Un-Happy Thanksgiving-- Shavuuuz

My place at my family's Thanksgiving dinner table

I'm shavuz.  It's a simple fact.  No other way to call my run of emotions over the past fortnight.  Literally, shavuz means "broken dick" (shavur zayin), but in slang refers to feeling down or depressed.  There have certainly been hard times over the past year, both mentally and physically, but the past two weeks have gotten to me in a new way.  This isn't going to be a very long post...it also might not be the most spirited.  While I'd like to apologize, this is my experience and my feelings during the course of my service.  I'm trying to smile while writing this, but there is only one thing that brings me out of the depths of my mental darkness.  Read to the end.

After returning to Shchem two Sundays ago, my citah and another left for a base in Jerusalem.  Israel's military is organized into three command areas: Northern Command, Central Command and Southern Command.  We arrived at the Central Command base for the sole purpose of doing guard duty.  And that's what we've done for two straight weeks.  That's all we will do for two straight weeks.  We do arbah-shemoneh, four-eight, shifts: four hours guarding, eight hours free.

But the free time is not free.  We have a schedule.  The same one every day.  In fact, I could probably tell you what everyone is doing right now.  Take today for example.  Aside from the fact that I am sitting in David and Amy's apartment writing this post on my yom siddurim, this day would have been no different than any other days.

I woke up at 2:10 to guard from 2:30 to 6:30, in the morning.  Went to sleep for an hour or less until everyone has to stand at 8:00.  We clean our rooms, brush our teeth, shave and shine our boots until 8:20.  Clean our guns until 8:40.  Eat whatever food was scrounged from the cafeteria (there is no breakfast at this base) until 9:00.  Then we have a lesson of guarding the base.  It's the exact same powerpoint we see everyday at 9am.  Depending on the officer giving the lecture, it will end roughly after half an hour.  Then we put on our vests, helmets, guns and kneepads for our commanders to check that we have full ammunition, water and no problems with our equipment.  Then usually we have down time until 12:00 for lunch.  Yesterday, we did yevishim, dry gun drills, like what we would do back in training.  At 11:45, they tell us we have to stand at 3:30 in workout clothes.  The next few hours are to eat, sleep or go guard if it's your shift.  If I guarded at 2:30 that morning, and our rotation is 4-8, that means I guard again at 2:30 in the afternoon.

While I'm spending the next four hours in a guard booth, the rest of the guys will go for a run, do pushups and situps, or some combination.  Actually, we've also done some krav maga workouts.  It's nothing like the intense training that course krava maga puts you through; instead, its some guy who supposedly was in a top-secret unit showing us some moves, how to take someone down quietly, how to operate in a neighborhood, etc.  It's hard to remember everything, but for the time being it's fun and a change.

Dinner is at 6:00.  When I come down from my guard shift at 6:30, I go straight to the cafeteria.  Everyone stands at about 7:15.  We may have a lesson about some equipment or weapon for a bit.  Then we're done at 9:00 to sleep.  Only to start again the next day.

View after the sunrise

The shifts are not always 4-8.  Sometimes you'll get a 4-12 thrown in, so your guard time changes, which means you'll miss some things on some days (like not getting a full few hours to sleep in the afternoon, or not working out).  Some days we do krav maga and a workout.  Last night, for fun, we watched "G.I. Jane."  It was kinda fun to explain things about the movie to the Israelis.  It was also kinda depressing to see, compared to us, how an intense operational unit works.

So, you can see that the eight hours off are not really free time.  What's worse is that when you're done guarding, you become a part of a response unit.  Three soldiers and a commander make up a rapid response team that is supposed to be able to respond to any crisis on the base within minutes.  There would be random times they would shout for our unit to respond, in the middle of the night, as I'm sitting down to dinner, whenever.

You have to constantly be in your uniform, boots on your feet, kneepads on your legs.  Always.  Even if you go to sleep.  When I get down from guarding at 6:30 and go to bed around 9 or 9:30, I sleep with my boots on.  If I happen to wake up when the next group gets done at 10:30, then I can take my boots off.  But usually I'm not waking up until my 2:30 shift.  Which means I'll constantly be in my uniform and boots.

The four hours guarding lend themselves to a lot of time to think.  I think about whether or not I want to become a sniper, what I want to do after the army, what job I want to look for, how I am going to be sure I get my month off to go home, and why I am here.  It's good to think.  I find it refreshing and valuable self-reflection time.  But when a third of my life is spent in this state, it's overkill and has probably done more to get me down than give me a boost for the future.

And then, finally, my commanders.  We're the only ones here from our unit at this base.  We are fighters now, no longer in training.  Yet we often do the miniscule, tedious tasks as if we are still in training.  My commanders, to say the least, are certainly not leaders.  Sure they are my superiors, in rank not age, but they don't command our respect.  They have strips on their arms or bars on their shoulders, and they think they have a world of experience and advise to offer.  I've known the age difference between me and them for months.  But I was really asking myself, "what the hell am I doing here with a Bachelor's Degree and Latin Honors?"

What made these two weeks real rough was a convergence of various different factors and influences.  For one thing, my time on kav is ending.  In about three months I'll be on the Lebanese border, but I had heard from other soldiers that Shchem is really the place where there is a lot of action.  What have I done?  Guard, guard, and more guarding.  At least at the base near Shchem, in the West Bank, it's a different, somewhat dangerous place, which makes life exciting and interesting.  Here at the base in Jerusalem, while there are Arab houses within a stone's throw of my guard positions, it still doesn't feel like an "outpost" or "frontier," as I talked about in my last post.

In addition, this is a jobnik base.  Everyone here has a desk job.  Literally, the thirteen soldiers and three commanders of my unit are the only kravi soldiers on the base.  We are called the "lochem," warriors or fighters.

While there are jobniks on every base, being on a specifically jobnik base gives me a look into the "other half" of the IDF.  Although they make up the overwhelming number of soldiers (I think around 80%), I start to see how truly not everyone can be a fighter.  It's not fair to ask every young man to sign up for kravi.  While there are certainly jobniks with legitimate reasons why they are not fit for kravi (medical, religious, psychological, moral), many are just lazy guys looking to do two to three years and get out.  I feel a big sense of pride with my red beret and my gun, compared to the rest of the base with their easy lives.  They leave for home every day or every weekend.  They arrive at 10 and leave at 5.  My Facebook status last week as I was guarding the main gate in the afternoon: "Ah yes, the jobniks' daily 5pm exercise: the run to catch the bus to go home...go to your families and dinner tables, to your warm showers and clean beds, I shall be here all night, likely not showering, likely not changing out of my uniform, likely not sleeping, guarding you and yours."  Just being around all jobniks made my life seem so much harder.  I wasn't a very happy camper.

Then, last Thursday was Thanksgiving...and I was depressed.  On that day, I wanted out of the base in Jerusalem, out of the army, out of Israel.  I was with all Israelis, not one American, let alone lone soldier, to commiserate with and complain about not being home.  I missed America and my family.  And not one of the soldiers, friends or commanders I was with could understand.  They just can't.  They can't fathom the life that I and other lone soldiers lead.  It was a rough day, a very rough day.

And the past two weeks have been the same, day in day out.

But I've got great news to look forward to!  One week from today, I'M COMING HOME!!!  For an entire month!