Hard times, but the purpose realized

Sign to the military section of the cemetery in Haderah.

Yesterday, Thursday, near the southern city of Eilat, alongside the Egyptian border, Palestinians coming from Gaza via Egypt crossed into Israel.  They were armed with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, and one had donned an explosives vest.  They walked near a highway and opened fire on a passing bus. Then they sprayed bullets into two more cars and set a mine for a third.  The one with the vest detonated it near another, killing himself and wounding those in the car.  Today, we know that eight Israelis died, including one soldier, who was twenty-two years of age.  Last night and this morning, rockets were fired from Gaza into Beersheva, Ashkelon, Ashdod and other cities.  All of this was unprovoked.

--------------------

The long twenty-one was over.  Now was the first of two two-week stretches.  Then jump school.  In short, imun mitkadem (advanced training) is going by.  In tironut (basic training), I often found it difficult to get my feet on the ground and have a sense of time.  Don't get me wrong: I was well aware of the seconds and minutes and hours all the time, as our commanders drilled that into our heads.  What I mean is that I did not have the understanding of what each week consisted of as I do now.  There were three weeks at the beginning of advanced training, then two sets of two weeks, then jump school, then there will be War Week and then about a month of miscellaneous work then my final masa.  It's a mental game, and in advanced training, the physical rigors outrun the mental stress.

The beginning of this two-week stretch started off easy, and pretty cool: with helicopters!  As in, training with helicopters.  Ok, it sounds incredibly awesome, and it kinda was, but in reality we spent half the day preparing for a few minute experience.  We arrived on base, had lunch and then were told to gather all our combat equipment and walk outside the base, to the same location where we walked into a tent full of gas, another uniquely military experience.

The entire base came out to the field that afternoon, some four hundred soldiers.  The three helicopters flew in from the hills in the distance and landed.  We learned how to quickly enter the cabin of the chopper, sit properly in rows on top of each other, and then jump out when we land.  I've never been on a helicopter before and sometimes thought how I would ever get in one.  Short of taking a tour of the Grand Canyon or some other tourist area, I would never have a reason to fly in one.  But, just like the gas, the military can provide you the opportunity for new experiences.

Not everyone could take the helicopter flight during the day and my plugah (company) had to come back in the evening.  We formed a line as the helicopter landed and ran towards the open door, keeping our heads low.  The first guy jumped in and went to the back.  The next guy sat between his legs and the next guy in front of him.  We're packed like sardines as they close the door and the helicopter lifts off.  I kind of wish it was during the day so I could see the hills and base fade for perspective.  But after literally less than four minutes, we landed and took a bus back to base.

The next day was spent on the firing range doing different shooting tests: running one hundred meters, crawling, running back and then firing five bullets; shooting from two hundred fifty meters; shooting standing from fifty then prone at one hundred, etc.  It was a relatively easy day.  At lunch, as everyone went to eat, I stayed behind to guard our equipment.  My MemMem (platoon commander) was still there and had a few words for me.  He asked me how everything was, and I responded that all is ok, of course.  My life has been harder with the MAG, and he commented how impressed he's been with my work as of the past month and a half.  Life felt good.

That evening started a holiday: Tisha b'Av, the ninth day of the month of Av.  It is the saddest day in the Jewish calendar.  To begin with, after witnessing the most spectacular and incredible event in history, the presence of God and the giving of the Commandments and Torah at Mt. Sinai, the Jewish people were persuaded not to enter the Promised Land and were thus destined to spend the next forty years wandering in the desert.  In addition, the First and Second Temples were destroyed on the ninth of Av.  Also, World War I broke out on this date.

Jews fast out of commemoration and remembrance.  Thus, in the military, we don't do anything.  It's a free day to rest, sleep and organize and fix our equipment.  And this was all necessary because the next day was a troop inspection by a high ranking officer.  All the next morning we laid out our equipment, spread out the MAG and Negev bullets, displayed the stretchers and radios, and donned our combat vests and helmets as the officer walked around, looking and scrutinizing everything.  The inspection lasted well over an hour and included a quick test of each individual's pakal (specialty).  He gathered all the MAGists and asked me to demonstrate how to deal with a jam, reload, take apart the weapon, etc.  This whole thing was essentially a check on my commanders: on the company commander and on down.

