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

was Danny, the clerk-skinny, no face hair, and looking sixteen. He was in
fact in his early twenties and was, we were told, the person who really knew
what was going on. The squadrons were all over the place, doing ten things
at once, little gangs here, little gangs there, and the only one who had any
continuity was the clerk, always there with the HQ element of the squadron.
If we needed anything or wanted to know-what was going on, Danny, the clerk,
was the man.
"Nice to meet you," he said. "Everybody's
away at the moment, but there's one or two people b mining around.
just go and sit in the interest room anud we'll sort you all out."
George and I spent a lot of time that day just hanging around. We
couldn't contribute anything, the whole squadron was away, and everybody was
busy. We were feeling rather helpless, sticking out like sore thumbs in our
uniforms. The few blokes who were around were in tracksuits or jeans.
The walls of the interest room were covered with plaques, photographs,
AK47s from Borneo days to the present-all sorts of bits and pieces that
people had brought back from all over the world. It was a history of the
squadron written in bric-a-brac.
Blokes came in and said, "You just joined the squadron? My name's Chas.
Nice to see you. You coming on the trip?"
They seemed genuinely pleased for us that we'd passed. There was no
feeling of us being the rugs, as we would have got in the battalions. They
knew what we'd done to get this far.
"I don't know," I said. "Are we going on a trip?"
Danny said he didn't have a clue yet. I was hoping in a way that we
weren't. I'd now got everything I'd wanted, but I'very much needed to get
things sorted out with Debbie. Our conversations on the telephone were still
a little strained. The relationship seemed fine on the surface, but
underneath I wasn't sure what her feelings were.
She seemed to understand how important it had been to me to get into
the Regiment, but I knew she was fed up with taking second place; when she
arrived from Germany, I wanted the quarter to be ready. In the meantime I
didn't know how she'd take the news that I was going away with my squadron
for a couple of months.
We hummed around to the stores, handed in all the equipment from
training wing, and drew out our squadron equipment. Unfortunately everything
we drew out was brand-new. We looked as if we'd just stepped out of a
catalog"Turn up tomorrow," Danny said, "and we'll see what's going on."
This was at ten o'clock in the morning.
"What do we do in the meantime?" I asked.
"Nothing. Go downtown if you like."
This was so different from the battalion, where we'd have had to stay,
even if there was nothing to do.
When we did go back the next morning, we were told: "Malaya, Thursday.
5 We packed all the brand-new kit and drew out shiny new jungle boots. There
wouldn't be time to break them in. On Thursday we boarded the aircraft. I
still hadn't organized the quarter for Debbie; I only hoped that things
would be sorted while I was away.
Some of the blokes had already been in the jungle for quite a while by
the time we turned up at the base camp, two hours' drive from Kuala Lumpur.