Bye bye Shizafon!!!

I am nearing the end of training. We have finished the actual training and now we just have 2 weeks of annoying things before our ceremony. To start things off they gave us what is called a yom kef, which translates to fun day. On a fun day the army takes you to do fun things like going to a beach to relax and have fun. This week I also had my week of ulpan - hebrew classes on base. I had the same kind of week during basic training. The minor conflict was that the classes started Sunday at 4PM so I wasn't able to attend the fun day. However, this was fine by me because the fun day didn't start out so fun - everyone had to be in Netanya by 7AM. I however had my own fun day because they told me that my first hebrew class of the week started at 4PM so I just had to get to the base before then! FANTASTIC! This means I got to 'sleep in' until about 845! Instead of actually taking the time to sleep in I ended up just going to bed even later than usual and getting my average of 4 hours of sleep before heading back to base.

The week of ulpan was fantastic - not that the hebrew classes were so exciting but knowing what the alternative was made the hebrew classes that much sweeter. For starters I was inside an air conditioned room all week. This week was very very hot. On monday it was the hottest day of the last 365. It reached 46 degrees celcius on base and the entire country worked its power plants to 93% of capacity. A high of 46 also meant a low of 30 at night, which putting it nicely sleeping without air conditioning very uncomfortable. I also got an hour for each meal and got to use my phone whenever I wasn't in class. Typically I am not allowed to even have my phone on me during the day. i didn't do a second of guard duty all week and slept between 7.5-8 CONSECUTIVE hours every night! What was everyone else doing? In short - cleaning and guarding. We had ot clean and organize everything before we gave it back. Think spring cleaning. We had to clean all the tanks and the equipment, the barracks and everything else we used in the past 4 months. People were also doing a hell of a lot of guard duty because the equipment was everywhere and for some reason at times we needed 3 people guarding within an area less than 50 meters. by the way, if it actually interests anyone I managed to learn some hebrew along the way.

This weekend is my last weekend in Shizafon (my base) and the desert! After 7 months of training I'm finally done. When people ask me where I'm from I tell them I'm from shizafon. People think I'm trying to make a joke, but its actually true. Even though I have a room on a kibbutz up north, I don't I don't go there on a regular basis and thus I say that my belongings live on the kibbutz. Every shabbat I manage to end up somewhere else - either visiting friends, or relatives, or I also have the kibbutz, but on top of that I spend half of the shabbats on base in Shizafon. i can only remember one occurrence in the last 7 months where I was in the same city/town/base/kibbutz/farm/etc. for 2 consecutive shabbats. And on top of that I have only been in Israel for 13 months - 7 of which have been spent in Shizafon. Once i leave this base for something a little more green what do I tell people when they ask me where I live. Do I still tell them Shizafon?

On friday while we were still cleaning and organizing stuff a few of us managed to take a peek inside a merkeva 4 - the upgraded version of my tank - the merkeva 3. my first thought was where is everything? There was so much space it felt like everything was missing! if you understand army lingo the exact expression used was "איזה ת"ש" Specifically, the loader has more room to move (and sleep) there is a semi-automatic loader for the cannon and the loader has his own computer screen. However he doesn't have the ability to have is head outside the tank nor does he have a MAG.

After shabbat it was back to work, we still had 3 more days of cleaning in front of us. On monday night we had a BBQ by the pool on the base where we 'broke distance' with our commanders. Until now our commanders were not allowed to be our friends and therefore we weren't allowed to speak to them or treat them like our friends. At the bbq there were some awards given out and of the 18 tzevets mine was awarded the most outstanding.

In the last 3 or 4 hours of cleaning the tank one of the things we didn't get around to doing was cleaning the nooks and crannies and the floor itself. After about an hour and a half of cleaning with a toothbrush and a wet sponge my commander tells me to get out of the tank. Once on top of the tank I saw one of the mechanics with a power washer. I couldn't believe that they waited until the last few hours to bring a power washer when the dirty tank has been sitting there for a week and a half. I didn't even care that in 5 minutes the power washer was 4 trillion times more effective than I was because they would have found me something else just as boring to do.

