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

and he looked like an officer. I could still remember him shouting at the
recruits, "Getting noticed is absolutely the last thing you want to do."
Al's special seat was a massive bag of rice. There had been a fresh day
just before I arrived. Al had asked for a large bag of rice, thinking in
terms of a two- or threepound bag. To everybody's amazement, a fifty-pound
bag had turned up. Al immediately adopted it as his chair. He used to sit on
it, scoop out some rice now and then, and throw it in a pot. Over the next
few weeks we had rice pudding, fried rice, rice with onions, rice with dried
meat, rice with fish, and Al's arse got lower and lower.
With the same drop, the mail had come through. Al was sitting on his
bag of rice and put his book down to open his letters. He looked inside one
envelope and started rolling up. "I think somebody's put a major hint in
here." He laughed, pulling out three sheets of paper, a self-addressed
envelope with a stamp on, and a pencil.
Nosh was having a brew one day and said, "We ought to have a Seven
Troop sun trap, somewhere we can wear our shades. We've got a reputation to
keep up."
I wondered what on earth he was on about.
A couple of days later we were mincing around in the base camp, cooking
away and gabbing off, and Nosh decided that the time had come.
He had a fag in his mouth and _ a golack in his hand and was walking
around a massive buttress tree right on the edge of our area.
He didn't say anything, but we suddenly heard ching, ching, ching.
Colin walked over. "What the fuck are you doing, Nosh?"
"Sun trap," Nosh said, one hand down his trousers, scratching himself.
"If I do the cuts right, it'll fall downhill towards the river."
"You sure?"
"Trust me."
If the tree fell the other way, it would come down right on top of our
basha area. All day we heard ching, ching, ching. Finally the noise became
ching ching creak.
The tree started to groan.
Nosh came over to Mat and said, "I think you'd better move, mate.
It might go your way as well. I'm not too sure. I think I might have
fucked up here."
People were running around with their weapons and belt kits, but nobody
was too sure which way to run. in the end we stood and watched.
With an almighty scream and a screech the tree finally toppled, falling
just inches from Mat's basha.
"There you go," Nosh said. "Very professional job."
It was, too. A big beam of light suddenly appeared through the canopy,
and 7 Troop got its sunglasses out.
Food plays such an important part in anybody's life in the military-not
so much for the calorific value and the fact that it keeps you warm as for
the fact that it's one of the only areas where you're going to get variety
and can spend time doing something entirely for yourself.
We talked a lot about what we were going to cook and how, and all the
different mustards or spices we'd be using. It was a diversion from normal
routine. Some people would go and catch fish to supplement the rations.
Others would set a trap and see what they caught, then make a big stew out