At the end of it all, we packed up our equipment and went to dinner.  Then we prepared for a 25+5 masa with thirty percent body weight.  We had heard that when another plugah did this masa, nearly ten soldiers didn't finish it.  Wonderful.

That day everyone weighed themselves before and after their equipment to make sure they carried only thirty percent of their body weight.  Unfortunately, that's not the case for me.  I needed to carry all of my MAG equipment.  I weighed 87 kg with just my uniform.  My MAG and all the equipment later and I weighed 124 kg.  42% body weight.  Wasn't going to be easy.

And it was HARD.  The first six kilometers are always the hardest.  You walk/stride/jog at a quick pace with all of the equipment.  Instead of building up to a fast pace, we immediately begin with a rapid stride and it takes your body most of the first hour to loosen up, become accustomed to the rigor and sweat enough to begin to cool down.

With all of the MAG equipment, my lower back, shoulders and feet started to hurt about halfway through.  The MAG itself is a heavy weapon, weighing over 10kg (22lbs).  At times I rested it on my shoulders, until my commander told me to hold it normally.  One great moment was when the barrel came off.  The MAG has two barrels because each one heats up and can be dangerous to shoot with.  Thus, it's pretty simple to take one off and without realizing it, I did.  But not to worry!  It provided me with a good ten minute respite from the monotony of walking!

At a break, I was talking with the other lone soldiers.  We were doing our normal complaints, asking how it is for each other, etc.  The same commander who enjoyed having me do pushups started questioning me: "You want to make aliyah, right?"  Yes.  "Why don't you speak Hebrew now?"  Because I'm with my American buds.  Chill out.  "I think you're scared to speak in Hebrew."  Yeah, up yours.  (Ok, I really didn't say the last thing to him.)

We finished at 3 AM and got to bed at 4.  The next day we went out to the shetach in the middle of the afternoon for Shavuah Machlekah (Platoon Week).  This "week" really was half a day, but combined with the masa, from which all of us were still in lots of pain and discomfort, it capped probably the hardest 36 hours of my life.

To operate as a machlekah/platoon, my citah/squad provides covering fire (compliments of me and my MAG) while the other two squads advance.  Luck would have it that my particular squad, out of entire plugah (company) is one that advances as well, which means I have to run with my weapon to and past the other citahs.  Essentially, my position is like that of a light-machine gunner, but I have a heavy machine gun.

The first run through was during the day.  I was FINALLY allowed to shoot my MAG in the shetach!  I was so pumped.  But instead, my barrel had problems and I could only shoot a measly five bullets, single fire.  Then at night, a commander gave me a belt of thirty bullets, which I rattled off within seconds.  Finally, after not really sleeping that night (we were given time between 2 and 4 in the morning to snooze), I loaded up with bullets and when given the command, let loose.  Fun fun fun fun fun.  I tore up the hillside, even aiming at a few barrel drums or trees for target practice.  I would finish one belt and reload another.  I shot nearly or over two hundred rounds.  One of the coolest things was when my citah was all in prone position, providing covering fire.  On my left was a soldier with an M16.  My commander was on my right with an M4.  I was in the middle with the MAG.  I've written before about "feeling" the power of these weapons on the shooting range, but here we were in the shetach, and all three of us within ten feet of each other.  I was engulfed in shockwaves.  It was, in a word, incredible.

And then I had a problem.  I had finished a belt, or rather, thought I had finished a belt, loaded another one, pulled the trigger, and BOOM, a small explosion from within the body of the MAG.  Fire, smoke and gunpowder shot out and the breeze carried it directly into me.  I coughed and coughed, but was fine.  Stupid me, I had forgotten to make sure the barrel was clear of bullets.  Evidently, it wasn't and another one was fired into the previous one, creating the mini explosion.  No harm done, but it took us a while to untangle the bullet casings that had gotten twisted together and stuck in the gun.

On the way back to base, we had a mini masa.  All of the equipment we had carried out, instead of piling it into a bus like we did on the way out, we were lucky enough to carry it back, with people on stretchers, the four kilometers back to and inside the base.  I carried my personal pack with my MAG equipment.  Really hard.

