Today Everything Changes: Quick Read by Andy McNab Read Free Book Online

the top and had been sent from the headquarters of the Light Division. It said, ‘McNab, congratulations on being presented with the Light Division sword.’
    I didn’t have a clue what that was until it was explained to me that each regiment presentsthis award to the most promising young soldier in that division every year.
    On the day I was to receive it, the whole battalion was in the gym for the colonel to make the presentations to each of the training companies. I thought having a sword would be great. I was looking forward to seeing it hanging above my bed space. But as I marched away from the colonel, a sergeant took it from me and gave me a pewter mug with my name on it instead. The sword went back to the regiment’s museum. And I kept spare change in my mug.
    The passing-out parade was very big, with 1,100 junior leaders on the parade-ground. I now understood why the sergeant major had the whole battalion out on parade each Friday morning. He was preparing us for this special day.
    That day, I thought I’d become a soldier. For the past year I had worn the training camp’s cap badge and belt, but as soon as I’d marched away from the passing-out parade, I could put on my regimental kit, the Green Jacket beret. I had become a rifleman.
    There was just one little matter to attend to. Our beautifully polished boots, which we’d slaved over for hours and hours, sitting at thebottom of our beds at night, had to be returned to the stores. You could only keep them if you were joining a Guards regiment and would be standing in them outside Buckingham Palace. The rest of us lined up and bashed them on the pavement until the polish cracked like crazy paving. No one was going to have it easier than we did.

Chapter Twenty-Six
    I wasn’t even eighteen when I joined my battalion. I spent the next eight years getting promoted quickly because I had passed my exams and liked being a soldier.
    I became a platoon sergeant, and it was then that I decided I wanted to join the Special Air Service. Nobody taps you on the shoulder and offers you the chance to become a SAS trooper. You have to apply to join, and then you apply to attend one of their seven-month-long selection courses.
    Out of the 180 on my course, only eight of us passed at the end of the seven hard, long months. That’s normal.
    It was, without doubt, the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. Finally the day came when I was going to see the colonel of the SAS, get my badge and become a SAS soldier.
    We eight new boys hung around in the SAS headquarters in Hereford. I felt so proud. Everybody who walked past us knew why we were there. They would stop, say, ‘Well done,’and shake our hands. Everyone in the regiment could remember how they had felt the day they got their badge.
    The sergeant major came out of his office, which was next-door to the colonel’s. He shook our hands and said, ‘Well done, lads, congratulations. The colonel will give you your badges and then you’ll be sent to your squadrons.
    But, before that, I’ll give you one word of advice: when you get to your squadron, look for someone you think is the perfect SAS soldier, the one you would like to be. Copy him. Learn from him. Don’t go thinking you know it all, because you don’t. We never stop learning. Keep your gob shut, look, listen and learn.’
    That was all well and good, but the sergeant major didn’t tell us what to do when we met the colonel. Did we slam to attention and salute? Did we march into his office?
    There is no marching or saluting in the SAS. Everybody calls each other by their first names. It’s not like being in the army.
    The sergeant major opened the colonel’s door and ushered us in. We semi-marched, semiwalked, all a bit uncomfortable. The colonel sat behind his desk, a pile of sand-coloured berets with the famous ‘Winged Dagger’ SAS badge in front of him. They were stacked like pancakes.He flipped one to each of us. No formality, no handshake. ‘Just