Regila!!!!

As I left off in my last post, I have my second one week vacation since I joined the army 13 months ago. They even let me off in time for rosh hashana - the Jewish new year. (Happy 5771!!!) I spent the holiday with my cousins and spent 3 days sleeping and eating. I am not exaggerating - I literally spent more than 50% of 3 days sleeping. It was nice to catch up on some sleep (but at the time of this blog, 4 days later, I am back to being exhausted).

The exciting news is that on the Sunday I went to Tel Aviv to pick up my plane ticket. Thanks to the Friends of the IDF (http://www.fidf.org) they are paying for my round trip flight! After being in Israel for 1 year and 5 months I finally get a chance to come home for a 2 week visit starting in mid october!!!!!! After running around the city in the morning to get the plane ticket I met a friend for lunch in Tel Aviv, then it was off to Jerusalem to meet up with 2 other friends and unexpectedly bumped into a 3rd. Monday it was back to the kibbutz to catch up on some movie watching. Within a 24 hour period I managed to watch 6 movies. It had been months since I had seen any movie, so it was good to catch up on them and also discover new box office hits that I never knew existed. For example, the movie 'The Other Guys' with Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg - I never knew such a movie had ever been made despite it being a major box office hit during the summer. Based on its ratings and its cast I decided to watch the movie and it was hysterical. I had no idea what I was missing!!!! Tuesday I managed to pull myself off the couch and meet a friend for coffee. All in all, my regila was very relaxing and stress free. I actually had time to relax, unlike my 4 day weekends where I try and do as much as possible.

My biggest accomplishment of the week and the year (yes, both 5771 and 2010) and maybe even longer is that I successfully packed my suitcase (alone I might add) not just hours or days in advance, but an entire MONTH in advance of my flight!!!! One can look at this from several angles. The first being that having been given a week off from the army, so now I have plenty of time to pack my suitcase so why leave it to the last minute? If you think that this is my train of thought you probably have no idea who I am. In fact, I am more of the type of person to leave things to the last minute. So why the change of attitude? Well, I haven't really changed my attitude. Despite the fact that I finished packing an entire month before my flight I still managed to do it at the last minute. How does that work? Well, chances are the next time I will get to my kibbutz will be the day that I have to go to the airport. I will have exactly enough time to be completely stressed out and have to run to my kibbutz grab my bag and run out the door to go straight to the airport. Before I left the base I had asked my company commander when I will be let off base before my flight in order to arrange my things and get to the airport in time. Hopefully I would be given a real answer that would allow me to pack before heading to the airport. He told me not to worry. That statement "don't worry" actually causes the exact opposite effect; not only does it cause me to worry, but it also causes massive amounts of stress. The last time I was told not to worry was in fact not that long ago. I was concerned about when I would be going home for my regila. I knew I was going home on wednesday, but that was precisely the problem. Since Wednesday night was the start of rosh hashana the buses stopped running in the afternoon. The problem was that the people that were coming to replace us were arriving Wednesday morning and we weren't allowed to leave until sometime after they arrived. Long story short, I caught the last bus home, and got there one hour before the start of the holiday. So whats the big fuss? Firstly, if I didn't get off base on time I would have been stuck on base for the holiday meaning the next bus out of the base was Sunday morning. Additionally missing the bus would have been being stuck up north without a place to spend for 3 days. That would be better than being stuck on the base, but not much better. So when my company commander told me not to worry about packing and getting to the airport in time, for me that translates to 'pack now while you still have the chance. Maybe we will give you enough time to get to the airport on time. I can't promise anything and you will receive an answer only at the last possible minute.' I don't know if I will be back at my kibbutz before my flight, so this is how I managed to pack a month early, yet still at the last possible minute.

Its back to base for 2 more weeks. Back to Toronto in a month!!!!!!!!!!!! And finally some pictures!

Me by a waterfall on one of our hikes

Some pleasant surprises

In 3 weeks a lot has happened, so I will change the post layout by separating each topic with a heading.

