Today Everything Changes: Quick Read

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

Book: Today Everything Changes: Quick Read by Andy McNab Read Free Book Online
Authors: Andy McNab
Tags: General, Historical, History, Biography & Autobiography, Military, Language Arts & Disciplines, Literacy
remember, these are harder to keep than they are to get. Good luck.’
    That was it. We turned and shuffled out, and I started Day One, Week One of the ten years I served in the Special Air Service.
    The first thing that happened to me as I walked out of that office was that I lost my rank. No longer was I a sergeant in the infantry. I was now a SAS trooper, the lowest rank in the SAS. I had to start again, work my way through the ranks, but I didn’t mind. The only thought in my mind was that I was actually in the SAS.

Chapter Twenty-Seven
    For the next ten years, I did the things that the SAS do. I took part in undercover operations, walking around cities with long hair, jeans and trainers and driving little sports cars. I lived under a shelter sheet in the jungles of south east Asia. I worked in Africa and the Middle East.
    But the one thing I learned very quickly was that life in the SAS wasn’t like the TV shows that showed troopers dressed up in black gear smashing windows to storm an embassy building.
    Education was just as important as all the bang-bang. In fact, the education centre in Hereford was three times the size of the one in the training camp at Folkestone.
    That was because the first skill you had to learn was how to communicate. You’d be no good in the field if you couldn’t tell everybody where you were, what you’d seen and what you were going to do about it.
    Within weeks of joining the SAS, I found myself in the education centre wearing headphones and learning Morse code. I’d thoughtI was going to be running around in my SAS beret, doing SAS stuff, but instead I was back at school.
    Part of the Special Air Service’s job is to work with other nations’ armies. But you can’t expect everybody to speak English, so you have to speak their language. It’s no use being in another country with weapons and ammunition if you can’t actually talk to the people you’re fighting the war with.
    During my ten years in the SAS, I learned to speak Spanish because I did a lot of work in Colombia on anti-drugs operations. I also learned Swahili because I spent so much time working in Africa. Two old Christian monks with long, white beards who had worked as missionaries in Africa came into the education centre to teach us. It was a funny sight, those two in their dark-brown robes with rope tied about their waists like a belt, teaching a classroom full of rough, tough SAS men.
    I started to learn more about grammar, the way words are formed and used. When it got hard, I used to think, I’m not thick, just not educated yet. But from today everything changes.
    No one in the SAS was embarrassed if they didn’t know something. Nobody on the planet knows everything. The whole point of being ina classroom is to learn, so it was good to put your hand up and say, ‘I don’t understand. Can you help me?’
    When I did the demolitions course, I thought, Fantastic! I’m going be running around blowing up power stations and bridges. But again I found that it wasn’t about the bang-bang. It was all about maths. I went back to school before I got my hands on any explosives at all.

Chapter Twenty-Eight
    Explosions are not like they are in Hollywood films, with a big blast, a massive fireball, and the bridge comes tumbling down. An SAS strike uses the minimum amount of explosives to create the maximum damage. Then there’s less to carry and less to conceal.
    With a bridge, the aim is to make specific cuts so that it will collapse under its own weight. To take down a building, you initiate its fall, and the building itself does the rest.
    We learned how to blow up everything from telephone lines to power stations, trains and planes. Everything had to be destroyed in such a manner that it couldn’t be repaired or replaced or – if it could be – it must take a long time to do it. Destroying something did not always mean taking it off the face of the Earth. It might just mean penetrating a machine far enough to

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