A Warrior's Words
-
The sun will come out
As I sit here writing this I have 3 hours before I have to wake up and prepare for the drive to Ammunition Hill, where I will be thrown on to a bus driving to the Bakum (The IDF’s reception Base). I have been unable to fall asleep for about 5 hours and so I figured I’d type out that last post that I promised before I enter the army.
I ended up having my destination in the army changed twice since my last post. At first I was destined for the Nuclear Biological Chemical unit I described in the last post, after that for some reason the army decided to swap me over to a different non-combat unit responsible for handing out gas masks to civilians and rescuing people that fall off cliffs, needless to say I was pretty bummed. However a few days ago one of my connections in the army managed to get me switched over back to the Combat Engineers except this time as an actual Combat Engineer instead of an NBC Purifier.
At first I was not sure whether or not I wanted to do this, and I was considering refusing the position and being put under arrest until they changed me to an infantry unit, but after a lot of research I found that not only do Combat Engineers have the same training as Infantry, they both do the same things during peace time. So I have decided to stick with the Combat Engineers and I hope it works out.
One of the annoying things with this new position is that my Basic and Advanced training bases are both about 7 hours away from where I live so coming home on the weekends will be a pain in the ass but I guess that’s not a huge deal.
Well I’m gonna try to get a little sleep before I have to wake up, I’ll try to write about my experiences during Basic Training every few weeks.
-
When the reality finally hits.
It’s been quite awhile since my last update and I wish I had a good reason for that but really I just kept forgetting to update when there was a new development with the Army. As such this post will be long.
I took my final Bagrut test a few weeks ago and hopefully I passed with a sufficient grade that will warrant me a diploma, because if not I’ll have to take the test again after the army which is in quite awhile.
Last time I updated I had been in the process of waiting to hear from the Army regarding which unit was going to be assigned to, I was hoping for the Golani Brigade but as the Army tends to do, they screwed me over. Not only was I not assigned to Golani, I’m not even going to an Infantry Brigade. I’ve been assigned to the Combat Engineering Corps which might have been cool seeing as they blow stuff up and get to use all sorts of cool technology but I will not be doing any of that. In it’s infinite wisdom the Army has decided to make me an NBC (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) Purifier, this means that I will be walking around in a hazmat suit pouring bleach on large tracts of land that have been contaminated by enemy bio-chemical warheads so that the very infantry I had hoped to be a part of, can go through said tracts of land and get the all the glory. It’s not the most glorious of jobs and it’s not at all what I had been hoping for but every cloud no matter how unbelievably dark has a silver lining. This unit has a shorter training period and I will be able to start my commanders and then hopefully officers courses after only 8 months instead of a year, it’s not a great triumph but it will have to do.
My draft date has been delayed by one week and I am now being drafted on the 20th of March which is Purim day but that doesn’t matter to the Army I guess. So with my remaining three weeks I am not really doing anything, I’ve been mainly sitting around the house, or hanging out with my friends, waiting for the time to pass and the day that I go to Ammunition Hill and leave my civilian life behind to arrive. The fact that I’m going to the Army so soon only hit me yesterday when I was sitting in front of the computer reading a web-comic and suddenly realized that in three weeks I will not be able to read my web-comics for at least three years, and it’s not just web-comics, over the next few years I will have no freedom at all and now I’m starting to get nervous and just trying to savor what time I have left.
I hope to update the blog at least once more before I am drafted, and definitely whenever I have time in the Army.
-
Waiting for the end.
Thought I’d give a status update since it’s been a few weeks since my last one.
In driving news I passed my test and got car insurance last week so I have been driving almost every day, taking my siblings to their various activities. Since I am a new driver however I need to have an experienced driver in the car with me for the first 3 months, which will only end after I am already in the army. So the point of getting my license now was really just so that I’d have it and insurance would be less expensive once I am released in 2014.
Speaking of the army. I got my results from the airborne selection and I did not pass. I pretty much figured that would happen as I had trouble throughout most of the selection and my only real hope for getting in was the fact that they are forced to accept a few people who did not do particularly well in the selection mainly for political reasons.
So now I’m hopefully headed for Golani which is also a very good brigade and maybe I’ll get a chance to join Egoz, their Reconnaissance Unit whose designation is Anti-guerrilla special forces.