The rest of the day I spent two hours cleaning my gun, then lunch.  Then the MemPay (Company Commander) revealed which citah had performed the best during Shavuah Citah Mitkadem: mine!  Our reward?  Go home?  Free time?  No and no.  Some snacks after lunch.  Wonderful.  Then we had a discussion as a platoon and, as luck would have it my contact fell out and my Platoon Commander acknowledged the work of one soldier in the group: me.  It was great for him to say how much I've improved as a soldier and how I've taken the MAG without complaint and excelled with it.  Of course, all of this was translated by a buddy of mine later.  Thanks, as always, Eliyahu!

Then we had a bunch of nothing, then Shabbat.  And it was a great Shabbat.  No guard duty.  No kitchen duty.  No nothin'!

This past week was a time for some of the guys to go to a new base and learn new pakals, new assignments.  I wasn't one of those guys.  The MAG, I was told, is important enough a specialty so I wasn't able to learn about GPS, or driving armored vehicles, or an automatic grenade launcher.  But it's alright.  Instead, however, about half of the plugah stayed at our base and did kitchen work or grounds cleaning.  I was able to get out of Tuesday thanks to a Yom Siddurim.

And then the best thing happened.  My commander called me that evening.  As is expected, I didn't answer his first call.  But he called right back, so I picked it up and he told me that I have a "hazkarah" the next day, a similar thing to what I did on Yom Hazikaron.  What he was telling me was that I had another day off!  What luck!  The next day, Shmuel, another lone soldier from New York who had a yom siddurim and also the hazkarah, came to Tel Aviv and then we went to Haderah to the cemetery.  When it was over, we went back to his place in Jerusalem, changed into civilian clothes, then went to a couple bars.  Take advantage!

We came back to base yesterday, did more of nothing and then this morning, got up at 3 am for the "buchan plugah," a fitness test.  We wore military pants, running shoes and workout shirt, with our combat vests and gun.  It was the entire company together.  We ran two kilometers and then one more with stretchers open and people on them.  Then we ran out to the firing range and split up into our platoons.  Two groups.  Run two hundred meters, crawl back ten, run the rest, then shoot three bullets kneeling and three more prone at a head target forty meters away in two minutes and forty-five seconds.  It was fun.

Now I'm finishing this post and about to head to Jerusalem, where Shmuel, Eliyahu, Shmaya and Effy (another lone soldier from Down Under) are spending Shabbat together.  Go to the kotel for prayer, maybe bring our guns....?  Who knows what could happen when you got five crazy guys, nuts enough to join another country's military and are given just a few hours off every few weeks.

This morning, after the buchan plugah, we showered and were all ready to leave....but couldn't.  Because of the terrorist attacks yesterday, we were held up a few hours as the IDF's higher command decided whether or not to keep us on base "to be ready" (whatever that means, probably just guard duty).  Things are getting serious.  I just hope when the time comes that Israel needs its soldiers, we will have completed our training and will be ready to fight.

And this is what it is like to shoot the MAG:

Pardon my French, but pretty frickin' bad@$$.

And, two more weeks until jump school....

"Closing 21"

...sounds forbidding, doesn't it?  Ok, maybe not to someone unfamiliar with the term or its circumstances.  Alas, allow me to enlighten you, as it is not something you want to hear in the army.  It means you are on base for three straight weeks, "closing Shabbat for twenty-one days."  But "closing twenty-one" isn't so bad.  The hardest thing is to think about home.  If that's not an option for three weeks, then there's no need to worry yourself and the time goes faster.  In addition, as my friend Shmaya from New York put it, "you're on base, the first of the month comes around, and next time you go home, you have a lot more money in the bank and no time to spend it!"

These were going to be three tough weeks.  First off, it was coming right after my regilah (break) week.  In addition, these were going to be three weeks in the shetach (field).  And it was the start of imun mitkadem, advanced training.

Indicators of experience:
Watch cover
received after the 6k masa

I had almost no trouble getting back into the swing of things after my week of rest and relaxation with my friends at the beaches and clubs of Tel Aviv.  That Sunday we had our first krav maga session.  It's about time we learned some close-hand combat!  My Mem Mem (platoon commander) had commented that it was unfortunate we don't learn more krav maga, but the reality and time restraints of our training don't allow for the proper time required for its training.  This session we learned how to fight with our guns, much like our last session at Mikveh Alon.  After it, we finished packing our bags for the shetach and went to bed.