Wednesday mornign we left shizafon for good! We had a sports day in Herzliya (just outside tel aviv) but i was given the day off to take care of business. It's nice to know that now I will be spending my time near trees and not in the sandy rediculously hot desert. I have my ceremony today and I still have no idea about what is happening to me after the ceremony. I don't know what pluga I'm going to or when I'm going there - the options are either right away after the ceremony or first thing on sunday.

War Week

After another shabbat on base I was ready for war week. Before we start every week we have a safety lecture regarding specifics about the week so they ended up spilling the beans so to speak (or so I thought) regarding thing they would end up making us do. One of the things they stressed was regardless of what happens nobody is to load the magazine into their gun unless there are direct orders from a commander. On sunday at lunch - about an hour before we headed to the field to start the week my commander told my tzevet (minus our driver because he was at home and not coming back to base until Tuesday) that we were staying on base to do tank maintenance instead of participating in most of the war week. I think im being naive when I say that most people would have been thrilled about that news. In fact everyone else wan'ted to take my place! Tank maintenance on base is pretty much a free pass to do nothing and relax. I had to find a way to get out of tank maintenance duty and join everyonelse for war week. I have a twisted idea of what is fun. A part of the reason for them needed people on base was to also be a part of a first response team in the event that there was an emergency in the area. Luckily the platoon commander's loader was not feeling well and I asked the commander if I could switch with him. After he thought about it he came back to me and said yes! Phew! What a relief that I would be able to participate - and even better, I would be with the platoon commander. Since there are more people than tanks there are typically 2 tzevets per tank, except for the platoon commander who only has the one tzevet. This means that the entire time I would be participating and they wouldn't take me as an extra person to go and do other bullshit. When I boarded the bus to the field with a smile on my face everyone waswondering why I was there because they all knew I was supposed to be on base. When I told them that I asked to switch with the suck guy and they said yes I got comments like 'are you crazy?', 'your nuts', 'your an idiot', 'your messed in the head', etc. However my favourite comment was 'how do you have a university degree? Your an idiot!'

To put this into perspective, writing this story from the other perspective would sound something like this. Shit - this week is war week. I'm going to get no sleep on the tank and they are going to wake us up numerous times every night. They are going to work us like gos - its going to be hell. I just found out that they are keeping me on base to do tank maintenance! How did I get so lucky? I feel like I won the lottery!

