The Start of Navigation

Two weeks ago we started our navigation training in earnest.  Previously, we had been learning how to navigate with instructors and open maps.  Now we have begun navigating in pairs without maps.  It is a long process that takes almost the entire day.

We spend the morning and afternoon plotting our course.  Each pair receives three to four coordinates that they must reach on their way from the beginning to the end of the navigation.  After the route has been drawn out on the map we spend the afternoon memorizing various azimuths (an angle measured in degrees between a reference plane and a point) that we will have to recall during the navigation.  Additionally, we scan the topographical map for anything that might be of use during the actual navigation.  For instance, some people find it useful to count how many hills they will see on their way to a certain point.  Aside from the difficulty of remembering these details for a 6 or 7 mile navigation, you would not believe how much more difficult it becomes to navigate at night.  While it is clear where one hill starts and ends during the day, at night it infinitely more difficult.  

As a result, a lot of people tend to get lost during navigations.  Our first night of navigations we left around 5:30 and we finished around 10 or 10:30.  However there were about two or three groups that got really lost and finished around 3:30 in the morning.  At this phase in the training it was actually somewhat amusing, but as we progress the navigations will get longer and we will be carrying more weight (right now we have one person who carries a 20 pound radio, but we will eventually work up to around 60 pounds).  

So far I have been doing pretty well.  On our last navigation I finished first, and learned the benefit of being good at navigating.  We finished around 1:30 in the morning and went to sleep on the bus while waiting for the other groups to finish.  As it turns out, the last group finished at 5:45 in the morning.  That meant that I got to sleep for 4 hours, while the last group to finish did not get to sleep at all.  

This week coming up will be our first week of navigation in the north.  It is also going to be a new style of navigation.  We will still be navigating as a pair, except this week we will not be allowed to learn our partners section of the navigation.  One person will navigate the first half, and the second person will navigate the second half.  I just hope my partner can get me to the right spot, if not it will make for a long night...

The Big One

I know it has been a little while since my last post, but my parents were in town this past week visiting and I got a little distracted.

A little more than a week ago everyone who enlisted in the Paratroopers in my draft class, about 500 people (there is one draft class every 4 months), partook in a 78 km hike to Jerusalem.  

**For those a little more familiar with Israel we started in Tel Shahar (even I don't really know where that is, somewhere between Jerusalem and Ashdod), walked through Bet Shemesh, Tzur Hadassah, around Jerusalem, and finally ended at Ammunition Hill.**

The hike is supposed to be a culmination of our training until this point, at the end of which there is a ceremony and everyone is presented with their red beret (signifying the paratroopers division).  For the regular battalions this is the end of their training, and at this point they will begin their actual army service.  For our unit it is simply the last phase of our training before we begin the Special Forces Training.  

We have actually been building up to this hike since the beginning of our training.  Our previous hike was 50 km.  However, I found that our 50 km hike was pretty poor preparation for what lay ahead.  Perhaps the sole exception to that would be that our previous hike was 11 hours long, so I at least knew going into this hike that it was going to be loooong and boooring.  We started the hike at 4 PM on Wednesday and finished it at 8 AM on Thursday.  While the sheer length of time begins to wear on you, perhaps the hardest part of the hike was that it was at least 70% up hill.  You would think that for every uphill there would be a downhill, but you (much like myself) would be mistaken.

A portion of the 15 hour hike was taken up by short 10 minute breaks that we took every hour.  Except for the random breaks that our commander decided to skip in order to gain ground on the other units (we actually started the hike behind the 3 regular infantry battalions, and ended the hike first).  I have to admit that I missed those breaks that we skipped, but harder than not taking the breaks is the mental anguish when you realize that you aren't going to stop.  You see the minutes begin to tick by and you start to think that maybe we are going to walk a few extra minutes because our pace had slowed down, but then a half hour goes by, and then forty minutes, and you start hoping that you aren't going to skip the next break as well.  