I’ve mainly just been sitting around the house and hanging out with my friends just waiting to start basic training in March. I have decided to finish my Bagrut (Israeli A-levels), and so I have been studying for that basically every day. I only need to get a 65 to bring my average to a passing grade and receive my diploma.
-
A Driving Conundrum
I received a test message this afternoon shortly I woke up, it was my driving instructor telling me that if I wanted to take my next driving test soon I should give him a call. Upon doing so he notified me that I would be taking the test this coming Monday, and that I would need to have a lesson nearly every day between now and then.
The reason I call it my next driving test is because I have already tried the test once but did not succeed. All was going smoothly until we reached a traffic circle that had two lanes instead of one. I entered the circle in the left lane and as I was supposed to exited on to the left lane. The problem was that there was a car parked directly in the middle of the left lane and I got stuck behind it waiting for a chance to switch to the right hand lane. This took about 5 minutes and at one point I thought I had an opening when a car inside the traffic circle had it’s light signalling that it would not be entering on to my street and I made the mistake of believing that and when I tried to switch lane the car in question pulled in to the lane and the person testing me had to pull the wheel to the left and hit the brakes. At that point I knew I had failed.
Hopefully this time I will do better and I’ll make sure to stay on the right hand lane.
However this whole topic brings to mind an issue I have with the way the whole learning to drive/taking the test process works in Israel. In order to be eligible to take the driving test you must first take a minimum of 28 driving lessons each of which costs between 90-110 NIS (25-30 USD). Along with the cost of your theory test 50 NIS (15 USD), driving test 400 NIS (115), internal driving test 150 NIS (45 USD). All this comes out to a grand total of 3400 NIS (955 USD), and that’s assuming you pass your first test!
The problem with this system (Besides the insane cost…) is that it is completely open to corruption. All a driving teacher has to do to make some extra cash is ask the tester to fail the student, the student will have to take more lessons, and the driving teacher and tester will share the profit.
So far I’ve paid about 1150 dollars on lessons and test, and assuming I pass this next one I will have spent a grand total of nearly 1500 dollars trying to get my damn license, and then I have to worry about insurance…
To all you young Israelis out there who are hoping to get their license I wish you good luck, and may your wallets not be empty at the end of this endeavor.
-
Video Game Rant 1
I’m gonna go on a little video game rant here.
In the past few years a lot of unique and exciting looking MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) have come out. Most of them are similar and don’t offer much new content or ideas however there are a few that really do have some unique ideas that have the potential to shine.
What comes to mind for me is the type of MMOG where the entire world is controlled by the players. Rather than there being a linear story line, it’s the players that control how the world works. For example guilds fighting each other to control strongholds and land, and what this means for me is the chance to really make a name for yourself in the game.
However the problem I seem to have is this: Whenever I hear about one of the games they’ve already been around for a few years and there are certain players and guilds that are famous and have vast influence in the game world, and for some reason my brain tells me “Why bother? You’re never going to go that far in the game if there are already people at the top.”
So maybe it’s my fear of failure that stops me from at least trying out these games, or maybe it’s just my ego not willing to compete with someone who has a head start, but regardless there are a lot of cool games that I would have loved to play but won’t get a chance to. At least not before the army.
-
My two days of hell.
So last week I attended an Airborne Selection, which is a two day event in which you are tested in order to see if you are fit to serve as a Paratrooper in the IDF. My goal is to be a sniper in the Forward Recon Unit of the Paratroopers, a spot that is extremely difficult to get in to and requires a lot of effort to be part of.
During the weeks leading up to it I had lots of various people give me advice regarding the Selection telling me how it was all in my head and describing the hellish things that take place their while trying not to discourage me. Unfortunately a lot of the descriptions I got were from people who hadn’t actually gone through the selection themselves, and the one person I know who did told me I was better off not knowing what would happen there beforehand.
On the invitation we were told that it was a requirement to get 7 hours of sleep the night before but I already knew there was no way I could fall asleep that night. So after tossing and turning I managed to get about 4 hours and then woke up at 5 AM so I could depart the house at 6:15 in order to get to the army base where the selection would take place at 8:00 sharp.
My dad drove me and we got there 15 minutes late. He dropped me off at the base and said good luck then drove off, making sure to tell me to call him to make sure I got situated. As I started walking through the army base looking for Pergola 1 I began to get myself acquainted with the way the base looked, knowing that soon I would be spending more than enough time on various bases.
