The misery of crawling into a sleeping-bag which is wet and sodden in total blackness on top of a mountain with the rain pissing down is misery without parallel.
Simon Murray, French veteran of Algeria
The hardest part of the army is standing up.
Or so I told a group of Americans tourists who came by our base for quite a revealing tour (who knew the Recon Paratroopers would put on such a show for a synagogue group on tour?!). I was assigned to accompany the group as they were shown a few propaganda videos, a collection of weapons we in fact never use (Uzis, handguns, etc.), trucks from the 1950s, and our graffiti-covered, foul-smelling barracks. As the tour wound down, time was set aside for a quick Q and A. Which is when one of the touring grammas politely asked what is the very hardest part of serving in the army. After deciding not to burden her with the social and emotional loneliness shared by most lone soldiers, I did a quick mental survey of the last three months of arduous training and told her the truth: The hardest part of the army is standing up.
You have been walking for miles through the night, heavy pack itching against the cold sweat between your shoulder blades, lower back and shoulders crying out for escape from the Sisyphean load. Your gun sling is carving a red whelp on the back of your neck, knees creaking onward as you ascend hills, cross through waist high thorns, and repeatedly fail to keep your balance on the unstable rock face at your feet.
So when the procession suddenly grounds to a halt, your body and mind as one collapse backwards, falling onto your pack for a precious few minutes of break. With the break in physical activity, the wind starts freezing the sweat, the stink and sopping mess of your shirt once again overwhelms your senses, and a damned thorn in your back makes every second of this break a fiendish torture. Nevertheless, you sit there basking in every dreadful moment, appreciating that for the first time all night your neck is not bent down by the weight on your back so you can finally look up and see the ochre moon and the sprinkled stars.
And then comes the order to stand. To reshoulder heavy packs and reform two lines. The march continues!
Everything holy beseeches you not to stand. Why be the first? No one else is making any effort to move. And why is the break over already? I was sleeping, finally resting from the grueling drudgery of this exercise. It is freezing foo shilling, there is no way I will move from my nest of semi-warmth here on the ground. And my legs have just slipped into the land of pins and needles. Give me a few more minutes to regain some control before getting up. Worst yet, I exchanged my sopping, freezing army shirt for a warm and dry thermal shirt during the break. Just the thought of slipping that sodden wreck back on my skin is terrifying. And have you tried shouldering my pack? Good Lord, Atlas himself could not keep such a heavy weight on his shoulders as long as I have.
So it goes. Throughout the night, every break commences with the awful need to gather one's wits and courage and stand up. Tactical necessity or incompetence often leads to frequent breaks. The march proceeds in stutter-step fashion. Sometimes nearly two hours pass without a break. Often you stand up, reshoulder your pack and move forward ten feet only to discover the march has stalled once again. Your body, of course, instantly collapses. Only to be told seconds later to get back up and continue marching.
The fighting, marching, fatigue and hunger are not always easy. But nothing compares to the elemental challenge of arising to recommence the march. As quaint as it may sound, simply standing up is the hardest of the hard in this man’s army.
BONUS
I was checking out of a supermarket the other day when it happened. A disabled lady, middle aged and clearly not very wealthy, stopped me just as I was about to pay for my groceries. Soldier, she said in English, please let me. Without another word she slipped money into my hand and gestured that I was to pay for my groceries with her savings. I pray for you soldiers every night, she added as I tried to tell her generosity was unnecessary. Please allow me to help you in whatever small way I can.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Training, & Marching, On and On
The first quality of a soldier is constancy in enduring fatigue and hardship. Courage is only second. Poverty, privation and want are the school of the good soldier.
Napoleon
I had no idea until this year that the Palestinians had a day set aside on their national calendar to commemorate the Six Day War known as Al Naksa, the setback. Considering that before 1967 the West Bank and Gaza were under the control of two Arab states that did everything in their power to shackle Palestinian national aspirations, the necessity of mourning Israel’s occupation of those territories seems a little unnecessary.
Be that as it may, the entire army was on edge as Al Naksa Day approached on Sunday June 5. Three weeks before, on May 15, Palestinian demonstrators in Syria and Lebanon had marked Al Nakba Day (‘the catastrophe,’ the day Palestinians commemorate the displacement that accompanied the creation of Israel on May 15 1948) by attempting to cross the border into Israel. Violence at the border and elsewhere in Israel had resulted in the death of fifteen Palestinians and one Israeli. Palestinian leaders promised even greater demonstrations on Al Naksa, so the army responded by canceling home leaves and moving troops, including my unit, towards the Syrian border as the weekend approached.
The resulting protests were similar to those on May 15. Palestinians in Syria, bused to the border by a government eager to distract opinion from the regime’s brutal repression of its own people, threatened to cross into Israel. Thoroughly prepared, the army warned the demonstrators not to cross the international border. When the warnings failed to do the trick, snipers from my unit were given the green light to fire at the legs of anyone seeking to illegally cross the border. As the snipers fired, other troops from my unit were on hand to ensure the mass of demonstrators did not surge over the fence into Israeli territory. The snipers, all close friends of mine, two of whom are the most innocent-looking, dimple-cheeked nineteen year olds I have ever met, are reported to have injured somewhere between twelve and twenty demonstrators.
While some of the squads in my unit were defending our northern border, my own squad was left fending off a storm of mosquitoes on a deserted base in the Golan Heights. Despite not seeing any action ourselves, Al Naksa Day still marked a rare distraction from the last two months of repetitive yet grueling training. This training comes on top of the formal training my unit completed in April. The day after wrapping up that fourteen months training odyssey, my squad joined the months-long refresher training (known as imun) the entire Paratroops Brigade has been engaged in since early March.