• Getting sick on an army field trip
• Yom Kef
• The cook: friend or foe?
• My first solo mission
• Surprises

Getting sick on an army field trip

I returned on Monday to the army for a few days of fun. They brought the entire battallion together (everyone that had just come back from their weekend off, that is) and took us to do some fun (and educational) things. Think school field trip, but more fun. This gave me a chance to see friends from training that I hadn't seen since. They took us to Kibbutz Tel Chai which was one of the first settlements in the north in the 20s or 30s. We learned about how they lived and about Josef Trumpledor. He was an officer in the Red Army during WW1 where he lost an arm. He was also the most decorated jewish soldier of any army of all time. He immigrated to israel and helped to found the kibbutz. He was killed when a neighbouring group of Arabs came to tak econtrol of the kibbutz. His dying words were טוב למות ליד ארצנו - It's good to die for our land (Israel).

Perfectly timed after the end of the tour (just as we were were walking out of the building) my stomach decided it wanted to throw up. After feeling a lot better after the puke a few hours later it happened again. It seemed as though I had either eaten something bad in the morning or I got a bit dehydrated. They took me to go see a medic where I puked a 3rd time and they let me get a good night sleep of 14 hours!!! After that I felt fantastic and it was well worth not feeling great for a few hours. On top of that I didn't miss anything fun OR important.

Once I rejoined the group we went on a short hike through one of the streams that flow into the Jordan River. Afterwards we went rafting down the Jordan where it was more of us pushing each other of the rafts. It's more like rafting down a lazy river than anything else.

Day 3 they took us to Kfar Giladi -the first Jewish settlement in the region. The founders of the kibbutz were new immigrants who wanted to live on the values of Jweish work of the land and Jews guarding their land. until then Jews hired arabs to work in the fields and guard them at night. This group of Jews travelled the land to try and convince the communities to hire them for work instead of the Arabs. Without any experience or knowlege of how to work the land or guard it they were not given any opportunities to work. After Finally getting their chance and proving their worth this group started to take on all the work for all the communities in Israel. Anyone who wanted to become a part of the group had to go through a years worth of grueling training before they were accepted. At the end of training they had a ceremony where they were handed a pistol and a bible - similar to the ceremony I went through. This elite group was the best of the best as only 120 people were tasked with guarding and working the land of all the Jewish settlements in the entire land. This organization then turned into the Haganah and later after the establishment of Israel in 1948- the IDF.



Yom Kef

Our fun eneded there and we went back to base to get back to work. Thursday I was told that on the upcoming Monday there was a yom kef (fun day) for lone soldiers and I was going to get to go. SWEEEEEEET!!!! But..... there is always a but. My officer didn't want to tell me what to do or convince me in any way but in short if I 'decided' to go to the yom kef someone else would have to come back to base a day early etc. etc. In short, someone else was getting screwed big time. Fine, I won't go I said and from then on I didn't think a bout it. On Sunday morning out of the blue I was told that I am going. They said 'those are the orders' and I wasn't about to argue or start asking questions.

So how long does a fun day last? Believe it or not the answer is a day and a half! I had to get to a dfiferent base on Sunday because thats where the meeting spot was. I got off duty in the afternoon and on top of that they told me not to take my gun - this is going to be more fun than I thought! I got to the other base, caught up with some friends who are now in other companies and hadn't seen in a while and finally went to bed and slept like a human being. Having gone 4 days without sleeping more than 2 hours at a time I was in need of a normal sleep. I then woke up for the start of the actual fun day. I managed to take another nap on the 3 hour drive to the beach!!! They had a whole lot of fun things to keep us occupied - the water, food, games, music, etc. They also had free massages. I thought maybe I could use one of those after 'sleeping' uncomfortably in a tank for so long. The second I layed down on the table I went from awake to 90% asleep instantly. The table was by far without a doubt the most comfortable thing I have layed down on in over a month. The first 4 seconds of the experience was great - I almost fell asleep, then the massage started. I was tempted to tell the guy just to leave me a lone and take 15 minute break and just let me sleep. The best way I can describe the massage is that someone was trying to wake me up for guard duty and I wasn't cooperating so they start pulling on my limbs and jabbing me in the back. All in all the fun day was a lot of fun. A nice day at the beach with friends I haven't seen in a while and good food - which I also haven't seen in a while.



The cook: friend or foe?

Smoothly moving onto the next topic - food. For those of you who know me you already know that I like to eat. To be more specific, I like to eat tasty things. So about a month ago we got a new 'cook'. I use the quotes because I would say that someone needs to prepare food in order to be called a cook. What he does manage to prepare I have a hard time placing it in the food category. Fone one shabbat we were out in the field and we always get our meals delivered to us. The problem is that the food is enver enough. We tell them we are 50% more people than we actually are and we are still left hungry. These are complaints by everyone - not just me. It also doesn't help that the meals come 2-3 hours after the ideal meal time. This is a regular occurrance every meal.

