Still going

Since my last post, we have finished the three month training period, and moved to a new deployment, so here are some highlights of the last few months.
I spent this training period with a new, younger team. I was supposed to take part in establishing a new tactical capability for the team, and be a leading, exemplary soldier for the younger guys. I achieved only one of those goals. I took part in a lot of training and developing the new capability. It was really cool because there was no script or method for what we were doing, so we had to make up everything as we went. I can’t really explain what we did, so I apologize for the vagueness of this paragraph, but overall I’m pretty proud I took part in building the new squad and capability for the team. On the other hand, I was definitely not an exemplary soldier. The entire time I’ve been with the new team I have been in a shit mood, pissed off that I am not with my original team. There are good guys in this new team, but I just don’t have energy for anything. I have barely volunteered for any assignments or tasks, and just been in a generally bad mood. The younger guys can definitely see that, and I’m sure it bothers them but I can’t really help it.
We had two weeks during the training period that were meant to simulate war. As usual we walked a lot with heavy packs and participated in big exercises. During the first week there was a specific night that was the most memorable. It was without a doubt the coldest night of my army service. We walked all night, conquering a certain area, each time using different tactics, then continued a few more freezing kilometers to the next exercise. Normally during these weeks where you wear your vest and heavy pack I never wear anything under my uniform. Automatically when I put my pack on I start sweating. If you wear anything under your shirt you can easily overheat and get dehydrated. However this night was different. I put on a thermal undershirt, neck warmer, and gloves, and was still cold. At some point we had to wait for a while after an exercise until we could continue walking. Everyone quickly put on all the layers we had, lay down in a long line of spooning, and tried to fall asleep. Two hours later, we woke up, everyone shivering and shaking. I tried to stand up and fell right away. I couldn’t feel my legs at all. The entire unit started doing jumping jacks and sprints to try to get the blood pumping back to our extremities.
The second exercise week involved the entire battalion. The first night we walked about 15 kilometers which wasn’t too bad. We reached a certain area at about 4 am, and were told to settle down for a few hours. Up until that point the skies were clear. The second we lay down to sleep, it started raining. We quickly tried to find a big tree that would shield us from the rain. A few of us had also packed big plastic sheets. Everyone clumped together and we pulled the plastic sheets over our heads. You couldn’t actually sleep normally. Every few minutes you would wake up, rain drops falling on your face because someone had pulled the sheet over himself.
The second night was much worse. We were told we were going to walk about 15 kilometers again. Not bad. One thing you learn when you are navigating is to use the terrain to your advantage. If you have to get from point A to point B, and there is a mountain range that goes around, and there is a valley that goes straight there, you walk along the range so you don’t have to climb down and up steep mountains. This night we did exactly the opposite of what we had learned. The entire battalion climbed down what felt like a straight wall. At some points I was holding on to a branch and my legs were dangling in the air. Advancing 100 meters took an hour. When we got to the bottom, we had to make up the lost time. This meant climbing up the other side of the valley at a ridiculous pace. This pattern continued a few more times during the night. We had no idea how much we had walked, but it was definitely more than 15 kilometers. The entire night the sky was playing games with us. We saw that the skies turned black and it started to rain, so everyone quickly put on their rain jacket and rain pants. Of course the second we put on the rain gear the rain stopped, and we had to walk with the gear on us anyways. If you wear the jacket and pants, and it doesn’t rain, you sweat profusely because the material is not breathable at all. If you don’t wear the gear, you get wet from the rain. I decided I’d rather get soaked from rain then suffocate and sweat in the plastic gear. We walked all night in a torrential downpour.

Finally we reached the last few kilometers, and the rain had reduced to a drizzle.
At the end of difficult weeks such as this one, there is always a big celebratory meal with relatively good food. I thought to myself, they must be smart enough to set up the food indoors, or at least under some sort of roof. Nope. When we finally reach the tables of food, the sky opened up and dumped everything it had on us. All the food was soaked. The big containers of rice and pasta became soup. The croissants became mush. The schnitzels were soggy. An entire battalion of exhausted, soaked soldiers quickly tried to stuff anything they saw into their mouths, and then looked around for the busses that would take us back to base. There were no busses. We waited in a torrential downpour and hailstorm for three hours. We clumped together and wrapped ourselves in the plastic table clothes. The rain penetrated the supposedly waterproof jackets. Every step you took your boot would spray water from the top, only to be refilled a second later. We waited and waited and waited. We were miserable. Finally we saw a bus on the horizon. Everyone ran to it. We were then told that this bus was for the non-combat soldiers who are in charge of logistics. The soldiers who hadn’t been walking for a week straight with 100 pounds on their backs. The soldiers who had eaten our food before it got soaked. The soldiers who hid from the rain in vehicles while we stood outside shivering. As they gleefully boarded the bus, a choir of curses and shouts could be heard over the noise of the hail hitting our backs. We started hitting the windows and shaking the bus. The driver quickly drove away. Motherfuckers. More busses came, and the skies cleared. We finally began to dry out. As our bus came, over an hour after the first, the rain started again. The entire situation was absolutely absurd.

In our new deployment, there is a small base we have to occupy and guard. There are three shipping containers. Two are meant to be barracks to sleep in, and one a kitchen. The kitchen of course has no cooking utensils, pot, pans, or food. Additionally there is a shipping container transformed into a shower. However the army refuses to fill the water tanks because there is no drainage. Classic army logic.

Quick funny story. We were doing a checklist and we decided to stop a car because the license plate looked odd. When we got closer to the car, we realized the back license plate was European and the front plate was from Connecticut. The world is a tiny place.

My unit is set to be in this deployment for a few months now, but I will hopefully not be here the whole time. I am supposed to go to a course for new immigrants to learn about Israel, Judaism, and Zionism. I’m guessing that I already know most of what they will teach, but the course is 7 weeks in a classroom with air conditioning, good food, good conditions. I’d say that beats walking around in the blazing summer sun with a helmet, bullet proof ceramic plates, and vest. I have also requested to fly home for a visit during the summer, so hopefully they grant my request. My release from the army is still a ways away, but I can’t say I’m not thinking about it.

Last thought. A friend recently told me he was planning to come to Israel for a few weeks, but that his parents didn’t want him to go because they didn’t think it’s safe. To anyone that might have had the same thoughts recently or in the future: it’s safe. Do not let the terrorists prevail. Come on that birthright trip, come study abroad here, come with your family for a vacation. I’m still here, and I feel safe as ever.

