Sof Maslul and Targad

About a year ago, I wrote a post about how I went from crawling in cow droppings to feeling on Cloud Nine; essentially about how feelings of pain, fatigue and hopelessness could suddenly reverse course, and with such suddenness and finality.  Like many things during the previous year, events from early in my military service pale in comparison to harder and more difficult challenges I've encountered since.  The previous fortnight was one of the most unique experiences I've had in the military.  It featured the easiest week in military service and the hardest; an uplifting achievement and a vicious beat down; a culmination of a journey measured in time and accomplishments, and the beginning and end of a gauntlet of pain, depravity and struggle.  And it is so many more coupled opposites.  If I've wet your palate for another adventure story, please read on.

The first week was our sof maslul tiul, end of the journey trip.  For the first eleven months to a year of a combat soldier's service, he is considered in "maslul," a Hebrew word that means journey, and in the military refers to his training.  While I advanced from the training base in October, I am yet to receive my brigade's fighter's pin, the final recognition of a complete fighter.  Other indicators include my unit's tags, my paratrooper pin, and my unit's red beret.  This week was the end of eleven months of training and being the newest company in the battalion.

Quality photo of me and Adam

We met in Haifa on Sunday morning then traveled to Tzfat, an ancient and mystical city in the Galilee by the Kinneret, Israel's northern lake.  It was exciting because everyone changed from our military drab into civilian clothes.  I hadn't seen many of these guys in civvies, and it was a fun change...and also made everyone truly seem their age, even the commanders and officers.  Adam, Shmuel and I felt old(er).

Over the course of the next three days, we traveled to various historic sites, ancient excavations, toured Tzfat, Akko, on the Mediterranean coast, visited an industrial park, and above all else, enjoyed the time in gym shoes, jeans, sweatshirts, and without guns.  We lodged at a hostel converted into a place for military units to stay when on trips like ours.  It was a few good days of worry-free enjoyment.

On Wednesday, we went to Beitleid, a base near Netanya (close by to the kibbutz I lived on for half a year) to prepare for our tekkes the following day.  It was to be a ceremony marking our transition from soldiers-in-training to full, active fighters for the battalion.  That evening we had a celebratory barbecue.  We received gifts on our accomplishments, including a backpack, hat, neck warmer, and other small items.  In addition, in keeping with tradition, some soldiers put on skits impersonating our commanders and officers.  It was hilarious.

Thursday evening arrived and we changed into our Aleph uniforms.  All three battalions (101st, 202nd, 890th) were a part of the same ceremony.  It was great to see some of my other lone soldier friends who I rarely see anymore.  Soldiers' parents, families and friends were in attendance.  My cousins David and Amy had tried to come but were unable to make it.  My family is back in the States.  No one was there for me.  Such it is for lone soldiers.

Yuval and I outside some ruins

The ceremony was short and simple.  Most of us just stood there.  A few soldiers were singled out as outstanding in their platoon or company.  We received Tzanchanim's seichat lochem, fighter's pin.  And that was that.

We had an hour to enjoy with friends and family, take pictures, and chill.  Then we boarded a bus to go back to base in the Golan.

On the bus ride, I experienced mixed of emotions.  The jubilation to receive my final piece of hardware was tempered by sadness that my parents were back in Chicago.  I knew I was going to be alone for this ceremony, but I was unprepared for how much it made me miss home.  I sent my mom an email to call me right away.  My parents called and I told them how I was feeling.  It was good to hear their voices and them to tell me they miss me and love me.  I needed that.

Shimon and I in Akko

Next we faced a few days preparing for the hardest week of our lives: the Targad.  A targad is a targile gdud, battalion size training exercise.  On Sunday, Tzanchanim brigade commander, Colonel Amir Baram, came to our base for an equipment inspection.  My company moved to the cafeteria to set up our gear.  He gathered the light and heavy machine gunners together and started asking us questions about our weapons.  He asked me to explain what a certain tool in my equipment bag does.  Noticing my accent, he asked where I'm from, and then proceeded to call me "Chicago" for the rest of the inspection, ending with a "job well done, thanks to Chicago," after I had made him laugh a few times.

Finally, Monday arrived and around noon we loaded our equipment on buses and traveled south and east, near the town of Beit Shean close to the Jordanian border.  We unloaded, formed into two lines with the rest of the battalion, and waited for six o'clock.