While I am eager to start the real life of a special forces combat soldier, this extra training might have been manageable had it introduced new skills or sharpened techniques briefly introduced in the past. Instead it has been one long mindless and taxing bore. My squad was unlucky enough to join this rotational training round after the more relevant and exciting training weeks (urban combat, etc.) had been completed. All that was left, and all we have done over the last two months since we thought our training was finished, is week after week of simulated war games. What that means in practice is trekking night and day under a heavy pack, rarely firing a shot, dragging ourselves and our heavy gear from one imaginary ambush to another.
These field weeks have been almost as difficult as the incredibly grueling misakmim at the end of formal training in late March. In some ways these last few weeks are even harder. In March we had mentally prepared ourselves for several weeks of incredible physical challenge that would soon conclude the last fourteen months of training. Our current exercises just grind on and on, serving no real purpose as far as grunts on the ground are concerned. Guys joke that the only takeaway from these weeks is convincing everyone that war is hell and we should all vote for the most left-wing parties in the next election. Others have noted that it is a shame Hamas and Hezbollah do not conduct similar punishing exercises. No doubt their own rank and file would grow similarly disillusioned about starting a ruckus with Israel if they had a taste from such exercises of the hellishness of large scale violence.
Our war games are, of course, designed for our senior officers’ benefit. One hopes that they at least are learning something from moving grunts like me up and down hillsides like so many lowly pawns. The true status of an infantry soldier, a lowly pawn, is my own takeaway from the last few weeks of drudgery. The only solace pawns like me can have is knowing that thanks to the Israeli system where every officer was once a lowly grunt (Israel has no equivalent to West Pointers or ROTC grads that commence their military careers as officers), the higher-ups have some understanding what they are doing when they shuffle us across the board.
BONUS
The endless marching over the last few weeks has allowed for one unexpected fun activity: Chinese language teaching! One of my peers first expressed interest in learning basic conversational Chinese. When I began teaching him a few vocabulary words for every mile we marched, others took an interest and a small cadre of language learners has emerged. Our attempt at Chinese gibberish while we march allows me to taste, if only in my imagination, what Mao and his Long Marchers experienced on their epic journey across China in 1935.
Napoleon
I had no idea until this year that the Palestinians had a day set aside on their national calendar to commemorate the Six Day War known as Al Naksa, the setback. Considering that before 1967 the West Bank and Gaza were under the control of two Arab states that did everything in their power to shackle Palestinian national aspirations, the necessity of mourning Israel’s occupation of those territories seems a little unnecessary.
Be that as it may, the entire army was on edge as Al Naksa Day approached on Sunday June 5. Three weeks before, on May 15, Palestinian demonstrators in Syria and Lebanon had marked Al Nakba Day (‘the catastrophe,’ the day Palestinians commemorate the displacement that accompanied the creation of Israel on May 15 1948) by attempting to cross the border into Israel. Violence at the border and elsewhere in Israel had resulted in the death of fifteen Palestinians and one Israeli. Palestinian leaders promised even greater demonstrations on Al Naksa, so the army responded by canceling home leaves and moving troops, including my unit, towards the Syrian border as the weekend approached.
The resulting protests were similar to those on May 15. Palestinians in Syria, bused to the border by a government eager to distract opinion from the regime’s brutal repression of its own people, threatened to cross into Israel. Thoroughly prepared, the army warned the demonstrators not to cross the international border. When the warnings failed to do the trick, snipers from my unit were given the green light to fire at the legs of anyone seeking to illegally cross the border. As the snipers fired, other troops from my unit were on hand to ensure the mass of demonstrators did not surge over the fence into Israeli territory. The snipers, all close friends of mine, two of whom are the most innocent-looking, dimple-cheeked nineteen year olds I have ever met, are reported to have injured somewhere between twelve and twenty demonstrators.
While some of the squads in my unit were defending our northern border, my own squad was left fending off a storm of mosquitoes on a deserted base in the Golan Heights. Despite not seeing any action ourselves, Al Naksa Day still marked a rare distraction from the last two months of repetitive yet grueling training. This training comes on top of the formal training my unit completed in April. The day after wrapping up that fourteen months training odyssey, my squad joined the months-long refresher training (known as imun) the entire Paratroops Brigade has been engaged in since early March.
While I am eager to start the real life of a special forces combat soldier, this extra training might have been manageable had it introduced new skills or sharpened techniques briefly introduced in the past. Instead it has been one long mindless and taxing bore. My squad was unlucky enough to join this rotational training round after the more relevant and exciting training weeks (urban combat, etc.) had been completed. All that was left, and all we have done over the last two months since we thought our training was finished, is week after week of simulated war games. What that means in practice is trekking night and day under a heavy pack, rarely firing a shot, dragging ourselves and our heavy gear from one imaginary ambush to another.
These field weeks have been almost as difficult as the incredibly grueling misakmim at the end of formal training in late March. In some ways these last few weeks are even harder. In March we had mentally prepared ourselves for several weeks of incredible physical challenge that would soon conclude the last fourteen months of training. Our current exercises just grind on and on, serving no real purpose as far as grunts on the ground are concerned. Guys joke that the only takeaway from these weeks is convincing everyone that war is hell and we should all vote for the most left-wing parties in the next election. Others have noted that it is a shame Hamas and Hezbollah do not conduct similar punishing exercises. No doubt their own rank and file would grow similarly disillusioned about starting a ruckus with Israel if they had a taste from such exercises of the hellishness of large scale violence.
Our war games are, of course, designed for our senior officers’ benefit. One hopes that they at least are learning something from moving grunts like me up and down hillsides like so many lowly pawns. The true status of an infantry soldier, a lowly pawn, is my own takeaway from the last few weeks of drudgery. The only solace pawns like me can have is knowing that thanks to the Israeli system where every officer was once a lowly grunt (Israel has no equivalent to West Pointers or ROTC grads that commence their military careers as officers), the higher-ups have some understanding what they are doing when they shuffle us across the board.