Random pictures from the last few months.

End of Deployment

As we are nearing the end of our deployment period I figured it would be a good time to sum up the last few months. Although we are still stationed in the same general area, we have switched bases. This base is much more fun because it is only our unit, no high ranking officers snooping around and yelling at us. There is a much better atmosphere, and it’s also a tiny bit warmer which is important. We have still been doing much of the same vehicle patrols, driving back and forth, protecting contractors who work on the fence and in the neighboring areas.

The best part about this switch of bases has been one of the assignments associated with the base. Every weekend that I stayed on base was spent at a place very close to a natural hot spring. The atmosphere is great there and it’s super relaxed. Besides smelling like hard boiled eggs for weeks on end (because of the sulfur in the water) it’s the best place ever.

In between all the patrols and guard shifts we did all sorts of things. There were many shooting drills, lots of runs, some basketball, movies, and lots and lots of backgammon. I’m still terrible but I can win a game here and there. We had many weeks where we had to make our own food, which is both good and bad. Good because you can decide what you want to eat, bad because your options are limited to pasta, rice, and couscous, with hotdogs or processed schnitzel. Occasionally we would try to upgrade our meals, for example coating chicken breast with cornflakes.

We had a week long exercise where they took one makhlaka/tzevet (company/team) from every battalion in the brigade, and it was a sort of competition. The focus of the week was combat in dense forest and shrubbery. We also had a paintball exercise where one team was in charge of protective a building while another team was charged with breaking into and taking over the building. We were about half as many as the team we were attacking. We decided the best method would to just charge at the door all at once guns blazing. It worked. It scared the shit out of the guards and we ran right by everyone, shooting them. At one point we were pinned behind a corner. my friend grabbed a broken down door, looked at me, and I understood immediately what he wanted to do. We crouched down, holding the door in front of us as a shield and slowly advanced, with the whole team behind us. We destroyed the other team, and all the others teams could talk about the whole week was how crazy we were.

But there is always bad news too. Because of a bunch of bullshit that my officers had tried to explain to me a thousand times, I am being moved to a different tzevet. After all I did to fight to get back to my original team, I am being moved again. Another one of my friends who was a commander of a younger team for eight months is also being moved with me. Our officers told us it is because “we are responsible, good, leading soldiers” and they want us to have a good impact on the younger team. As much as it sucks to leave the team again, I’ll try to make the most of it. For the new team I had to go to a short course this week, which meant I slept at home every night, which was awesome because I got to see my whole family.

When we move to the training period, the oldest tzevet will be released from the army, leaving us the oldest in the company. They have a big influence on the vibe of the unit. No doubt the atmosphere will change, but we will have to fill their roles and step up to the plate. I am looking forward to the training period because you get to go home almost every weekend, and there’s a great atmosphere always.  Here are some more random pictures from the past few months

Shaul

Life after training

The last few months have been a whole mix of things. After I finished my official training, I got to return to my old team. It’s a bit weird to come back to the team because there are a lot of peoplemissing. A few people for injured, were kicked out, or sent to different rolls in other places, such as commanders, medics, drivers, etc. We are about 1/3 of the number of guys we started. However this allows you go get really close with the guys that are still here. As time goes on, more and more guys finish their assignments and come back to the team. In the last four months of your service, everyone is supposed to come back and it’s supposed to be awesome. 

  
The whole unit was in a three month training period. These training periods between deployments are used to refresh and brush up on skills and fighting techniques learned during official training. We spent different weeks training in urban settings, open field tactics, explosives training, etc. The best week by far was the explosives week, where we just went out to the middle of the desert, and blew up a bunch of random things everyday. 

There were also two weeks designed to simulate war, much like the final weeks of official training. However since these are during refresher training and not official training, they are less about breaking you down and making you suffer, and more about fighting as a whole battalion or brigade. These weeks included huge numbers of soldiers and units, all taking part in the fake-war. I got to ride in a helicopter for the first time in the army during one of the weeks. Since I had just finished my training a few weeks before, I was still used to carrying heavy gear and walking far distances. However, the rest of the guys in my unit it had finished their official training anywhere from 6 months to a year and a half ago, and it had been a while since they had carried that much weight.  
 After the final week in this training period, I was finally allowed to fly home for a whole month. It was a great break after not being home for almost a year, and it was especially awesome to see all of friends again. 

  

 Now my unit is in a deployment period, assigned to guard one portion of Israel’s border. However, I’m not supposed to specify exactly where. We mostly do patrols in hummers around the area, making sure everything is nice and quiet. Every once in a while we stop and make some coffee so keep awake. Making black coffee is a huge thing in israel and especially in the army.  
 

In every vehicle there is the driver, the commander in the passenger seat, and two more guys in the back. There is basically no leg room in the back. Your feet are under your knees, it’s basically the most uncomfortable position imaginable to be in for 12 hours. I am usually put in charge of a vehicle, which is usually a task given to the more responsible guys. This involves making sure we get to the right locations, navigating, listening to/using the communication devices, and generally being more alert and awake. One of the big problems is dealing with the drivers. These guys are not from our unit, their sole job is to drive us during our patrols. Many of them are past their three years of mandatory service. Lots of these guys struggles finding work as civilians, so they either stay or come back to the army because it is a steady salary, that most anyone can do. These guys are usually worried about themselves, and don’t always cooperate with us. They always want to drive to the nearest city to buy cigarettes, or when we try to wake them up they refuse. It definitely teaches you to deal with people you wouldn’t have to deal with otherwise.  
 

It is very different being on active duty rather than in training. Now, let’s say I have an 8 hour patrol, during the other 16 hours of the day I can mostly so whatever I want. I can sleep, read, watch tv, play ping pong, work out, anything. It’s much more relaxed and I’m enjoying the freedom a lot. The next few months will be very routine; patrol, guard, eat, sleep, read, workout, go home for a few days, then start it all over again. The monotony hasn’t gotten to me yet, and hopefully I’ll find things to do or hobbies that will keep my me occupied. 

As I spend more and more time here, I’m realizing that my hardest decision is still ahead of me. If I thought it was a tough decision choosing to go to college or to the army, it’s going to be impossible to decide what to do after the army. Do I stay in israel or go back to the states? Lots of my friends who are girls or guys doing a shorter service are already thinking and planing what to do after they are released. Can’t say I’m not jealous. 

  
Shaul

Done.

