On the whole, the past 3 months have been very hectic. Being on base 2 weeks at a time, and then getting less than 48 hours at home takes its toll, and I find myself trying to take advantage of every spare minute during the weekend, despite how tired I am.
שבוע מפקד חוליה , or ‘sub-commander week’ started off with an introduction and several classes where we were told that we were handpicked, one by one, after special deliberation and consideration, as to who is suitable for this important position. Apparently, this job is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the long path to being a commander, and then possibly an officer. Of the 30 of us chosen, they told us that 15 get sent right after advanced training to the commanders’ course (called the early commander’s course because these are the ‘cream of the crop’ so to speak, who have potential to even continue on to the officer’s course). It definitely appeals to me to take this important step if I am offered to become a commander. How could it not be fun to order a bunch of 18 year old Israeli’s around, telling them when they can and can’t go to the washroom, and giving them 10 seconds to run 100 meters away and back...From what I’ve heard, I would not be required to sign more time to be a commander but then again, it’s the Israeli army and anything can happen and anything will happen. Either way, I have many more challenges to overcome in the coming months and these possibilities are a long ways away.
Sunday evening we went into the shetach, which I am slowly beginning to call my 3rd home, after of course the base itself and my kibbutz. The first day consisted of dry and live fire drills, working in groups of 4 in the field, from 5:30 AM until 1 AM the next day. We then finally packed up our equipment, took down all our tents, and passed out in the middle of a huge puddle of water and sand. When I say passed out, I mean every single person fell asleep within 2 minutes, to the point where the only noise to be heard was some heavy snoring amidst the drizzle of rain. Finally, after 2 hours of sleeping in the cold, the transport came to take us and our equipment back to base.
After returning from the shetach, we spent a day in the shooting simulator. It mimics the shooting range as accurately as possible, to the point where you actually use M16’s, but hooked up to a computer via a long cable. To me it seemed like a souped up arcade game – lying in position with your gun shooting at the screen as moving terrorists approach and open fire on you. We were divided into groups, and each person had a turn to act as commander to practice what to do in a dynamic situation rather than the same drill that we did a billion times in the field the previous day.
We also had a day ofניווטים (navigations), spent walking probably around 20 km the entire day. Since it was our first time, we did it mostly in a group, learning how to read a topographical map, which at first was very confusing, considering every hill/mountain in the desert looks exactly the same!! We each had our own turn to navigate the group to a given point between 1-2 km away. Using the compass and the map, I planned out my route and it ended up with a climb to probably one of the highest peaks in the area. I asked for confirmation that it was the right path – me trying to be efficient and save everyone having to climb up this monster of a mountain only to turn around because it’s the wrong way. Of course, I didn’t receive any help. I thought it was a joke because this hill was definitely too high for him to expect us to climb. I thought that the commander simply knew I made a mistake but wanted me to get everyone to climb up the hill anyways. Finally, after a very intense climb to the top, I got confirmation that it was the right one. I was very pleased, although I know that I have nothing to be proud of because we are going to get to the point where we navigate much harder terrain with much more weight on our shoulders, and for much longer distances. The week came to an end very nicely, me receiving a generous package of goodies from Israeli school children, sending chocolates and candy to lone soldiers for family day.
After finishing this week of training for my ‘specialty’ (sub-commander), I was under the impression that I would have the following week to relax. The week is known as שבוע מקצועות, or profession week, and seeing as how I already got mine, I thought I would just relax while everyone else went to the shooting range to practice with their new guns/scopes, etc. Boy was I mistaken. At the beginning of the week, they took everyone to the armory, and started dividing people into groups. Within a couple minutes, I realized that I was in the group that was going to sign on new weapons. 2 minutes later, I left carrying my new ‘baby’ for the week – the NEGEV! The negev is an Israeli designed light, emphasis on the light, machine gun, weighing in at a mere 7.6 kg. For those of you who can’t do the math in your heads, it’s almost 17 pounds. That of course doesn’t include another ~2kg for the extra barrel, and of course the ammunition, which adds on more than another 10 kg. Known to be the hardest מקצוע (profession), demanding the most רבק (determination/motivation), soldiers given the “honour” of this gun end up carrying equipment weighing a total of around 30 kg for this gun. Imagine carrying all that during the final 80km masa! Luckily for me though, I was only doing the training for the negev as a backup, and there is someone else in my kita who will have it, which leaves me as a mefaked chulia (sub-commander).
Although it was very overwhelming at first, it was exciting to learn about this gun, probably THE most important tool the infantry have, and I slowly learned to appreciate its value and significance, as well as the responsibility being given this gun entails. The negevist is always up in front of everyone else when advancing, providing extra cover fire power, and despite the added weight, is required to move faster than everyone else. Some highlights of the week include:
- Night shooting – with a laser and night scope that almost makes it easier to shoot in the dark than in the daylight. With the scope on, you literally look like Robocop with a large scope attached to only one eye. It was a bit confusing at first because you see with night vision in one eye, and normal darkness in the other eye.
