Competition for friends of Sleaford Navigation Trust Competition rules 1. Open to any UK resident over the age of 18 except members of SNT committee or IWA Lincolnshire Committee 2. Answer the following question for a chance to win a signed copy of award winning Lincoln author and Sleaford Navigation Trust member David Zelder’s novel “Yomping Outside” What was the exact date when The Royal Marines were founded, by whom and what were they originally known as? 3. All entries must be submitted by email to the author david@davidzelder.co.uk and the first totally correct email received will win the prize. No other means of entry will be accepted. 4. Final date for entries 9.00 a.m. December 10th 2011 5. No correspondence will be entered into and the promoter’s decision is final Here is a short synopsis of the novel:After a successful 18 year career in The Royal Marines, Nathan Sawyer is at a crossroads in his life, wondering which path to follow. Fate takes a hand when he witnesses 2 Serbian men beating up a young girl. He intervenes, rescues her and discovers she is a Montenegrin, called Elena Borovic. She and eleven other girls were kidnapped in Belgrade and for over a year have been forced to live as sex slaves in Liverpool. A rescue is mounted for the remaining girls which plunges Sawyer and his team into the middle of a gang war. This is a fast paced thriller in the style of a super spy movie, with a likeable hero, beautiful girls, evil crime lords and fast moving action on an international scale. There is never a dull moment as the action flits between Liverpool, Leeds, Cyprus and Belgrade, with double crosses and violent altercations at every turn. In amongst the action is a delicate love story which neatly counter balances the violent encounters. This novel comes from an author who in 2011 has already won three writing competitions for his writing.
We encourage our readers to buy the novel online. Go to www.davidzelder.co.uk and select “bookshop” to order the book. For every copy sold the author will pay £1 to The Royal Marines Charitable Trust Fund. When you fill in your address details you must put “SNT” in the box entitled “additional information” then for every copy that has this code that is paid for before December 24th 2011, the author will also pay £2.00 to Sleaford Navigation Trust. Online ordering only. Happy reading!
Please see next page for is an extract from the first chapter
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Yomping Outside By David Zelder starts…….. Chapter 1
What to do outside
It was gone 11.15 on a Wednesday night so the Liverpool streets were relatively quiet, apart from the siren incessantly blaring on its way to some incident or other and the gentle pitter-patter of rain drops on the pavement. Being October, the moon’s weak glow, softly diffused through the clouds, combined with the rain to create a canopy above me which now assumed the colour of frosted steel. Already one or two shops had started to put Christmas displays in their windows. As I padded softly past the garish signs screaming out their yuletide bargains, I wondered what the hell I’d be doing at Christmas. I’d been on the outside for six months now and really needed to decide what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I was almost thirty eight years old, quite a good looking guy, with neatly cropped dark red hair, a level of fitness and a body that, although covered in battle scars, most Premiership footballers would die for. I’d a bunch of money in the bank but no identifiable future and no woman in my life. I smiled to myself as I saw the armed forces recruitment office opposite The Liverpool Hotel on James Street. The adverts in its window were offering a life of excitement, a good career, first class training and excellent rates of pay. I thought back to the time when I first walked through the door of a similar office in Bristol nineteen years ago as an impressionable, and completely lost, eighteen year old. I’d been pulled off the rugby pitch where I was playing in a County trial game to be told by the police that my parents had both died in an accident on the M4 motorway. After the funeral and the inquest I realised how desperately alone I was. As an only child, living in a small but neat terraced house in the Bristol suburbs I’d been planning to go to Liverpool John Moores University to study for a BSc in Sport Science but then my world had collapsed around me. What to do next had troubled me for some weeks after the funeral. I couldn’t face my friends; I’d no close relatives and spent hours walking the streets in Bristol, trying to clear my head. With no-one to advise me I’d suddenly lost the desire to go to University. What I needed was something in my life that would be all consuming and enable me to assuage the guilt I felt about losing my parents. I felt responsible for their deaths as they were on the way to watch me take part in the trials when the accident happened. I was thought to be a good player and my parents were proud of me. There was even a chance I might’ve been good enough to have joined Bristol or Bath as a professional, after university. One Thursday afternoon I crossed the road from Bristol University and was wandering aimlessly down Colston Avenue when I saw a giant photo of some guys playing rugby in the window of the forces recruitment office. Next to it was an even larger photo of a landing craft delivering its cargo of thirty five Green Berets on to