2 teams. 1 surgery. Kilos gained. Kilos lost. Thousands of kilometers walked. Hundreds of kilos carried. Countless bullets fired. Endless sleepless nights. This has been my life for the past 1 year and 7 months. I am proud to stay after occasionally bleeding, profuse, constant sweating, and admittedly there was some crying too, I have finished my training.

I haven’t written for a long time and there is too much to tell so I’ll try to boil it down. Two weeks ago I had my final Krav Maga session. This basically meant we were woken from sleep with screams, had to quickly change into our Krav Maga shirts and shoes, and sprint to the gym. The entire session was dedicated beating each other up. You wear a sort of protective helmet, a chest pad, and boxing gloves. You take turns holding your hands above your head, while your partner hits you as hard as he can for thirty seconds. Unfortunately I was paired with our biggest kid, about 210 pounds of muscle. Let’s say when it was my turn to hit him back I couldn’t even breathe so he didn’t feel too much. The main part of the session has everyone standing in a circle, music blasting, and then the instructor calls one person in at a time for a few sessions. He then sends in one, two maybe even three opponents on him at once, their goal to beat the shit out of him his goal to survive to the next round. After twenty seconds you are completely gasses and just try not to die. You can see some clips of the session in the YouTube link at the end. I even make an appearance at 4:03, I’m the one on the right in the beginning with the black/green belt. At the end of the session the instructors introduced themselves and spoke to us like human beings for the first time, and then they put on a helmet, and pads, and we got to give them a taste of their own medicine.

The fifth to last week and the last week of training were very similar, so I’ll merge the two. The idea of these two weeks is to simulate war in the most extreme sense. Each soldier carries tons of gear in his pack, each one according to how much he weighs. Since I am one of the bigger guys, fittingly I carry basically the heaviest pack. Unfortunately every time i try to remind them that i had surgery a few months ago, they say everything will be okay and assign me another item to put in my bag. Both weeks all of my gear together weighed over 100 pounds. The weeks are basically structured like this. You walk with your team, complete all sorts of assignments along the way, conquering houses, capturing hilltops, valleys, shooting drills, stretcher marches, the possibilities are endless. The real difficulties of these weeks are the lack of sleep and food. You do not sleep. Period. It is hard to understand how this is possible if you’ve never not slept for a week, but apparently its possible. This means you are always in a weird state of not really awake but not asleep either. There can be fifteen minutes at a time when you suddenly trip on a rock, and realize you have been sleep walking for the past mile. In terms of food, the rations are 4 kabanos and 6-8 hot dog buns per 24 hours. You can also bring nuts, dry fruits, energy bars, even candy, depending on how much you want to carry. Kabanos are like dry hot dogs, sort of like Slim Jims. They are made from the unspoken, crunchy, otherwise inedible parts of animals. They are very high in fat and I guess they have some protein in theory. The problem is that they cause serious heart burn and the gross fatty taste sits in your throat the whole week. Because of this, and because I didn’t feel well the whole week, I really only ate about 1 dry sausage and 1-2 buns per day, and some trail mix. The first week I lost 8 pounds, and this past week I lost 10 pounds. And a week isn’t even 7 days. It’s really from Sunday afternoon to Thursday morning, around 80 hours. However, I believe some of the weight loss is also from dehydration.

Both weeks presented serious problems for me. The first week on the last day around 2 PM, we continued to march on despite the serious heat. The unit had received special approval to continue training no matter what the weather was like. I guess I was seriously dehydrated and probably overheated, because the next thing I remembered was waking up in the military ambulance. My friends told me I passed out. They stripped off my clothes and poured lots of water on me, to try to cool down my body, and took my temperature. They put an IV in my arm, and kept trying to wake me up but I didn’t respond. Then apparently all my muscles started cramping and i was shaking, so they quickly put me on a stretcher and put my in the ambulance, where I slowly woke up. I spent the night sleeping and drinking water, and felt like new the next day. Since it was near the end of the week, I didn’t participate in that final night, which I felt pretty bad about not being with my team.

This past week I also felt very dehydrated the whole time and had to stop a few times but I didn’t stop. The main issue was my muscles. Every step I took the muscles in my legs would cramp and spasm uncontrollably. It was incredibly painful but I didn’t have a choice other than to keep going. 

Finally we reached the base of the final mountain. Usually the older soldiers who have finished training come to help you up the mountain. Our commanders told us there was a problem and they couldn’t. So we started the climb without them. Suddenly from around the corner fifty guys came sprinting screaming throwing smoke grenades. We sprinted the whole way up the mountain which was extremely steep all while smoke grenades were going off  around us. I could barely move and constantly thought I was going to faint. I had two people pulling me and one pushing. Finally I reached the top and I was done. They passed around  cigarettes and cigars and snacks and soda and we went crazy, singing dancing screaming. We had done it. All that training finally culminating in one moment. I couldn’t believe I have actually reached the end after so much struggles and doubts. We were given our pins and were officially fighters. At the end of the video there is is clip of the climb. 

There was an official ceremony later that day, and lots of people came to support which was awesome. If you asked me two years ago I would never have guessed this is where I’d be now. I leaned a lot about my self and pushed myself way way past my physical, mental, and emotional limits. It is undoubtably the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. There were times where I wanted to and could have quit but I didn’t. I didn’t know I could do it but I proved to myself and I am very proud. 

Now I get to go back to my team! I’m really excited to be reunited with my guys. We have a couple month of unit wide training before we go up to our next deployment. And hopefully I’ll get to fly home for a nice break soon. 

Tired, ten pounds lighter, proud, and with a big silver pin on my chest, 

  Shaul

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=heqT3QdUtZs#

     
        

Navigations (Orienteering)

