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.
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| Indicators of experience: Watch cover received after the 6k masa |
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.
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.
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| Tzanchanim tag received after 7+1 masa |
(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.
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| Discete (dog tag) cover received after 10+2 masa |
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.
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| Infantry pin received after Masa Sammal |
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!
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| All now permanent fixtures on the uniform, with Shimon |
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