some foreign beach in full combat mode. At that moment I thought to myself that I’d have nothing to lose, playing rugby and maybe seeing some action around the world, whilst also getting paid for it. Almost subconsciously I walked inside and, after chatting with a pushy careers adviser, I completed the short questionnaire and then booked an appointment for the four part written test. After successfully passing that part, and then sailing through the interview, all that remained was the fitness test. This required me to run 2.4 km in less than twelve minutes and twenty seconds, which for a man with my sporting background and fitness training, was a doddle. After receiving my join-up papers I began to look forward to starting my new life, training to be a Royal Marine. I was successful in passing the Potential Royal Marines Course and very shortly was on my way to Commando Training Centre Royal Marines (CTCRM) at Lympstone in Devon, with a steely and dogged determination to forge a career for myself. I’d managed to sell my parents’ Bristol home complete with all its furniture for a tidy six figure sum and, for the first time in my life had a healthy bank balance and a future career to look forward to. PDF Creator - PDF4Free v3.0
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The next nine months were tough and very challenging and I learned a great deal about myself as I moved inexorably towards my goal of being awarded the coveted Green Beret. I began to realise that most of my friends on the outside were very shallow and, as is often the case nowadays, very materialistic. The friendships which I forged during my nine months’ training at CTCRM were very different. We looked out for each other, we worked closely together, and in the many armed conflicts in which we subsequently became involved, we were totally dependent on each other just to stay alive. You don’t get that on Civvy Street, where more often than not it’s every man for himself and stuff the rest. Now here I was on James Street in Liverpool passing another recruitment office, nineteen years older, wiser, much fitter and satisfied with my career as a Royal Marine, but what the hell was I going to do now? I’d come to Liverpool for a break and to see where I might have been living for over three years if I’d actually gone to University. What was I going to do with the rest of my life? I’d come here also to clear my head and give myself some thinking time. I quickly left the recruitment window behind and decided to walk on in the direction of the waterfront by the great River Mersey before going back to my hotel. As I walked slowly and easily towards the Cunard Building I reached the bottom end of Water Street, and stopped to look up in awe at the Royal Liver Building. The huge clocks showed it was 11.30 as the rain continued to beat down on the copper statues of Liver Birds that stood proudly on top of the two towers. The bodies of both birds had turned duck egg green in the near one hundred years that they’d proudly guarded the entrance to the mighty ferry terminal. As I admired the beauty of the building with its hundreds of windows, I thought wryly to myself that there must be plenty of profit in the insurance industry to afford such an imposing headquarters. I was woken from my reverie by the sound of a high revving car engine and the tortured squealing of tyres coming down St Nicholas Place at a fair rate of knots. The car slewed to a halt about 100 metres in front of me and its two front doors swung open violently, almost before the BMW convertible had come to a stop. My years of training and many tours involving active armed combat, plus my natural instincts, warned me this was trouble. The two men who jumped out of the front seats had their backs to me as I moved closer, keeping in the shadows. One of them opened the car’s rear nearside door and shouted a few harsh words in a guttural Eastern European tongue and heaved something out of the back of the car on to the softly lit road. I peered through the gloom, straining my eyes to penetrate the swirling mist that was only just dimly lit by the muted autumn moon. Eventually I was just able to make out that they’d dumped a slightly built young woman who was now on her knees, sobbing loudly on the road. One of them immediately smashed the girl in the face with his clenched fist, causing her to fall screaming to the ground. They then both started kicking her and shouting obscenities in phrases I recognised from my time in Kosovo. The thugs were obviously Serbians. I could see that each time the girl tried to get up the two scum-bags knocked her back down. Even in the poor light I noticed blood starting to trickle down her face. I covered the last couple of metres to their car in an instant and quickly pushed my hand hard on the horn. The noise had the desired effect and the two thugs stopped attacking the girl and looked in my direction. As I shouted for them to leave her alone I stood by the driver’s door. The first man ran at me screaming insults and threats, with his head down in an angry and violent charge. You learn in the Royal Marines that surprise is the first element of attack so I waited until the man was level with the front wheel then I slammed the car door open as hard as I could. The attacker had no chance and collapsed unconscious with a broken nose and his face covered in blood. One down, one to go, so far so good………………..
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