BONUS
The endless marching over the last few weeks has allowed for one unexpected fun activity: Chinese language teaching! One of my peers first expressed interest in learning basic conversational Chinese. When I began teaching him a few vocabulary words for every mile we marched, others took an interest and a small cadre of language learners has emerged. Our attempt at Chinese gibberish while we march allows me to taste, if only in my imagination, what Mao and his Long Marchers experienced on their epic journey across China in 1935.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Unforgiving Morale, Unforgotten Values
I read two books in the past week, The Unforgiving Minute and Ultramarathon Man. Both are autobiographies by supremely disciplined men whose commitment to overcome any obstacle sees them past severe physical and mental hardship. In The Unforgiving Minute, a recently discharged lieutenant in the US Army charts his growth as a leader from his student days at West Point and Oxford to the military trials he faced in Ranger School and leading a platoon in Afghanistan. Ultramarathon Man is the story of an otherwise mild guy, whose exploits— running more than 350 miles (560 km) without rest, 135 miles (217 km) nonstop in 120°F (49°C) heat, a marathon at the South Pole— have to be read with eyes agog to be believed.
Like anyone else, I am inspired and informed by both reads. As a soldier in the IDF, a young man who volunteered to serve out of deep convictions in the necessity if not the nobility of his military service, the two men's stories strike a deeper chord. They remind me of the discipline and commitment, the passion and desire, I want to believe exists in my military service. I am also reminded of the demands placed on a young man called to lead his peers into battle, a position I sought to pursue when I first enlisted. Reading the two books was not easy, since the values and goals they remind me of are so distant, so foreign, from the army in which I serve.
The author’s experience in Ranger School, the unforgiving nine-week combat leadership course in the US Army, brought home the absence of these values in my service. Ranger School is said to be one of the most physically rigorous combat courses in the world. But the part of the course that grabbed my attention is the values that instructors and trainees alike, at least in the pages of The Unforgiving Minute, constantly evoke. To be one of the fifty percent of Ranger students that pass the course, it is not enough to be a natural leader in fantastic shape with a strong record of accomplishments. You have to embrace the Ranger mantra that you are a soldier that never quits, never fails, and serves alongside the best of the best for the most noble of reasons. In other words, you must accept and become a part of the culture of excellence demanded of Rangers.
While my former unit in the Air Force had a similar culture, the environment in the regular army is very different. Excellence is a distant cousin of an established mediocrity. Worse is the widespread malaise, or as we say in Hebrew, the swamp-like sense of shavuz that pervades entire battalions. There is little sense of working to be the very best we can. Maybe Israel’s socialist past is to blame yet a fiery ambition is all too absent in the Israeli Army.
Considering that Israel’s enemies are literally at our gates if not within our walls, there is a tragic irony in the lack of passion and discipline in the army. Perhaps the difference between a draft and professional army, a mandatory and volunteer force, explains the malaise here versus the United States. Despite the benefits to morale that could come from serving in an army that draws its soldiers from across the country, the mandatory nature of the draft does the opposite.
My experience suggests that the blame lies within Israeli society, chiefly in the army itself. While army service is still generally respected and seen as a path to future success, within the army the educational values—Zionist, Jewish, democratic—that could strengthen morale are not taken advantage of as much as they could be. As I have written before, Zionism is generally absent in the IDF. National holidays often pass without a serious attempt to remind soldiers why they are sacrificing three years of their youth on their country’s behalf.
While the army has a whole staff of soldiers tasked with providing educational content, my experience shows that platoon leaders, the first and second lieutenants that run the army, are the most essential players in the state of their soldier’s morale. My previous lieutenant, for all the unpleasant memories he left with me, provided a sterling example of a leader who really channeled Zionist meaning into our training. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of my current platoon leader. Recognizing the critical role lieutenants play in the direction of the army does lend added ache to the regret I feel in not pursuing a goal I had at the start of my service.
Drawing a comparison between the US Army’s elite leadership course and the regular ranks of Israeli grunts is, I realize, unfair. For all I know (my knowledge of the US Army is limited to a few reads like Generation Kill), US grunts share much of the shavuz of their Israelis peers. Nevertheless, if I were to write a book about my military experience like the author of The Unforgiving Minute, I would not be able to describe a service underlined by the passion and commitment shared by the incredible ultramarathon man. Ironically, pursuing that discipline and desire was part of my reason for enlisting. Igniting my lost spark, is what I called it. Finding that purity of purpose. Perhaps a lesson is that no army, no brontosaurus-like institution, is the place to look for such commitment. Inner fire ultimately lies within, the actual jungle one must explore no matter what external goal or pursuit he seeks.
Like anyone else, I am inspired and informed by both reads. As a soldier in the IDF, a young man who volunteered to serve out of deep convictions in the necessity if not the nobility of his military service, the two men's stories strike a deeper chord. They remind me of the discipline and commitment, the passion and desire, I want to believe exists in my military service. I am also reminded of the demands placed on a young man called to lead his peers into battle, a position I sought to pursue when I first enlisted. Reading the two books was not easy, since the values and goals they remind me of are so distant, so foreign, from the army in which I serve.
The author’s experience in Ranger School, the unforgiving nine-week combat leadership course in the US Army, brought home the absence of these values in my service. Ranger School is said to be one of the most physically rigorous combat courses in the world. But the part of the course that grabbed my attention is the values that instructors and trainees alike, at least in the pages of The Unforgiving Minute, constantly evoke. To be one of the fifty percent of Ranger students that pass the course, it is not enough to be a natural leader in fantastic shape with a strong record of accomplishments. You have to embrace the Ranger mantra that you are a soldier that never quits, never fails, and serves alongside the best of the best for the most noble of reasons. In other words, you must accept and become a part of the culture of excellence demanded of Rangers.
