I haven't posted since New Years practically and in those two months, I have just finished training. I haven't filled you guys in on practically the most interesting and jam packed part of my army service. I don't have a good excuse, but what I can do to make it up is write this post. I am now enjoying a week long vacation so I finally have time to fill in the gaps.
The last time I really wrote a detailed post was before our מסכם צוות, so I will start from there. The training for my unit takes a year and three months. The last two to three months are filled with "finals". These are summary weeks where you are supposed to show off your knowledge of something that you learned over the course of the training.
There are about four or five of these finals weeks. Two of them have to do with navigation; you are dropped off in the field and must navigate your way from point to point without any help from maps or the like and do this under time limits. I am above average when it comes to navigation and so I enjoyed those final summing up weeks because I took them as a challenge and I love rising to the challenge. Furthermore, as a new immigrant, navigating the country allowed me to see new landscapes and places, far away from the classic tourist spots that I had been familiar with up until that point. The last summary week for navigation saw me navigate from the western shore of the Kinneret practically all the way to the coast.
The other two weeks were summary weeks of combat as a whole unit (remember we also did a summary week of fighting as a four man unit- I wrote about that earlier). Ostensibly, the week was meant to summarize all of the things we had learned over the year: combat engineering, open terrain, undergrowth terrain and urban combat, navigation,camouflage, etc. In practice, however, these weeks meant walking for tens of kilometers every day while on full gear and up to 50% body weight. The first week like this, the מסכם צוות, was terribly difficult. I was the machine gunner and its difficult to describe how painful the week is to machine gunners. Imagine that your vest and backpack that contain very heavy ammunition, clothing, and food are weighing you down and dragging you backwards. Now imagine that simultaneously a twenty pound, bulky, and long weight is hung over your neck and drags you forward. Painful to say the least. To add insult to injury, the first two days of this week were spent up north near the Lebanese border. The terrain there consists of very thick undergrowth, lots of cattle fences (think barbed wire!) and steep mountains. The strap of the machine gun gets caught on every other bush, your hands are constantly being torn up by thorns, and your leg muscles burn from all the ascents and descents.
Well, the second night that we were there, the skies simply opened up with torrential rain and a frightening lighting storm. Most people don't enjoy being drenched with rain,but to soldiers, rain is our kryptonite, There is nothing worse than being wet and cold. You don't have the luxury of going indoors. Many times, you must wait hours before the chance of changing into dry clothing. Of course, this storm happened as we were in the middle of scrambling up a very high mountain. So there I was, carrying at least half my body weight, the machine gun pulling me forward, pack pulling me backward. It was freezing, with lightning and thunder booming and the wind was howling. I was drenched and the trail we had been following quickly turning into a nightmare of slippery mud. In a particularly steep place, I fell at least twenty times in a row. I simply couldn't climb up.
This was probably my biggest crisis moment. At that particular moment, I just didn't care about it all. I could care less about the stupid mountain, the irrelevant mission, forget Zionism, challenging myself. I only wanted a hot shower and dry clothes. I mean, I was a fingernail away from just giving up. The only thing that kept me going were the guys with me. I couldn't let them down so eventually I made it up. I don't think I will ever really forget that night. It was the worst night of my life.
The other summary week we had that summarized combat as a unit was this past week, the very last week of training. It too was meant to summarize everything that we had learned and it too in practice just meant a lot of walking with heavy weights on our backs. But more on our last week later.
Lets see: I could go into extreme detail about all the weeks that we did these past two months. But I think for brevity's sake, I will list all the weeks that we did, with a general overview of what they were about as well as some themes that characterized the final months of training.
We spent a week on learning how to walk to and approach houses/targets quietly without being recognized. We spent another week learning how to camouflage positions using the undergrowth and shrubbery of the terrain itself to make the position look as natural as possible. We spent another week in urban combat: learning how to take over houses and complexes and navigating in the crowded conditions of Arab cities, including a very fun and interesting exercise in an actual Arab city in the West Bank. As I mentioned, we had two weeks of solo navigation which I really enjoyed. We also had a week of learning to fight in tunnels and finally a very cool week of explosives where we quite literally spent all week blowing things up. Isn't it is nice to hear that this 24 year old is still a little boy at heart?
Themes:
The gradual loosening of the rules. As time went on, the rules were loosened. Slowly, we had more access to our phones, music was allowed to be played on base as we were working, we had more say in certain things etc.
The tzevet (unit)- Though our unit was always very close knit, we became even closer. I love my guys. Forget the whole special training b.s.; in my mind the only advantage to the training that I did was for the incredible bond that exists between the guys and that will only grow as we continue to serve with each other, including in the reserves. In addition, I really missed my lone soldier friend, Shaul, the past few months and am eagerly waiting for him to finish his training and rejoin us.
The relationship with the commanding officer- I am not sure if you guys remember, but I had written a while back that I had lost some respect for the guy when he didn't let me stop after I got really bad blisters. Well lets just say that from the moment on, things only got worse. The guy simply played good cop/ bad cop with us non-stop. He was always on the look out for the smallest infractions and simply could not loosen up. It was an unfortunate situation because in most cases, the commander is supposed to form an incredible bond with his soldiers and with us it was just a poisonous one. Well in any situation, in a week from now we will be getting a new commander and I really hope for everyone' sake that he will form a constructive bond with us.
Finally, the big moment. Our last week. Well in terms of what happened it was quite anti-climatic. Just a lot of walking, then doing an exercise, and more walking, then exercise etc. But finally on Thursday morning, after a year and three months of training, we climbed our final mountain to finish the training. Awaiting us on top of the mountain were our former commanders and guys who already finished the training. Gas grenades were going off, fireworks were in the air, music was blasting...it was an incredible scene (check this out)
And then we climbed to the top and it was pure joy and pandemonium. Everyone was hugging, smoking, cheering, screaming, dancing. It like a year and three months of struggle, pain, desire, stress and all that it took to finish the training came out in one beautiful sunrise.
And now to finish quickly. After that morning, we got our pins finally in an evening tekes, showing that we are now lochamim, fully trained combat soldiers of Gadsar Nachal.
\My friends and family came which was wonderful and now I have a week long vacation!!
Nate.
P.S. Check out our awesome end of training video!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STVVgF8QzhQ&sns=fb
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