Once we got to the field we still didn't really start he week. We thought that the second shabbat went out ( the end of our weekend) they would come running at us and yelling get your stuff. Now! Move move move. It still hadn't happened and we were already in the field. Finally it happened at around 8PM on Sunday. Grab your helmet, bulletproof vest and regular equipment vest and get to the tank NOW! Rule number 1: you can only remove your helmet and vests when you go to sleep in the tank. Now you all have 2 minutes to run to your bags and pring your phone and watch (we wouldn't be needing those things throught the war week). We got on the tanks, drove about 200 meters and set up for sleep in the tank. As I have mentioned there isn't much room for me to stand in the tank, and speeing would definately be uncomfortable. I didn't sleep well, waking up numerous times to switch sleeping positions. It wasn't a matter of getting comfort able, it was about contorting my body in such a way that I wouldn't be in pain.
I woke up after a horrible nights sleep, and to my surprise they actually had let us sleep our regular 6 hours. I couldn't believe that they hadn't woken us up in the middle of the night. Maybe things were going to get harder starting on the Monday and they just wanted to give us a break the first night. The first thing we did was to prep the tank for our first exercize which was on the platoon level. When we do exercizes on the platoon level or higher, the loader's job is made a lot easier (and less fun) because we are not allowed to fire from our MAGs or M16 because of safety concerns. One of the interesting things was that I was in the tank with the platoon commander so I could see everything that was going on as it unfolded while he was giving the orders to the other two tanks.
The rest of the day was relatively dissapointing for a war week. we didn't do much of anything - just preping the tanks for the next exercise. We spent a lot of time sitting around thinking why the hell aren't they making us do stuff? where's the fake war? It was more like we were at war with boredom. We went to bed at night and once again I woke up to light outside. And this time I was upset, and the first thought that came to mind was how the hell did they not wake us up in the middle of the night??!?!?! In the morning we spent time learning about anti tank missiles from a special forces anti tank unit (Orev Givati) who came to partake in an exercize with us. We learned a lot about the threat that then antitank missile causes and how we deal with it. The exercise of the day, which I didn't get a chance to participate in was to maneuver a platoon of tanks through a wadi - which is a dry riverbed. The objective of the exercise was to spot the anti tank missile crews. For those of us like me who weren't in the tank, we got dressed up in 'enemy uniforms' (old US army uniforms) and sat on the side of wadi throughout the exercize. I should be more specific - I didn't side on teh side of the wadi, I lied down and went to sleep for a few hours!
For the third night of sleep in the tank I decided to sleep outside ontop of the tank, which was a lot more comfortable than sleeping in the tank. Four people can sleep in the tank, and you can fit up to about another 12 on top of the tnak for a total of 16 people. Now obviously 16 people sleeping on the tank would be non ideal conditions, but than again even if here was one person nly on the tank I don't think it would be possible to get a comfortable sleep. Again to my surprise I woke up after a full night sleep without unexpectedly being woken up by the commanders in the middle of the night.
Wednesday was the company wide exercize, which was going to be awesome. It was without ammunition, however because I was in the tank with the company commander I would have the chance to seehow he works and get to see everything as he sees it. The beginning of the exercise was somewhat boring, because we were just looking at the field and splitting up responsibilities. About 5 minutes before we were about to go on the 'attack', we ran into problems and the transmission oil temperature started to overheat. After waiting for it to cool, we ran in to oil pressure problems, which basically rendered us useless. So the company commander called over another tank, and he switched spots with its commander and continued on the attack. That was a real bummer because right then and there the exercise stated to get interesting. I listened in on the radio and heard all the commands. After a while we got out of our tank to walk up to a point where we could see what was going on. After a while we started to get hot and wanted to find some shade. I ended up going to sleep on the tank for about an hour an a half before the mechanics came and woke us up. By this time the exercise had finished, and I was pissed off because I had missed it because of our piece of shit tank. With the conclusion of that exercize we had finished 'war week'. The fact that the tank broke down and I ended up missing the exercise tells how the week went - not how I expected and not my idea of a fun war week. The week was less of a war week as it was a week without luxuries - phones, watches, tents, beds, and light in the nighttime.
The rest of wednesday and Thursday was spent taking apart everything we had built up in the field for the past 4 months. After 4 straight weeks in the field we had finished all of the training in the tanks and with the 2 remaining weeks we have a week of logistics (cleaning, organizing and returning all of the equipment) and a concluding week. The best part of the logistics week is that I don't participate in it!!!! Instead of logistis I get a week of hebrew classes on base! On July 1st, I officially finish training and have my ceremony where I receive my warrior's pin.

Tank crew test

This week we headed straight to the field. As I mentioned last update that I had 3 minutes to pack my bag for the weekeend and the folowing week. I also mentioned that I hoped I didn't forget to pack anything that I needed this week. Well, I didn't forget to pack things I needed but one of my bags din't make it to the field. The bag had 3 very important things I needed - my hat, gun cleaning equipment and food. Once we got to the field we startd to set everything up for our final test in the tank. The test covered everything we had learned on the tanks. There were several parts to the test including an oral section where I had to answer questions about the tank maintenance and how to fix specific problems in the tank. The main part of the test was firing lots of ammo during a course that we hadn't previously practiced. Another aspect of this test was that the company comander was command my tank and not my regular commander. This was because at the beginning of the training 4 months ago I had been chosen to be in the company commander's tank crew, and he would be commanding us during the test as well as during the company wide exercize.
Surprisingly I wasn't nervous or overly excited that he was commanding us for the first time. We have practiced all the drills so many times that it doesn't matter who is in the commander's seat or any of the other seats for that matter. It's very much business as usual and I know what my job is so I just have to do it like I was taught. Another advantae of bein with the comany commander was that we got to go first. This was advantageous because it meant the guns were clean and less of a chance of gun jams. The course went well with few jams therefore we were able to fire all of our ammo. I shot about 100 bullets from my MAG and finally emptied a magazine (29 bullets) in automatic mode from my M16. I still think the MAG is more fun.
Thusday when we got back to base late in the evening they hada BBQ for us as a sort of congradulations for finishing the test. The best part of it was that ther were chicken wings! It wasn't like what Iwas used to back at home but after eating shit for a week in the fild it tasted incredible. I can't unbiasedly determine if food tastes good or not naymore because my definition of fresh food now includes anything that has been eaten from a can within 5 minutes of the can benig opened. I often nd a second oppinion as whether the fod I eat actually tastes good.
Friday we had the last part of our test which was a multiple choice test on the computer. There were 5 different topics to the test and each section had about 20 questions. Each test had a time limit but they removed the time limit for me, becuase of my difficulty with hebrew. Most people were done the tests within an hour. I completed 4 of the 5 tests in 2 hours and 40 minutes. I managed to complete most of it on my own without any help but from time to time I needed to ask for an explanation on a number of things I didn't understand in hebrew.
With the completion of our crew test we are now advancing to the levels of platton and company exercizes. A single tank never goes out fighting alone - tanks always fight at the minimum level of the platoon which is 3 tanks. We started to have classes about the strategies and tactics in fighting as a platoon which was very interesting to learn.