As the sun set, we started off on our targad.

My platoon

I will not be able to give specific details about what occurred over the next four days.  This is in part because the post would be significantly lengthier, in part because I cannot remember specifically, and in part because I do not want to remember specifically.

To begin with, we had a twenty-two kilometer hike.  Oh, and by twenty-two, I actually mean thirty kilometers.  We walked all evening with our heavy equipment.  We finished around eight in the morning.  Now, I know I've done hikes twice that length (such as my masa kumta, to receive my red beret), but this was still as difficult.  At the end of this masa, as opposed to our training ones, we didn't have time to rest, sleep and recuperate.  Rather, this was the beginning of the week, it wasn't the end in and of itself.  In addition, we didn't stop every hour like on the training masas.  Also, I had to carry my machine gun partner's equipment in addition to my heavy gun because he was crying the entire first hour about how heavy it was.  When we did have a break, my commander made me carry it...for the next twenty kilometers!  Not until I finally put the bag down on another break and told them I was done carrying someone else's equipment did we switch back; I am more than willing to help for a little, but this is his job and he must do it.  The kid still cried.

Me and my company commander

In total, we ascended and descended four kilometers both ways.  Thirty kilometers in distance.  Over twelve hours hiked.  And at the end?  Why not have a fake battle that covers a span of two and a half kilometers and up the largest hills I've ever seen?  As part of the covering fire unit, I had to spray the hill/mountainside with fire until the advancing units came into my field of view.  As they pressed on and "conquered" further positions on succeeding hills, I had to run to catch up to them and provide covering fire for another set of hills.  I hated my life.

At the end, we went wandering through the hills of the Judean River Valley, in sight of Jordan, looking for the next objective.  And this is how it continued for a couple days.  We had day drills and night drills.  We were always constantly moving.  If we stopped for even a few minutes, people immediately dropped to the ground and passed out.  It was harder during the day because of the sunshine, and it was harder during the night because of the frigid cold.  It was forbidden to wear thermal clothing during these hikes because you ran the risk of overheating.  That's fine when you're moving, but when you stop you freeze within minutes.

We ate sparingly throughout each day, rationing the food given to us at the beginning of each new day... or, more appropriately, each time the sun rose (the concept of a "day" seemed to have lost its distinct exactitude of time).  On Wednesday, I think, we were mercifully given four or five hours to sleep during the middle of the day.  A few friends and I picked a spot by a clump of trees, ate a quick meal, spread open our military-style, yoga-esque sleeping mats, laid down, and next I know, the sun has significantly shifted its position in the sky and someone is kicking me awake for us to move on.

We refilled our ammunition, water and food.  I change my socks, not wanting to look at my feet, but forcing myself to massage the blisters that were forming.  Then we wait for the next part of the targad: helicopters to transport us north the Golan.

Although he gave me thousands of pushups and other
punishment during training, my sergeant is
a genuine great guy.

This part was pretty cool.  We were the last company to be transported, so we spent a few more hours on the hillside as the other companies were picked up and taken north.  Darkness descended when it was my platoon's turn to board the helicopter.  This was my fourth time on a helicopter, but the first outside my training base.  Instead of being taken on a quick five minute flight from one secluded point to another in the field surrounding a training base, we were flown for twenty-five minutes, from within a kilometer of Jordan to north over Tiberias, the Kinneret, other smaller towns, and finally touching down on the elevated terrain of the Golan Heights.

The difference in location was immediately apparent upon landing.  I jumped off the chopper after it touched down and scurried away from its blades to a nearby gathering point for the platoon.  My feet were sucked into the soft, marshy ground.  The wind was relentless.  The cold was penetrating.  Thankfully, we were dropped off close to the rendezvous point for the battalion because we left much later than the first company.  After reaching the point, a few kilometers away, we were able to attempt to nap for a few hours.  Never have so many guys formed such a long spoon line.  We stacked our equipment bags by our heads to block the wind, laid down our mats, and snuggled in close.  For a few minutes I was warm as the body heat from hiking stayed trapped beneath my clothes and vest and I was able to doze off to sleep.  Then suddenly, I would snap awake as the cold overcame the meager body heat I had left.  Then it was a struggle to keep my eyes closed, my teeth from chattering, my toes from freezing, and my mind from cursing my situation.