- At one point, all 13 of us doing the training were given a chain of 20 red tracers to fire on automatic, and that was probably one of the coolest things I’ve done in my service up until now. They call it שמים אדומים, or red sky, because the entire sky turns a bright red colour from these tracer bullets.
- After practicing fixing a certain type of jam in the gun maybe 50 times, I was able to fix the jam in less than 8 seconds, instead of my initial 30+ seconds.
- Spontaneously being given an obstacle course to run, including running, crawling, rope climb, wall climb, and monkey bars, all with the 7.6 kg negev on me.
- The most hyped up part of the week – the 300 meter crawl. This was definitely the hardest thing I’ve had to do in my entire life, having to literally pick up the gun in one hand and toss it ahead a bit, while I continue to advance at as fast a crawling pace as I can manage. Eventually, most people get to the point where you just can’t lift it anymore and resort to just pushing it on the ground in front of you as you crawl ahead. Once everyone finished this feat, in an average of 25 minutes, we were spoiled with some ice cold cokes, but of course not entirely spoiled because we were given only 2 minutes to drink them. We then filled the cans up with water, put them onto the 25 meter line, and each one of us had our turn to spray 20 bullets into their coke can. A big adrenaline rush, to say the least, especially coming off of the rush of crawling 300 meters with this huge gun!
The whole week was nowhere near fun and games. Just the act of taking all our equipment to and from the shooting range was difficult enough on its own. After being in the shooting range almost the entire week, practicing shooting as well as dry drills of operating jams in the gun, tons of crawling, rolling around, and running, we also had runs up to 6 km in between these drills every day. I got to the point where I would literally have half a loaf of bread with my meals, and still feel hungry 2 hours later, needing to snack on another sandwich or two in between meals.
The following week was spent actually practicing as a mefaked chulia in the field with my team of 3 others. We were also surprised, if the word surprise is suitable for a gift like this, that we would be doing a joint exercise with the air force – practicing boarding and disembarking a helicopter. And yes, it did include the actual helicopter ride. After a couple boring dry drills on safety and practicing doing it quickly, it was time for the real deal. From the time the helicopter lands, you have about 30 seconds for everyone to get onto it before it takes off again. It may sound simple, but everyone has a 20 kg bag (same as the one in field week) to take with them as well. Flying in the helicopter was an incredible experience. It was much different than flying on an airplane, and definitely a once in a lifetime experience (of course to be beaten by my upcoming parachuting course in 2 weeks!) At some points on the turns, I guess because the pilot wanted to show us a good time seeing how excited/nervous we were, he made ridiculously wide turns so that we were almost flying sideways. Overall, we flew twice in daytime, twice at night and also had one more practice evacuating the wounded via helicopter. Most soldiers don’t even do a drill like this during their entire service, so we were very lucky considering we’re still in basic training.
The weekend was a closed weekend, spent guarding in Hevron. Hevron is a mostly Arab city with around 150 000 Palestinians living around the only several hundred Jewish settlers. Every weekend, extra soldiers are sent to guard on Shabbat to ensure that these Jews and many more who come to pray in Me’arat Hamachpela (where the forefathers are buried) feel safe. The whole weekend was a mess, guarding upwards of 20 hours over both Friday afternoon and Saturday, sometimes for 7 hours straight, while in between sleeping around 6 hours a night. It was made easier by the fact that at least there is an obvious purpose to doing this guard duty – protecting and ensuring the safety of everyone there – both Jews and Arabs living there. Of course, the Jews who passed by were very grateful, wishing us a Shabbat Shalom and many giving us snacks to eat (which is technically not allowed but it happens all the time there, and who can refuse cake fresh from the oven). The irony of the weekend was that it was supposed to be pretty intense because of demonstrations, but because I was in a different area for my shifts, I didn’t hear anything about it even though I was in walking distance to the entire thing. Nor did I hear anything about it later on because of the very limited access we have to TV/internet.
Finally, this past week was spent doing advanced shooting. We spent the entire week, Sunday to Thursday, from early morning to late at night, at the shooting ranges. We even had to sleep there one night! The drills were much more intense and more advanced. We practiced shooting in the normal positions as well as shooting in irregular positions such as from behind tables/etc and of course fixing jams that can occur in the M16. We also practiced quite a bit at shooting at moving targets. It’s a big messy process to organize this specific exercise. In the shooting range at a certain point there is a huge trench around 3 meters deep. We were divided into 2 groups and the group that wasn’t shooting had to go down into this ditch and hold long wooden sticks attached to the targets, for the other group to shoot. It was a bit scary at first hearing the bullets whizzing by above you, but then it just became very funny to watch. The people in the ditch had to run left and right every couple seconds to keep the targets moving, and for the people shooting it looked somewhat like a puppet show with the moving targets dancing back and forth. In the end it was a worthwhile exercise and definitely useful to practice.
I am very happy because there are only 2 weeks left until we go to the parachuting course, and then I will be done with basic training and finally have a week off to relax. The next step after that is advanced training. I’ve heard it’s not as bad because we won’t be timed 2 seconds to do anything they ask, like they do now in basic.
