A Week of War to become a Warrior

Me and Michael, my MAG partner, after War Week

I am a military buff.  It's a passion I inherited from my father; he loves reading about history in general and wars in particular.  When I was younger, my family took two separate driving trips through the eastern and western theaters of the Civil War, touring battle sites and exploring the land.  Sounds thrilling, right?  Ok, that was actually not sarcastic!  I formalized my understanding and knowledge of history and conflict through studies in high school and college, in addition to personal learning, which includes reading, movies, etc.  Through all of this, I truly believe that you cannot understand war, or judge someone's behavior or actions in the heat of conflict, until you personally have been in battle.

With that being said, this past week was War Week, a culmination of my training in a week-long exercise in the shetach designed to simulate being....well....in a war.  And did it succeed?  You be the judge.

First let me say that Sunday we had returned to Tel Nof for another paratroop jump.  It was to be my plugah's fifth and my fourth.  On the plane, I was to be the last one in the second jump group.  However, not everyone in the first and second jump groups got out the door in time.  That left me second in the third group.  The guy ahead of me panicked beyond belief, saying that there is no way he can be first, and they switched our yellow cords, putting me at the head of the pack.  What this entails is standing two feet from the door the entire time the plane circles back.  It entails entering the doorway a good two minutes before the plane enters the drop zone, being able to see everything, the sky above, the horizon in front and the ground way below.  It entails looking at the side of the door and not seeing the lights on, then suddenly the red light goes on and you know you have literally seconds before the green light flashes....on....JUMP!

This was an intense, incredible jump.  For my fifth one, hopefully in a few weeks, I would love to be first out the door again.  That evening, my entire plugah received their confats, the paratroopers' wings.  Then we returned to our base.

We prepared our equipment for two days before leaving the base on Tuesday evening.  To start off the week, we were walking out of the base when a wasp stung me on my head.  Literally, just flew in, dug its claws into my hair above my temple, and put its stinger in my noggin.  It was painful and a little swollen, but I was ok.  Just a great way to start the most intense training experience of my life.

All three plugahs (101, 202 and 890) gathered in the field outside the base's fence and as we each waited our turn for helicopters to take a handful of soldiers and fly off deep into the shetach.  My MemPay (Company Commander) had told us before that we are envision not being the shetach around Bach Tzanchanim, but rather in southern Lebanon.  That was hard to do when I recognized every hill and valley we walked through.

And most of the week, we just walked.  There was a rough schedule to each day, much like the days and weeks in the shetach throughout my training.  We would have a day and night exercise or 'targile' and often sleep around noon, during the hottest part of the day.  When the choppers finished dropping the last citah (squad) of the plugah (company) off around midnight, we walked a few kilometers then slept, I think.  To be honest, the week is pretty much one long experience between the sun rising and falling and the stars rotating in the sky.  I couldn't tell you on this day we did such and such a thing or this particular targile.  I have a rough memory of the order of the targiles, but not necessarily their placement in the days.

Anyway, I know the first day we slept for a good five hours in the early afternoon.  We woke up, had field rations for dinner, then walked and walked for hours to the location of the next targile.  We would arrive each evening at the next exercise location between ten or two at night.  After the exercise, we would walk again for hours.  Then maybe be given two hours to sleep, wake up around six for another targile.

Each targile is really a TarPal, a targile plugah.  It is something that defines a soldier as a warrior; once completing these large exercises, the soldier is fit for combat.  Each TarPal can take over two hours; we have a dry run and then a wet run, the first essentially walk-through and the latter with live ammunition.  Maneuvering over a hundred soldiers in an area a square kilometer with large hills can take some time.

For me, I was in a unit that provided covering fire, called Cipah Retik.