There was one part of the hike that I particularly remember cursing our company commander under my breath.  There were two stops during the hike to eat.  The first was after 24 km and the second was after 54 km.  So as those marks begin to approach you begin to look forward to the rest.  After about 48 km we had walked what seemed to me close to another 6 km and everyone was beginning to look around for the site where all of the food would be (all though to be honest I think we mostly wanted to just sit down, or at least I did).  We stopped for about 5 minutes and the commander told us that we had gone about 52 km, in another 2 km we would reach the 54 km mark (for those of you, like me, who are less familiar with kilometers, 2 kilometers is equal to 1.2 miles).  At this point everyone thinks to themselves, "Okay, 20 more minutes and we will be there!"  After about 2 and half more hours of walking we finally arrived, and were given about 5 or 10 minutes to rest before continuing (about 25 or 30 minutes less than I had hoped for).

We entered Jerusalem around 7 or 7:30 in the morning and walked the last 2 or 3 kilometers inside the city of Jerusalem.  It was actually pretty amazing to see hundreds of soldiers walking down the streets of Jerusalem (somewhat symbolic of what took place during the 6 Day War), but to tell you the truth at the time I really couldn't appreciate that or much of anything other than how dead my legs were.  The last 300 meters everyone opened up their stretchers and we sprinted to Ammunition Hill carrying the stretchers.  Finally, after 15 hours of walking with all of our gear we finished the hike...and then we had to get ready for the ceremony.

At 4 PM on Thursday we had our ceremony in which we got our Berets.  My mom and dad flew in from the U.S. to come and see it.  It was mercifully quick, since I don't think anyone was in much shape to stand on their feet for too long.  During the ceremony my Team Commander actually gave me his beret, which is quite an honor.  

At the top are two pictures from the hike (one from the beginning and one somewhere in the middle) and two from the ceremony.

 

The Holidays

This month is considered to be the Jewish Holiday Season. Last week was "Rosh Hashanah," the Jewish New Year, this week is "Yom Kippur," the day of Atonement, and next week is "Sukkot," the holiday remembering the Jews 40 years of wandering in the desert.

Last week we were given off Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday for the holiday. I spent the first night with one of my friends from my team that lives relatively close by, and the second night with my family from the kibbutz.

This is actually my second Rosh Hashanah in Israel, and I have noticed that there are some customs that people keep here that I have never seen before in the U.S. For instance, I am familiar with eating apples and honey to signify a "sweet New Year," but in Israel there are several foods that are significant to Rosh Hashanah for different reasons:


-The Pomegranate is eaten because it is said to have 613 seeds, the same number of Mitzvahs that are described in the Torah.

-The head (or meat from the head) of usually a sheep is eaten in the hopes that we will be leaders and not followers in the upcoming year. (I can definitely say that I had never eaten "head meat" before, but it tastes kind of like brisket)

-Dates symbolize our wish to remove evil (apparently something to do with the word Date in Hebrew - Tamar, which is connected to the word Tam - meaning cease to exist. Sounds like kind of a stretch to me)

-Squash relates to our hopes in the High Holy Days that G-d will read our good deeds and tear up any list of bad deeds (again realting to the Aramaic word for squash)

-The word for leek is connected to "cutting," and symbolizes our wish that our evil deeds be cut down, or our enemies decimated.

-Black-eyed peas represent the wish that our merits will increase in the New Year


Those are some of the blessings that I encountered (I actually had to look most of those up because even most Israelis don't remember why they eat each thing). It is a meal before the meal, which makes for a pretty long dinner.


When we went back on Thursday we spent the day learning how to read topography maps for our upcoming navigation training. This Sunday we started the navigation training by going out in the field and seeing how the map translates to actual hills, rivers, valleys, etc. Monday we drove to a popular navigation training ground and practiced getting from point to point in small groups with commanders. Tuesday we were supposed to travel to the same place and get a little bit more advanced (navigating with out the map), but there were some logistical problems and our bus didn't come. So we spent the day navigating in the area around our base (still pretty big, but the main difference is that the various landmarks are less pronounced, thus making it more difficult for novice navigators).
Truthfully, no one seemed to have a problem navigating during the day. The problem is that none of our real navigations (the ones we will do in pairs, or alone, with significant weight) will be during the day. You would be surprised how hard it is to tell distances, or try and make out how many hill tops there are in the dark.
We were supposed to stay on the base and guard during Yom Kippur, but yesterday (the day before Yom Kippur) our commanders told us we would all be going home. I am not one to complain about time off, but as a result we had to go to sleep early and we actually did very little navigation at night. In my case I didn't do any at all. I was in a group of three and the first navigator got significantly lost, and by the time we figured out where we were it was time to get back to the base. However, I'm not too concerned we have another 8-10 weeks of navigation training in the future, so I'm sure I'll get a chance.