While my former unit in the Air Force had a similar culture, the environment in the regular army is very different. Excellence is a distant cousin of an established mediocrity. Worse is the widespread malaise, or as we say in Hebrew, the swamp-like sense of shavuz that pervades entire battalions. There is little sense of working to be the very best we can. Maybe Israel’s socialist past is to blame yet a fiery ambition is all too absent in the Israeli Army.
Considering that Israel’s enemies are literally at our gates if not within our walls, there is a tragic irony in the lack of passion and discipline in the army. Perhaps the difference between a draft and professional army, a mandatory and volunteer force, explains the malaise here versus the United States. Despite the benefits to morale that could come from serving in an army that draws its soldiers from across the country, the mandatory nature of the draft does the opposite.
My experience suggests that the blame lies within Israeli society, chiefly in the army itself. While army service is still generally respected and seen as a path to future success, within the army the educational values—Zionist, Jewish, democratic—that could strengthen morale are not taken advantage of as much as they could be. As I have written before, Zionism is generally absent in the IDF. National holidays often pass without a serious attempt to remind soldiers why they are sacrificing three years of their youth on their country’s behalf.
While the army has a whole staff of soldiers tasked with providing educational content, my experience shows that platoon leaders, the first and second lieutenants that run the army, are the most essential players in the state of their soldier’s morale. My previous lieutenant, for all the unpleasant memories he left with me, provided a sterling example of a leader who really channeled Zionist meaning into our training. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of my current platoon leader. Recognizing the critical role lieutenants play in the direction of the army does lend added ache to the regret I feel in not pursuing a goal I had at the start of my service.
Drawing a comparison between the US Army’s elite leadership course and the regular ranks of Israeli grunts is, I realize, unfair. For all I know (my knowledge of the US Army is limited to a few reads like Generation Kill), US grunts share much of the shavuz of their Israelis peers. Nevertheless, if I were to write a book about my military experience like the author of The Unforgiving Minute, I would not be able to describe a service underlined by the passion and commitment shared by the incredible ultramarathon man. Ironically, pursuing that discipline and desire was part of my reason for enlisting. Igniting my lost spark, is what I called it. Finding that purity of purpose. Perhaps a lesson is that no army, no brontosaurus-like institution, is the place to look for such commitment. Inner fire ultimately lies within, the actual jungle one must explore no matter what external goal or pursuit he seeks.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Final Seminar: Zionism Intact, Garin Gold
No one comes from overseas to voluntarily enlist in the Israeli army for lack of idealism. As I have explained once or twice, lone soldiers have a raft of reasons for joining the Israeli army. But nearly everyone shares some sense of deep seated Zionism, a sense that their service is contributing in some way to the Jewish State. And then they serve. Volley after volley does not go quite the way they imagined, the balls keep coming at them when they are not ready to return them, and by the end of the match, if not before, they have sworn to never again take up a racquet, if not avoid the court all together.
The tennis parable is merely another way of describing how volunteer soldiers from abroad tend to lose their Zionism over the course of serving in the Israeli army. It happens because the army is a grinding and grueling environment where Zionism is unnervingly absent upon and a grunt’s life is full of disappointment and frustration. After a year and a half, or two or three, no one emerges unscathed. And while exact numbers are unknown, my experience suggests that well over half of lone soldiers finish their service burned by the experience and distanced from a once fiery Zionism.
No one in my garin (the group of lone soldiers I live with on kibbutz) has had an easy ride in the army. Each of us has had our low moments, many followed by even lower moments as if some celestial being was trying to prove things can always get worse. And so as we gathered for the final weekend seminar before our discharge date in October, I was eager to hear where my friends were with their Zionism.
Surprisingly, the answer is very well, thank you. Towards the end of Shabbat, I led a discussion group on these very issues. Despite my efforts to play devil's advocate, to remind my garin friends of the many complaints they voice all the time about their army service, the collective response was that their sincerity and attachment to the state has only deepened through their army service.
Perhaps I should not have been so surprised. After all, I feel the same way. More importantly, the strength of our garin (and the whole Garin Tzabar concept in general) is our ability to draw strength vicariously from each other’s experiences. While each of us shoulders personal disappointments, our garin is a community we can and do turn to all the time to share our complaints. Rarely do I share a complaint with less than half the members of my garin before their sympathetic ear has reduced the bitterness of whatever it was that was bothering me. As much as I appreciated the framework of Garin Tzabar -- and my own kibbutz community -- before the army, only now do I recognize how valuable and lucky I truly am to be part of such a program.
The tennis parable is merely another way of describing how volunteer soldiers from abroad tend to lose their Zionism over the course of serving in the Israeli army. It happens because the army is a grinding and grueling environment where Zionism is unnervingly absent upon and a grunt’s life is full of disappointment and frustration. After a year and a half, or two or three, no one emerges unscathed. And while exact numbers are unknown, my experience suggests that well over half of lone soldiers finish their service burned by the experience and distanced from a once fiery Zionism.
No one in my garin (the group of lone soldiers I live with on kibbutz) has had an easy ride in the army. Each of us has had our low moments, many followed by even lower moments as if some celestial being was trying to prove things can always get worse. And so as we gathered for the final weekend seminar before our discharge date in October, I was eager to hear where my friends were with their Zionism.
Surprisingly, the answer is very well, thank you. Towards the end of Shabbat, I led a discussion group on these very issues. Despite my efforts to play devil's advocate, to remind my garin friends of the many complaints they voice all the time about their army service, the collective response was that their sincerity and attachment to the state has only deepened through their army service.