For the past five weeks we have been doing nothing but navigations. I am pretty sure that at some point I have attempted to explain navigations here, but I’ll give it another go anyways. It all starts with a few lists and a map. Each person is assigned a few points, ranging from 2-5 usually. Each point has its own coordinates, 702375/689281 (totally random but that is the format we receive the coordinates in). Each point also has a description of the point, for example, hill, mountaintop, riverbed, intersection of two streams, row of trees, cement block, etc. At each of these points there are supposed to be rocks or something that have all sorts of words painted on by different army units. The words can also be totally random. Your job is to go from point to point, find these words and scribbles, and write them down. It would look something like this: “Paratroopers 101 – red. 631 Respect- Yellow and Black. Battalion 51 is tired! – White”. When you finish the navigation, your commander has a list of all the words written at every point, and he checks if you were at the correct point. Besides each person’s personal points, there is of course a start point, end point, and a few checkpoints along the way that everyone must pass through. Once you have the list of all of your points, you bust out your map, compass, and protractor. you then sit and plot all of your points on the map, making sure the coordinates fit the description of the point. once you have plotted all of the points, you need to plan the best route from start to end, through all of the points, that will take the shortest time, and will be easiest to walk. Once you have plotted your points and planned your route, you need to write out your navigation. You break is up into small manageable chunks. You measure the direction from your first point that you must start walking in (angles), you measure the distance (meters), you write what terrain you are walking over, (crossing a river, walking along a mountain ridge, climb to the top of the hill), and then you write verifications for the point. The first part of my navigation might look something like this. 1. 250°. 800 meters. From the start point, walk 800 meters at 250° along the river, until another river intersects it. The three directions of the river should be at 70°, 135°, and 290°. Once you have your entire navigation mapped out and written out, its time to memorize. You go out on these navigations without the maps or stories, so you have to remember it all, the terrain, the angles, the distances, the descriptions of the points, everything. If that wasn’t enough, you only do navigations at night, so you are at the sky’s will. If there is a full moon and clear skies, your’e in luck. If it’s cloudy or there is no moon, good luck… Right before you start, you tell your commander the entire length of your navigations, and he calculates your times. There is a Time-100, which means if you arrive before that time you get 10/10 in the time category. Time-0 means that if you arrive after that time, no matter how many points you correctly collected, you get a 0 on the entire navigation. Finally, there is Safety Time. If you arrive after the Safety Time you get a punishment, usually to stay a weekend on base when everyone else gets out.

Like each thing in the army, you start from 0 and build your way up. We did a total of about 8 weeks of navigation. Our first navigations were 5 kilometers, during the day, with open maps, in groups of 4. As the weeks progress, the navigations get longer and more challenging. In the middle you start doing “golem” (dummy) navigations. This means you go out with a partner, but each person only knows his half of the navigation. So I would navigate 15 kilometers, my partner walking behind me, I would reach the middle checkpoint, and he would take over. These are the worst because when it is not your turn to navigate you just trail behind, tired, bored, with no clue where you’re going, and you just slow down the navigator. The last two weeks we did solo navigations, and this past week we had our final navigation week. Four nights, Start from the Kineret, finish at the Mediterranean Ocean, over 100 kilometers (over 60 miles). Two of the four nights I walked for 12 hours, which meant my last few hours of walking were in the daylight under the blazing sun. This is the general route/direction, of course with countless twists and turns.  

The routine goes like this, you walk all night along your route, inevitably get lost at some point, run back to the last point you were sure where you were, and keep going. Every now and again you have to take a second, bend forward at the waist and let the weight of your heavy backpack slide towards your head so that you can relieve some of the pressure on your back, lots of cracking ensues. If you are too tired at any point, you might choose sit down for a few minutes. This means you simply lean back and let the backpack bring you down and absorb your fall. Most times you plan just to sit for a few minutes to let your legs rest, however suddenly you wake up, realize you fell asleep, look at your watch, and realize an hour has passed and you’d better keep moving.

You find all of your points (actually I usually don’t manage to find all of them), and you reach the end point knees exploding, back aching, chafing everywhere, drenched in sweat, dehydrated and starving. All you want to do is sleep. But no. You have about 8 or so hours until you set out for the next night’s adventure. During those 8 hours you have to eat, clean the food, organize things here and there, prepare your gear, and of course mark all your points for the next navigation and memorize the route by heart. Usually I managed to put in about an hours work before I passed out. You try to find a bit of shade to save you from the sun, usually to no avail. After about two hours I would wake up drenched, face red, head pounding from dehydration, and have to continue learning my navigations. Sun sets, you eat anything you can find quickly, and you have to start the next navigations. If you are a good navigator and walk fast during the first navigation, your week will look very different than someone else’s. Someone who finishes early gets to sleep until everyone arrives, then when everyone else has passed out from exhaustion, you learn your navigation in peace. When everyone frantically wakes up and starts cramming, you take it easy, maybe even take a nice nap. I am not one of those people.  And so it continues, day after day. Full nights of walking. Carrying lots of weight. Little food. No sleep. Somehow I managed to finish the week, but I spent the entire weekend sleeping and icing my knees to numb the pain. Not the best week I ever had.

However there are good things about navigations. I did get to see lots of new places I had never been to in Israel, and it is definitely a personal challenge when you have no one telling you to keep going, so you have to find a way to convince yourself to keep going for 12 hours without stopping. That being said, I am very happy that this was my last week of navigations. I have about two months left of training, with many difficult weeks, long kilometers to walk, and heavy backpacks to carry until the end. Hopefully my body can withstand a couple more months before it totally gives out on me.

Not yet packed for the army tomorrow, falling asleep, ice packs on knees, sincerely yours,

Shaul

Full Steam Ahead

Since my last post my training has continued to roll. We have had all sorts of different weeks, each focusing on different type of fighting and terrain that we have to be comfortable in and know how to operate in. One week we learned and practiced urban warfare, (imagine all the military video games you’ve ever seen, its actually pretty damn close to that). The next week we learned how to fight in thick underbrush, and the week after that we learned how to build camouflaged positions between trees and bushes. At some point during those three weeks, I can’t remember exactly, we had a day at the shooting ranges where we practices close range burst-fire, something that my team had spent two high intensity, pressure weeks on earlier in their training. However, as I had missed those two weeks, the instructor took me aside, and ran through the entire two weeks with me in about an hour and a half. Needless to say my arms were dead and the barrel of my gun was sizzling. We also had a 24 hour exercise that was easily the hardest thing I’ve done in the past six months.

Before I delve into the juicy stuff, my team finished their training a few weeks ago. I asked permission to go to their ceremony. It was a very weird experience for me. Although I was very happy for my guys that had worked so hard for a year and three months to reach that point, it was really hard for me to watch from the audience and not be up on the stage with them. When I was watching their rehearsals for the ceremony, I sat in a chair along the path to the stage. As each team was called up to the stage, almost every single soldier in the 100-person company gave me a pat on the head, shook my hand, or told me to smile. They all knew how hard it was for me to watch, but they were glad I was there. They kept reminding me that I’ll finish my training in no time, and I’ll be back with my team before I even realize. I faked a smile, kept nodding, and tried to look as happy as possible.

A few stories/feelings from the fast paced weeks.

