Tironut week 4: the MAG!

Sunday we took a day trip to Jerusalem. We went to Har Hertzl again. We were given pretty much the exact same tour so it was a bit boring considering I was just there a month ago, but it was more meaningful to be there now as a kravi soldier. Afterwards we went to the Kotel and a also had a scavenger hunt in the Old City, which was a lot of fun. Not so surprisingly I bumped into a friend of mine in the Old City who is visiting from the states. As we were standing in 2 lines waiting to walk to the next part of the tour I saw him walking down the stairs and said in a rush to my mefaked 'Mefaked, I know him! Can I go over there?' I was pissed off because he gave me literally 60 seconds to speak to my friends who I hadn't seen since the summer. A lot of my friends are in Israel for the December break and conveniently I'm stuck on base and can't visity any of them.



Monday it was back to the field to finish our last week at the shooting range. We had some pretty exciting and difficult exercizes - shooting with gas masks, running with the gas mask and then shooting while out of breath. We also started practicing walking while shooting; up until now all the shooting we have done has been in static positions. We started practicing for our exercize next week which involves 4 soldiers all moving through the field at once, giving commands and shooting while running and in static positions. We started practicing dry runs (without ammunition) and I can already tell that next week is going to be a lot of fun. However, I do have homework this weekend because I need to learn the commands. A lot of them involve Hebrew words I've never heard before so its pretty much like memorizing jibberish. Slowly but surely I'm learning the commands, but its still frustrating that I can do it, but I actually have to sit down and learn it.



We had another masa where we hiked back to the middle of nowhere (AKA the base). Surprisingly the field was a lot closer to base than I expected - every time we took the bus there I managed to pass out instantaneoulsy and it felt like I had a solid nap even though it was only a 10 minute drive. The hike was 6km in about 45 minutes and I had a lot of fun - it was an okay workout for me but still not difficult. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in my machlakah who is pumped up and excited to go on the masaot. Most of the people think I'm absolutely nuts (again, this is nothing new). I'm still upset that I'm not going to get a chance to do masaot like in infantry which are upwards of 50km. In shiryon our longest masa is only (yes, I did say only) 30km. Most of my machlaka was not only unexcited about the 6km masa, but petrified of it. After the masa we received the shiryon pin to put on our beret.



On Friday we spent the day cleaning and doing pushups because we were not running all the dime during our weekly misdar mefaked, where we have to clean all our equipment and our rooms. It's a lot easier mentally to do the cleaning when I know I'm going home the next day. But everyone was not energized because we were only halfway through our 2 weeks on base.



The best part of this week was definately the 20 or so bullets I fired with the machine gun (MAG). It was awesome - there was a lot of kickback with the gun pounding against your shoulder as you hold down the trigger. What a rush! In 2 weeks we finish with the basic training and start learning our job in the tank. I had to rank the 3 jobs based on which one I prefer. I'm not guaranteed to get the job I want but they say they take it into consideration. I ranked the jobs 1 - loader, 2 - gunner, 3 - driver. I want to be the loader because asside from the commander he has the most responsibility in the tank and is second in command. He is in charge of loading (duh) all the shells into the turret, communications and he has the use of a MAG out side the tank, so like the commander he can stick his head out of the tank. I also feel as though the driver has the coolest job if I could do it for about a week, but afterwards I would get bored.