I think the following story describes best the situation I am in with the food. So one day after not receiving breakfast at all (already not off to a good start) I was on guard duty while everyone else was eating lunch. When someone came to switch with me so I could go eat he told me that when I see what lunch is I'm going to start to swear. He was right in one respect - that I would start swearing, it just didn't wait until I got to see the food. The next person I saw told me that when I see the food I would laugh. I asked 'laugh or cry', to which he responded you will cry. The 3rd and last person I saw on my journey to the lunchroom was one of my commanders who flat out told me 'don't eat.' Well I can't say they didn't warn me. So what was for lunch? - disgusting army kebobs with leftover salad from a few days earlier. So there are a few things wrong with the meal and surpringly the disgusting army kebobs wasn't the problem (disgusting army kebobs are always disgusting). The first problem was that ther ewas no potato/rice/pasta dish next to it whcih ALWAYS accompaniesthe meat. Problem #2 - leftover salad. Not that I have a problem with leftovers, in fact leftovers can often be better than the food made fresh. The thing is there is no such thing as leftovers in the army, everything is tossed after the meal.These 2 things point out the lazyness of the 'cook'. So as I was eating the disgusting 'meal' I put a lemon slice (part of the salad) in my mouth and it caused me to make the all-too-familiar sour lemon face. One of my friends started to laugh and to which I responded 'and that's the best part of the meal!'

My first solo mission

I was taken to another base to meet wtih teh batallion commander where myself and the 3 other lone soldiers in the battallion were given presents for rosh hashana (the jewish new year). When I got to the base they told me to be back here at 1220. I looked at my watch and saw it was 12 - Lunch time! I very quickly made my way to the lunch room to eat a dsecent and normal (army standards) meal. We walked into the battalion commanders office where he gave his speech - 'Thank you bla bla bla we appreciate etc. etc. etc. difficulties of being a lone soldier yadda yadda yadda happy new years, here's your present.' This entire time I was preparing myself for my mission at hand:

Mission: Consume as much baked goods as possible before I have to leave the office. Secondary mission - if possible do this in a casual manner.

Setting: 8 people in the air conditioned room standing around a table FILLED with chocolate croissants, ruggelah, cinnamon rolls, apples + honey, watermelon, drinks, chips, candies and other snacks.

Enemies and their capabilities:

• Battallion commander trying to engage me in small talk and catching me with a mouthful of food.
• The clock and unexpectedly running out of time.
• My digestive system causing me to choke.

Allies and their capabilities:

• The head nod - always a substitute for speech.
• Watermellon and drinks to lubricate my digestive system and prevent me from choking.
• Pockets for placing wrapped candies.
  

Debriefing: Given the amount of time provided (and not knowing this amount of time in advance of the mission) I was able to consume a fair amount of food. All I can say is that I tried my best. The watermellon performed above and beyond its call of duty as it did a fantastic job of both satisfying my tastebuds and lubricating my digestive system allowing for easier consumption of the baked goods. The opportunity to make use of the pockets were not that frequent and I was only able to save a few candies for later. The small talk was kept to a minimum however the questions required answers and a head nod was not an applicable response. Eating baked goods at a constant and fairly fast paced rate I feel as though I could have continued for a lot longer had more time been provided. The fact that I had consumed a meal less than half an hour before did not affect my performance in any way.


Surprises:
On top of the surprise fun day and presents I received I also got a few other surprises. 2 days before going home and a few hours before the start of the mission while everyone was standing around the tanks, my officer came up to me and said take my phone and put it inside. Waiting with a somewhat puzzled look on my face not knowing what to do afterwards, he said 'thats it. I'm taking your spot'. What does that mean? He's taking my spot in the tank for the day and I have a 16 hour break where NOBODY is in charge of me and can tell me what to do! How awesome is that??!?!?!!? (non rhetorical question. The answer is very awesome). Everyone was in shock and started asking 'why not me?' The second commander insisted that the officer switch out his loader and give him a break because 'alex is going home in 2 days' and also he is more senior than I am. Fantastic, now I'm going to get screwed I thought. Immediately after making that suggestion the commander went back on his word and said on second thought my loader doesn't have a good handle on the roads in the area so switch with Alex. Phew. Not giving them any more time to argue about it I head inside. Within 5 minutes my gunner comes inside and says get back out there. SHIT! In the end he got switched out because he had just returned from his brothers wedding and hadn't slept a wink.
The next day it was the same deal, the officer was going to switch someone out again. It was decided to switch out the other loader this time. Then at the last minute the officer decided to switch me out with his response to everyone else who then started to complain 'just beacuse'. Sweeeeeeet. So I had some time to relax, pack my bags get a good nights sleep (which didn't happen) and go for my 7km run before heading home. I now get a regila, which means a 1 week vacation from the army (instead of 4 days).

