Today Everything Changes: Quick Read Read Online Free PDF Page B

perhaps, I would have to work out the weaponry loads our guys had to carry so we could share everything around equally.
    I needed to know the burn-out range of tracer because it helps you to judge distance. A tracer burns out at 1,100 metres.
    It took me a bit longer to work out why we all had to keep our lockers in the same, tidy way. It wasn’t like we had lockers in the field. The reason, though, is very simple. If you can keep your kit and your body in good order in camp, then it will help you do the same out in the field. As a soldier, that’s where you spend mostof your life, so it matters. If you look after your kit and know where it is, you will be able to live and fight outside in the rain and wind for a lot longer than if you treat it carelessly.
    The water bottle that had to be filled to the brim? That made sense too. If you got used to doing it in the camp, you would do it in the field. If one day you found yourself lying under your shelter in thick snow, an extra two mouthfuls of hot tea might make all the difference to how you feel. There was a reason for everything.
    After about three months, everything was coming together for me. I knew the three things I always had to do in the field. I had to avoid being (1) wet (2) cold and (3) hungry. If I managed that, everything else would be a whole lot easier.
    I also understood why my weapon must be close to my body at all times in the field. What is the point in having a weapon if you can’t get it over your shoulder fast and fire it when you need to?
    It was weird, but I began to enjoy all of the screaming and running around. I really liked this army stuff.
    If Rocky Gates or Sergeant Mann had said,‘McNab, jump in a barrel,’ then I’d have jumped, no problem, because I knew that the training was turning me into a soldier.
    And not just any soldier, but a member of the infantry, a future leader of the infantry. I started to think that six years in the army would be OK. In fact, if things went well, I might even stay longer. I might never leave. For the first time in my life, my little world looked good.

Chapter Nineteen
    It was about now that ‘milling’ became a more regular part of our training when we went into the gym. All the hard nuts from Scotland and the north of England had a bit more polish than me, but I was amazed to find that I had one of the best punches. Now I understood why milling was so important. It was because all the training sergeants were picking their company boxing teams for the inter-company boxing matches.
    The good thing about getting into any sports team in the army is that you’re excused some of the other training because you have to train for your sport. And, of course, you get to walk around in a maroon tracksuit, looking and feeling a little special.
    It was always a massive scrum to get fed at breakfast, dinner and tea with hundreds of skinheads queuing up for food. But this was the British Army, so it was a strictly organized scrum. You weren’t allowed to head for the cookhouse on your own. You had to march ingroups of no less than three. Whatever training you’d been doing in the camp before a mealtime, and wherever you’d been doing it, you had to march back to your room and dump your belt and beret on your bed.
    Then you grabbed your white china mug, your knife, fork and spoon – which we called ‘eating irons’ – in your left hand. You rested this lot on your left hip and set off, swinging your right arm and moving as fast as you could without breaking into a run. It was like Wacky Races as a thousand sixteen-to seventeen-year-old infantry soldiers marched hard and fast to get to the front of the cookhouse queue. Unless, that is, like me, you were in the boxing team.
    But there was a problem. A lot of the others resented us sports people. Maybe it was the colour of the tracksuit – or maybe it was because we were allowed straight to the front of the dinner queue as a privilege. Until you were brought back