A few hours later, or at three or four in the morning, we woke, boarded a bus with our equipment, and drove off to the shetach for Shavuah Citah (Squad Week).  This week was to learn how to attack a hill as a squad.  For some reason, something that even my officer didn't quite know why, but I brought my MAG and all its equipment.  I had the gun strapped around my shoulders and the heavy vest on my back climbing up and down hills, providing covering fire and then running to catch up with my squad as they advanced.  The worst part?  The "covering fire" was just me shouting "MAG-a, MAG-a, MAG-a" over and over and over.  No actual bullets were fired on my part.  Wasn't exactly the most thrilling time for me in the shetach.

We did our daytime exercises, had lessons all day about the different specialty weapons in a squad, then had our nighttime exercises, and returned to base at three in the morning.  Hour free time before bed.  Over twenty-four hours awake.

We came back because Monday was a fast during the day.  It's the Seventeenth of Tammuz, a daytime fast to remember when the walls of Jerusalem were breached before the destruction of the Second Temple.  We woke late and then I met with the Mishakit Aliyah with the other lone soldiers to review for another test on our training.  The fast ended that evening and we returned to the shetach.   We slept, woke, did our daytime drills, slept during the middle of the day, and then watched a helicopter shoot up a few barrels with a Vulcan cannon.  My entire plugah (company) gathered on a hillside and waited as night descended to watch the reservists practice their drills.  It was pretty cool, if overhyped.  You could barely see the helicopter.  You heard the cannon fire and saw sparks shoot up a few hundred meters away from it.  It shot three times.  We did our nighttime drills and then returned to base.

Or rather, to the kitchen.  Again, not fun work being in the kitchen, but there are times that it beats being in the shetach!

For the weekend, my machlekah (platoon) went to Hebron for guard duty.  No one really gets excited about the prospect of a long weekend standing up and missing out on a relaxing Shabbat back on base.  For me, at least this was different than the last time I was in the city of Judaism's second holiest site.  We woke early and packed up to go.  This time, Kfir, another infantry unit, was on duty in Hebron.  The machlekah was split up and I was sent to a base with about forty of us.  I started guard duty at four in the afternoon and didn't end until ten.  Standing.

So where was I guarding?  Specifically?  Let's just say, from this photo from almost exactly a year ago, you can almost see where I was.  Off to the right is a street, or more like a dirt path, that leads to an Arab section of the city.  About fifty meters up that path is where I stood.  My surroundings looked like a scene in the video game "Assassin's Creed," a game that takes place in the Holy Land during Medieval times.  I'm completely serious.  I stood on a platform ten feet above the road, across from a house.  Really it was just a makeshift metallic slab that constituted a door and a tangle of stairs that disappeared into a construction of brick, wood and mud that called a house.  In addition, they had a horse and cart.

There were little kids in the area.  Either they walked through or played in the turn in the road, or peered out at me from behind green-barred windows.  (Why do I mention they're green?  Because I think they're intentionally that color as it is the color of Islam.  Hence the Arab section.)  I'm dressed in full combat gear, complete with a bullet proof vest filled with ceramic plates.  Heavy and gets hot.  Also difficult to bend over to pick up your water.  But you feel like you're doing something legit(imate).

And I was doing something important.  Around seven at night, people, meaning Jews, starting walking down the path towards the Tomb of the Patriarchs for Shabbat.  I was standing, protecting my people as they went to practice our faith.  Isn't that why I'm here?  Hell yeah it is.  It was tough standing for six hours.  It was tough to see a two-year old Palestinian girl throw a rock at me.  But it was great for the young and old, the men and women to take the turn in the road, look up at me in my uniform, wave or give a slight salute and greet me with a "Shabbat Shalom!"  An ego trip?  Ok, maybe a slight one.  Fulfilling?  Definitely.

Tzanchanim tag
received after 7+1 masa

The ten or so of us who were on duty for that shift were picked up and returned to the Kfir base at the end of the evening.  Then we had a Shabbat meal with the base.  It's cool to have one on an operational base; it's what military service is really like.  But the next morning, woke up for a seven to eleven shift, then a quick afternoon break and back again from five to eight.  I was located at a closer location to the Tomb for the morning shift and was able to have short conversations with the Jews as they passed.  I was able to converse pretty easily in Hebrew.  I always made sure to say something if I heard English.  There was a group of guys from Brooklyn who I got to know that morning and we had a nice conversation about the army, America, politics, Judaism in the evening.  I also received quite a few invites for Shabbat and even for places to live.  Jews helping Jews is a beautiful thing.