The second surprise I got, which was more of a releif is that I was FINALLY given confirmation that I will be getting a vacation to come home and visit my friends and family for 2 weeks in the middle of october! More details to come in an upcoming blog post within the week.

Major General Israel Tal (RIP) passed away over the weekend. He was named one of the top 5 armored commanders in history, and he was in charge of designing and producing the Israeli Merkeva tank. Here is a quick article about him.

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=187548

I know its a bit late, but I want to wish everyone a shana tova and a successful new year.

Who says the border with Lebanon is quiet

So as I was mentioning in my last blog post about how boring and regular everything is here, well not much has changed except for almost a war breaking out!!!! So what happened? What caused this battle? First I will summarize to the best of my ability but don't expect any insiders info (mainly because I don't have any - its all published in the news) I will just summarize and explain what happened. So one of the regular activities that the IDF is doing is clearing obstacles that obstruct Israel's line of sight into Lebanon. The obstacles they are clearing are within enclaves. An enclave is defined as the area between the Blue Line and the border fence. The fence is a metal barrier (maybe 2 meters high) which is the physical barrier separating Israel and Lebanon. The blue Line is the internationally recognized border between the two countries. The fence is located on the Israeli side of the Blue Line and is independent from the Blue Line. There is no law saying that the two must lie one on top of the other. Thus in more locations than not there are these pockets (enclaves) created where one can cross the fence (from the Israeli side) and still be on Israeli territory. On the other hand - from the Lebanese side, before one gets to the fence they may have already crossed the international border - the Blue Line. On a side note, even though the Blue Line is not defined physically on the ground Israel and Lebanon know exactly where it is. Typically it is Joe the Lebanese farmer and his herd of whatever that probably unknowingly crosses the international border line trying to control his herd as they get closer to the fence.

So on August 3rd Lebanon decided it was going to make some news. It seems that someone called up a bunch of news stations (because there was an unusual amount of journalists in the area just by coincidence). They might have said to the journalists something like 'hey, theres going to be some news happening today, maybe you should come check it out.' So while they are waiting for the news to happen, the IDF was uprooting a tree on the western side of the fence (the side closest to Lebanon) yet still Israeli territory because it was in one of these enclaves. It is important to note that the IDF told UNIFIL (united nations interim forces in lebanon) prior to the uprooting of the tree about this ROUTINE work. As this is happening, a LAF (lebanese armed forces) sniper opens fire on Lt. Col. Dov Harari, RIP and kills him instantly with a bullet to the cheek right below the eye. Another officer was also wounded by gunfire. The fact that these high ranking officers were shot at and not the soldiers that were actually removing the tree shows that it was even more so a preplanned attack. With this being the spark, what followed was artillery from both sides and tank fire from Israel in what turned out to be nothing more than a one day battle.

So what was my heroic role in all this? Having returned to base from my 5 day weekend the day before, we joined our platoon out in the field. We did not yet switch with the crew that was on its way home for their weekend so I was not on call and therefore did not have a tank to jump to when the emergency occurred. I helped to prepare the tanks for the other 2 crews and then sat out in the hot sun with my vest and helmet on for 6 hours waiting... waiting... waiting... until suddenly we heard a vehicle come speeding around the corner towards our direction. It turned into our camp area and came screeching to a sudden halt. A soldier hopped out of the jeep opened the trunk, left a large crate for us, jumped back in the jeep and sped away. So what was this surprise mystery crate? First I will recap the last few sentences as I might have over-exaggerated a tad. (words inside the brackets to replace the previous word) So after sitting in the sun for 6 hours (not an exaggeration) waiting... waiting... waiting... until suddenly (finally) we heard a vehicle come speeding (driving at a normal speed) around the corner towards our direction. It turned into our camp area and came screeching (-) to a sudden (-) halt. A soldier hopped out of the jeep opened the trunk, left (handed) a large crate (cooler) for us, jumped (got) back in the jeep and sped (drove) away. At that moment it was 630PM and what we FINALLY got was lunch! After 'lunch' we got picked up and taken out of the field because it was realized that without a tank we were completely useless and there was nothing for us to do. They took us to where the pluga is stationed and over there we continued to do nothing until we went back to the field the next day. By the time everything had 'calmed' down it was back to our regular work and I had missed all the action (not that had I been in the tank I would have seen any, but nonetheless).