Perhaps I should not have been so surprised. After all, I feel the same way. More importantly, the strength of our garin (and the whole Garin Tzabar concept in general) is our ability to draw strength vicariously from each other’s experiences. While each of us shoulders personal disappointments, our garin is a community we can and do turn to all the time to share our complaints. Rarely do I share a complaint with less than half the members of my garin before their sympathetic ear has reduced the bitterness of whatever it was that was bothering me. As much as I appreciated the framework of Garin Tzabar -- and my own kibbutz community -- before the army, only now do I recognize how valuable and lucky I truly am to be part of such a program.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Our Holy Turbans
Israeli soldiers dressed for battle tend to look like soldiers from any country in the world, give or take a higher number of skinny, short Jewboys. The one exception is up top, where Israelis sport a head covering born by no other soldiers in the world. A kippa? Not quite. The peculiar hat is a mitznefet, a floppy mesh wrap that looks like a shower cap and attaches to the standard military helmets worn underneath.
The need for a mitznefet is hardly unique. Just as other armies daub their helmets with camouflage coloring, Israel uses the mitznefet to disguise the sight of a military helmet from the enemy. The mesh is perfect for reducing the sun’s (or moon’s) glare that reflects off a soldier’s helmet. Green/brown or tan coloring also allow a soldier to subtly blend into woods or desert surroundings.
Why other armies have not adopted the mitznefet is anybody’s guess. My own guess is that the distinctly Jewish roots of the camo-wrap explain its singular placement atop the heads of Israel’s soldiers. The modern source of the mitznefet is a mystery. But slip back a few thousand years into biblical Israel, and the source of a top commonly mistranslated as "clown hat" is clear. In the Biblical passages outlining the dress for the priests of the Jewish temple, a chef-hat like wrap is designed for use by the high priest. This special headdress is called a mitznefet by the Bible, a holy turban so to speak. From high priest to modern warriors, the mitznefet still serves as the crown of the Jewish peoples’ protectors.
The mitznefet is far more than a camouflaged crown however. The top also becomes an instant source of protection from the sun and annoying mosquito by dragging the mesh net down across one’s face. Portable mosquito netting and shade, two uses my peers quickly make use of whenever we pause in the sun during a long march. I have gone a few steps further, finding that the mitznefet also does a marvelous job of providing an extra level of unintended camouflage. When my heavy helmet becomes unbearable during a sweaty march, slipping the helmet off into my pack and keeping only the mitznefet atop my head never seems to catch the attention of undiscerning officers. When the march itself becomes unbearable, a final level of creative tampering is called for: With or without the helmet, the mitznefet provides ample space and coverage to clip a small music device to the inner webbing. With the rest of the mitznefet pulled down around the earphones nestling in my ears, no one is the wiser that I am rocking out to Tupac or Bob Dylan during a long march.
The Red Badge of Courage
Within him, as he hurled himself forward, was born a love, a despairing fondness for this flag which was near him. It was a creation of beauty and invulnerability. It was a goddess, radiant, that bended its form with an imperious gesture to him. It was a woman, red and white, hating and loving, that called him with the voice of his hopes. Because no harm could come to it, he endowed it with power.
Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
Assigning a soldier to enter combat bearing a flag sounds absurd. And yet standard bearers have been a near universal practice since man first took up arms against his fellow. Blame pride, morale or the simple necessity to know where your mates are in the fog of war. Or call it the mark of Cain, embraced across one too many battles over oh so many years.
The Israeli army has no use for standard bearers. Yet like their predecessors, every infantry unit has a soldier tasked with carrying a red flag into battle. Known as the daglan, this soldier’s job is to identify his troops formation so they will not fall victim to friendly fire. While his task may seem nothing like those legionnaires who entered battle bearing nothing but a heavy pole topped with a bronze eagle, there are many unnerving similarities. Both are for all intents and purposes are unarmed, their weapon hanging limply at their side as they run through the line of fire grasping a glorified stick. That stick is designed to signal their forces identity, a great idea to avoid friendly fire, less so when it allows the enemy to zone in on a convenient target. Raging bulls are not the only ones attracted to a waving red flag.
In the Roman Legion, bearing the eagle standard was a signal honor, granted to a soldier known as the aquilifer from the Latin word for eagle, aquila. In the Israeli army, serving as the daglan also comes with a share of honor. In my squad, our two Ethiopians (first or second generation immigrants from Ethiopia) bear our flags into battle. Whether this is designed as a mark of honor, or is simply taking advantage of the fact that they so clearly already stand out, is not my place to judge.
Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
Assigning a soldier to enter combat bearing a flag sounds absurd. And yet standard bearers have been a near universal practice since man first took up arms against his fellow. Blame pride, morale or the simple necessity to know where your mates are in the fog of war. Or call it the mark of Cain, embraced across one too many battles over oh so many years.
The Israeli army has no use for standard bearers. Yet like their predecessors, every infantry unit has a soldier tasked with carrying a red flag into battle. Known as the daglan, this soldier’s job is to identify his troops formation so they will not fall victim to friendly fire. While his task may seem nothing like those legionnaires who entered battle bearing nothing but a heavy pole topped with a bronze eagle, there are many unnerving similarities. Both are for all intents and purposes are unarmed, their weapon hanging limply at their side as they run through the line of fire grasping a glorified stick. That stick is designed to signal their forces identity, a great idea to avoid friendly fire, less so when it allows the enemy to zone in on a convenient target. Raging bulls are not the only ones attracted to a waving red flag.
In the Roman Legion, bearing the eagle standard was a signal honor, granted to a soldier known as the aquilifer from the Latin word for eagle, aquila. In the Israeli army, serving as the daglan also comes with a share of honor. In my squad, our two Ethiopians (first or second generation immigrants from Ethiopia) bear our flags into battle. Whether this is designed as a mark of honor, or is simply taking advantage of the fact that they so clearly already stand out, is not my place to judge.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Visiting Esther on Har Herzl
Winding my way past the sullen stone slabs and twisting tree trunks on Har Herzl, Israel’s Arlington Cemetery, I searched for a headstone that explains why on the eve of my twenty-sixth birthday I am, gun in hand, dressed in the uniform of a soldier of the Israel Defense Force. Four days ago, on Yom HaZikaron, Israeli Memorial Day, this hill was overrun with the families and friends of the fallen, come to honor the final sacrifice of their loved ones. I had spent the better part of the day on duty at Ammunition Hill, another landmark to Israel’s fallen in this city of troubled memories. And so when my weekend leave arrived, unfinished business drew me to the stilled ranks atop Har Herzl. A young lady was waiting. Her last words echoed in my mind as I slowly made my way to her final resting place.