The fastest 10km

Thursday we woke up at 430AM to participate in a run that was put on by the army. We drove an hour north to go for a run and then drive back 1 hour to the base to do a bunch of bullshit for half a day before we went to bed and then home Friday morning. It was a real nuisance that they didn't let all of us go home after the run. Just before leaving the base they gave us 2 minutes to leave our guns in the barracks and get on the bus. As I put my gun away one of the commanders wanted to confirm with me that I had my alef uniform (my public one - meaning I was going home after the run!) I told him that nobody told me I was going home. He told me to hurry up - pack my bag to go home in addition to packing my bag for the following week because we weren't returning to the base before going to the field. I managed to pack everything I needed (I hope) and get on the bus in about 4 minutes. It's amazing how quickly one can move when you find out your going home one day earlier than expected after being on base for 15 days. So what was the occasion? I got to get fitted for insoles for my boots which was in Herzliya.

So aside from the excitement of going home, back to the run. It was a huge event with thousands of soldiers and other civilians running. There was a 3km and a 10km run. I opted to do the 10km run and only one other person in my company did it as well. The longest I had ever run before was 8km so no matter how I did I was going to be my fastest 10km ever. My time ended up being quite good - 53 minutes.

I head back to base for 2 more weeks to finish up training in the tank. After that its 2 more weeks of bullshit and on July 1st I have my end of training ceremony. Next week we have our crew test in the tank. Until now all the exercises we have done in the tank we review exactly what we are going to do before we step in the tank, but for the test everything will be a surprise. Once we complete the test i will technically passed training and I will become a full licensed combat soldier.

Technical training week 2 and 3

After shabbat it was back to the field for a week of training with the tanks and ammunition. We did 2 different courses - one at night and the second during the day. We finally started firing real shells which is a lot more fun than the practice shells because firstly there is a big boom and a massive 70 ton recoil of the cannon in front of my face. It's also a lot faster and easier to load the real shells. I was also able to shoot my MAG and M16 in automatic mode. The crappy part was that gun jams only allowed me to fire 8-10 bullets from my MAG and from my M16 - only 1!!!

At the end of the week instead of spending shabbat on base they sent us down near Eilat to guard the border with Egypt. Instead of being able to sleep on a base in a room with a bed and eating lukewarm prepared food which is typically more tasty because its Shabbat an doing minimal guard duty, I had the following conditions:we got dropped off on the side of the road close to eilat - we set up shop 30 meters from the road and 30 meters on the other side was the border. Our mission - 28 hours of guard duty (the duration of shabbat). I clocked 9 hours of guard duty, and the rest of the time was spent sleeping. For the 7 of us we were given food (battle rations), water, a camoflauge tarp to build our shelter, some poles to hold up the shelter, string and a hammer. The personal belongings I had to bring with me were my vest and its accessories, sleeping back and jacket (yes it can get cold at night, and additionally it can double as a pillow. On top of those items I was ALLOWED to bring all of the following items: toque, gloves and a neckwarmer ( come as a package with the jacket), sunglasses, toothbrush and toothpaste, snacks and this booklet where I write my blog (it is important to note that the pen was borrowed from someone else). No phone allowed, no reading allowed, no fun allowed. Its a good thing I have this blog to keep myself entertained and semi-sane. After taking away our weekend we go back to the field for another week of training where I get to launch my first mortar shell!