(In fact, probably because I'm the only non-Israeli in the group and I'm not shy about my amateur Hebrew level, I would often shout words of encouragement or motivation.  The commander of the unit is a sammal (sergeant), a tough, kinda crazy, guy who will yell horrible, hilarious things at us if he gets upset or frustrated.  He quickly took a liking to me because I would act a bit crazy.  He said to me before the week started, "you have all the 'rabak' in the world."  That's pretty nice praise; 'rabak' is something like spirit and craziness and heart all rolled into one.  It's like the Rebel Yell, except something that you carry within yourself all the time, not just before a battle.  As the week progressed, everyone in the plugah would shout things to me when we passed by, calling us 'cipah rabak' or 'satlanim!' [stoners] a word I had used a few weeks prior to describe the unit.)

I was with my MAG, in its stand, on the top of a hill, overlooking the exercise area, shooting at different spots on the target hill, pretending to blow enemies away.  I never shot the MAG so much.  I would receive hundreds of bullets for each exercise, and fire through them literally within minutes.  At night, I had night-vision goggles (which is pretty awesome) and an infra-red laser on my red-dot sight to see where my barrel was aiming. On one particular evening, I shot literally about five hundred bullets.  In the night vision, the barrel shone white it was so hot.  I said to Michael, my MAG partner, "you want to return to the Bach now [by way of injury]?  Just touch the barrel."  Seriously, a guy from the previous draft returned early from burning his hand on the barrel.

But I would shoot the gun for a few minutes, then at the end of the targile, be required, with the other Magist in the group, to run down my hill/mountain, and up the target hill or hills, past most of the plugah, in preparation for attacking the following hill.  And this is with full ammunition already in my vest, about thirty-five kilograms of weight.  Not fun.  And those few minutes of shooting the MAG couldn't really make up for the hours (literally hours) each day of carrying the weapon as we hiked for kilometers and kilometers.  Each night, we would average around ten kilometers, stopping every hour for a few minutes before continuing.  We didn't follow any roads; instead, as if stalking an enemy, we traversed terrain that brought us to our destination as quickly and quietly as possible, but that often meant climbing up and down hills that would measure a hundred meters or more in height.

One evening, tanks were involved in a targile.  It was at night, and with my night-vision I could see them.  They played only a cursory role in the exercise, providing fire in support of the foot soldiers.  And the fire was also a MAG, but attached to the tank itself.  They didn't fire their cannons.  There were also supposed to be snipers with us, but that never materialized.

We spent Shabbat in the field as well.  This was actually a pretty nice experience.  On Friday morning, after not sleeping at all in the night, we came up the buildings we use for urban warfare exercises, and pretended to attack another plugah that was occupying the area.  We had the next few hours to eat and chill, then given the last two hours before Shabbat for ourselves to relax, take off our vests (which we were never allowed to do at all during the week), go to sleep, whatever else there is to do when you have nothing to do it with.

Evening prayer service was very nice, although short for me because I had to guard the tent full of ammunition.  Seeing all the soldiers, dirty and tired from three rough days, in our uniforms in the field evokes a different emotion than seeing us all clean in our Aleph uniforms in the synagogue on base.  It's almost as if we truly are in combat and taking these few moments to attend to the reason that we fight: our Judaism.

I was finally able to change my socks and take my contacts out for the first time all week.  I slept on Shabbat without my boots on, but the rocky ground made sleeping anything but easy and comfortable.  Then when Shabbat ended, it was right back to work and a two hour hike to the next exercise location.

Every time we hiked, we relied on our MemPay to guide us to the destination.  He received orders from a commander higher up and the MemPay had to find our way to the target.  That required reading a map, which would often require stopping at different intersections, if only for a few minutes.  But each time we stopped, if we were allowed to sit or lay down in prone position, I was out like a light.  And then three, five or ten minutes later, "everyone on their feet!" and we would continue.  With all of this sleep included, I would say we averaged between four and five hours of sleep every twenty-four hours.