Today is what is known as Erev Yom Kippur, or Yom Kippur Eve in Christian terms. It means that the fast starts tonight at sundown and lasts until sundown tomorrow. Because last Saturday we turned our clocks back sundown starts at 5:30.
What is really interesting about my first Yom Kippur here in Israel is that it really illustrates the divide between the religious and the secular. In the U.S. most Jews I knew fell somewhere in the middle, but here it is very black-or-white. There are religious Jews, who pray three times a day and wrap Tefillin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%27fillin

And there are secular Jews, who may have never seen the insided of a Temple or know a single prayer. I learned that to fast on Yom Kippur also means not to turn on any lights, including turning on a television or starting a car (technically I think that means I have already broken my fast by using the computer). When I got home from the army to the kibbutz I thought I would eat my last meal around 5, before the sun went down. When I walked in to my adopted family's house I was informed that dinner would be served around 8. They said they had not even thought to ask whether or not I fasted for Yom Kippur.
I feel like in the U.S. most people try and make an effort to fast. Here either you fast or you don't even think about it. I heard one of the soldiers this morning turn to his friend and ask if he was planning to fast, his response, "Yeah - for an hour or two!"
Here I am in the "Jewish State" and if it weren't for the fact there is absolutely no transportation until tomorrow night at 8, you wouldn't even know it is the most solemn and important day of the year. Not that it bothers me, I just find it a little strange.

The Preparation Hike

Last week was supposed to be the start of our Navigation training, however, due to some unforseen problems our navigation training was pushed back. Instead, we spent the first half of the week at the shooting range. We are going to be moving to a new base in a few weeks, where the Special Forces are stationed, and we needed to calibrate all of the new guns and sights that we got from our new base.

Wednesday and Thursday we had a 50 km hike that is supposed to be a hike to prepare us for an even longer hike we will be doing on Ocotber the 15th/16th. We have done several hikes in the past, each one gradually increasing the distance (our previous hike was 38 km). In the beginning the hikes were fairly difficult. In addition to the quick pace, everyone walks with their vests, ammo, and guns. There are also two people who carry a stretcher, two people carry 8 liters of water, two people carry a 20lb. radio, and myself and one other guy carry the light machine gun and all of the ammo. The end of each hike there is also a period in which we carry someone (or two someones) on a stretcher. The last two hikes the pace has been less of a factor and the real difficulty has been the boredom. It takes us about an hour to walk 6km (close to 4 miles), and every hour we take a short break. This means that our 50km hike that we did last Wednesday took us almost 11 hours.

We left at 6 PM on Wednesday, and we finished at 4:45 AM on Thursday. You would be amazed at the things that go through your mind during that time. For instance, in the time it took me to walk 50 km I could have watched all three Lord of the Rings Movies (extended addition), or I thought about maybe trying to sneak my iPod with me (but I realized even if I got away with it the battery would probably die before the hike was over). Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, by the end of the hike my vest was rubbing me so bad that it took my mind off of the boredom.

Our next hike in 2 weeks is going to be about 80 km...if anybody has any suggestions as to how to kill 20 hours of walking I am all ears!

A "Resting" Week

At the start of the week our commander told us that it would be a good chance to rest after what was a considerably difficult prior week - I still don't know why I believed him. Going into the week we knew that we were going to be getting ready to give back all of our gear in preparation to change bases. What we didn't know was how they would fill all of the downtime.....

Sunday our entire company went to the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem for a cultural day. When we got back to the base for dinner we were warned against eating too much food. This I assumed was a sign that we would be going for a run in the near future. In fact this was to be the first of many Krav Maga lessons we would have during the week.