Well done, lone soldiers!

That morning was a large drill incorporating tanks.  It took place over an enormous open, flat area.  This was evidently a very important drill because there were many high-ranking officers in attendance, including some generals.

Suddenly, the covering fire company lets loose its ordinances.  The sounds of heavy machine guns, large mortars, automatic grenade launchers breaks the stillness of the crisp Golan air.  Large puffs of smoke appear hundreds of meters downfield, mounds of earth shooting into the air indicate the location of each explosion.  Off to the side, another company begins their assault, soon to be followed by us.

As I witness this scene, I am in awe.  It is truly a battlefield in every sense of the term.  It is not a firefight between buildings or an assault on a hill.  It is an army advancing downfield, each soldier willing himself to press on and continue the advance to the next mound, or the next tree, or the next depression, ever onwards towards the enemy.  The picture that developed before my eyes reminded me of the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War.  On July 3rd, 1863, the third day of the battle, Confederate General Robert E. Lee attempted a final assault against an entrenched Union position.  In what became the longest and most violence cannon barrage in history, he bombarded the center of the Union line for hours before sending General George Pickett's division on a frontal assault against the bombarded position.  Pickett's men had over a mile of open ground to cross, without the benefit of their own artillery, at the mercy of Union artillery and rifle fire.

Pickett's Charge was dramatic, noble, and horribly catastrophic.  Within hours, nearly 3,000 Southern soldiers were killed or wounded trying to attack an entrenched Northern position.  Believing his army to be invincible, this attack was perhaps Lee's biggest blunder, mistake, error (I don't know the proper word) and cost the lives of an entire division.  There is a great moment in the movie "Gettysburg," when, as Rebel stragglers limp back to their lines, Lee (Martin Sheen), anxious to try another attack or prepare for a Union counter attack, calls to Pickett (Joshua Lang) to regroup and rally his division.  Pickett, usually a man of flamboyance and showmanship, stands teary-eyed, and looks up at Lee on his horse, and chokes out, "General Lee, I have no division" (go to minute 5:00).  Somehow, across many miles and many more years, I felt like I had a glimpse into what battles looked like before technology made open-field warfare suicidal.

Eventually my company advanced to a forward position and I set up my machine gun and let it loose against a clump of trees three hundred meters downhill.  Evidently, the colonel had caught up with us and his entourage videotaped him overlooking our actions.  My friends tell me they pointed the camera for some time at me working with my MAG.  Yay!  Yay?  I don't know.  Now he'll always remember Chicago.

After the "battle" we walked some more over chewed-up, soggy ground.  The tanks, armored personnel carriers, and other heavy transport vehicles absolutely destroy the soft ground.  They create ruts that go halfway up my leg!  And many of these are filled with rainwater.  We have to negotiate many of these paths, always looking for a dry way through or around the obstacles.  It is imperative to keep your feet clean.  Our boots are not exactly water proof and despite wrapping a garbage bag around my socks, cold feet are just as bad as wet feet, and they get cold if the boot gets wet.

But we kept walking.  And finally had another exercise that evening.  And this one was hell.

For my company to get to the location on the battlefield where we were to begin our own "assault," we had to cover three kilometers!  And it was over absolutely the rockiest terrain ever.  At night.  Traversing hills that I had to climb hands on knees over rocks and boulders, small rivers without the help of a flashlight, puddles in the ground without submerging my entire foot.  We did a "dry" and "wet" run of this battle, meaning the first was without firing and the second was with live ammunition.  Essentially, we do the entire drill twice, which meant going out and back and out and back.  Over twelve kilometers alone for this one drill.  Carrying the MAG and trying to correct each misplaced step and not break my ankle, or trying to keep my muddy boots from not slipping off the wet rocks in the middle of the river was a nearly impossible task.  I fell into the rivers multiple times, soaking my boots.  From the stones, rocks and boulders, my leg muscles burned.  My ankle muscles burned as well.  I don't even know if I have ankle muscles, but they burned all the same from trying to stabilize myself with each step.

