The Hero (unfinished)

He knew that the audience were leaning forward in their seats to hear the answer to the interviewer’s question but he paused before answering nevertheless. He waited long enough for the cameras to move into a closeup on his face and he still waited. Eventually his long pause was justified by the interviewer once again feeling the need to speak, lest things get awkward on prime time television. “You were in the field on your own for 2 weeks after getting separated from your unit, you fought alone for all that time and racked up over 50 confirmed enemy kills and were then spirited to safety by the miraculous arrival of a rescue helicopter. What was going through your mind all that time? What prompted you to launch a one man war against an enemy you had no reason to believe you could beat?”

It was the same question, more or less, that he had been asked a mere moment ago but television personalities hated silence on air and always felt obliged to fill it, even if it meant repeating themselves. It was the exact silence he had been waiting for. Make the story all the more dramatic and sell even more books, there was even talk of a film…

“Well” he said, cutting off all fears the interviewer had that he might have croaked on air. “The thing was, I was the worst soldier in the world for getting separated from my unit in the first place.” This drew a few surprised giggles from the studio audience; he went on as if he hadn’t heard them. “I’ll tell you the story from the very beginning and perhaps it will make sense.” The interviewer nodded his head, either utterly fascinated already or doing an excellent impression of someone who was. His thick makeup was starting to run ever so slightly at the top of his forehead where his perfectly groomed, full head of hair began. He wore glasses even though the lenses were weren’t prescription as focus groups has suggested that chat show hosts are more accessible to their audiences when they wear them.

“We jumped into the helicopter at 01:15 in the early hours of the morning, the rockets were already falling on the villages to the North, as I am sure you remember. The order had come that we should go in and so we did. For me the helicopter ride is always the most frightening aspect, once my boots are on the ground at least I feel like I have some measure of control over my own destiny, but when I’m in the air there’s nothing I can do.” He paused, time to throw out a nice dose of humility for all those watching, “and I have nothing but the greatest of respect for all of those air force guys flying those helos, where we would be without them I don’t know!” He let that little bone go for the air force pussies who dropped them off in the forests and mountains and were back safely in their magnificent bases scarcely an hour later having done their job, while he and his friends were only just beginning their own private nightmares.

“We came under fire soon after the helos had left and found ourselves in a tough position. Our officer, Schneider was hit and that left 5 of us.” “Yossi Schneider,” The interviewer interjected, “from Kibbutz EinhaShofet, correct?” “Yes that’s him” he said “a wonderful officer, we would have followed him anywhere, I guess you can say that we did. All of us had great confidence in him, he was a natural born leader!” He said though he remembered well enough that Yossi Schneider was an asshole who had consistently gotten them lost on field exercises and was by far the biggest obstacle towards the successful completion of the mission. But it just wasn’t done to speak ill of the dead, not to mention the fact that Schneider was the son of Lieutenant General Aaron Schneider and it wouldn’t be helpful for book sales to insult the memory of the deputy chief of staff on national television. So he continued the charade that he was a great, honoured officer beloved by his men, despite the fact that it was a bald faced lie, despite the fact that on the inside he was dying to scream about the incompetence of the man. Instead he simply continued with the story.

“The sergeant, a big Gorilla by the name of Neiman…”

“Ah yes Avi Neiman! The interviewer interrupted once again, speaking as if he actually knew the man personally. Awarded several decorations for his role in the mission”, he read from one of the prompt cards that he had surreptitiously positioned where only he could see.

“Er yes” the interruption had knocked him off balance “Avi took command and ordered me to try and move over to the flank of the enemy and catch them in a crossfire.” Well it was a half truth, after running away from the shooting he had found himself way off to the East anyway, Avi had simply sent him forward, probably expecting him to get killed doing it, but he had obeyed.

“With them giving me covering fire I first ran over to our right and crawled for about 75 meters” he embellished.“Until I had made it into some shrubbery and where the foliage in general was a lot heavier, then I stealthily moved forward until I was way in front of our own guys and parallel with the enemy. I moved back around towards them and could see these enemies of ours shooting at my friends in front of them. I couldn’t believe how little I felt, the only thing that scared me was that I might miss them when I threw the grenade or that it might hit something and roll back towards me. Anyway I threw the grenade at a huge man firing a Russian made machine gun, I took cover when it exploded and then I was on them firing and screaming all the way, when the smoke cleared 5 of them were lying on the ground dead and broken.