Dear mummy and daddy,
I am writing to beg you that whatever may have happened to me, you will make the effort to take it in the spirit I want. We had a difficult fight. I have tasted hell but it has been worthwhile because I am convinced the end will see a Jewish state and all our longings… I want you to remember that we were soldiers and had the greatest and noblest cause to fight for… I have lived my life fully, and very sweet it has been to be here in our land… I hope one day soon you will all come and enjoy the fruits of that for which we are fighting. Be happy and remember me only in happiness.
Shalom.
Esther
I discovered Esther Cailingold’s
last letter to her parents as a small child. Buried in the pages of O Jerusalem, a dramatic nonfictional account of the fight for Jerusalem in the 1948 War of Independence, Esther’s words became my reference point for Israel’s embryonic struggle for survival. Her values left an equally vivid impression. Two weeks after David Ben Gurion declared the independence of the state of Israel on Friday May 14 1948, Esther fought her final battle in the besieged Old City of Jerusalem. As retold in O Jerusalem,
Racked by a high fever, in terrible agony, Esther Cailingold lay dying this Shabbat eve on the floor of the second story of the Armenian monastery with the rest of the wounded. There was no morphine left to ease her pain, and the wounded man beside her saw one of the orderlies bend over and offer the only sedative he had, a cigarette. She lifted her hand and started to take it. Then her hand fell back.
No, she whispered, Shabbat.
Long after I moved onto other accounts of the 1948 war, I remained attached to the sprightly twenty-two year old English girl whose passion and commitment to her people sustained her right through her final sacrifice. In contrast to well known figures like Hanna Senesh and David ‘Mickey’ Marcus, Esther fell under the radar. My admiration was strengthened by the belief that Esther was a heroine of 1948 I alone treasured.
Or so I thought.* Several months ago, I stumbled across Esther a second time. The Prime Ministers, a newly published political memoir by retired Israeli diplomat Yehuda Avner, is devoted to insightful and humorous asides about four of Israel’s most prominent leaders. Except for one chapter, modestly titled Esther, whose pages share the lifelong impression a young English girl had on the author in Jerusalem in 1948. Avner was gracious enough to counsel me several years ago when I wrote to him with questions about pursuing a career in Israeli diplomacy. Discovering his connection (Avner’s relationship with Esther extends past 1948: he later married Esther’s sister) with one of my Zionist role models seemed reason enough to write to him again. Until I discovered that even closer connections to Esther lay at my doorstep.
Despite calling Tirat Zvi home for nearly two years, most of the locals remain strangers. So I was surprised when dropping Esther’s story to a friend on kibbutz resulted in discovering that Esther’s nephew lives on the kibbutz and her elderly brother resides a few blocks from my home away from home in Jerusalem (Asher, her brother, recently published a book about his sister entitled Unlikely Heroine: Esther Cailingold's Fight for Jerusalem). In seconds my Esther, safely ensconced in the mythical realm we build for our heroes, was revealed as a real person. With living family and friends who can talk with me about the challenges faced by the modern state just as they once held similar discussion with Esther.
I had always known, of course, that Esther was all too human. And that given the brief number of years that have passed since Israel’s establishment, many of her peers are alive and well. Discovering Esther’s family, however, bought into sharp relief that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of living Esthers, quiet heroes of Israel’s struggle for survival whose heroism is overlooked in the casual way that we build monuments to our martyrs and forget the tales of the survivors. Esther’s untimely death brought her words to my attention, words that explain why I moved half a world away to enlist in the army of the Jewish state. Had she lived, I almost certainly would not have grown up inspired by her example. Ironically, the recent encounters with her family and friends have left me with a better appreciation for her often overlooked peers, the surviving veterans from Israel’s most demanding days.
Esther Cailingold succumbed to her wounds on May 28 1948, sixty-three years ago today. She was twenty-two years old.
* My belief that Esther's legacy was treasured by me alone could not be farther from reality. As I recently discovered, Kibbutz Lavi near the Sea of Galilee, Yeshivat HaKotel in the heart of Jerusalem's Old City, and numerous other libraries and war memorials across Israel and England commemorate the young English Zionist.
BONUS
I am a fairly goal centered person. Every birthday is a chance to reflect on the objectives I have reached over the past year and draw up a list for the next. One of my most fervent goals has proven difficult to drop my birthday list-making: a serious romance, with the bar for serious set pretty low the longer the goal remains unrealized.
And so I appreciate the irony that the girl I chose to spend time with the day before my birthday is buried beneath the ground. Perhaps, suggested a friend, you are looking in the wrong places. My friend is right, though the lesson Esther left me about appreciating living heroes has insight for my romantic life as well. Because heroic role models are not the only ones I have a tendency to enshrine in a mythic realm of impermeability. Somewhere in that make-believe world is the girl I am looking for, an imaginary girl that real flesh and blood have trouble living up to. Perhaps along with appreciating previously overlooked heroic grandmothers, my experience with Esther is telling me to open my heart to their granddaughters as well.
Dear mummy and daddy,
I am writing to beg you that whatever may have happened to me, you will make the effort to take it in the spirit I want. We had a difficult fight. I have tasted hell but it has been worthwhile because I am convinced the end will see a Jewish state and all our longings… I want you to remember that we were soldiers and had the greatest and noblest cause to fight for… I have lived my life fully, and very sweet it has been to be here in our land… I hope one day soon you will all come and enjoy the fruits of that for which we are fighting. Be happy and remember me only in happiness.
Shalom.
