Guarding Kibbutzim

Wednesday it was back to base where on Thursday we headed out to do a week of guard duty on communities close to Gaza. Before we went out on Thursday we went to the shooting range for a refresher and some more practice, just in case. Our company was split up to 5 different communities. My community was the furthest away from Gaza - about 800 meters from the fence. We are 8 soldiers plus our commander and we all live in this house on the kibbutz. Compared to everyone else's accommodations, ours was the best. We figured this out when every night our deputy company commander, driver, and medic came back to our kibbutz to sleep. Most of our time here is either spent guarding, sleeping or preparing or eating meals. I have 2 shifts of guard duty - 3 hours during the day and 4 hours at night, which spans all hours of the clock.

As for the food situation - its still passover so the variety of food we can eat is limited. I now agree with pretty much everyone on the fact that passover sucks. The only situation where the holiday is awesome is when you get to eat food made by MY mother. Aside from the limited variety there is also a food shortage as we only get army shipments of food twice throughout the week and before we even started we realized we had to ration the food. We got packages of matzah ball mix which was awesome - we could have made about 100,000 matzah balls except for the fact thatwe were missing the only other 2 ingredients required - soup mix and eggs.

The week was very uneventful except for 2 drills that were held - one of whcih I was happy I didn't participate in and the second was the opposite feeling. The first drill was at 3AM where our commander woke everyone up and they had to practice what to do if a mortar shell/kassam rocket fell within the kibbutz. So how did I get out of the drill? Lucky for me I was already awake and guarding. The second drill I was also guarding throughout its duration. The infantry brigade that is guarding the general area held a drill whcih simulated terrorists within the kibbutz. Since I was already guarding I ended up doing nothing and listening to the radio chatter which was a bummer.

If you have a good eye, the answer is yes - the magazine is loaded in the chamber.