On the final night of the underbrush training, we had an exercise that was meant to last all night. The overall idea was for the team to navigate over a few mountains and into a valley, where we would find “enemy combatants with anti-tank rockets” – in reality this meant we would find our medic, most likely sleeping against a tree or chain-smoking cigarettes to stay warm. The moon was nowhere to be seen, which meant you couldn’t see three feet in front of you. The rain has an evil side to it that it always gets worse exactly when you have an exercise that will never get canceled. So of course, as we put on all our gear, the skies opened. we quickly took off our gear, put on our rain coats/pants, and put our gear back on. These rain suits are pretty good at keeping you dry for about ten minutes, until they get soaked through and you get wet anyways. Even if you somehow got a magical suit and you stay completely dry from the outside, you will be soaked from the inside because it is like wearing a plastic bag around your whole body. all of your body heat is reflected right back at you and you feel like a turkey roasting in the oven. So we started this exercise, in the pouring rain, with zero visibility. The whole point of this underbrush exercise is that you can’t really see anything anyways because there are bushes and trees and thorns everywhere. I felt like I was in some jungle movie, having to hack away at the bushes with my machete ( or gun) to blaze a trail for myself. Every step you have to make a decision. Do I keep my eyes forward, so I can attempt to see where the guy in front of me went, and so I can try to avoid the thorn bushes, or do I look down at my feet to try to land on solid ground and not between to rocks and twist my ankle over and over again. The problem is if you look down, you still fall and then you try to break your fall by holding on to the nearest bush, which is of course feels like its made of needles and broken glass. So then you let go of the thorn bush, and continue to fall, and get your foot lodged between two rocks, twist your ankle, and fall in a pile of what you can only hope is mud (99% its cow shit). When you finally stand up, fingers bleeding, ankle throbbing, and boots caked in cow dung, you don;t see anyone and have to rub forward to try to find the nearest person. Then you fall again….

Before we even started the camouflage week, we arrived at the bottom of some mountain at the edge of a forest, and it wasn’t raining. The instant we stepped off the bus, you guessed it, it began to rain. We walked to to top of the mountain, probably about an hour, without our rain gear, and each with our personal backpack from home. When we reached our camp that someone had set up earlier, everyone was fully drenched. The tents we were supposed to sleep in were those quick-build four person camping tents that take about fifteen seconds to build. Problem is, they aren’t exactly water proof. I chose a tent, crawled inside, and the entire thing was flooded with rain and mud. We tried to put trash bags underneath us to repel some of the water. I climbed into my sleeping bag, which was already mostly wet, sat with my knees bent up to my chest, because of course as the tallest one I was sleeping in the middle, and the zipper of the tent was broken, so it was raining directly into out tent. I managed to sleep in about ten minute increments, waking up all the time trying to move me feet because I couldn’t feel them. All night I was waiting for my turn to guard, just because it meant I could stand up and try to get the blood flowing in my legs again. Finally my turn came, and went outside, and took the rain jacket off the guy who had guarded before me, because of course all of our rain jackets were buried deep at the bottom of a truck with all of gear.  The mud was ankle deep, the rain heavy as ever, and absolutely freezing. The whole hour and a half of my guard duty was spent in a four-person huddle, everyone shivering trying to steal body heat from each other. As I stood there, I looked at my watch, February 16, 4:00 AM. Happy F**king Birthday to me. My shift ended, I crawled back into the muddy pond that used to be my sleeping bag, and shivered awake until the sun came up. We did a few exercises during the day, and we were supposed to sleep there another night, but our commanders must have known it was my birthday, so they canceled the second night and on the way back to base we stopped in some run-down, random city at a mall. You know at the malls in America they always have the gross Chinese food that is always glowing orange, sticky, and you know one bite will give you cancer right away, but it just tastes so good? Well this is what we all ate at this weird mall, except that it didn’t even taste good. Needless to say no one cared. We were all just glad to be in a warm building, eating hot food. When we walked through the mall we left a trail of mud behind us, and all I could think about was how good everything smelled. Everyone there was clean and the stores were filled with perfume, while I’m sure all of us smelled like the piles of cow dung I mentioned earlier…I guess you really learn to appreciate small things in the army. Happy Birthday to me….

This past week we had a 24 hour exercise. Everyone had a heavy backpack with all sorts of gear, 4.5 liters of water, 5 tuna sandwiches and 4 chocolate sandwiches. Somehow I got screwed and got only chocolate. Basically we started at about 6 PM, of course the rain also started at 6PM, we walked for a few hours down a mountain range in thick underbrush, got lost, then found our position and set up an observation position. Since I am not trained to operate the Orev missiles, I sat back and fell asleep right away. After about forty five minutes, someone woke me up, and we kept moving. This next section was basically all up hill. Five or so hours later we reached our second position overlooking an Arab village. Again, I fell asleep, woke up after half an hour, and kept going. This next section was the worst. We had seen on the maps that all we had to do was walk down to a valley, where we would find a nice path that would take us for 4 kilometers right to our next position. Easy. Of course there was no path. We fought through the underbrush for hours, sliding down the muddy banks of the valley, literally hanging onto trees to try to lower ourselves down to the bottom. We finally reached the bottom of the dry river, and started walking. The river bed was very rocky, and much like the underbrush exercise, I kept turning my ankles. We walked about four or five hours in this river bed. Every hundred meters I felt like I was going to pass out. Since I usually drink a lot of water, and I knew from the beginning that I didn’t have very much with me. I tried to ration it out as much as I could. Same goes for the food. What ended up happening is that in the entire 24 hours (which turned into 28), I drank only two liters of water and ate two sandwiches. The entire exercise I was woozy and weak, head spinning. Somehow we finally reached the position, about six hours late, sun high in the sky. We built the camouflage, and crawled under the net. I began to survey the damage from the night my hands completely black and caked with mud, a few fingers bleeding, shirt and pants soaked with sweat, shoes and socks soaked with rain, rain pants torn completely down the middle from the thorns. Thank god I am not trained to use the Orev missile, because it meant I could fall asleep for almost the entire portion of the exercise. We finally finished the exercise, and I realized the damage was worse than I thought. My knee had taken a serious beating from the five hour down hill climb in the river bed. Then the four hours of sleeping with my knees tucked to my chest didn’t do it any good either. My knee is now swelled up, and I can’t put pressure on it or bend it in any direction.