After the exercise, we were told that we had a short three kilometer hike taking us to a few buildings we were supposed to take over.  I learned that week that take anything the army tells you and multiply it by two or three.  So in that case, we were to walk for about six or seven kilometers.  At the end, it turned into ten.  Everyone was dead tired.  The sun was rising.  And still there was no end in sight.  Four hours later and we came to our destination, well after the other three companies had arrived.  I sat down next to a building with my platoon, waited, heard the exercise was over, and were told the week was over.

I'm tired just from typing and recalling how I felt.  We ate and slept for two hours then had a ceremony where the colonel and the commanding officer of the battalion both spoke.  I don't know what they said and I didn't care.  I could barely stand.  My feet ached.  And then I saw freakin' jobniks who did nothing during the entire week join us in our formation, wearing combat vests, pretending to be of some importance and worth.  They could fall off the face of the earth and no one would care.

Over four days.  Nearly 100 kilometers walked.  Maybe nine hours slept.

We bussed back to base, cleaned our equipment and prepared for Shabbat.  And it was a great, comfortable, relaxing Shabbat.  Towards the end of the day, my squad commander and platoon commander had conversations with us to say wrap up the past few months.  That evening we were to move to new companies, to be explained more in a later post.  After dinner we watched a short slideshow of the past eleven months.

Maslul is over.  I am in a new company now.  I have my Tzanchanim fighter's pin.  And now I am on a week break from the army.  Life's alright.

A Short Week

I left my apartment at 7am with Adam and his girlfriend, Steph.  We headed to the Central Bus Station in Jerusalem.  Once there, we took two escalators to the top floor.  I headed to the platform of Egged Bus No. 480 to Tel Aviv.  They headed to Haifa.  My bus pulled in at 7:30.  I threw my bag underneath, flashed my military ID to the driver, collapsed in a window seat and passed out for the fifty-five minutes to Tel Aviv.

The New York Giants had won the Super Bowl just a few hours before.  I watched the game at my apartment with Adam, Steph, my roommate Shmuel, and another friend, Shmaya.  I hadn't slept since the morning before, but it was completely worth it to enjoy an American tradition with American lone soldiers.

Here I am, a MAGist, taking apart Shmuel's Negev on some down time.

In Tel Aviv, I stopped at the bank before heading back north to my base in the Golan.  My plugah (company) had headed out to the field on Monday morning for a week of platoon-size exercises.  I arrived at base in the afternoon and, as can happen in the IDF, somehow, miraculously, gloriously, fell through the cracks, which means I didn't head out to the shetach until twenty-four hours later.  There was an issue with finding my MAG, the machine gun, equipment.  Doesn't really matter.  Point is, I headed out the shetach a day later.

Or Shmuel, my roommate, handling his Negev.

When I got out there Tuesday afternoon, they had us put on gas masks and they started throwing gas grenades at us.  Wasn't fun.  Also, you're not supposed to wear contacts with the masks because if the gas touches your eyes with the contacts on them, I hear you can seriously damage your eyes.  So when gas was thrown, I ran the other way.  But then we practiced walking maneuvers with the masks, which  wasn't enjoyable, but you get used to breathing after hiking for a while.

Finally, darkness descended and we had an exercise with my platoon attacking a few hills.  This was the same terrain as the previous field week, so the ground was still muddy, soaking, pretty much a bog or a swamp.  We had to charge across ground where your boots would get sucked into the mud.  We ran up hills where you slid back down.  The drill wasn't so much fun.

We slept at the base that was nearby because the conditions outside were terrible.  The next day was going to be a Tarpal.  It is a company drill.  For this, as opposed to the previous day, they brought out my machine gun, the MAG.  The drill takes about three hours to complete: we have to get to the "battlefield," the commanders have to be given instructions, different levels of officers always feel the need to address the company with different instructions but pretty much they all say the same thing, we have to set up our equipment or get in position, we do a "dry" drill (meaning no firing), everyone comes back to the initial rendezvous point, the drill is critiqued, then we run a "wet" drill with live fire, and again we debrief.  Takes a while.

For this drill, I was a part of the covering fire platoon.  We were given a lot of ammunition.  And I let it fly!  As I wrote on my Facebook wall the next day: "Dear Israeli taxpayers: I apologize for using your money to unnecessarily fire over 1100 rounds with my machine gun in twenty minutes.  It was too much fun.  Sincerely, your Lone Soldier."  That is no joke.

