"Энди Макнаб. Немедленная операция (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора"OWmi'tsh all best wishes, George."
I telephoned Debbie and said, "I'm in! I reckon I've passed!" She was really pleased. I was really pleased. But the sad thing was that I was so engrossed in what I'd been doing that I didn't stop to think about what she'd been going through. She'd been stuck in Germany, unsure of whether I was going to pass or what the future might hold; she hadn't seen me for months, and all I'm doing is phoning her up and telling her how great I am. I was so selfish; she was getting two letters a month from me and maybe a phone call a week, and it was never to say, "How are you?" Maybe I didn't ask because I didn't want to hear the answer. The idea of continuation training was to give us an introduction to the skills that would be needed once we got into our squadrons. Our first introduction was to be to the CT (counterterrorist) team. We sat in the classroom on the first day dressed in civvies. It was the first time I'd ever done a soldier's work in civilian clothes, and it felt a bit strange. The training team weren't going to be teaching us for this phase, we'd been told; it would be members of CRW, the counterrevolutionary warfare wing. In came a bloke called Ted I knew from the Green Jackets. We'd always known him as Ted Belly because of the losing battle he fought in the inch war; now he was on the CRW. Ted was a tall, approachable cockney with hair like straw. No matter what he did with it, his head looked like a bird's nest in a gale. "Today we're going to learn all about the nine millimeter," he said. "Anything you don't know, just ask and Uncle Ted'il tell you. ranges. Maybe we'll have a few wagers-all right?" The 9MM Browning pistol was extremely to the Regiment and underestimated by many outside, Ted said. It was an extremely effective and powerful weapon, easy to conceal, yet hitting at a surprisingly long range. The Regiment used it for VIP protection, counterterrorist and covert operations. On the counterterrorist team, everybody's secondary weapon was the pistol. We had to learn every bit of theory there was to know about the Browning, as well as the stripping and assembling, all the technical details on what happened if a pin was filed this way, what happened if the trigger mechanism was slightly adjusted. We learned how to hold the weapon correctly and how to stand correctly. The method the Regiment used was totally different from the army's. It was based on combat experience, which the army hadn't got much of with pistols (I had fired one twice in my career). Ted taught us how to draw the pistol from various types of holster, how to draw it covertly when we had our jackets on, and even what sort of jacket to wear and how to wear it. From different firing positions, we practiced until we could hit the target with both eyes open from thirty-five meters, then fifty meters, while pushing people out of the way in a crowd. We practiced from seven-thirty each morning until dark o'clock. We'd get a tea urn in the morning, pick up loads of scoff, and scream down to the range, eight of us having a really good time with the pistol. I thought that as a sergeant in the infantry I'd know lots but found it |
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