I was sweating even in the early morning desert heat, trying not to make too much of a big deal about the fist sized hornets winging their way all around me. We headed out after our Sergeant who was stomping his way ahead into the desert as if there was no one behind him. I struggled to keep up with him though I could only go as fast as the rest of the guys under the stretcher. There was a rough track through the desert leading to the rifle range and we struggled our way through it but after 10 minutes we were a strung out bunch with the stretcher falling behind and others moving forward, I didn't even know where the guys trying to balance the table on their shoulders were.
We eventually caught up with the Sergeant because he had mercifully stopped moving. He turned and looked at us all, seething with resentment, “don’t you understand that you’re a tzevet? You move together at all times and since you can’t seem to understand that we are going to walk back to base!” He turned and walked past us all back in the direction of the base. “Go on follow your Sergeant” Ran said to the raw recruits who were too busy staring at our Sergeant walking in the wrong direction to remember that we were supposed to follow him.
With the utmost of care we swivelled in place under the stretcher and followed the hulking body whop was already far out in front of us. The base was in sight when without saying a word he simply turned around and marched back in the direction of the range. Again we swivelled under our load and marched back behind him. He was to keep doing this during the march to the range and it became a regular feature of our morning routine. Sometimes it took over an hour to reach the range which should have been 15 minutes away. By the time we made it there I felt like I had already done a day’s work and it was still early morning. Another series of tiny missions followed that ended with the range put into working order. We had to do one mission to take the targets to the correct distance, another to hammer stakes into the ground, another to tie targets to the stakes, it was mind numbing and intensive all at once and there was no time to reflect on just how inefficient it was.
Once the range was in what the Sergeant considered to be working order a bunch of shooting instructors turned up. For the most part they were girls and everyone seemed to have massive problems with their rifles necessitating the need for continuous personal attention. That day we learnt how to zero the rifles making them accurate for our individual use and spent several hours firing at targets 50 meters away both while lying down, kneeling and standing.
After a couple of hours the short commander Alon, who along with Ran was in charge of us on a day to day basis, called a break and stood us in a three sided square, he stood in the open side facing us all. “Ok take 30 seconds to drink an entire water bottler…go!” All 18 of us drained a water bottle in the time given but he wasn’t finished. “One minute to refill and get back here…go!” We ran and accomplished the task, drank the second water bottle, he sent us back again, we drank a third. He kept going until every one of us was throwing up water, he and Ran found it hilarious.
Once we had all been sick we returned to shooting.
We went shooting almost every day of boot camp, almost every day it was the same the tortuous walk to the range in the morning, assembling the range from scratch with every moment accounted for, I was even sent to the toilet on a timer.
This was boot camp and it had begun in earnest.
The funny thing about boot camp was that the more it progressed the less I cared about about being in the Sayeret. The Sergeant worked us hard, far harder than the genial Sergeant in charge of the Sayeret. The tougher the training the more it slowly dawned on me that I had made it to a tough unit, the kind of unit that I had been trying to get into all along. I quickly changed my attitude and determined that if this was to be my home then it was time to work as hard as I could. With my lack of Hebrew I was going to be more of a burden unless I made an extra effort to help out. The only thing that I figured I could do was carry as much on my back as I could.
My first opportunity to do so would come during soon during a forced march, there was one of these each week starting from just a few kilometres and culminating in the 90km march for our red berets.
We eventually caught up with the Sergeant because he had mercifully stopped moving. He turned and looked at us all, seething with resentment, “don’t you understand that you’re a tzevet? You move together at all times and since you can’t seem to understand that we are going to walk back to base!” He turned and walked past us all back in the direction of the base. “Go on follow your Sergeant” Ran said to the raw recruits who were too busy staring at our Sergeant walking in the wrong direction to remember that we were supposed to follow him.
With the utmost of care we swivelled in place under the stretcher and followed the hulking body whop was already far out in front of us. The base was in sight when without saying a word he simply turned around and marched back in the direction of the range. Again we swivelled under our load and marched back behind him. He was to keep doing this during the march to the range and it became a regular feature of our morning routine. Sometimes it took over an hour to reach the range which should have been 15 minutes away. By the time we made it there I felt like I had already done a day’s work and it was still early morning. Another series of tiny missions followed that ended with the range put into working order. We had to do one mission to take the targets to the correct distance, another to hammer stakes into the ground, another to tie targets to the stakes, it was mind numbing and intensive all at once and there was no time to reflect on just how inefficient it was.
Once the range was in what the Sergeant considered to be working order a bunch of shooting instructors turned up. For the most part they were girls and everyone seemed to have massive problems with their rifles necessitating the need for continuous personal attention. That day we learnt how to zero the rifles making them accurate for our individual use and spent several hours firing at targets 50 meters away both while lying down, kneeling and standing.
After a couple of hours the short commander Alon, who along with Ran was in charge of us on a day to day basis, called a break and stood us in a three sided square, he stood in the open side facing us all. “Ok take 30 seconds to drink an entire water bottler…go!” All 18 of us drained a water bottle in the time given but he wasn’t finished. “One minute to refill and get back here…go!” We ran and accomplished the task, drank the second water bottle, he sent us back again, we drank a third. He kept going until every one of us was throwing up water, he and Ran found it hilarious.
Once we had all been sick we returned to shooting.
We went shooting almost every day of boot camp, almost every day it was the same the tortuous walk to the range in the morning, assembling the range from scratch with every moment accounted for, I was even sent to the toilet on a timer.
This was boot camp and it had begun in earnest.
The funny thing about boot camp was that the more it progressed the less I cared about about being in the Sayeret. The Sergeant worked us hard, far harder than the genial Sergeant in charge of the Sayeret. The tougher the training the more it slowly dawned on me that I had made it to a tough unit, the kind of unit that I had been trying to get into all along. I quickly changed my attitude and determined that if this was to be my home then it was time to work as hard as I could. With my lack of Hebrew I was going to be more of a burden unless I made an extra effort to help out. The only thing that I figured I could do was carry as much on my back as I could.
My first opportunity to do so would come during soon during a forced march, there was one of these each week starting from just a few kilometres and culminating in the 90km march for our red berets.
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