***For those of you unfamiliar with Krav Maga, according to Wikipedia "Krav Maga is a military hand-to-hand combat systemm developed in Israel, which assumes no quarter will be given, and emphasizes maximum threat neutralization in a "real life" context. (Here is a quick video I found http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0CjWX9-Z14&feature=related, it is pretty realistic in terms of what we do).***

Until this point in our training, all of our Krav Maga training had essentially been conditioning. We did a lot of suicides, sprints, and crawling, but no actual drills. This was the first week we actually put on gloves and gear. Each lesson has a "warm-up" in the beginning of about 30 minutes of sprints, after which the Krav Maga begins.
Our first lesson we were taught different punch and kick techniques, which we practiced on a partner who stood against a wall with his hands in the air. Monday we graduated to actual "fights." It started out as one-on-one, but quickly moved on to two- and three-on-one. The idea being that the person who is getting double and triple teamed is given no chance to catch his breath before two new people enter and mount a new assault.

The truth is that I actually enjoy the Krav Maga itself, the one downside is that after more than one day of Krav Maga in a row your entire body becomes tight and sore. Not to mention that after the second day it hurt to walk because of the bruise on my right quad from all of the kicks I had taken.

By the third day, there was a hault put on Krav Maga because of the number of injuries people had sustained (oddly enough no one had been injured in an actual "fight," rather people were coincidentally hurt during the lessons). There was one member of my team who had to get a staple in his arm after he cut himself on a screw sticking out of a door, in a mad dash to change the two left gloves he had selected. Two more people got hurt when they ran into each other during sprints.

War Week!

This past week was called "War Week". The idea being that it is supposed to simulate a week of wartime conditions and simultaneously act as a final test combining all of our training up until this point. Needless to say, I did not expect it to be an easy week.

A couple quick captions: The top picture is my team before we headed out Sunday night (I'm in the back row, 4th from the right). The middle picture is just something my commander took on one of the few chances we got to sit down. The last picture is my team carrying somebody on the stretcher, little did we know at the start of the week that this would become a very familiar pose.

We spent the majority of the weekend leading up to the week getting all of our gear ready (when everyone wasn't trying to guess what we were going to be doing). Sunday the entire company was brought into an auditorium and the Company Commander explained our first mission. It was explained that there was information speculating several rocket launch points that we would be going to try and eliminate. As a company we would all walk 10 km to get into position, from that point each team had its own assignment. There are 4 teams in the company, two anti-tank teams, one reconnaissance team, and then my team which is supposed to be a sniper team.
We left around 11 PM on Sunday night and walked in two lines with the recon team leading the way. We walked for about 2 hours and then everyone began to break off into different directions. My team was in charge of climbing two tall hills/mountains and providing information/fire to the three other teams who would be storming the targets. When the entire scene had played out it was already 5 AM. At this point we no longer knew what to expect from the week, this was as much as we were told before hand...and this is when it really got fun.
From 5:30 Monday morning until around 8:30 me and the rest of my team had to carry someone on a stretcher in a simulated retreat. When we were finally finished with the stretcher we practiced storming a hill until around noon. After we stormed the hill we went back to carrying the stretcher, except this time we opened two stretchers (which cuts the number of people who can help switch out with you in half). We then preceded to carry the stretchers up and down hills in the dead heat for about 2 hours. At that point one of the smaller guys on the team named Chesterman got dehydrated. As awful as it sounds I think that sort of got our commanders' attention and they let us find a spot with some shade and sit down to rest for a while.
When it started to get dark we got up, put all of the gear back on (which in my case happens to be all of the gear for the light machine gun, somewhere in the neighborhood of 50-60 pounds of ammunition that I had the pleasure of carrying around all week), and started walking. One of the less appealing sides of spending a week in the field is that there really is not much time scheduled for showering, and after hours of carrying people on a stretcher I tend to get a little sweaty. This has multiple downsides, however, the two most pertinent are that the nights quickly become much colder and secondly the wet clothes rubbing against your skin all day lead to sever chafing. By the time we had got to Monday night I was in some serious pain from where my vest had rubbed my sides raw.
As the night wore on we did a few more drills in which we practiced storming hills at night, and around midnight on Monday we recieved our first "meal." The contents of which were 1 and a half pieces of bread, 1/5 of a can of tuna for each person, 1/3 of a pickle, and a can of corn to be divided amongst all 17 of us. It sounds somewhat meager, but at that point I was actually not that hungry.
The rest of the week was more of the same. Tuesday morning around 5 AM we had another hike with the stretcher for about 2 and a half hours. We had another drill storming a hill until about 11 AM, however, at this point we ran into what I like to think was some luck. It became so hot that it was pretty unsafe for us to continue, so we found a tree and sat down until it cooled down. We were given our second meal Tuesday afternoon. It was more of the same, except at this point half of our bread had ants...it didn't seem to deter anyone. At which point we continued with the stretchers. Tuesday night we did a few drills with blanks in which we played the enemy for an opposing team and vice versa. Tuesday night/Wednesday morning was one of the harder "acts" (as our commanders referred to them) of the week. We carried two stretchers for 3 hours, one of which carrying our heavy machine gunnist, his machine gun (another almost 20 pounds), and our water.
Wednesday morning we had been without water from about 3 AM until around 9 AM. I was starting to get a headache and I mentioned it to our medic. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your take of it, Wednesday was the hottest day of the week. As a result, we spent most of the day light ours in the shade. When the water arrived I had some trouble drinking it. Every time I drank I threw it back up. The medic decided it best to give me an I.V. When you are hooked up to an I.V., much like in a hospital, there is a plastic cylinder that lets the medic see if the fluids are moving from the bag down into the tube. Apparently, my body drank the fluids so quickly that there were no drops in the tube, it was completely full for the duration of the I.V. The medic said he had never seen that happen before.
Wednesday afternoon we had our third and final meal. This time the bread had spots of mold on it. I don't know about everyone else but at least for me at this point I was so hungry my stomach was starting to throb. I laughed as I watched people after the meal scrounging in the dirt for pieces of corn or tuna that others had dropped.
When we were asked to start moving again we opened up the stretchers this time while wearing gas masks. We hiked another 2 hours at the end of which we scaled a hill that is 200 meters literally straight up. We arrived around 10 PM. We had another drill with blanks in which my team and another team practiced taking over a hill together. When we finished around 1 AM, everyone filled up their water and got ready for the 10 km hike back to the base...this time carrying stretchers.
We carried one stretcher back for about 5 km and then stopped. After the first 5 km they told us to open another stretcher and put on our gas masks. We had to go the last 5 km with gas masks while carrying two stretchers. We finally got back to the base around 4 or 4:30 AM.


