The One That Got Away - Junior edition by Ryan Chris

Author:Ryan, Chris [Ryan, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: azw
Publisher: RHCB Digital
Published: 2010-11-03T16:00:00+00:00

Tuesday 29 January: Escape – Day Six

There was something spooky about my surroundings. The wind blowing through the rocks of that huge wilderness took my mind back to another desert, another time. Africa . . . the Kalahari. My thoughts floated away to the time when ‘B’ Squadron was deployed on a three-month training exercise, my troop staff sergeant was killed, and we all became caught up in what felt like voodoo or black magic.

For the various parts of the exercise, the squadron had spread out over a wide area. The Air Troop went free-falling; the Boat Troop splashed around in the swamps; the Mobility Troop drove around the Kalahari desert; and the rest of us went climbing in the Tsodilo Hills. That was my first trip abroad with the squadron, and it brought home to me how dangerous our training was.

On our first evening in the country, before the troops split up, we had a lesson on snakes from an African called Lazarus. He started releasing snakes from a sack to show us the various kinds which we might come across.

He brought out a spitting cobra, holding it by the throat, and said that if you gripped it like that, it couldn’t spit. ‘Watch that thing,’ growled the SQMS, ‘because if it does spit, and the stuff gets in your eyes, you’ll have problems.’ Sure enough, as Lazarus came past me the cobra spat, and although I closed my eyes, some spit landed on my arm and the side of my face. I wiped it off immediately, but wherever a drop had touched me, it took the pigment out of my skin. I was left with pale dots all over my cheek, and a patch the shape of the British Isles on one arm.

As a grand finale Lazarus produced an Egyptian cobra – a massive creature about four metres long – which he set down on the ground. We were gathered round in a circle, and he said, ‘Stand still, and let it go through your legs.’ Everything was fine until one guy moved and the cobra chased him. The man ran up onto a water bowser, and the snake wrapped itself round one of the axles, baring its enormous fangs as Lazarus heaved on its tail, trying to drag it off. In the end he got it back into his sack, but it was amazing that none of us had been bitten.

After that little introduction, our troop moved up to the Tsodilo Hills. Our camp was maybe half an hour’s walk from the base of the biggest hill – an outcrop of bare, blue-grey rock which rose in tiers from a dead-flat plain. Some of the tiers, which went up in vertical rock faces, were anywhere between thirty and sixty metres high. It looked like an enormous, sharp staircase.

In the evening, as we sat round the fire, one of the guys said, ‘I’m going out shooting – does anyone fancy coming?’ Nobody could be bothered. So he went out on his own, and presently he came back with a small, furry animal about the size of a hare.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.