As many of you already know, the past couple weeks I had a minor case of shin splints. The army’s solution to this very common problem, which apparently happens to every combat soldier at some point during their service, is simply an exemption from strenuous physical activity called ‘Betim’. It essentially means that every time you have to do guard duty, you can sit. Every time you get 10 seconds to run here, 10 seconds to run there, you simply walk and are allowed to get there late. It does not allow you to do anything. It makes you feel like you’re a cripple not capable of anything that everyone around you is capable of doing. There have been many instances of people around me getting Betim for all sorts of reasons, and I've always seen them lagging behind the group. It never occurred to me that I would need Betim, to which people many times attach a stigma of laziness and evading the ‘hard work’ everyone else is doing, which is a terrible feeling. As happy as you are that you have time for your medical problem to heal, you really wish that you felt better and not left out of everything that all your fellow soldiers are doing. At least have a problem bad enough to deserve Gimmelim, which is a break at home for medical reasons, instead of being stuck on base. As much fun as it is to complain about how difficult things are, or how you really wish you didn’t have to go for that run, or for that 15 km masa, when it actually happens and you can’t go, and you see your friends come back from doing it, you really feel that you missed out on something.
On that note, 3 weeks ago, we left our home base to go to the Tel Nof Air Force base, where we would be doing our 2 week paratrooping course. Everyone had to go through a medical check before arriving to ensure that they are capable of participating because, as I’m sure you all know, parachuting out of an airplane is not the safest thing, and accidents often do happen. My Betim were scheduled to end a day before the course started, so naturally I was very excited that the timing worked out so well. After insisting several times on seeing the doctor to get the go ahead for the parachuting, I was simply informed by the medic that the doctor is busy, will take a look at my information, and update him. But of course, not to worry (famous last words) because it looks like I will be jumping. Two days later, after arriving on the parachuting base, they make an announcement: ‘anyone who was not approved by the doctor to participate in the course, please step to the side’. Seeing as how I had not heard any news, I assumed no news was good news so I remained in place. Of course you can see where this is going. A minute later my officer makes eye contact with me and signals to me with a movement of the eyes to go to the side that I am not participating. As you can imagine, it was very upsetting not being able to participate, and even more so, being misled by them and not being told what’s happening until the last possible second. Gotta love the army!
So basically, for the vast majority of these 2 weeks, while all my friends were learning all this cool stuff about parachuting, and practicing the jumping and rolling techniques, and of course jumping from a plane 5 times, I was secluded into a smaller group of 4-5 other people with Betim who would go to the kitchen from 5 AM until close, at around 9 PM, with a 2 hour break over lunch time. Being in the kitchen is one of the worst things you can do in the army (in my opinion), hence it usually is given as a punishment. However, for us lucky soldiers there was simply nothing else for us to be doing on base for 2 weeks, so we had the honour of working there. Working in the kitchen on base entails washing the same huge pots each a couple times a day, tons of squeegeeing the floors, making lots of schnitzels, and the occasional helping out with baking pastries or bread. Having to be stuck in the kitchen for so long really makes you second guess the reasons why you’re here and makes you think about the good life with family and friends you left back home. All these feelings can be summarized into one, very well known slang word in the army: SHAVUZ.
In Hebrew, shavuz is short for Shavur Zayin, literally broken penis. Like shin splints, it is almost guaranteed to happen to every soldier at least once throughout their army career, at which point they simply are sick of everything and just really want to do anything possible to get out of the army. I guess the most accurate translation for the word would be depressed. I recently found an excellent way to describe the feeling, written by another lone soldier on his blog:
“Like elderly men before Viagra, shavuz soldiers cannot rally any excitement to perform their tasks.”
Of course, there are several solutions to this problem. The obvious, but more challenging one is simply to remember all the reasons you came here in the first place and work yourself out of the funk. Evidently, this is much more easily said than done. Another, more temporary way out is to somehow legitimately get off base for a day or two, which can be done by getting gimmelim, or by getting some sort of referral to a doctor off base (specialist). I happened to employ both of these solutions. On the Thursday of my first week on base, after pestering the commanders quite a bit, I landed an appointment with the army optometrist. This was actually very legitimate, as I had been running after them for months to get to see him, all so he can sign a form enabling me to buy a pair of glasses at the army’s expense. As it turns out, the same day, a friend of mine from the garin was having a tekes (ceremony) marking the completion of his 3 month medic course. I of course really wanted to be there, and seeing as how it was on the same base as my appointment, and the appointment itself would only take a matter of minutes, I asked to stay for it. My mefaked, knowing that my appointment was at noon, and the tekes was at 4 PM, was a bit skeptical at first, so it took a bit of persuading. After asking him for permission to stay a bit longer so that I can attend the tekes, and seeing him think it over in his head, I decided to help him out. So I say to him ‘what happens if I just miss the bus back to base after my appointment. Also, I don’t exactly know how to get there and back, for all I know I could end up taking the wrong bus and arrive at a completely different place.’ Taking the hint, he looks at me, smiles, and says ‘you do what you have to do, as long as you’re back on base by the end of the day’.