In one drill, I fired about five drums of 125 bullets, plus two ammo boxes of 230.  Add that up.  Literally went through it all in minutes.  The spent cartridges piled up around me.  Some banged off rocks on the ground and nicked my wrists, hands, or jumped into my shirt.  The skin from my thumb to forefinger is still a dark shade because of the gun powder being kicked out of the gun.  I would often pull the trigger for five to seven seconds at a time, letting loose a hail of thirty bullets.  My vision would blur from the vibrations of the gun.  I popped balloons that were set up two hundred meters away.  Steel plates three hundred meters away would be torn to shreds.  Then I picked up and moved to the next location and fired at the next target.

When that drill was over we had lunch and a few hours down time.  Then we did the same thing at night.

Finally, I was able to see the tracer rounds I shot.  Tracers were banned at the Bach, the training base, because they have to potential to start a fire in the desert.  But here, no one cared.  In the ammo boxes, every tenth bullet is a tracer.  As I fired again, I could see where my bullets landed in the darkness.  It was really cool to see a few tracers seemingly fly directly skywards; they must have hit a rock and been redirected.  For this drill, I fired around four hundred bullets.

The MAG comes with two barrels.  They are supposed to be replaced every 460 rounds.  For the day drill, the gun was firing with virtually no jams.  I was in the zone.  I was shouting at my partner to go get another ammo box, to hold the ammo belt as the gun pulls it in each round.  Why would I want to switch my barrel when things were going so smoothly?  Why would I want to have to give myself an extra hour of work of cleaning to do?  So I used the same barrel the entire day.  And things were great.

Before the day drill, a herd of cows crossed into the firing area.  A Bedouin suddenly appeared, saw the hundred soldiers in full combat gear, our officers yelling at him to get the hell out of Dodge, and he quickly moved to herd the cows in a different direction.  A week ago, my platoon officer commented that we must be careful not to hit the cows, as they are someone else's property, their money.  It's kind of a funny scene.

After the evening drill, we hiked back to our base.  It was supposed to be about five kilometers and would take ninety minutes max.  Instead, within throwing distance of our base, we ran into a fence.  It was someone's farmland.  Obviously in the Golan Heights you will eventually run into a fence!  My company commander just assumed we could take a dirt path from the field back to base without any problems.  Think again!  Now, we hiked an extra four or five kilometers to circumvent the fences, adding an extra two hours to our ordeal, and not getting back to our base until one in the morning.

We had barbecued food waiting for us.  It was a treat to have that and we were looking forward to it during the entire hike.  It was a celebration for us completing our maslul (path, way), our training in Tzanchanim.  While we have been out of the training base since our masa kumtah in October, soldiers are not finished with training until a year into their service.  (I'll explain a lot more about this in a post I'm planning to write in a couple weeks.)

And there was one more surprise.  Before sending us off to bed, our company commander congratulated us on a good week, a strong finish, and said we would be going home Thursday afternoon!  Instead of waking up early on Friday, we would get an extra night at our homes.

Needless to say, the next day went by fast.  We cleaned our guns, returned and organized our equipment, completed an exercise test by running three kilometers in our combat vests and guns, and then left around five in the afternoon.

It was a quick week.  I've had a very nice Shabbat at my apartment with my roommates.  Tomorrow we start a week to celebrate the end of our training and have a ceremony on Thursday where we finally receive the Tzanchanim brigade's fighters pin.  Exciting stuff.  But then we will have perhaps the hardest week of my life with a Targad, battalion exercise.  Following that is a week break.  My service is almost over.

And, like Jon Stewart has at the end of every episode of the Daily Show, here it is, your moment of zen:

Thank you, Yuval.

Imun

"If there is a heaven, it would look like this.  If there is a hell, it would feel like this."

Thank you Adam for perhaps the most apt description of our lives deep in the Golan Heights during imun choref, winter training.  Our base is situated in the shadow of the highest point in the country, Mt. Hermon.  We are within shouting distance of the Lebanese and Syrian borders.  When the sun is shining and the clouds are appropriately someplace else, the view is incredible.  The other part of our time there--and by that I mean the other ninety-seven percent--the cloud cover is dense, the sky is dark, the wind howls and the temperature plummets.