All I can say is that I am glad the week is over. It was our last week of Advanced Training and after the upcoming week, in which we give back all of our gear, we will be starting Navigation training as the first phase of Special Forces Training.


One of my friends gave his camera to our commander, who took a lot of pictures throughout the week. I am going to try and get him to give me some copies and I'll try and put some pictures up next week.

Teams Week

The last three weeks were my last weeks of Advanced Training, and apparently the commanders thought it best that the whole company spend the three weeks together on the base.


The first week was called "Team Week" (for some reason the translations never really sound right in English). This was the first week that we started learning how to fight as a team (usually around 20 - 25 people in the Special Forces and around 30 - 35 in the regular batallions). Until this week we had learned pairs, groups of four, and then "class" of roughly 10 people.
After talking to some of the commanders it sounds like we got off pretty easy. Supposedly, this was supposed to be one of the hardest weeks of training, but because it was soooo hot it was more educational than physical. We spent the mornings and nights storming hills, about one drill a day. Then in the afternoons we would sit in the shade and study for an upcoming test we have.
As it turns out, there are different levels of training depending on intensity and at the end of each level there is a test. For instance, soldiers who work in an office reach level 02 (which happens to be the training I did when I was at the Army Hebrew course). The next level is almost the exact same training, except that it includes throwing a hand grenade. The level that we are now at is considered 07. In addition to having to know how to use all of the different weapons, such as the grenade launcher, heavy and light machine gun, and the sharpshooter scope, there are questions on Israeli Military History, First Aid, Anti-Chemical Warfare, and how to use different radios. After 07 the next levels are mostly reserved for commanders, officers, and special forces.
After each drill we would have a short session carrying "wounded" soldiers on stretchers and on our shoulders. This is usually one of the hardest parts of being the field, but because is really was so hot we didn't have to carry them very far at all. According to my commander, when they had the same week it was in the rain and mud all day and there was very little sleep. I guess we lucked out a bit.
At the end of the week there was a long hike back to the base. We are slowly working our way up to 70 km, which will be the hike we do to earn our red beret. This hike was 34 km and then an additional 3 or 4 km carrying two people on stretchers. It was pretty tough and lasted somewhere around 6 hours. I can definitely say that I am not looking forward to the next one. Aside from the fact that I have to carry additional weight because of the machine gun, it starts to become pretty boring because we have to walk in two lines the whole time and we aren't supposed to talk. I am realizing as I write this that the word "hike" might be a little misleading because we are going at a pretty fast pace. The norm is supposed to be 6 km an hour, which, if your commander has long legs like mine does, means you are spending most of the hike in a slow jog.


