Immediate Action Read Online Free PDF

over to join me for a chat. He had perfect, graying hair that had been sprayed and looked to be in his forties but probably still thought he was seventeen. He was wearing a blue jumper with a big red star.
        "Hello," he said, sliding into the booth next to me.
        "What, are you in the navy?"
        "No, I'm with the battalion up the road."
        "Just got here?"
        "Yeah."
        It was all rather nice. We chatted away, and then this Chinese woman came in. She was absolutely stunning.
        Flared trousers, high heels, and my boy was off in raptures. She sat and joined us.
        "You in the navy?"
        "No, I'm with the battalion."
        After a drink or two she moved over a place, and I thought, I've cracked it, it must be the sight of my drink, a woman like this was bound to feel comfortable in the company of an international jet-setter. More people were coming in, and the bar started filling up. The jukebox started playing slow Donny Osmond numbers.
        I was slowly getting pissed, and I didn't really pay that much attention when my new friend said, "Call me Pierre."
        To me, Pierre was a French blokes name. I hadn't realized it was also a Chinese woman's. Then, very, very slowly, I started to get the picture.
        I looked around and realized that everybody in the bar was a bloke. I looked again at Pierre-and the awful truth sank in.
        "Just going to the toilet," I said, disentangling her hand from my thigh.
        I did a runner, haunted by the faces of all the blokes I'd seen looking at me through the windows. I was going around for days afterward laughing manically and saying, "They do the best Spanish omelet in Gibraltar down the Capri. It's full of dodgy character's, of course, but it's worth it for the food."
        The battalion were coming back to England in November and heading more or less straightaway for South Armagh. I would be too young to go with them immediately; you had to be eighteen, because years before there had been too many seventeen-year-olds getting shot. It was bad PR, so they'd upped the age limit. I'd have to wait until after my birthday.
        We went to Lydd and Hythe for infantry buildup training. We spent a lot of time on the M.U.F (marksmanship under fire) range and were trained in all the different scenarios we were likely to meet.
        "We are going to be based in South Armagh-bandit country," said our company commander, "and B Company are going to Crossmaglen, a town that makes the rest of bandit country look like Camberwick Green."
        We were issued with street maps and told to "learn" South Armagh.
        There was a shooting during the buildup training, and for the first time I started to read more of the newspaper than the TV page.
        Toward the end of the training we were issued with an optic sight for our weapons. I'd never seen this bit of kit before, but I knew that it existed. That was it; I thought I was the international sniper.
        In the infantry at that time all the clothing was incredibly basic. We had a uniform, but no effective waterproofs or warm clothing. If you wanted stuff like that, you had to buy your own. The most exotic item we were given to help us through the rigors ahead was a pair of thick arctic socks.
        I was eighteen years old. I'd already been in the army for coming up to two years, but this was 'my first operational tour. Everything was great. The way I looked at it was I was having a good experience, I was with the battalion, I thought I was hard as fuck, and I'd have enough money to buy a car and show Christine a good time when I got back.
        Crossmaglen, a cattle market town known to us as XMG, was right on the border. This meant the players could prepare in Dundalk on the other side, then pop over and shoot at us. There was a big square in the center, with a number of small buildings with metal railings in front to hold the livestock. It was