19 With a Bullet Read Online Free PDF

closing, and by the time we reached the turnaround point I was trailing well behind the others.
    I couldn’t believe it! I had been betrayed. My body had betrayed me. Why was this happening? This was the very same dirt road that I had run almost every fucking day preparing for this very fucking moment, and now I had fucked it up royally. Halfway back to camp I had to sit on a rock, gulping for breath and watching in disbelief as wheezing troops ran past me. I shook my head and felt weak and useless. I couldn’t believe I had fucked up my one-and-only opportunity to get into the Parachute Battalion. I got up slowly and began walking back along the stony dirt road, feeling totally dejected and mystified by my failure, when my asshole lieutenant drove by in a Jeep and pulled to a halt in front of me in a cloud of dust. He looked back over his shoulder, his one hand on the long gear lever.
    “What happened to you?” he hissed. “You’re the one who was always asking to go to the Parabats. What’s wrong? What happened?”
    I shrugged my shoulders and said nothing. I had no explanation for him. He shook his head at my failure, jammed the gear into first and pulled off, spraying me with stones and dust. When I got to camp the troops who had finished the run stood in line, their chests heaving, waiting to give their times.
    I was walking dejectedly past them, heading for the bungalow, when someone grabbed my arm roughly and literally shoved me into the front of the line at the desk, barking a passing time to the clerk. I turned to look into the black eyes and pock-marked face of the lieutenant whom I had known as a sarcastic, mean son-of-a - bitch. He held my arm tightly, his fingers digging into my bicep, and glared at the clerk until he was sure the corporal had written down my passing time; then he shoved me in among the crowd of potential paratroopers standing wheezing nearby.
    I felt a rush of hope as I stood quietly among the group of passing candidates who were still huffing and puffing. I couldn’t believe he had done that. I was eternally grateful to the man. I would meet him later in a similar circumstance and be able to return the favour. Oddly, I didn’t feel like a cheat, or that I should not be there. I knew it was through some freak occurrence that I had fucked up on those simple preliminary tests, probably because I wanted to get to the Bats so badly that when they did surprise us by showing up, I was too nervous to get myself together.
    Anyway, I didn’t give a shit. It was very unlike me, and I vowed to myself that I would push myself with whatever I had and through whatever it took to pass the real paratrooper physical tests that lay ahead.
    Later, the group of us which had ‘passed’ the tests was sent to wait on the lawn outside some admin offices, and told to wait to be individually interviewed by the Parabat lieutenant.
    This was the next tricky part, but I had long ago prepared for it. I knew that they would strip us to our underwear and inspect us physically, and I knew the Parabats wouldn’t take anybody with tattoos.
    Before leaving home, I had bought and carefully kept a jar of skin-coloured theatrical make-up to cover up the butterfly I had tattooed on my shoulder in my early schooldays. As they began interviewing the guys I dashed off to the bungalow on some flimsy excuse, pulled out my special make-up and applied it liberally to my left shoulder and the back of my neck, already pretty badly sunburned after my new no. 4 haircut. I did a good job and dashed back again, full of cream. When my turn came I stripped down to my underwear and walked into the office.
    The redhaired Parabat lieutenant was sitting at a desk with papers in front of him. A second lieutenant leaned against the desk, his arms spread wide, supporting him. He was a blond-haired, raw-boned man with thick black eyebrows that met between his eyes.
    “Hold your hands straight out in front of you,” he barked after glaring at