One day the following week we went to the shooting range to sharpen our skills (have fun) with the M16 and MAG. In addition to this practice we also practiced putting out fires. This wasn't part of the original plan, but I suppose it makes for more interesting day and blog post. So when someone fires an automatic machine gun aiming at the same spot on a hot and dry day it is likely that a bush or shrub might catch on fire. Well, we weren't fast enough at putting out that small fire before another shrub caugt fire and the wind caused it to spread. We debated if the wind would change and the fire would die down on its own or if we could put it out ourselves or if the fire department would shortly arrive to put it out themselves, etc. There were times we thought the fire was small enough that we could get close enough to put it out but then it got bigger. When we thought the fire would put itself out the wind changed direction causing the fire to spread. After about an hour we got our act together and finally put the fire out. Conveniently that was the exact moment that the fire department showed up. We told them thanks for nothing and they turned around without even getting out of their truck.

So I'm sure the question on everyone's mind is when do you get to see me? Well the easy and simple answer is the come to Israel. Or you can wait until I finally get some time off to come home for a visit. So I am supposed to get 30 days off from the army every year to come home for a visit. So how much time has passed? As of Friday August 20th, I am one year in the army!!! How exciting!!! Additionally, i don't know if you have noticed or not but I have yet to come home for a visit! So the army has a funny way of managing to screw you over in any and every situation. So without getting into that too much, I have finally been granted time off - not quite sure on the dates yet, so I don't want to get everyone's hopes up. So during my weekend off, Saturday night to be specific I got a call from my commander saying that I need to go first thing Sunday morning to take care of some paperwork related to being able to fly home. This news was very frustrating to hear, but it didn't stop me from meeting up with some fans of http://kaldorskorner.blogspot.com for some beers in Jerusalem. The night was K4Z and the fans were excited to meet the man behind the blog. I managed to take a quick hour and 45 minute nap before waking up to catch a 645 bus. I had called the bus company Saturday night to see what time I needed to catch the bus to be at my destination by 10AM. They told me that if I take the 645 bus I will get there at 1015. I then clarified that I needed to be there by 10, and the lady on the line said I was taking the first bus. This was definitely my first hint that Sunday was not going to be a day that was going to go my way. I also found out that it was likely that what I needed to do could most likely be done over the phone or avoid it altogether. So I finally get where I need to go and take care of the business I need to take care of, which takes exactly 5 minutes as expected. Fast forward to 3PM where I get off one bus and I am waiting for another one of several buses that I needed to take throughout the day. I wait almost an hour for the bus and then I suddenly get a call from my company commander saying that he wants to confirm the document that I was given to make sure that I had done everything I needed to do and that I was to wait for him at a close by location in 20 minutes. Super, just what I wanted - another thing delaying me getting home and resuming my day off that is slowly going to waste. The second that I get off the phone with him, the bus that I was waiting for for almost an hour conveniently arrives. So I get delayed by almost another hour and manage to catch the 445 bus. My weekend finally resumes when I got back to my kibbutz at 630 - 12 hours after I had started my day. Instead of spending the day by the pool/beach in Tel Aviv I rode buses halfway across the damn country... and back! Hopefully this is the end of all the bullshit that I have to go through in order to get my time off to come home, but I'm only expecting to be shit on more (not in the good luck way).

First day on the kav - what could possibly go wrong?

Firstly in regards to the title, the word kav in Hebrew means line, and in this context it can also refer to the work soldiers do in guarding the border. More on this story further down in the post.