And towards the end of the week, sleeping almost became a burden.  How?  Because, for example, one evening, I remember having a dream so vivid that I thought it was reality.  I was in my bed at my home in Chicago, watching a movie or something on the computer.  Suddenly, I hear two sets of snoring on either side of me.  I think to myself, well the first can be my cat, but realize that he passed away a few months ago.  Then, in my dream, I frown and am confused.  The illusion begins to dissipate and I realize that I am not in my comfortable, big bed, with my beloved childhood pet sleeping at my side.  But rather, it's three in the morning, I am in the middle of the Judean desert in Israel, sitting, freezing, in my combat uniform and vest, my hand on the trigger of a machine gun, and Michael, snoring, resting his helmet on my leg, and another guy snoring on the other side.

I soon had a few other dreams that reminded me of home; what the plane ride back will be like, who will pick me up from the airport, who will I see first, what should my schedule be, etc.  While I used to go to sleep thinking about girls to help sooth me and put me in a comfortable, familiar state of mind, I now found myself being averse to those thoughts and would just pass out from pure exhaustion.

Sunday afternoon, as we waited for helicopters to again pick us up and transport us somewhere else, an incredible thing happened: it rained!  Ok, if you're in Chicago right now, I'm sure that it's rained once this week already.  But for summer/fall in Israel, it's incredible.  And that we were in the desert made it....what would you say....a miracle?  At first it was just a few drops, and I looked at the clouds in the distance and saw them moving towards us.  Within minutes, the place was pouring (by Israeli standards).  A bunch of guys tried to find shelter on the barren hill behind they bags or sleeping mats.  Most of us just enjoyed the surprise.  I saw my friend Shmuel being told by one of our commanders to practice handling jams on his Negev light machine gun.  I sprinted down the hill to join him and partake in something that in every other circumstance I hate.  I wanted to crawl, to roll in the mud, to get as dirty as possible from the rain.  But it was not to be.  The MemPay didn't want us behaving like, I don't know what, and soon the rain stopped and the helicopters came to take us away.

After our last targile on Monday morning, we slept for a few hours and awoke at noon to don our gas masks.  This was something I always dreaded.  For one thing, you are not allowed to wear contacts with the masks and you can't fit glasses inside the rubber hoods.  Hence, for me at least, you're left blind.  We had a three kilometer walk back to the base and it was start with these masks.  You can't breathe in them and they become very hot, especially with a helmet on your head.  I walked slowly, staring at the ground, measuring my steps with my breathes.  I heard shots in the distance and saw tear gas canisters come flying towards us, landing in the middle of the two lines, spewing white smoke.  A few of us steered clear of them but I could still feel the sting of smoke, the smell of the gas.  It reminded all too much of the day we ran into a tent filled with smoke.  Fortunately, this walk was just under a kilometer.  We took off our masks, but then loaded twelve people onto stretchers for the final journey to base and into our plugah.

So was this War Week really war-like?  In some ways yes and in many ways no.  We practiced attacking enemy positions with real ammunition, would hike to different locations for "battles," were constantly tired, had an irregular eating schedule and combined different military units such as helicopters and tanks.  But we also had a regular TarPal schedule and routine (day and night; dry and wet), with a briefing and debriefing before and after each exercise, we were never without food or water, once each exercise was completed, that was it until the following one that evening or next day, there was no advance or counter-attack.  You can decide.

Above all, in the end, it felt good to complete the last hard exercise of advanced training.  Now we just have two masas left until I'm done with training.  Yesterday was devoted to cleaning and returning equipment.  This morning, all three plugot had a mini ceremony where the head commander of the base said that we have turned from soldiers into warriors and are prepared for combat.  Today, there was a special event held for the lone soldiers of the base for Rosh Hashanah.  Much like the one right before Pesach/Passover, we received gifts, this time a toaster.  I'm currently on a Yom Siddurim, but have to return, not to base, but to Hebron tomorrow for guard duty for all of Rosh Hashanah!  It kinda sucks; I was looking forward to a relaxing New Year and four day break from the military, but it is not to be.  But now I am reminded of what the Sammal said to me yesterday as we were cleaning our weapons, "I like you, Daniel, because even though you are here for only a year and a half, you know why you are here.  Most of these guys [Israelis] spend their three years having no idea why they are here."  This weekend will be again the reason I am here.