Esther
I discovered Esther Cailingold’s
last letter to her parents as a small child. Buried in the pages of O Jerusalem, a dramatic nonfictional account of the fight for Jerusalem in the 1948 War of Independence, Esther’s words became my reference point for Israel’s embryonic struggle for survival. Her values left an equally vivid impression. Two weeks after David Ben Gurion declared the independence of the state of Israel on Friday May 14 1948, Esther fought her final battle in the besieged Old City of Jerusalem. As retold in O Jerusalem, Racked by a high fever, in terrible agony, Esther Cailingold lay dying this Shabbat eve on the floor of the second story of the Armenian monastery with the rest of the wounded. There was no morphine left to ease her pain, and the wounded man beside her saw one of the orderlies bend over and offer the only sedative he had, a cigarette. She lifted her hand and started to take it. Then her hand fell back.
No, she whispered, Shabbat.
Long after I moved onto other accounts of the 1948 war, I remained attached to the sprightly twenty-two year old English girl whose passion and commitment to her people sustained her right through her final sacrifice. In contrast to well known figures like Hanna Senesh and David ‘Mickey’ Marcus, Esther fell under the radar. My admiration was strengthened by the belief that Esther was a heroine of 1948 I alone treasured.
Or so I thought.* Several months ago, I stumbled across Esther a second time. The Prime Ministers, a newly published political memoir by retired Israeli diplomat Yehuda Avner, is devoted to insightful and humorous asides about four of Israel’s most prominent leaders. Except for one chapter, modestly titled Esther, whose pages share the lifelong impression a young English girl had on the author in Jerusalem in 1948. Avner was gracious enough to counsel me several years ago when I wrote to him with questions about pursuing a career in Israeli diplomacy. Discovering his connection (Avner’s relationship with Esther extends past 1948: he later married Esther’s sister) with one of my Zionist role models seemed reason enough to write to him again. Until I discovered that even closer connections to Esther lay at my doorstep.
Despite calling Tirat Zvi home for nearly two years, most of the locals remain strangers. So I was surprised when dropping Esther’s story to a friend on kibbutz resulted in discovering that Esther’s nephew lives on the kibbutz and her elderly brother resides a few blocks from my home away from home in Jerusalem (Asher, her brother, recently published a book about his sister entitled Unlikely Heroine: Esther Cailingold's Fight for Jerusalem). In seconds my Esther, safely ensconced in the mythical realm we build for our heroes, was revealed as a real person. With living family and friends who can talk with me about the challenges faced by the modern state just as they once held similar discussion with Esther.
I had always known, of course, that Esther was all too human. And that given the brief number of years that have passed since Israel’s establishment, many of her peers are alive and well. Discovering Esther’s family, however, bought into sharp relief that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of living Esthers, quiet heroes of Israel’s struggle for survival whose heroism is overlooked in the casual way that we build monuments to our martyrs and forget the tales of the survivors. Esther’s untimely death brought her words to my attention, words that explain why I moved half a world away to enlist in the army of the Jewish state. Had she lived, I almost certainly would not have grown up inspired by her example. Ironically, the recent encounters with her family and friends have left me with a better appreciation for her often overlooked peers, the surviving veterans from Israel’s most demanding days.
Esther Cailingold succumbed to her wounds on May 28 1948, sixty-three years ago today. She was twenty-two years old.
* My belief that Esther's legacy was treasured by me alone could not be farther from reality. As I recently discovered, Kibbutz Lavi near the Sea of Galilee, Yeshivat HaKotel in the heart of Jerusalem's Old City, and numerous other libraries and war memorials across Israel and England commemorate the young English Zionist.
BONUS
I am a fairly goal centered person. Every birthday is a chance to reflect on the objectives I have reached over the past year and draw up a list for the next. One of my most fervent goals has proven difficult to drop my birthday list-making: a serious romance, with the bar for serious set pretty low the longer the goal remains unrealized.
And so I appreciate the irony that the girl I chose to spend time with the day before my birthday is buried beneath the ground. Perhaps, suggested a friend, you are looking in the wrong places. My friend is right, though the lesson Esther left me about appreciating living heroes has insight for my romantic life as well. Because heroic role models are not the only ones I have a tendency to enshrine in a mythic realm of impermeability. Somewhere in that make-believe world is the girl I am looking for, an imaginary girl that real flesh and blood have trouble living up to. Perhaps along with appreciating previously overlooked heroic grandmothers, my experience with Esther is telling me to open my heart to their granddaughters as well.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Hamakor - The Beak Shirt
Without appreciating the beak, you cannot understand the pride and joy a soldier has in reaching the ranks of Orev Tzanchanim (my special-forces Paratroopers unit). The beak (in Hebrew, makor) is a distinct t-shirt, generally black in color, with two looping golden eyes and a silver beak on the backside. The eyes and beak have an dangerous yet humorous edge, suggesting this is a raven well aware of its checkered legacy in popular myth and legend.
Every unit in the army has a symbol of some kind. And every unit produces t-shirts celebrating their accomplishments. Yet few units have soldiers who say without a trace of phoniness that the only reason they chose their unit, and the thing that motivated them to persevere through the hardest bouts of training, is a t-shirt. Except Orev Tzanchanim. Except the makor t-shirt.
The makor t-shirt is said to be the best t-shirt in the IDF. Whatever the case, the shirt has its own Facebook group, a bunch of world travelers who send in photos celebrating the shirt's presence at famous sites around the globe. The highpoint of our masa aliyah was undoubtedly arriving in our rooms and finding a black makor shirt neatly folded on each soldiers' bed. We had been forbidden from owning or wearing a makor shirt until this moment. Watching everyone slip into the heralded t-shirt was the ultimate sign that we had arrived.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Arriving and Ascending as a Lohem
Following the 2006 war with Hezbollah, the Israeli army came under a storm of criticism. Besides pointed critiques of the strategic handling of the crisis, there was wide-spread anger at how unprepared the army seemed to be for the actual fighting. Many stories were told of infantry units that were marched deep into Lebanon without proper gear, food and the training to manage such arduous circumstances.