This week we finished preparing/cleaning the tank before we headed up to start guarding the border with Lebanon. One of the tasks that I had to do was to take out ALL the ammunition from the tank, and then shortly thereafter refill the tank. This was backbreaking work that involved removing 45 shells each about 60 pounds and about a meter tall. It's a shame that us combat soldiers have to do this horrible work and that they couldn't bring in some temporary jobniks to do some real work. Another critical part of cleaning the tank was to scrub all the birdshit off its cannon :-P

We finally finished cleaning the tank and set off for the border with lebanon. Lifestyle here is very different from anything we had in training. Firstly our base is very small. Aside from having to be in uniform just about 24/7 i'm allowed to walk around in half my jumpsuit and tie the top half around my waist (it is a very hot thing to wear). Another important thing we have here is a TV! With a lot of free time, we are able to chill out by the tv, play cards and relax.
So what is a typical day like? I'm not really sure when my day starts, so lets define a starting point. Lets say that when I get out of bed (assuming I get to sleep in a bed) is the start of the day. Having said that, my day will usually start sometime in the afternoon. We will have a few meetings, clean some stuff and have downtime until about dinner. At night we start getting ready for out guard duty inside the tanks. This lasts about 8 hours throughout the night and into the morning. During this time I stand on my chair while looking outside with my nightvision goggles and trying not to fall asleep.We get a couple of hours to sleep inside the tank during the night however it is uncomfortable at best. When we do get a chance to sleep the 4 of us have to take turns being awake to listen to the radio to notify everyone if something has happened and we need to wake up.Once we are done with the mission we have about an hours work to prepare the tank for the day. Then we do our regular morning routing where we clean our guns, boots, etc. Afterwards we can finally eat breakfast (after we make it for ourselves - we get lunch and dinner 'catered in' from a different base). Once breakfast is done and we clean up after ourselves we are given time to catch up on our sleep, and i get to bed anywhere between 10-1130ish AM.

So taking a step backwards to the first day when we got to the base we started to learn the area - where we were situated, and the terrain around us. We walked up to one of the outposts by foot to see what we will be looking at on a daily basis. We get up there and take a quick glance around and the question on everyone's mind is where's Lebanon? The platoon commander (mem mem) points in the direction of Lebanon, and everyone looks directly in the direction where he points. At that EXACT MOMENT where we all simultaneously had our eyes locked onto the specific point in Lebanon which was no further than 100 meters from the border, we heard a huge boom and a giant mushroom cloud rise up from the EXACT POINT where our mem mem pointed! Everyone looked at each other with an expression on our faces that say wtf?!?!?!?! did that really just happen???? (yes it really really did just happen, you can't make this shit up!) And yes, the expression is the same in english and in hebrew - if you were wondering. Other things that were going through my mind were holy shit, what do we do now, this is just my first day!!!! how did my mem mem do that? can he do it again? does he have other super powers? is that what they teach in officers training course? I could go on and on with questions of those sort, or I could just add 'etc.' but in this case only one additional rhetorical (or maybe its not rhetorical) questions is necessary: is my mem mem part of the First Earth Battalion? If you understand the question then you can fill in all the other applicable questions. If you are confused by the question watch the movie Men Who Stare At Goats. So at this point the mem mem decides that it might be best if we swiftly made our way back inside to figure out what the hell is going on! "Oh that?" Someone says nonchalantly, "That's just UNIFIL (United Nation Interim Forces In Lebanon) clearing landmines". This is one of the things that they do. Now I bet that has heightened your curiocity as to what else UNIFIL does. Well what they are SUPPOSED to be doing is keeping the region quiet while enforcing UN resolution 1701 created after the 2nd Lebanon War in 2006 which states that Hizbullah is not allowed to be armed south of the Litani River. To say that they are doing a poor job would be an understatement. enough about that nonsense.

On Tuesday - 2 days before we were going home, the tzevet that returned to base from being at home took our place on call so we no longer had that responsibility. If anything ever does happen while I'm on call I have to run and grab my vest and helmet and run to the tank and wait for further orders. We had a few drills over the past 2 weeks which helps to shake up the routine of boredom. So the tzevet that is not on call usually helps out with the daily work on the tanks and are extra bodies to do guard duty and other random things. That night the tanks left for the field to sleep in tents for a while. My tzevet didn't go because there was nothing for us to do there without a tank. We then realized that we had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do for a day and a half before we were scheduled to go home. Downtime isn't so much a rarity, but this much consecutive downtime is. There was so much nothing to do that they let me go home one day earlier than expected - 5 day weekend!!!! (My usual schedule is 17 days on base and 4 days at home). I found this out Tuesday night. I was then able to get a good 8 hour's night sleep. I woke up an hour early for some unknown reason and was unable to go back to sleep because I was excited to go home, so I ended up just laying in bed for that hour attempting to drift back asleep. I ate a good relaxing breakfast and went for a run before heading home in the afternoon!