It was nice enough, looking more like a university campus than an army base except for the large quantities of APCs and Machine-Gun wielding soldiers. Eventually I found some other young guys who were looking for the same place and together we found our way to what looked like a soccer a concrete soccer field that had wooden bleachers and a wooden roof. When we arrived there was already what looked like 150 other guys and some soldiers walking across the field telling them different things.
I quickly found a spot on the bleachers and waited for someone to tell me what to do in the meantime making sure I had all the documents they asked me to bring. I won’t bore you with the details but after about 2 hours they finally finished making sure we all had the correct documents and by then there were 300 of us.
At this point we were divided in to Squads alphabetically by our last names. I was put in Squad 4 and our Squad Leader was a young soldier who was getting released from the Army in 2 months and looked like he didn’t care at all what we did as long as we left him alone. We were each given a number within the Squad and then we ran to another area where we were given a quick medical examination and a chit-chat with the doctor to make sure we were feeling okay.
After that we marched towards supply containers where we were given the uniforms we would be wearing throughout the Selection. We were each given: Pants, a Shirt, a Belt (Which was too big for my small waist), a weird hat and a plastic canteen.
Afterwards we got a few minutes to set up our tents and beds before we walked to the cafeteria to have lunch which consisted of pasta, hot dogs, and various salads.
Needless to say the rest of the day wasn’t very exciting. We were supposed to have a 2 kilometer run but it got cancelled after the first squad did it and one of them fainted cause of heat exhaustion and the people in charge of the Selection didn’t get permission to continue.
At around 7:30 PM we got put in two new squads and my new squad leader was a total hard-ass, shouting at us if we did anything wrong and not allowing us to goof around, which I appreciated because it got out of hand in my first squad. They then told us we had to wake ourselves up at 3:00 AM and prepare for a hike.
We went to bed at 8:00 PM outdoors, in the desert, with thin blankets, it was freezing. I slept ‘til 2 and then I couldn’t sleep anymore so I did my best to stop my mind from worrying about the hike which I heard was extremely hard. At 3:30 we got handed pieces of bread and hot tea to warm ourselves up, they then made us drink our canteens in one go, something we had been made to do a few times the day before.
At this point our squad leaders, who were in the active army and about to be released, were replaced by Reservists. These guys were badasses, they looked and talked like they hated our very existence as if it was our fault they couldn’t be at home with their wives. The started shouting at us and gave us 90 seconds to get all our gear on our backs and ready to march.
As we walked out of the rear gate of the army base it was still dark outside and cold, but the reservists quickly fixed this by shouting at us to jump in place repeatedly making sure our feet hit our butts every time we jumped. At first this was easy but after about 2 minutes each jump took a few seconds and I was running out of breath. This went on for about 5 minutes at which point I was dying and then joy of joys we got to sprint back and forth over and over again until we couldn’t breath, and this was just the warm-up before the hike, what the hell did I get myself in to?
A lot of the guys in my squad were in good shape and they were big, but even they were having a little difficulty. We were then told to start running in to the desert where we found 25 kilogram bags of dirt and we had to run while hauling these over our shoulders. Eventually they told us to stop at one point and one of the Reservists set up a tire about 20 meters away.
We were ordered to lift the bags of dirt over our head with our arms perfectly straight and we weren’t allowed to fidget or let the bags down even for a second. This was pretty easy for the first 30 seconds but then my arms muscles started to burn and I didn’t know how I would survive the rest of this day if I couldn’t even get through the first 30 minutes. After about 4 minutes of holding the bags and our arms killing us they told us to: throw down the bags, sprint to the tire, run back to the bags and lift them over our heads for another 4 minutes. They made us do this over and over again and it was torture, during this ordeal half of my squad gave up (Most of them bigger and in much better shape than me) and walked over to the side to rest, knowing they could never be paratroopers now that they had quit.
Finally after half an hour, and dead arms, they shouted at us to start running again. We were led to an open field that ropes stretched out to form a rectangled with wires running across the rectangle making it impossible to simply stroll through without some jumping. I knew before they even said it: we were going to crawl.
