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

"What did you land up in then?" the old man asked, looking up from his
paper.
"The Royal Green Jackets."
"What's that?"
"Part of the Light Division." I beamed. "You knowlight infantry."
"You wanker!" he exploded, hurling his newspaper to the floor.
"You're not going to learn anything. All you're going to do is run
around humping a big pack on your back."
But I was not going to be deterred. A couple of days later, when it was
clear that my mind was made up, my mum handed me an envelope and said, "I
think you need to know all about this."
I opened the envelope and pulled out my adoption certificate. It wasn't
a shock. I knew my brother was adopted, and I'd always just taken it for
granted that I was, too. I wasn't really fussed about it.
"I met your natural mother when you were about a year old," my mum
said. "She told me that she worked for a Greek immigrant who'd come over to
England in the fifties and was running a nightclub in the West End.
She sold the cigarettes in the club and was seventeen when she fell
pregnant by him. She told me neither of them wanted a baby so she left you
on the hospital steps in a carrier bag."
My mum and dad had fostered me more or less straightaway and eventually
adopted me.
"She wasn't really concerned about you, Andy," my mum said. "She said
to me, 'I can always have other kids." In September 1976 I had what I
thought was the world's most fearsome haircut and boarded the train to
Folkestone West. Double-decker buses were waiting to take everybody to the
Junior Leaders' Battalion camp at Shorncliffe. As soon as we got there all
eleven hundred of us were given another haircut. A really outrageous bone
haircut-all off, with just a little mound on the top like a circle of turf.
I knew straightaway I was going to hate this place.
The first few days were a blur of bullshit, kit issue, and more
bullshit. We couldn't wear jeans; they were ungentlemanly.
We had to stand to attention if even a private came into the room.
I thought I was hard, but there were people here who made me look like
the Milky Bar Kid. They had homemade tattoos up their arms and smoked
roll-ups. If they couldn't find somebody to pick a fight with, they'd just
scrap among themselves. Shit, I thought, what's it going to be like when I
get to the battalion? I wanted out.
It was a very physical existence. If we weren't marching, we'd be
doubling. We were in the gym every day, running and jumping. I actually got
to like it. I found out I was quite good at running and started to get more
and more into sport.
As a young soldier, milling was part of any selection or basic training
at the time. They'd put four benches I together to make a square and say,
"Right, you and you, in you go," and in we'd go and try to punch hell out of
each other. Most blokes just got in there and swung their arms like idiots.
The hard nuts from Glasgow and Sheffield were a bit more polished, but I was
amazed to find that one of the best punchers of all came from Peckham.
Before I knew it, I was on the company boxing team.
One good thing about getting into any sports team in the army is that