I was thrilled, both to be able to attend my friend’s ceremony, and get off base and away from the kitchen for a day. I took full advantage of the day, visiting 3 other friends who also are on that base before the ceremony itself, and then even taking a quick detour to stop by at my family’s in Givatayim after the tekes. The buses worked as late as 11 PM, so I was planning on staying as late as I could before going back to base. Finally, around 9 PM, I get a call from my commander, saying ‘Oren, where are you?’ I reply “I am visiting my family in Givatayim”. He goes: "What the hell are you doing there? Don’t you think you got carried away with yourself? When were you planning on getting back to base?” So I go “I don’t know, I didn’t really think about when I would get back, the buses work until around 11 PM, so maybe 10, 10:30. You told me I have until the end of the day.” He just replies: “leave right now and call me when you get here”. So I left around half an hour later, and having my family drive me to base, I got there just past 10 PM. As I arrive to base, I give him a call. He picks up his phone, sounding as if I woke him up, and goes “You got here? Good. Go to sleep, and be ready tomorrow morning at 4 AM to leave base for home.” Like I said, gotta love the army!
After a great weekend, and a bit of brainstorming as to good ideas of how to get gimmelim so that I wouldn’t have to go back to the kitchen, I decided to use the old ‘vomiting and diarhea excuse’ which always works because there really is no way of verifying it, and not only could you spread it to others on base, but you could also yourself get dehydrated. I never thought I would be one of those people that have to pretend they’re sick to get out of the army, but drastic times call for drastic measures. The things we were doing in the kitchen were unbearable. (The fact that everyone else was on an adrenaline rush the entire week because of jumping out of an airplane everyday didn’t help the matter either.) Later on in the week, I had to scrub all the chairs in the kitchen with bleach, and also scrub the bird poop off the walls (for some reason, there are a large number of birds stuck in the חדר אוכל with us, and they manage to make quite a mess). I guess it is there way of cleaning and preparing for Passover, and all I can say on the subject is THANK GOD that I am not in the kitchen for the week right before Passover.
Finally towards the end of the second week of the course, I was able to convince them to let me go help out at the place where they actually parachute. They were already doing the last jump out of 5, but I was very excited to finally see some action. It was a night jump, so they would be jumping in the evening after dark, which meant that we would have to get there around 3 PM and stay until the last person completes his jump and then clean up the site, which ended up being about 1 AM. Even in the dark, it was a beautiful site seeing hundreds of people parachuting to the ground from right above you, and knowing that I will also be doing it in a couple months time made me very excited.
After finishing the jump course, we came back to our home base to close one more weekend, before we have a week vacation (called regila) until the following Monday. Nobody really knew the reason why we had to close, and most thought there was no reason, until we heard rumours that we would have a masa. Sure enough, Saturday night just after Shabbat finished, we set out for our masa samal. Before going out for it, I had to see the doctor in order to get permission because I never officially got the go ahead to continue with physical activity since my shin splints, even though the Betim period was over 2 weeks earlier. After a few simple questions from the doctor, he said that I could do the march, but that I would not be able to carry any extra weight (the stretcher or 9 L water pack). However, a question I was not prepared for was him asking me if I did the parachuting course. I answered no. And then he says to me “why not, your Betim ended two weeks ago, just before the jumping, why didn’t you see the doctor earlier?” All I could answer was “my commander never really let me see the doctor and the medic was supposed to take care of it; I was only told that I’m not doing the course after we got to the jump base and it was too late then.” The closest thing I got to an apology or sympathy was a weird face made by the doctor. Obviously it was very upsetting to hear it, after seeing everyone so excited about their jumps and seeing everyone walking around so proudly with their wings on their uniforms, but I didn’t have time to process it then because it was just minutes before the masa. The masa ended up being 18+3 km (the last 3 with stretchers open with around 70 kg of sand on each). Overall it wasn’t so bad, and at this point, I feel like doing a masa is just part of the army routine, and frankly, 20 km, 40 km, and 80 km are all the same, it’s just a matter of time before it’s over. This one happened to take around 4 hours (with a 10-15 minute break every hour). In true army style, the masa didn’t end up being a simple 21 km. After getting back to base, we immediately proceeded to the 400 meter obstacle course (including 3 meter rope climb, 2 meter wall, monkey bars, crawling, etc). And then it was over!
Ironically, the masa was exactly what I needed to get me out of the funk that has weighed down on me the past couple weeks. Either that, or it was the anticipation of a week off from the army, eating good food, watching tv, and seeing all my friends, some of whom I go without seeing for months at a time because of non-overlapping weekends off from the army. Right now, I am sitting here at the end of the shortest week of vacation I have ever had. Although I would’ve loved for it to be longer, I think that any longer and it would have made going back to the army at the end of it a serious issue.
Up ahead is advanced training for around 2-3 months, after which I am still hoping to be chosen for the early commanders’ course, which would last 4 months. Advanced training is more of the same of basic, except almost every week is spent in the field practicing more advanced manoeuvrings, and according to the schedule, I will be getting almost every weekend off, except for the first 3 weeks. Of course, recent events in the area, including 100 rockets and mortars being fired into Israel over the weekend do not bode well for the coming months, so things could change... but I can only hope for the best.
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