On a somewhat unrelated note, there was a pretty funny/weird story that happened that same week. Each week when we arrive from home the army chooses a place to meet so that it can charter buses to the base from one location. Some of these meeting points are bigger than others, and as it turns out we met at one of the bigger meeting points this week. Why do I bring this up? Because there are so many soldiers meeting at one place at one time it is the perfect place for the Military Police to set up shop (unbeknownst to me, although logical had I took the time to think about it). What is the job of the Military Police you ask? As far as my interaction goes they are a mix between Internal Affairs and the Fashion Police. They are fellow soldiers who were chosen to the Military Police after enlistment. They are in charge of making sure the soldiers that are walking the street are dressed properly, shine their shoes, don't jaywalk, and of course the occasional random drug test (that of course is done on the base and not on the streets).
As far as I know the Israeli Army is the only army in the world that lets its soldiers grow a beard. Originally, this started for religious reasons, but now pretty much anyone in the army can have a beard if they really want one. The thing about the beard is that it is one way or the other, either you have a beard or you don't. There is no option of having a beard one week then the next week not having one. Anyway, out of a combination of various reasons such as laziness, hearing that there was very limited time to shave in the mornings during basic training, and not wanting to irritate my skin by using the razor blade every day...but mostly laziness I decided to take the beard path.
I had gotten into a pattern of trimming my beard on weekends that I got off, except that for some reason I always ended up using someone elses trimmer with different settings, and it just so happened that this weekend I accidentally trimmed my beard particularly short and when I arrived to the entrance of the meeting point on Sunday morning I was stopped at the gate by the Military Police. Some 18 year old girl came up to me and asked me if I had a certificate of approval for my beard. I didn't think much about it, I had the certificate and assumed she was just doing a random check to make sure I had the proper documents. Then came the questions of did I trim my beard (which she said was against the rules, but almost everyone does), so on and so forth. After a few minutes I was given a ticket, which means I would have to go to a "trial" and receive my punishment. I can't help but think that if my Hebrew vocabulary was better I might have been able to put up a better argument, or if I had really been thinking on my feet I should have acted as if I didn't speak Hebrew (I'll habve to save that for if there is a next time).
Later one of my friends explained to me that it was written on the certificate of approval that you are allowed to trim you beard, so long as it does not look as if you shaved yesterday. At that point it was too late, but I figured I'd save that as something to bring up at the trial. When I got to the base I wasn't too worried about the trial because usually the punishments involved having to stay on the base for a certain amount of time and I was already going to be there for three weeks, and I doubted the punishment would be any longer than that.
In the end, getting the ticket turned out to be kind of lucky. I was waiting and waiting the first day for the trial and it never came. Finally, on Thursday (our last day in the field) one of the commanders came up to me around 1:00 PM and told me to get in the Hummer and go back to base for my trial. Turns out that my trial was at 6, so in the mean time I got to take a shower, eat a real meal (in the field we eat field rations all week, not that it is terrible, but after a week of canned tuna, corn, and white bread it gets a little monotonous). The trial itself was something of a joke. I explained what happened, what my friend told me, and that from what I understood it was acceptable to have a beard somewhat short because that was the way it was when I had requested the certificate. The commander in charge of my trial looked at my beard (at this point it had almost a week to grow out) asked if that was how it looked on the day I received the ticket, I said it was, he said he didn't really understand why I was given the ticket and pronounced me innocent. I then got to eat dinner in the dining hall and wait until 10 o'clock to join my team in the field for the hike back to the base. In the end the ticket was a nice excuse to get cleaned up and rested.