As I was writing this post, every few sentences I had to open up Google translate and look up how to say a word in English, because I have become to accustomed to using certain words in Hebrew. Just a funny shift from my days of having to translate words from Hebrew to English for homework assignments.

Well that’s all for now. I don’t have the energy to proof this thing, so I do apologize for any typos. Hopefully my knee heals quickly and doesn’t jeopardize my training, and hopefully I can manage to get all of the thorns out of my hands.

Till next time

Shaul

Getting Back

I was on medical leave for a total of 6 weeks, known as Ram 2. Everyone always says “How do I get Ram 2!” In theory, it is the dream. You are at home, not in the army, the days count as if you were in the army, and you get paid. In reality, it was a very difficult 6 weeks. For Israelis it may be easier, as they may have friends who serve close to home and go home everyday, but all my friends are in the army. Everyday I found myself looking for things to do to keep myself occupied. I watched a million movies and TV shows, slept a lot, but would basically wait until my friends in America would wake up, or my friends in the army would get their phones so I could talk to them. Most of my energy went into growing this masterpiece:

My pride and joy

I returned to the army, not yet able to return to training. I was given a temporary position, something along the lines of being in charge of logistics and cleanliness. I mostly tried to get back in shape. I truly did not do anything. I’m not even going to waste another sentence describing those four weeks.

It has been very tough watching my old tzevet continue their training without me. Every week I see pictures of everyone on top of some mountain after a ridiculous week. Every looks absolutely exhausted but ecstatic to have made it to the end, together. While I sit in my room and try to entertain myself, they are out, working hard, continuing to get better each day. The highlight of each week for me is on Thursday when they return to base from the field and I get to see them and hangout with them. I usually even help them clean their gear and sit in on things they do just because it makes me feel like I am still a part of the team. They will officially finish their training in two weeks, at which point I will likely cry that I am not with them at the end. It will also mean that they will not be in the same base as me anymore, and I won’t see them for a long time. It’s also hard to see all my lone-soldier friends planning their trips home, as I know I cannot fly until the end of the summer most likely.

Last week I officially joined my new tzevet. They drafted 4 months after me, so they have about 5 months left of training. They are an Orev tzevet, not Palchan, which in theory might not make sense for me to finish my training with them. However, most of the training is the same for all the different units within the Gadsar Nachal, with the exception of the specialty course (example: my explosives course), so it doesn’t matter if I finish with the Orev, rather than the next team of Palchan which are 8 months behind me, as opposed to 4. This was I can get back to my guys sooner. It has been very weird so far. My old tzevet was usually around 26 guys, this new tzevet is around 15. They also behave very differently from my old tzevet so I don’t feel as connected to them. Obviously I have only been with them for a week or so, but still something feels off. Hopefully as time passes this feeling will give way to strong friendships. I’m in a weird position because I am only supposed to finish my training with this tzevet, and then go back up to my old tzevet for my active duty. I already feel like I don’t have my heart totally in this new tzevet, but hopefully I can treat them like I would my guys. I am waiting for the doctor’s permission to begin training, at which point I will probably be sorry I wanted to continue training. I’m sure it is going to be unbelievably difficult, but I am looking forward to it.

Moving the focus away from me, the recent conflict with Hezbollah on the Lebanese border has hot close to me. Anytime you hear soldiers were killed, immediately you pray you don’t know them. When I heard the names, I was relieved, but of course still sad for the families that lost their sons. The next day I was wasting away on base when a friend from my tzevet showed up, and I asked what he was doing there. He told me he was on his way to the funeral of one of the soldiers, his friend. There are no words that can really help in that situation. Additionally there has been some tension in my grandparents kibbutz. They live along the Lebanese border, and last week there was suspicion of Hezbollah breaching the kibbutz. The residents were told to lock their doors and remain in their houses. My grandma said this was the first time she has locked the house in years; the key barely budged in the lock. Nearby kibbutzim claim that they can hear Hezbollah digging tunnels under their homes. I really hope this stuff doesn’t escalate into anything more serious.

Hopefully my next post will be a bit more juicy.

I’m At Where I’m At

My commander called me over to a bench outside. I already knew what he was going to tell me, but I tried telling myself it would be something different. I was right. “It’s not up to me, you know if it was my choice you’d still be with us…but you are no longer a part of this team.” Trying to hold back the tears, I walked back to my bed, starring at the ground, praying that no one would come talk to me. It has been a long time since I’ve had to hold back any tears. The second I got to my bed and closed my eyes my best friend pulled me back up and sat down next to me. Nothing he could say would really cheer me up, and I think he knew that. He said that this doesn’t change any of the friendships I’ve made, and that this is my tzevet, no matter where I actually am.

I spent the next week at a convention of sorts, where 20-30 units in the army build a tent, decorate it, and fill it with things representing their unit like the unit’s weapons. Each day 5,000 high school seniors would come to the convention, walk around the different tents and learn about different units that they might be interested in. The kids weren’t so interested in what we had to say about the units, instead they preferred to play with the big guns and pretend to shoot each other. It was a cool opportunity to try to brag about my unit to a bunch of kids who don’t really know anything about the army. A lot of the kids who came don’t want to join a combat unit, and there were also those who don’t want to join the army at all. It forced me think a little bit about why I like my unit, and why I decided to join the army in the first place.
After a week at the convention, I was given permission to fly home to Boston. It was a great trip. I drove out to UMASS to see a close friend and get my dose of college. (As sweaty and gross frat parties are, it was a beautiful experience). I went to the dentist for the first time in about a year a half and got a cavity filled. I went to a very cold Patriots game, where they absolutely rocked the Broncos. I ate enough burritos from Anna’s to keep my blood pumping for a few more months. I spoke at my high school to a few Hebrew classes about my experiences in the army and in the operation this summer. I slept in my bed. My dad cooked Thanksgiving dinner because I flew home right before, and he knows it’s my favorite meal of the year. But the best part was seeing so many of my friends that drove, took busses, trains, and planes home just to see me. I can talk to all of them on WhatsApp, and I can video chat with them when I get a chance, but there is no substitute for seeing your friend in person and giving them a big hug that’s over a year in the making.

I love Anna’s.

