They'd taught us how to make clothes out of animal skins, and weapons out of sticks and stones. People were spending hours making jackets out of bin liners and rabbit fur hats that would have passed muster at Ascot. I did the minimum I thought I needed to pass. On one of the exercises a large crate turned up. |
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