"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
characters were well into it; for some of them it was the biggest course
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.