On a side note below is a feature done by the military channel called weaponology that chronicles the history of the state of Israel and the weapons that their commando units used. Highly recommended.

http://www.israellycool.com/2010/07/27/navy-seal-vs-israeli-commando-tonights-the-night/

The new life

This week I got to my new company. It's a completely different atmosphere as to when I was in training. When we got there there was a table of food and everyone there was singing and welcoming us. Everything is more relaxed and there is no distance with our commanders or officers. The people are really nice and overall I enjoyed myself. In the barracks there is also a TV and ping pong table. One of the best things is that while we are working on the tanks there is music playing!

This week was spent getting adjusted to the new life, arranging our equipment and cleaning the tanks. This week we didn't do any guard duty or any of the crap jobs. Typically all the new guys end up getting all the bad jobs (which will surely start next week) While in training I had another tzevet that was on the tank with me because there wasn't enough tanks for people, but now I have my own tank, so I have to do twice as much work as before.

Once the work is done for the day, we are given our free time. It's not like in training where we only had an hour and then we had to be in bed, but we are given more time, and sometimes people order pizzas or sit around and drink coffee. The atmosphere is more relaxed. The only downside is that the additional free time we use to 'hang out' cuts into our sleep time, and thus we don't get a 'full night sleep' - whatever that means. On Wednesday night they set up a projector outside and we got to watch the semi final game of the world cup.

Sorry for the quick blog update, but I don't have much time by the computer this weekend. You can take this time to catch up on my previous posts if you have fallen behind on the blog reading.

warriors pin סיכת לוחם

Thursday I had my end of training ceremony. There ceremony was for the 380 new lochamim (fighters/warriors) like myself that have just completed the same 7 months of training as I have. In addition to us there were 150 additional soldiers that have just completed the 4 month tank commanders course who participated in the joint ceremony.

We have been practicing for the ceremony for a week now - just about every day we would stand out in the desert sun for about an hour to an hour and a half and practice standing, marching and transitioning from one standing position to another. This was the worst part of each day - so much so that

everyone was arguing as to who would go do guard duty so they could miss the practice.

On the day of the ceremony I had to show up at Latrun by 9AM. From then until 130PM we were practicing. During that time we had 3 breaks where we were able to go drink and sit down to rest our feet. The only positive thing about practicing was that the sun was beating down on top of us and not directly in our faces, which was the case as the sun began to start setting at 5Pm - the start of the ceremony. The ceremony was an hour and a half and it was HOT! So much so that one guy in my company passed out due to dehydration (he was fine afterwards, and this is a regular occurrence at such ceremonies).

Invitations to the ceremony were given out a few weeks ago and it said that vi

sitors were able to come at 130 and that hte ceremony started at 5. Everyone was falsely misled because we thought that we would have free time to spend with the visitors during that time. I figured that we would have to start standing and waiting in our positions well before the ceremony started (4:20). What nobody expected was that directly after we finished practicing at 130, everyone had to go and do paperwork and register to the new battalion. This is where I finally found out where I would be going and when. The first thing I learned was at I had the weekend off and that I could actually go home after the ceremony (something that was still unknown). The second thing I learned was that I also get off next Thursday - 2 weekends in a row!!! I then found out what new company I will be going to: its name is ze'evim (wolves). Like the other companies in the battalion all are up guarding the lebanese border. I also found out that a fair amount of good people from my company are also going to ze'evim, so I will have friends there. Other than that I don' know much else.

After all the paperwork, I finally had an hour of free time. By 4 we had a quick platoon meeting before we had to line up for the start of the ceremony. So within that free time I finally got to ea

t lunch at 3PM, change uniforms, shine my boots and meet up with my cousins that came for the ceremony. In addition to my cousins, a friend from Toronto who was visiting in Jerusalem managed to make it out to the ceremony.

So after 7 months of training and a full day of standing out in the sun without shade what di I get besides a sunburn? I get my sicat lochem (warriors pin) which every combat soldier receives after finishing training. Below is the pin for the armored corps. As part of the ceremony, the commanders distribute the pins and pin them on our shirts. I wasn't just given a pin, but the company commander removed HIS pin from his shirt and pinned it onto mine. Definitely a huge sign of respect from the leader of the entire company.

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.