(For me, in Hebron, for the first time, the Islamic call to prayer became a noisome cacophony of sound.  I was saddened and surprised to feel this way.  I've heard the call numerous times before and always thought it a beautiful thing about Islam.  In fact, the Arabic that i sounded from the tops of the minarets strikes at the beginnings of my interest in the Middle East.  For me, songs and sounds, both in Hebrew and Arabic, of this region are so full of yearning; for truth, for understanding, for reason.  It transports my mind to a much different realm, in time and place, to the beginning of beginnings, to where answers can be found to some of the most fundamental aspects and questions of life.  It makes me realize how old this place is, how many centuries people have lived here and throughout the wars, conquests, and disputes, still live everyday.

The sound is of yearning.  It was this sound that probably had the biggest impact on bringing me back to Judaism.  When I first heard the song "Yedid Nefesh" at the Western Wall a year and a half ago on Birthright, the sense of yearning and simple desire to live that the vocals arose within me made me think of my people being loaded into box cars, about them forming lines and being told who will live and who will die, and primarily, of walking out into a forest to dig their own grave, be shot, and fall in...all because they are Jewish.  How can I not want to fight back?

But I digress.  The call to prayer those two days in Hebron all jumbled together to hurt my ears.  Maybe all the mosques are competing for air space.  It seems like businessmen know no boundaries.  The commercialization of religion?  Topic for another time and place.)

One week down.

The start of the next week was a time of catch-up for me.  Back during Pesach, I got extra time off and missed throwing grenades.  About two dozen of us in the plugah were yet to learn to throw and Sunday was the day to finally catch up.  We again put on the protective vest under our combat vests.  Climbed up a hill and practiced with a rock and dummy grenade before the real thing.  The whole while, I had a live grenade in a pocket on my vest directly over my heart.  Honestly, it was a little freaky.  The guns and everything don't bother me.  This highly explosive devise with a kill radius of eight meters and can wound up to fifteen meters made me a bit nervous.  I pulled the grenade out of my vest and pulled the pin.  Thrust my arm behind me and threw it.  I ducked behind the bunker.  I heard the lever fly off with a surprisingly forceful noise and counted for four seconds.  Then BOOM, 1,024 pieces of shrapnel flying out in every direction.  Even from a distance at the bottom of the hill, you see the violent explosion and then hear the noise.  It's quite incredible how powerful something the size of a baseball can be.  It also made reality for me a bit more real.  War has got to be a terrifyingly hellish time.  Your world explodes into a violent fury of noise and steel.

But for now, I'm still in training.  And I'm relatively safe from everything.  Sure the grenade made me nervous at first, but I approached it like a roller coaster: I'm somewhat scared of heights, but if I'm strapped in, I know that countless people have already done what I'm doing without any harm and I know I'll get through it with no problem.

Discete (dog tag) cover
received after 10+2 masa

After the grenade, I rejoined my plugah to do some shooting exercises.  Run two hundred meters and shoot at a target fifty meters away with five bullets, all in two minutes.  Shoot a target two hundred and fifty meters away.  Shoot at fifty standing, then then kneeling, then prone.  Fun but surprisingly very difficult.  In addition, we did another buchan maslul, the obstacle course.  I improved my time from 8:30 to 8:13.  I'm happy with that time, but will probably do it again.  Looking to get under 8:00.

The shetach experience that week was learning to fight in an urban environment.  It was fun but very hot.  The IDF had built a group of a few dozen square, cement blocks that mimicked buildings and rooms.  We learned how to enter through the door as a unit of two or four, advance into more rooms, walk up and down stairs, and how to climb over a wall with the squad while advancing in a village.  Essentially, I put my back against the wall and bend my knees.  The soldiers climb onto my thighs, then my shoulders, then over the wall.  It builds and tires the legs.

We did countless drills peering around corners, into buildings, entering buildings and clearing rooms.  It was again a little freaky doing the drills with live ammunition.  Each machlekah had a special room to fire in.  The walls were padded with fiberglass and plenty of other thick material.  But the quarters were really small, maybe fifteen feet by fifteen feet.  The first soldier peers around the doorway, spots the terrorists, lets off a few shots, then they both enter and shoot the back wall, spraying their fire from corner to corner.  We certainly wear earplugs.  The room smells of gun powder and you can see the dust kicked up by our boots and bullets lazily waft around the beam of sunlight from a small ventilation hole in the roof, providing the only source of light.  At night, vision was essentially nil.

