Harry Flashman and the Invasion of Iraq Read Online Free PDF

alone the provinces. Yet another reason why Stonehouse is wasted on the Marines - if it were up to me, I would have the entire place moved to Salisbury Plain and given over to the Hussars. Still, their jollity and eagerness to please, coupled with the company of S02 Media, made dinner a significantly happier affair than it otherwise might have been. For reasons unknown I was as hungry as a horse and thirsty to boot, so I set about leveraging the goodwill of the mess staff in order to get second helpings of everything, while a couple of the chaps joined me in putting away a couple of bottles of Amarone, which fairly hit the spot.
    I was all for whiling the evening away in the mess bar but S02 Media was having none of it. It was, he pointed out, potentially our last-but-one opportunity to paint the town red and we had nothing to do the following day but the nauseating tedium of traipsing round RM Stonehouse’s many administrative offices to draw desert kit, sign forms, and have Lord-knows-how-many inoculations. Not the kind of day which requires much brainpower. He called a cab and we made the short journey to the Barbican, always a good spot for a jar or two and for ogling the local talent which, it being Plymouth, is far from shy. It was a frigid evening but this seemed to have no effect on the attire of the local girlies, who thronged from pub to pub wearing little more than their underwear - a truly enjoyable spectacle. We descended on a wine bar and began working our way through their stock of Italian reds whilst putting the world to rights. After an hour or more I had comfortably settled in and was sporting the kind of rosy glow that comes from coupling excess food and booze with cold winter air, when I felt an unexpected tap on the shoulder and looked up. There, looking down on me with her trademark haughty smile, was Kate Gibson, a filly over whom I had spent many an idle hour fantasising during our days at Sandhurst together. She was vacuous, conceited bitch - but stunningly good looking and fit as a racehorse, which more than compensated for any failings of character, at least in my book.
    “Harry bloody Flashman!” she explained. “What the hell are you doing in Plymouth?”
    With transparently false modesty, I explained the current situation, leaving little room for doubt that I now stood head and shoulders above my peers in terms of being selected for such an operationally vital mission. She looked less than impressed, while S02 Media looked suitably quizzical as I introduced him. He disappeared to the bar to get some more wine while La Gibson, before I had chance to ask her, drew up a chair and the two of us descended into the usual “Whatever happened to such-and-such . . .?” conversation that one invariably has with old colleagues. Kate, it transpired, was attached to the Navy for a couple of years on some job creation scheme dreamt up by the Second Sea Lord’s office. She was currently stationed in Plymouth and had tentatively agreed to meet an old university friend for a glass of wine that night. At least that was her story and to be fair, I could see no sign of any lingering bloke whom she might be seeing. Equally, there was no sign of the university friend either which, given her unusually friendly overtures, I was rather glad of. S02 Media reappeared with the wine and three glasses and we set about getting more merrier than we already were. Shortly before we reached the bottom of the bottle, Kate departed to powder her nose and I seized my opportunity to get shot of my Media Ops colleague.
    “Look, I wouldn’t ask this of you unless you were a real chum. But would you, ahem, push off somewhere else?”
    “You jack bastard,” he retorted, clearly unhappy.
    “You’d ask the same in my position.”
    “Balls,” he replied. “I’d stick to my guns and have a lads’ night out.”
    “Be that as it may, this bird is clearly gooey at the forks -she’s putty in my hands! And I’ve wanted to get