Blog post 100!

Firstly, congratulations to me on my 100th blog post at kaldorskorner! Thank you to my loyal readers, and I apologize for not having this blog post up in timely manner.

After getting off base 3 weekends in a row, staying on base for 2 weeks felt like forever. It didn't help that the work that I was doing made the time go by even slower. We started off the week with a little trip around the golan heights. They took us to outposts on the border with Syria to show us where everything is situated and where all the Israeli forces are supposed to be in the event of an emergency. They told some stories about the Yom Kippur War in 1973 where my brigade played a critical role in defending the golan. The cool part about it was that as they were explaining the battle, we could see exactly where the battles took place. Once back at the base, I spent most of my time working in the kitchen, guarding and pitching a bunch of tents and arranging things to build us a 'base' in the field. One thing that I did that was supposed to be interesting was a tank simulator. They hooked the tank up to something like a virtual reality computer, gave the commander some cool goggles and ran us through a simulator. The driver got to sit in front of a computer and drive with a joystick, the commander as I said had his cool goggles and the gunner sat in his chair in the tank and was able to see what was going on through his eyepiece. I got nothing. They ran us through the simulator and everyone knew what was going on except for me. They gave us a practice shell to load every time the gunner had to shoot from the cannon, but I managed to avoid the actual work by just throwing the switch indicating that the cannon was in fact loaded. Things got a bit complicated when they told me to fire from the mortar launcher. I wasn't exactly sure what to do to fire it because they had some sensors hooked up to it, so I asked if I had to aim it or what exactly I had to do. They said 'just push the button'. Ah, so I pushed the button and continued doing what I was doing before, which was sitting on my chair in the tank and reading the news on my phone. Whenever I had to load the cannon I would lean forward a bit and throw the switch. This entire simulation lasted about 2 hours, and it was boredom to the extreme. After it ended they had recorded everything and played parts back for us to discuss what we did and how to improve. The simulator is primarily geared for the commander and the gunner and was able to identify things that could have been done better. It was really cool to see the simulator work after the fact when they showed us the video, however it was unfortunate that I didn't get to enjoy any part of it.

It was nice to have finished the very boring week, and I had a relaxing shabbat on base where I caught up on sleep and also went out for a 5km run since the weather was perfect after a week of rain, fog and of course, mud. After shabbat ended they told my crew that we were heading to the field to guard for the night. Aside from the fact that in the field there was a lot of rain and mud and a leaky tent that conveniently dripped water all night on my backpack I managed to get another long night sleep because there was nothing to do and no reason to stay awake. There was another tank company there as well guarding their tanks which were right next to our tanks so the 2 hours of guard duty flew by since I had someone that I had never met before guarding with me and we were able to pass the time quite quickly.

This week we learned and practiced how to capture an area that is intended to hold Syrian forced. We did this using both tanks and infantry soldiers. The most interesting part of the exercise was that we had to drive over a rampart which was fairly steep and at a height of about 5 meters. Video below.

After the few days of exercises we drove the tanks to a different area, so I was able to take a nice scenic drive through part of the golan. Its like taking a nice drive by jeep or ATV except its infinitely more awesome because its a tank! While I was moving the tank to a new area, everyone else was taking apart the camp that we had built in order to move it all to the new site. I was extremely happy that I didn't have to participate in the packing up of everything.

Once we got to our destination it was starting to get dark and we were staying the night. We pitched a tent and headed to sleep. It was a really ugly night because it was going to rain. By the time I woke up to guard for an hour at 4AM it had already rained a lot and it looked like it wasn't finished. I was standing literally inside a cloud and I was scared that any minute the sky would open up on me and I would get completely drenched from head to toe. I was guarding the 4 tanks that we had come with and I could barely see all 4 of them even though they were parked one next to another because of the fog. I spent the hour being very antsy and staring at my watch hoping that my shift would end before the rain started. It was a very stressful hour, but I managed to luck out and it didn't rain on me during my shift. In the morning it started to pour - to the point that i had to walk backwards when I was walking into the wind. They drove us to the new camp site where we started to built it all over again - this time in the rain. We were supposed to start our weekly cleaning of the tanks, but it continued to pour throughout the afternoon so we spent a few hours taking shelter in the tents. After the rain let down they sent us to start work. We put in a half assed afternoon of work because it was virtually impossible to actually clean anything because there was nowhere to put the parts of the gun when I took it apart because everything was full of mud. In short, it was a wasted afternoon, but we headed back to base in the evening.

On Thursday everyone was heading back to the field to finish the work that we started the day before, except I got half a day 'off'! I had been requesting my full day off for over a month, but they waited until the last possible minute until they HAD to give me some time off. My ID card was to expire on the upcoming Sunday because that was my scheduled discharge date. Since I had extended my service I had to go to some office in the city to get my card renewed. They waited until the last possible day to give me the time off, and they didn't even give me the entire day. The made me come back to base in the afternoon only to go home the next morning. That kind of pissed me off that they wouldn't just give me the extended weekend. I got back to base and did nothing until I went home on the Friday morning. When I was inquiring what I needed to do in order to renew my card I was told I just needed to go to this one office and they would take care of it and that there should be no problems. Having dealt with Israeli bureaucracy (that in itself is an oxymoron) in the past, I knew things usually don't work out. I get to the office and tell them that I need to renew my ID card. They tell me that I can't do that here - and that I need to do it in Tiberias (at least 2 hours away by bus - I was in Kiryat Shmoneh). Fantastic! I tell them no, I need to do it here and now because I have to catch a bus back to base (there was only one time to catch the bus) and that my ID card expires in 3 days. They say sorry, the closest place they issue the ID cards is in Tiberias we can't help you here. Well, I ask them if they can call the place in Tiberias and get me a temporary pass or some piece of paper saying that my service has been extended. Literally 4 minutes later I got exactly what I needed! It wasn't a new card, but it was a piece of paper that had my new discharge date on it. It really is amazing how stupid people are.