I returned to Israel with half my suitcase filled with presents for what felt like the entire population of Israel. Two days after I landed, I found myself in the hospital getting prepped for surgery to repair a hernia. Lying on the surgery table, the anesthesiologist told me he was injecting the anesthesia into my IV. My aunt told me it’s fun if you try to fight it and try to stay awake. I didn’t even know I fell asleep. I woke up with an oxygen mask over my mouth, tried to move, then remembered I just had surgery. They rolled my bed to a three person room. On my right was an old guy who just had his stomach or large intestine or some abdominal organ removed, let’s just say he had trouble controlling his new-look intestines because he would not stop farting. The guy on my left spent about every other minute calling his mamuchka. He did his part keeping me up at night by puking up a storm. The one good part of being in the hospital was that my commander sent one my friends from my tzevet, Nate, to hangout with me. It was great to see him, and I’m sure he enjoyed skipping a day of training, eating some real food, and sleeping under a roof. I am now resting at my grandparents house for a few weeks, until I return to the army to boring office jobs until I heal completely, get back in shape (which will be a huge obstacle), and join a younger team to complete my training.

Big Nate

The past week or so since my surgery have been frustrating. For the first few days I couldn’t move at all. The first time I got up from bed to go to the bathroom I almost fainted. My mom and grandmother had to do absolutely everything for me, I felt useless. Most days I feel better and better, but some days are painful. I have done nothing besides sleep, eat, and watch movies. A few days ago my tzevet was training in the north, and they were sleeping in a kibbutz close to my grandparents house. My mom drove me to see them. It was so good to see them. They all wanted to hear about my trip home, how it was to see my family and friends, but really all they wanted to hear was my stories from college. “Was it like American Pie??” They were of course very jealous of my beard. One of my friends literally had a difficult time looking at me while we talked because he was so upset that he doesn’t have a beard anymore.

Today being Thanksgiving, I figured I’d do a little corny reflection. My last few posts have been full of me complaining. The past few months have been very frustrating, and I’ve spent a lot of time feeling bad for myself. Even though my situation isn’t ideal, I am trying to put it into a bit of perspective. I am injured right now, but I will soon be healthy and can start getting back in shape and training. I am not with my tzevet right now, but once I finish training with a younger team, I may be allowed to return to serve with my guys. Seeing them for an hour this past week made me remember how glad I am to be a part of that team. I may not be at home with all my friends for Thanksgiving right now, but I saw many of them a short while ago and can still keep in touch with them. I may not be in college right now, but at the end of my service I think I will be glad I made this decision. There are 66 families of soldiers that after this summer will never see their boys again. I still get to talk to my family everyday. Even if I think I have it rough, or I’m having a particularly frustrating day, there are always those who have it worse than me, and those who have it easier than me, and I am where I am. I will try to make the most of it all.

Be happy and thankful for where you’re at, what you have, and who you have. Happy Thanksgiving.
Shaul

The Pretty, the Gritty, and the Shitty.

I know I haven’t posted anything for a while, but I haven’t felt like there was anything to really write about. Most of my posts are about cool, new, interesting or tough things I did. This time there isn’t anything like that. This post is a bit depressing. But I guess that’s part of writing down all my experiences. That I have to write them ALL down. The pretty, the gritty, and the shitty. This is some pretty shitty shit.

For the past seven weeks or so I have been in an explosives course. We spend hours upon hours in the classroom, an act much more difficult than a march or a run for many of my very hyperactive friends. We are used to spending all day in the sun, walking, running, crawling, and carrying heavy weights. Suddenly you put us behind desks for ten hours a day and we go a bit crazy. There’s a reason we all drafted to a combat infantry unit and not to intelligence. Even though we aren’t doing anything physically exerting, everyone falls asleep all the time. There is a sharp distinction between myself and the two other Americans compared to many of our Israeli friends. All three of us are used to sitting in class all day then going home and doing homework for a few good hours. We all took schools very seriously. We don’t talk to our friends or disturb the instructor. This is not the case with many of the guys. While this isn’t true at every Israeli school and with every Israeli student, school in Israel can easily turn into a joke, homework sometimes a complete after thought. It is very difficult for me to learn in an environment where not everyone is focused 100% and wants to take in every word. Since I enjoy learning, and haven’t been in a classroom setting for about a year and a half, the academic portion of the course was very interesting, but of course the hands-on was much more exciting. Simply put, blowing stuff up is cool. One night we were out doing an exercise where we walked very far and up a very big mountain. The problem with the exercises in this course is that only a few people can really interact with the explosives, so almost everyone is in the back, “guarding” in different directions. This means everyone is sprawled out in a deep sleep, resting their helmet on their guns, or sitting back on the heavy backpacks. When the explosives were ready, we all gathered in one area at a safe distance, still half asleep. Without warning, there was a flash of light and a BOOM and everyone’s ears rang for a few minutes. That woke us up pretty good.

However this course did not go as well as it should have. Since Tzuk Eitan ended I had been having some pains, I went to lots of different doctors (about 8) to try to figure out what was going on, but nothing. One night in the course the pain got much worse so they drove me three hours to the hospital. I got there at 2AM. I went to the ER and got checked out but they didn’t find anything, so they gave me pills and a bed. As I was lying in the bed, an older man came up to me and asked to use my phone to call someone. I gave him the phone and he stepped out of the room. After about two minutes I went out to check where he went. He was gone. I ran around the hospital looking for him, asking security. Nothing. I called the cops, even tracked my phone on someone else’s phone, told the cops what street the guy was in, nothing. At 3AM I passed out on the bed because the pills made me fall asleep. I woke up at 8AM in what felt like a Jason Bourne movie. I barely knew where I was, I didn’t have a phone, any phone numbers, there was no one with me, and of course all the nurses and doctors had just started their shift so one one knew anything about me. I put on my uniform, shaved, shined my shoes, and headed to the nearest mall to buy the cheapest phone I could find. I somehow managed to find my parents number on a computer in the phone store, and through them my commanders number so I could tell him what had happened. A few days later I went to the hospital again, and found out I have a hernia. The entire course I didn’t participate in anything physical or carry anything. No runs, no workouts, no Krav Maga, nothing. As shitty as some of these things can be, like a three hour session of torturous Krav Maga, it is even worse to have to sit by and watch your team do shitty stuff without you.