We finished the shetach after two nights, three days, and came back to base.  One of the machlekahs went to Ein Gedi for guard duty while mine and another stayed on base for guard duty and kitchen work all of Shabbat.  It was really not the quiet, relaxing Saturday that I desperately needed and wanted.  Instead, kitchen work means long days on your feet and guard duty means odd shift hours and an irregular sleeping schedule.  We were on this rotation until Tuesday.  It was a tough last twenty-four hours for me.  Sometime on Monday, word got around that we were going to close another twenty-one starting the following week.  In addition, I had been getting fed up with how completely crappy the jobniks who work in the kitchen as their military service treat us.  We work all week in the field or on base, sweating, bleeding and not sleeping, and then we come to work in the kitchen and these guys expect us to worship the ground they walk on.  Most of them are there because they were injured early on in their kravi service and their just finishing out their three year service in the kitchen.  They probably hate their lives, even though they get a week on and week off rotation.  Sometimes I feel bad for them, but when they yell at us to work and then they go play on their iPhones for hours, I don't care for them.

Two weeks down.

Tuesday evening was the beginning of Citah Mitkadem, Advanced Squad training in the field.  Supposedly it is one of the hardest weeks of training.  To make it a little easier, that afternoon, the entire plugah gathered for a brief ceremony where we broke distance with all of our commanders and officers.  Finally, the mental relief that I wrote about last time was here.  The first two weeks we were still in Tironut (Basic Training).  Now, with calling everyone by their first name and other informalities, the mental stress relaxes, only to be replaced by more physical difficulties.

The beginning of the field featured a short masa (hike): 5+5 (five walking, then five more carrying a stretcher).  And we did it with 35-40% of our body weight on our backs.  We were weighed earlier in the day and then added our equipment for a final count.  I weigh 87kg, and then added the heavy water bag and weighed 118kg.  Never before have I ever weighed 87kg/191lbs.  I've only ever reached about 185, and that's after lifting a lot of weights.  It's my legs, they're getting stronger from all the walking.

And this masa proved that.  It was hard, surprisingly so, despite it's relatively short distance.  At the end of it, we were expecting a 'layla lavan' (white night), where you stay up all night.  Instead, thankfully, they let us go to sleep.  But it's not fun having your uniform soaking wet and trying to sleep outside.  In fact, one of the most difficult things about the shetach is that you sweat so much during the day that when night falls, you start to freeze at night.  And we had received new combat vests the week before, and they cover the entire chest and stomach, which makes breathing and ventilation a little more difficult.

Infantry pin
received after Masa Sammal

Anyway, this was a week (or really a day and a half, which was enough) where my Mefaked didn't even know what the schedule was.  We would receive our orders through the radio and carry them out.  Food would be dropped off at different locations and we had to hike there to get it.  And by hike, I mean carry someone on the stretcher up and down hills, with the weight on our backs, not knowing exactly where we were going, and sometimes our Mefaked also not knowing.

Similar to Citah Week, we also did exercises battling up hills against cardboard enemy targets.  Before one of these exercises at night, one of the guys in my citah got sick and had to leave.  It was a little scary because we had been warned and heard about guys in other units getting heatstroke.  We were sure to drink plenty of water throughout the day as a precaution.  My friend was evacuated by jeep, but we carried on until the next day.  The second morning we woke up and immediately put our packs on our bag, put a heavy guy on the stretcher and followed off after our Mefaked....for over an hour and fifteen minutes, about four kilometers.  It was one of the hardest things I ever did.  There were about six or seven of us carrying the stretcher the entire time.  A lot of time carrying and not much switching.

But then the hike finally, mercifully, ended and we boarded a bus that picked us up to bring us back to base.  The end of the week--the three weeks.  We had a short run that evening and went to bed early.

The other week, the August draftees came to base.  A lot of the Israelis were really stoked that they we are the big guys on campus and not complete novices anymore.  That's definitely not true.  I was personally excited to see them because it showed how far we've come in just four months.  I think back to what we've accomplished, been through and what the new guys will have to endure.  It's just another time marker.  In country for nine months; in the IDF for seven and a half months.

Done with the twenty-one.

On Sunday, we train with helicopters!

All now permanent fixtures
on the uniform, with Shimon