After dinner on saturday night they drove us back to the field. Everything was a big balagan (mess) and nobody knew what was going on with respect to logistics. I ended up sleeping an hour on the bus on the way to the field before having to switch buses. Only the smaller bus was able to go down the massive hill in the field. The driver of the small bus was pissed off because it was 1AM and we were running hours behind schedule - so he refused to make 2 trips to bring everyone to the campsite. Our commanders told us to unload the equipment from the big bus and grab only our sleeping bag and get on the small bus. I maanged to be the last one on the small bus because the driver shut the door when he was ready to drive, conveniently a split second after I got on the bus. Half the company was left at the top of the hill, 2km away from our campsite. I ended up lying in my bed for almost 45 minutes waiting for the people at the top of the hill to walk all the way back to camp after arranging all the equipment which was to be brought in the morning. We got our free hour of time and then went to bed. There wasn't much to do at 2AM with only my sleeping bag and phone. I had already called toronto while we were waiting for the people to walk back, so for the free hour the only thing there was to do was sleep. And that I did - 7 straight hours!!! In the past 2 days with all the guarding and driving we did I managed to sleep almost 21 hours (which is 3.5 regular nights sleep in the army). I am now completely re-energized for the upcoming week.

Sunday and monday was spent doing nothing. It wasn't until Tuesday that my tzevet did our training. Monday afternoon I spent lying in my bed and 'learning'. By about 3PMwe had our first work stoppage due to heat. There are different levels to how they measure what translates to heat strain, but can be better explained as how absurdly hot it is. It reacehd level 5 which means that we stop all work not directly related to primary training we are doing on the tank. The heat strain scale is dependent on a number of factors, not just temperature but to give you an idea it was 40 degrees Celsius in the shade. After about an hour of heat strain level 5 we were suddenly ordered back to work because there was a drop in the heat strain to level 4. I don't know which one of the factors changed but I felt no difference whatsoever between levels 5 to 4. My commander told my tzevet that now we were going to the tank to practice switching pins in the tank tread which is the most physically demanding exersize involving lots of sledgehammering and a tug of war with the tank - just what I wanted to be doing in the 40 degree heat. Luckily there was a mechanic on the tank so we were sent back to doing nothing. phew!

Tuesday was our turn on the tanks where during the day I got to fire 2 mortar shells. The gunner tells me the range and I have to aim the launcher according to the range, load the mortar and turn the dial to fire. It makes a "blooop" sound, then I jump up on my chair with my head out of the tank and wait for about 25 seconds before I see the explosion. The first one I fired was perfectly aimed but offset to the left a bit, but the second was right on target. Again I had the opportunity to fire my M16 in auto mode, but there were other gun jams I had to deal with first. By the time I was al prepared to fire my M16 and had hte safety turned to auto and one moment away from pulling the trigger the commander said "hadal!" - Stop! It was the end of the exercise. shit.

At night we did the same thing we had done the week before during the day, but now at night. The main thing being firing a shell from the cannon. From the loaders perspective, firing the cannon at night is much more intense than during the day.Sound at night is much more intense so the boom is a lot stronger. On a side not 2 days earlier as I was in the process of lying down in my bed to go to sleep while one of the other tzevets was practicing. They fired the first shell of the night and it scared the crap out of a bunch of us. We are used to loud bangs all the time but this was idfferent becuase i twas the first loud bang at night. Additionally the tank was less than 200 meters away from our tent when it fired. I thought how the hell am I going to fall asleep with this noise occurring throughout the night, but eventually I succeeded. So in addition to the loud bang heard from within the tank, there is a big flash inside the turret blinding me for an instant and the entire turret fills with gas from the explosion of the shell. So after not being able to see or breathe for a second its back to work and I loaded another shell as fast as I could. I got to fire from my MAG and M15 again. After shooting about 100 bullets from the MAG I went to pick up my M15 but again we reached the end of the course. shit again