Under Gabi Ashkenazi, the IDF chief who took over following the war and recently retired, many of these problems were addressed. Fitness standards were raised, new gear was purchased for the grunts, and tougher training for veteran soldiers was introduced. What this means in practice is that the refresher training each brigade undergoes every few months is now a serious affair. These months of refresher training are part of a rotation that sees three of the four infantry brigades (Paratroops, Golani, Nachal, Givati) manning the borders for a few months while the fourth trains in the Golan Heights. By chance, my team finished our formal training and "graduated" into the ranks of the Paratroops just as the brigade rotated from the Gaza border into refresher training in the Golan. What this means is that despite having just finished fourteen months of arduous training, my team's first task as combat soldiers is to train for two more months.
Our first week of post-training training was eerily reminiscent of the last weeks of our maslul. We were back in the desert foothills near Masada, carrying heavy loads over long nighttime treks. We barely slept, poor logistics saw us run out of food (so much for learning lessons from 2006!) and waiting at the end of the week was a familiar late night stretcher hike.
What made this baltam different than others is that this time there was a reason we hiked twelve kilometers carrying weighted stretchers: this stretcher hike was the Masa Aliyah, an event designed to welcome us to our new home as members of the Orev special-forces paratroopers.
As we approached our base, veteran members of the unit came looping and hollering, barely dressed in all manners of bird-like costumes (Orev, the shorthand name for our unit, is Hebrew for raven). Two rivers of fire bordered the final hundred yard dash home. When the gates of the base were finally swung open, complete pandemonium broke loose. Shaving cream, rainbow colored stick-lights and all manner of circus contraptions were set alight and thrown into the air.
Dropping the stretchers, my guys joined the veteran soldiers in a tranced out, blissfully happy rave scene. We partied late into the night, dancing, sitting for a funny skit, and munching down on a sumptuous barbeque feast. It was a riotous yet lovely way to mark a week that began five days earlier with the country remembering the Holocaust and would end in a few days time with two days that honor Israel's veterans and independence (Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzamut). Today's masa aliya had a special resonance of its own. A year ago exactly, on May fifth, I completed a previous masa aliyah to the base of my former unit. Somehow it seems fitting that in this week of national memories, my own celebration recall the long path I have taken to finally find a home in the IDF.
BONUS
The lack of food was not the only reason my fellow soldiers were grumbling this week. A shortage of funds means that for the foreseeable future my team will not be issued the lightweight and better quality vests and helmets worn by Israeli special forces. As my peers digested the news and came to terms with the run-of-the-mill faulty logistics, many whined that training had been better than our new setup. Behind their complaining lies the grim reality that while in training a soldier could always look forward to things getting better after the maslul, now that we have reached that sought after place and found it is just as poorly run, the only place to look forward to is finishing the army, a destination that lies nearly two years in the future for most of my peers.
Under Gabi Ashkenazi, the IDF chief who took over following the war and recently retired, many of these problems were addressed. Fitness standards were raised, new gear was purchased for the grunts, and tougher training for veteran soldiers was introduced. What this means in practice is that the refresher training each brigade undergoes every few months is now a serious affair. These months of refresher training are part of a rotation that sees three of the four infantry brigades (Paratroops, Golani, Nachal, Givati) manning the borders for a few months while the fourth trains in the Golan Heights. By chance, my team finished our formal training and "graduated" into the ranks of the Paratroops just as the brigade rotated from the Gaza border into refresher training in the Golan. What this means is that despite having just finished fourteen months of arduous training, my team's first task as combat soldiers is to train for two more months.
Our first week of post-training training was eerily reminiscent of the last weeks of our maslul. We were back in the desert foothills near Masada, carrying heavy loads over long nighttime treks. We barely slept, poor logistics saw us run out of food (so much for learning lessons from 2006!) and waiting at the end of the week was a familiar late night stretcher hike.
What made this baltam different than others is that this time there was a reason we hiked twelve kilometers carrying weighted stretchers: this stretcher hike was the Masa Aliyah, an event designed to welcome us to our new home as members of the Orev special-forces paratroopers.
As we approached our base, veteran members of the unit came looping and hollering, barely dressed in all manners of bird-like costumes (Orev, the shorthand name for our unit, is Hebrew for raven). Two rivers of fire bordered the final hundred yard dash home. When the gates of the base were finally swung open, complete pandemonium broke loose. Shaving cream, rainbow colored stick-lights and all manner of circus contraptions were set alight and thrown into the air.
Dropping the stretchers, my guys joined the veteran soldiers in a tranced out, blissfully happy rave scene. We partied late into the night, dancing, sitting for a funny skit, and munching down on a sumptuous barbeque feast. It was a riotous yet lovely way to mark a week that began five days earlier with the country remembering the Holocaust and would end in a few days time with two days that honor Israel's veterans and independence (Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzamut). Today's masa aliya had a special resonance of its own. A year ago exactly, on May fifth, I completed a previous masa aliyah to the base of my former unit. Somehow it seems fitting that in this week of national memories, my own celebration recall the long path I have taken to finally find a home in the IDF.BONUS
The lack of food was not the only reason my fellow soldiers were grumbling this week. A shortage of funds means that for the foreseeable future my team will not be issued the lightweight and better quality vests and helmets worn by Israeli special forces. As my peers digested the news and came to terms with the run-of-the-mill faulty logistics, many whined that training had been better than our new setup. Behind their complaining lies the grim reality that while in training a soldier could always look forward to things getting better after the maslul, now that we have reached that sought after place and found it is just as poorly run, the only place to look forward to is finishing the army, a destination that lies nearly two years in the future for most of my peers.
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