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.
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.
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