Where I last left off, I mentioned that I was looking
forward to being on a base down south for a couple weeks. Little did I know
that this would be a field base, in the middle of nowhere, which several times
did not even have running water, let alone hot water. We were also staying in
large tents which we haven’t used in a long time. Sandstorms due to very strong
winds were a normal occurrence. By far, the funniest thing that happened was on
one of the first nights we were there. It was around 4 AM, and already several
times I was woken up by the strong winds. All of a sudden, I hear a loud
clanking sound, followed by very angry screams. Apparently, the tent right
beside us was blown over and collapsed on top of everyone while sleeping.
The
funnier part is that it was a tent of fighter soldiers mixed in with around 5-7
drivers from the unit. It is known that the drivers are fairly lazy people and
not the nicest. So while the combat soldiers spent the next hour screaming at
each other trying to put the tent up in the dark of night, the drivers just
stayed in bed pretending to sleep.
Food for this month was the usual field rations – tuna,
corn, beans, pickles, halva, and canned fruit, with the occasional hot meal
from a nearby base. This time though, I was prepared. You’d be surprised at how
good tuna tastes with a little bit of lemon juice and sweet chilli, even after
eating it for 3 meals a day for a couple weeks. There were no bathrooms either,
although because it was a field ‘base’ and not exactly the field, I guess they
felt it necessary to bring outhouses. It wasn’t exactly the smartest idea – reason
number one: half of them were blown over by the wind, with their contents
leaking out. Reason number 2: because we were in the middle of nowhere, they
only came to empty/clean the outhouses once a week, if that. After the first
days, I just reverted to ‘field habits’. And it was definitely the better way
to go.
One of the weeks at this field base was spent concentrating
on the role of the mifkada, or unit headquarters, during wartime. Let me just
say that while many people, including myself, often disrespect the mifkada, if
there is a war, they perform a job just as important as the fighters, and work
just as hard. This obviously isn’t the case for the day to day life of the
mifkada, which is a picnic relatively to the fighting platoons. Most of the
week I spent commanding a Nagmash, or APC (armoured personnel carrier). It
really is quite enjoyable, kind of like going on a jeep ride in the middle of
the desert, driving over sand dunes and such. You also get to wear one of these nicely padded helmets.
Of course, the helmet is not padded to make it more comfortable to wear; it is padded to protect the radio equipment inside. Obviously, army bureaucracy was still
there to ruin the fun. On the first day, we were told to be in the APC at 9 AM,
which for some reason required a 6 AM wake up. After waiting half an hour, we
left and went back to the tents to wait. This cycle happened another 4 times
during the day, until finally at 12:30 midnight, a full 15 hours later, we
actually left for the exercise. A typical day in the Israeli army...
The 2 weeks before pesach were probably the most frustrating
I’ve had since I began in the army. It took a full week of asking my officer
several times a day to speak to the platoon commander so that I can fly home
for dental school interviews for him to finally meet with me. I had a huge
argument with him because he didn’t want to let me go. His argument was that I
was already gone for 3 weeks in November, and another 4 days beginning of
March. He had the chutzpah even to say that because I am finishing the army
this August, I don’t need to travel. It was very rough trying to reason with
them. Logically, I was still entitled to another month because that first 3
weeks counted towards my first year. Even if I wasn’t allowed to fly, I still
could not believe that they would actually not let me go to the interviews and
make me waste a full year waiting for the next school year to start. Maybe it
was their way of secretly trying to get me to stay more time in the army.
Regardless, in the end it was a combined effort from many people, including one
particularly high ranking officer, making a couple phone calls on my behalf to
the battalion commander to let me go. Doesn’t matter how many times you hear
it, I’ll repeat it once more so it sinks in. Whether you’re right or not, many
things in this army run on proteksia (connections) so it never hurts to have access
to those people to help you out when you need them. And yes, at some point during
army service, every soldier will need it.
On an unrelated note, a couple weekends ago was the
scheduled ‘flytilla’, where many pro-Palestinian activists were supposed to
arrive in Israel to protest the usual issues. Israel apparently learned from
their PR mistakes of the past, this time preventing the activists from boarding
the airplanes in their countries of origin. In true Israeli style, they put
their own cynical twist on it, apparently passing on this letter to those who
were not allowed to board their flights. http://honestreporting.com/flytilla-fails-to-take-off/.
Must have made some people pretty upset...
Since my service lasts only 2 years as opposed to the
regular 3, I am getting to that point when I can see the light at the end of
the tunnel and can’t stop counting down the days until the end. Thinking about
how Israelis do a full 3 years or more (girls are required to serve 2) makes me
respect them even more – doing my 2 years was hard enough, I don’t think I
would’ve survived the full three. At the same time, I definitely value everything I've done over the past year and a half and do not regret any minute of it. However, the army schedule eventually gets so routine that
people sometimes resort to doing very ridiculous things. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJs1zNmPOw0. I guess this was
supposed to be the paratroopers’ response to the video of Nachal troops dancing
to Tik Tok a while back. At least we weren't stupid enough to start dancing in the middle of Hebron like Nachal did!
I am now back in Israel after 2 awesome weeks at home, on
base for the weekend, as well as Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut, for the
second year in a row. At least this time around I’m not celebrating by doing a
50km march.... I also have a pretty good chance of being off base for the
upcoming Lag Ba’omer and Shavuot Celebrations, which should be good.