Two weeks ago we did nothing but organize our equipment.  Five straight days and part of a sixth were dedicated to making sure our vests, kneepads, magazines, medical tourniquets, guns, helmets and everything else are combat-ready.  Although we are in training, Tzanchanim is technically on call in case there is an outbreak of hostilities in the Golan, aka in case there is war with Lebanon or Syria.  Consequently, we constantly need to have our equipment battle-ready.  But for it to take the entire week to organize is beyond me.  Welcome to the IDF.

We had a number of exercises that week: push-ups, abs, runs.  I also did a lot of meaningless, boring, mindless, depressing, degrading, annoying logistical work with the company's equipment, in the kitchen, or elsewhere.

It was not a fun week.  It was not an exciting week.  It was a physically easy week.  But emotionally and mentally a little more taxing then expected.  But such is life and times in the army.

This past week was a field week, a shavuah shetach.  We are doing the exact same drills we did during advanced training back in July.  It was shavuah kitah, squad week.

Unfortunately, very unfortunately, incredibly unfortunately, this week was not during the middle of the summer.  Instead of negotiating immense heat waves during the middle of the day with napping beneath a large tent, we have to contend with frigid temperatures, constant rain, grassy hills over saturated with immense amounts of rain, relentless wind, and fog so thick you cannot see more than one hundred feet in any direction.  (We are so high up, that the clouds are literally right above our heads.  It's quite cool to see them roll in, and with such incredible speeds, and be within its cover.)

We first went out to the field intending to sleep in tents.  That plan quickly failed as the rains came and didn't leave, turning the dirt into mud into a sinkhole.  We packed up our equipment and moved to a nearby base for the evening.  We were soaked; our equipment, our clothes, everything.  I had to switch uniforms and socks.  Everyone got the idea to put garbage bags in their shoes.  It wouldn't have kept our feet from being cold, but it would have kept them dry, which in many ways is more important.  For most of the week we were in the feet, I wore a thick pair of socks, garbage bag, and another thick pair on each foot.  Felt weird, but did what needed to be done.

Just like training at the Bach, the training base for most of my service, this week was designed to simulate attacking hills, as if we are in Syria.  One morning, the weather was clear and sunny.  My kitah hiked out to the location of the drill and we spread out in a line.  Now, after the Tarchat from a few weeks ago, many guys in my squad, company and platoon have been out with injuries, either real or imagined.  What this means is that we started with fifteen guys in my squad at the beginning of our service in March.  Those numbers whittled down to about ten after soldiers sustained random injuries that dropped them from being combat fighters, guys going to commanders' course, or falling to jobs.  And finally, after the Tarchat, and all the injuries that followed, we fielded five soldiers and one commander in the field this past week.

This one drill was the highlight of the week.  We crawled up a slight rise to get into an attacking position.  I had two magazines loaded into my M-4, ready to unload on the grassy dune that loomed 100 yards before us.  Supposedly it had a number of terrorists (paper targets) pockmarked on the dune.  We crossed the open field in spurts of thirty yard sprints, shooting while jumping back to the prone position.  When we reached the dune, we climbed and laid at the top, shooting at the targets and balloons at the next dune.  We climbed/slid down the first side, ran around its side and up the next, slipping because of the mud and loving every minute of it.  I finished a magazine and loaded another.  Then another.  I shot around seventy bullets for that one exercise.  Maybe a bit much, but more fun.  And the M-4 is a lot of fun to shoot.

Preparing for gun drills, with Matthew, Adam, and Shmaya

The rest of the time was spent sitting in a tent freezing, eating, having discussions, practicing traversing terrain in different formations, building firing positions, and other exercises.  We thankfully returned to base on Wednesday afternoon.

Thursday morning we wake up and have a run with the Magad, the battalion commander.  10 kilometers.  Not very thrilling but a good run at the end.  It was clear skies, sun was shining, and an incredible view of Mt. Hermon.

I came home to Tel Aviv for the weekend and returned to my apartment in Jerusalem last evening.  Then today I had a yom siddurim to take care of issues with my phone and apartment.  But also tonight is the Superbowl!  Giants verse Patriots.  1:30 AM Monday morning local time.

174 shekels for beer, 215 for snacks, 200 for pizza and $20 for the NFL.com Game Pass.  American lone soldiers getting time off from the Israeli military to share an American tradition together watching on a computer from my apartment in Jerusalem....