I hate crawling, I’m not good at it and I have delicate skin so it tears easily resulting in lots of bloody scratches that are also painful. However we had no choice and they lined us up on one end of the rectangle and then we crawled as fast as we could to the other end, when we finished crawling we had to sprint back to the side we had started at, line up and crawl again.
They made us do this for another maybe 20 minutes, and every time we crawled it got harder for me and I slowed down, towards the end I was crawling so slowly our Squad Leader would have the other guys start crawling before I was finished, the rest of the Reservists shouting at me to pick up the pace.
I was out of breath, out of energy and seriously contemplating giving up when they told us to stand up and start running again. By now the sun had risen and it was getting hot, as it tends to get in the desert. I couldn’t run, my legs wouldn’t do it, every step felt like something was thrusting a knife in to my leg, but I walked as fast as I could trying to keep up with the rest of the Squad, each step was agony.
After more running they brought us to yet another open field where there were 3 poles set up in a line about 5 meters apart. One the first pole were four tires marked numerically from 1 to 4, with 4 being on top. They told us we had to work as a team to solve the puzzle of getting all the tires to the last pole arranged once again numerically with 1 on top and 4 on the bottom. Now this seemed pretty simple and I’m usually pretty good at puzzles, but then they explained the catch: We had to keep our eyes closed the entire time and only one tire could be moved at a time. Now doing this puzzle alone would be hard enough but doing it while having 15 guys all shouting at once trying to tell each other what to do while our eyes were closed was neigh on impossible. The Reservists didn’t appreciate the shouting and ordered us to drop down to the push up position, lower ourselves, and stay like that for 2 minutes, another thing I’m bad at and hate.
After 15 minutes of fumbling around and bumping in to each other the reservists got tired of watching and told us to open our eyes and start running again. My legs kept locking up and it really hurt so when they told us to stand still and listen I was happy for the short respite. They told us to close our eyes and that this next test was to see how well we knew each other. We had to form a circle arranging ourselves according to our squad numbers, we had to do this with our eyes closed. We also weren’t allowed to say any numbers or letters. And to top it all off only one person was allowed to talk. Needless to say we failed miserably, having to drop down and do push-ups and sit-ups a few times before once again the Reservists got bored of watching.
They told us to pick up the stretcher we had been carrying that had 100 kilos of dirt in bags on it and that we were going to on a hike. Once again we were running and I was in pain. Our squad leader told us that if the stretcher ever got too far away from him we would have to start the hike all over again so we made sure to constantly switch who was carrying it and we were the only squad that managed to stay with our Leader the entire time. Throughout the hike they made us do different things like run back in forth or sprint in circles but after about 45 minutes they led us back in the direction of the Army Base and I knew that I had done it.
The feeling I had from accomplishing this impossible feat was one of pure joy. This happiness was amplified by the gorgeous female gym instructors who conducted our post-hell stretching. We were given an hour and a half break and as I entered my tent my legs finally gave out. I couldn’t stand up, my legs simply not responding to the orders I was giving them. As I sat on my bunk I started to cry, the feeling of having survived overwhelming me.
After our break the Reservists turned in to different people. They started being nice to us, telling us how they were proud we had done it and how the country needed young men like us to fight for it. We were given interviews and sent home.
The reason I wrote about this, beyond to simply share the experience with you, is because when I went to the Selection I had only a vague idea of what to expect, with different conflicting information given to me by various people. I hope that anyone else who is planning on doing this Selection can learn from my experience and know what to expect.
Above all the most important thing to remember is that your physical strength has nothing to do with this process, it’s all in your head. If you believe in yourself, you can do it.
-
Israeli by Day
Israeli by Day is a blog that was written by american Danny Brothers, who decided to move to Israel and join the IDF.
In the blog he discusses various parts of his life, most of them relating to his time in the army. Since Danny finished his service the blog stopped being updated.
I am hoping to make my blog similar to Danny’s in that I will post not what I do in the army but rather how it affects my life, along with other rants and raves I may post that have nothing to do with the army.
-
What this is
Before I explain what this blog is I thought I’d give a little back story.
I am an 18 year old guy who was born and raised in Israel. In March I am being drafted in to the IDF in to a (hopefully) combat position.
My goal with this blog is to simply put my various thoughts regarding this process of going in to the army and other things in to this blog. Why I want to do this I am not sure, maybe it’s because I want to share this experience with the rest of the world.
I hope this works out and you guys enjoy reading this.
