Sitting out

In the first week that I couldn't really participate in the army (because of my ankle), I'm missing some stuff I was looking forward to. This past Sunday our battalion had a jump with the American Green Berets. Although everyone who participated told me that they never want to jump again and that I didn't miss anything. Apparently, the jump was with a lot of gear. Everyone jumped with vests, guns, ammo, and a giant bag that probably weighed between 40 and 60 pounds.

The day after the jump I went to see the doctor about my ankle (it is already starting to feel a lot better so I'm not too worried) and I ran into one of my buddies. He was there because he hurt his ankle in the jump. He began to explain to me that the winds were pretty intense and that he was getting pulled back and forth as soon as he got out of the plane. He ended up directly on top of another chute. He said that by the time that they got separated he barely had time to release his gear, which is connected by a rope, before he hit the ground. On a normal jump there is about a minute before you hit the ground, on this jump there was about 30 seconds because of all of the gear. His was not the only story I heard, one of the guys on my team told me he landed next to an American who landed on his back and immediately began cursing. In the end it may have been good I didn't jump.

The rest of the week is going to be more urban warfare, with paintball and more intricate buildings than we worked on last week. I'm kind of bummed that I won't get to work with them, but at the same time I think that being able to take a little time off will really help my ankle.

Friday the 13th!!!

As a general rule I tend to believe the Friday the 13th is an unlucky day (at least for me). This goes back to a particular Friday the 13th when I was about 8 years old and was at a beach with all of my Dad's family in Destin. I was building a sand castle and on a trip to collect water from the ocean I didn't notice a broken glass in the sand. You can fill in the rest of the story but without going into the details of the crying and the trip to the hospital I will say that the story concludes with me getting stitches on the toe of my right foot.

So that being said, I didn't even realize that this past Friday was Friday the 13th until my sister pointed it out to me (I don't think Israeli's know about it). So this particular Friday I got out of the army and went straight to my first football game of the season. It poured rain the whole game, literally poured. Blayke tried to come and watch my game, but she got turned around with some of the bus routes and didn't end up showing up until the end of the third quarter (about 4 and half hours after she set out from her apartment on what should have been an hour and half trip). But I'm getting ahead of myself. The game was actually going pretty well. I played running back and outside linebacker. We went up 3 touchdowns, but then after a few fumbled snaps somehow the other team got back into the game. On the first drive of the second half, someone tackled me from behind and my ankle got caught underneath us. I had to be helped off the field didn't get to play the rest of the game (a little while after Blayke finally got to the game). Fortunately, we held onto the lead and won 30 - 22. I guess winning should count for something, but I still think Friday the 13th is an unlucky day.

There was a small write up about the game in which they mentioned me, so I thought I'd put the link up:

http://www.ifl.co.il/52/section.aspx/153 (if that doesn't work you can just go to "ifl.co.il")

Anyway, we have a game this Thursday, but I'll probably be sitting this one out.

War Time Urban Warfare

Last week we practiced urban warfare in a war time setting. In the past all of our urban warfare training had been focused on missions in the West Bank, which is a different style of urban warfare.

In the West Bank we are usually going into someone's house in the middle of the night to arrest them. They don't know you are coming and they usually aren't ready for it. During war time that is not the case. You are going into a home that you have made it clear that there should not be anyone inside. If there is someone inside they probably mean you harm.

For that reason every room that you enter, you enter shooting. Any room that you come to that you are fired at you throw a grenade in. So this is what we practiced this week. It was pretty interesting, except that once again the army finds a way to take the fun out of the things that sound like they might be fun.

I heard throwing grenades into a room...sounds kinda fun. The truth...not so much. For safety reasons the rooms that we throw the grenades into are covered with sand on the floor (so that someone doesn't throw a grenade and have it bounce back out, which apparently happened during a previous training drill pre-sand). What I didn't consider was that entering a room with a dirt floor after a grenade has gone off makes it kinda hard to see, and even harder to breath.

I have a video of it, but I am having trouble loading it. I might try later to see if I can get it to work.

Ok, it took a little while but I got it to upload. You don't get a real feeling for what it is like when the grenade goes off (I stood in the corner and rocks from the roof flew off on to me), but it is still kinda fun to see).

Open Field Warfare Practice

The past two weeks we have been working on our open field warfare. Last week our company practiced its war time assignment. Which for the most part consists of anti-tank missiles, with the exception of my team, which is a sniper reconnaissance team.

What that means is the two other teams were given "targets" that they had to eliminate, and we had to direct them to their targets with our reconnaissance capabilities. Therefore, in each drill (there was one each night of the week) my team would go out a few hours before the other two teams and set up on top of a mountain. From there we communicated via radio to the other teams and told them where they needed to fire.

I simplified it a little bit, but that is more or less what we did for the entire week. We would navigate a few kilometers, set up a reconnaissance stand, pack up and walk until we met up with the other teams, and then usually carry two stretchers for about 5 kilometers until we got back to a bus. From there we went back to a nearby base and started the process all over again the next day.

The week after, we practiced storming hills. The first few days we practiced as a team, and the next two days we practiced as an entire company. The content of the week was pretty regular, other than navigating, I think we spent the most time training on how to storm hills. However the week itself was pretty tough.

Winter is only just started here, but that means rain. And the first few days it sure did rain. I don't know if anyone reading this has slept outside in the rain, but I can tell you that there are few things more depressing than waking up early in the morning, sticking your head out of your sleeping bag and being rained on. I don't exactly know why we didn't have tents, I'll chalk it up to logistical problems, but needless to say I was happy when the rain stopped after Tuesday (keeping in mind our weeks start on Sunday).

We had a few drills that were extremely long, for example storming 4 or 5 mountains in succession. Additionally, we had quite a few drills each day. For a frame of reference, each drill tends to take about 45 minutes to an hour and we have to do each one twice (once without live rounds and then with real ammunition) for safety reasons. In one 24 hour period we did 8 such drills. As a result, the week seemed to inch along.

Nothing to special happened, although there was one time when I kinda felt like Tiger Woods. I remember when I worked at IMG someone had talked about how Tiger Woods time was divided. One of the things that you might not know is that Tiger often has to go play a few rounds of golf with his sponsors. For example, he is sponsored by Cadillac, so he might have to go one weekend to play with the CEO and some of his friends, or put on a show at the range for some their clients (I don't know if you have seen the commercial where he juggles a ball around and then hits it out of the air, but that kinda stuff). So what's the connection? I'm getting to that.

One morning before one of our drills the commander of out entire brigade showed up and told us that there is a company here in Israel, I think a construction company, that sponsors the Airborne Special Forces. Every year the donate tens of thousands of dollars to our company. On this morning there was a group of from this company who had come to watch our drill. Before we started the drill I asked my commander how much ammo to bring (normally I shoot about 200 or 300 bullets in a drill) and he told me to bring as much as I could shoot. So I brought 600. Then before we started our company commander came up to me and said he wanted me to be "deadly" with the machine gun. I wasn't exactly sure what he meant, but I assume he meant shoot a lot, and I did.