Our commanders always tell us that in the army the only reason anyone agrees and manages to do all the shitty stuff is because of your tzevet, your team. They say that when we are all 40 years old, fat and balding, and one of us loses all his money gambling, (we all know who this will be already), the tzevet will gather money and bail him out without any second thoughts, because you trust everyone no matter what. Before Rosh Hashanah, every single one of my friends, and both of my commanders (totally unexpected) asked whether I had a place for the holiday, and if I wanted to come to their house. There is nothing more important than your tzevet. Your tzevet is the only thing that holds you. When you are walking all night in the freezing rain carrying a backpack heavier than your sister, you only keep going because your friends are with you and are suffering just as much. You do so many absurd things in the army with your friends that you become unbelievably close to them. Literally, very very close. There have been many nights where we are all in one big spooning line, cuddled up for warmth while we are trying to fall asleep on top of some freezing mountain. There have also been way too many times where I have been under the same shower head with five other guys because we don’t have time for each one to shower alone. You shampoo someone’s hair while someone sprays water on you. Told you we’ve gotten close…. As time goes on, the tzevet gets smaller and smaller. We started 29, two left a few months ago, two more left this past week, and in a few weeks 3 will be headed to commanders course. It will be interesting to see if the dynamics of the group change.

This past week my tzevet went to a very difficult week, categorized as a “pressure week”. They aren’t allowed to talk all week, and even locked their watches in a box here, so they have no way of knowing the time. Because I can’t take part in any of it, I had to stay on base to guard the gear. Every night when I wake up to guard, I spend the whole time thinking about what difficult and painful things my tzevet is going through right then, and how badly I want to be suffering alongside them. Kind of a messed up situation eh? I am waiting now to schedule surgery for the hernia, and am very anxious to learn my fate in the training and with my tzevet, as I may have to drop to a younger tzevet because I missed too much material. Even if I do have to drop to a younger tzevet to finish training, I hope to rejoin my tzevet after training in our normal service.

We’ll see what happens…Shaul.

Operation Tzuk Eitan Part 2

Since the last time I posted much has changed, so I’ll just dive right in.

About a week after we started the course, we were told we were going to be part of the operation. We were all glad to finally be doing something, not sitting in a classroom all day while others were fighting in Gaza. When we got there, disappointment struck again. We sat in the sand for three days. The two most exciting things we did was swatting flies and looking for shade. Once again our unit’s task was backup, but for some reason no one needed any help.

Finally after a few days, we were told that there was a mission that needed our help. Not everyone was going to be able to go in, but I was one of ten who were chosen to participate. We were told we had an hour to prepare our gear. This was an hour like I’ve never experience before. I ran around gathering my gear, preparing it as best as possible. The emotions that ran through me were much more intense than everything I’ve ever felt. Imagine how nervous you are before a big test, or a first date. Your hands are probably a bit clammy, you are probably a bit sweaty, and maybe your leg or hands are shaking a bit. I have been nervous before, but never like this. I was soaked with sweat, dripping absolutely drenched. My heart was pounding so loud I could feel it in my head. Anytime I tried to pick something up my hands failed me. It was a paralyzing nervousness. You start questioning yourself. Am I ready? How will I react if something happens to my friends? Will I know what to do? And then you begin to calm down. You begin to feel excited. Imagine how excited you are before the biggest basketball game of the year against your rival. You’ve been waiting and training for the entire year for this moment. Now multiply that feeling by about a thousand. The sweat stops running. Your heart continues racing, yet now you feel that it pumps energy through your body. You are in control of your body. Everything you do feels ten times faster, you are sharp. We’ve been training for this moment day and night for 8 months. This is why we drafted, this is why I came to Israel. For this moment. The moment arrives. Everyone is on full combat gear, ready. We start to load into the armored vehicle, when suddenly we are told to get out. Mission canceled. Utter disappointment. From the highest adrenaline rush to absolute depression. We take off our gear, lay down in sand, and watch the sky light up orange as the rockets and mortars fly from both sides. You try to sleep, but the lump in your throat and bitter taste in your mouth just won’t go away.

A few days later I got a chance to speak with my dad on the phone for a few minutes. It was a totally normal conversation, until suddenly the Red Alert siren went off, which means that Hamas had fired a rocket in my direction. Hoping my dad didn’t hear the siren on the phone, I told him to wait a second, and started running to a concrete shelter. I picked the phone up again, and continued talking like nothing happened. Immediately there was a massive boom and everything around me shook loudly. The Iron Dome missile defense system had intercepted the rocket very close to where I was, so it sounded as if the rocket had actually hit. After my dad made sure I was ok, the conversation went on. Not the normal conversation most parents are used to having with their children. All I can say is thank god I wasn’t talking to my mom…

More days past, still we did basically nothing. We were having a discussion with our commander when he got a call and said everyone on gear as fast as possible. Not knowing what was happening, everyone did so and jumped into the armored vehicles. After a nauseatingly long, bumpy ride, we arrived somewhere, and were told to get out, and load our guns. We are never allowed to walk around with a bullet in the chamber, but now we were. This meant this was for real. We walked in the sand until we reached a huge field of thorns. We had to search for Hamas infiltrators coming through the attack tunnels. We looked through the entire field for anything that didn’t look natural. A pipe? A plastic bag? Call over the tracker to see if it’s suspicious. We fought out way through thorns taller than us, being cut and scraped the whole way. It was very nerve racking because you literally couldn’t see anything three feet in front of you, so someone could pop out of anywhere. As we searched Hamas fired a rocket over our heads, and the Iron Dome intercepted it right above us, another loud boom that scared us. We heard gunfire and more mortar shells falling as we continued to search. We walked by holes in the ground that were caused by mortar shells falling. Finally we finished searching the area, and continues up over a hill, where we needed to search another area. When we got to the too of the hill, we quickly ran down it into the ditch we needed to search because we were completely exposed to Gaza. I was able to catch a glimpse of the first few rows of houses. Most of them with massive holes, many completely destroyed, smoke rising, completely abandoned. It was a pretty surreal scene. We finished the search, and finally felt as if we did something, however small it may have been. Later that day our commander told is that in a very similar event a few weeks earlier four soldiers had been killed. He wanted to make sure we understood how real and important the search we did really was.

Now that we are back on base, we had a discussion with the whole team about the operation. Everyone shared an experience, a memory, anything. One of my friends whose close friend was killed during the operation said something that really hit me. He described his experience visiting his friend’s grave for the first time. He missed the funeral because he could not get there in time. As he climbed up the hill to the grave, many friends passed him on their way down, yet he could not stop or say hi to any of them. He walked right up to the grave, where he found ten of his best friends. It is such a sad and unnatural situation that ten 19 year old guys reunite with each other, after a month of fighting, around the grave of their best friend, instead of sitting around a bar, or at a restaurant.

We are now back to our normal schedule, and we are supposed to restart our course on Sunday.

Shaul.