I screamed towards Nieman to ceasefire as I moved back towards their position but he screamed back up to me to stay where I was and that they would come to me. A couple of minutes later we were back together, them carrying Schneider’s body on a stretcher. We hadn’t even started and already we had lost our officer, it wasn’t a good omen. We marched North from our landing zone with me as lead scout, we marched until daybreak and still hadn’t reached our target which was only supposed to be a few kilometres away but we hadn’t been dropped off in the correct location and had to move a lot further than planned. When we did get to the target, a missile battery that we were to destroy, we found that the air force had already done the job for us and all that was left of it was a smoking crater in the ground and a burned out truck.

“So what happened then?” the host asked, literally on the edge of his seat, “How did you come to be separated from the others?”

“Well I am coming to that…” he said the interruptions of this television star moron were becoming tiresome and threw him off his game.There was smug smile on his face while he waited, expectantly for him to go with the tale. “Nieman sent me to scout forward in the wood and see if there were enemy forces in front of us while they waited at the now obliterated target. I did as ordered and moved forward. I scouted down a trail of tyre tracks that led from the our target towards what was presumably a stockpile of missiles for the now non-existent missile system, perhaps the air force had missed the stock pile. I scouted down the path for about 20 minutes and came to a burnt out vehicle and no more tyre tracks. I carried on for another 5 minutes or so to try and figure out where it had been headed but found nothing of any value and turned around to move back to my team.”

The announcer grinned, he knew what was coming, he had heard the story already. “Only there was a problem when you turned around wasn’t there?”

“Well yeah” he shifted uncomfortably in his seat, admitting it still made him feel uneasy and here there was a huge live audience and many more people watching at home. “I turned around only I couldn’t remember which way I had come from. The area was heavily forested and I had left the tyre tracks behind me several minutes before.”

“you were lost…” the interviewer butt in.

“Yeah I was lost, I circled around trying to find the burnt out truck but somehow I just couldn’t get to it.” The mere memory of it had the sweat streaming down his face, the feeling of utter defeat had rolled over him forcing him to search both more intensely and more erratically as the adrenaline filled his system. Each second that past during his search had increased the fear harbouring within him until he had given up in the middle of a wood sitting down hugging his knees next to a fallen tree. His navigation skills had never been good. He had toldNieman that before he made him lead scout, it’s not like Nieman didn’t already know but the great oaf had never had a particularly large brain and now he was lost, alone and unlikely to survive the ordeal. Images of the soldiers who had been taken captive over the years filled his mind, getting taken alive was the greatest fear of any soldier.

“So I was wandering around looking and looking for this burnt out truck and I couldn’t find it.” But I did find it, I found it as soon as I forced myself to get up, it was right there in front of me and I followed the tracks all the way back to the boys. “I decided to head East which was the direction that the starting point lay in. I figured it my best chance to hook up with the guys again. After a couple of minutes of heading in that direction I heard shooting, I had a sick feeling and ran towards it, weapon at the ready.” I was right there, I watched them get massacred, I did nothing. At the end Nieman saw me, he saw me and I saw him die and I did nothing from my little bush. “By the time I got to them it was too late, they were all dead, the men who had killed them were all over the place, I had nothing to do there but move on.I had no idea where I was going, the radio had been with Nieman and now it had fallen into the hands of the enemy. I had nowhere to go, no idea how to get there” and I had watched my friends die without lifting a finger to help them.

Beyond the Green Line: Masa

These marches didn’t scare me, I had run 10km a day while training for the gibush so the idea that a mere 5 km march would be a problem was laughable. The marches took place through the night, the first one saw us loaded down with our weapons, water and ammunition as well as one big radio, one stretcher and a jerrycan filled with 10 litres of water, all three of which were to be carried on every march by a volunteer, later more pieces of equipment would be added but for now it was just those three things. In keeping with my new found ideology I opted to take the jerrycan.

The march began at night with the day simply being too hot to engage in that kind of physical activity. The Sayeret began the march first which was something that I found incredibly irritating, we followed. The Sergeant was up front while Alon and Ran marched behind us, we had been drinking all day in preparation for this and even in the late hours of the night I could feel the sweat trickling down my back. We were in two lines for the march and without much ado the Sergeant began to move.

The pace was a half run half walk which seemed to completely prevent me from falling into a rhythm. My lower back was in anguish after a mere few minutes, the weight of the water sloshing around in the jerrycan was constantly tugging at the straps on my shoulders, ensuring that they were biting into my skin. The dust kicked up by those walking in front of me dried out my mouth bringing upon me an instant urge for water that was made alot worse by the knowledge that I was carrying 10 litres of it on my back and wasn't allowed to drink it. My watch became my best friend and my worst enemy, I was constantly focussing on it to draw strength from each second that passed and yet I looked at it so often that timed seemed to pass by only with exasperating reluctance. The straps continued to bite into my skin and the weight on my back pulled me down into the soft ground underfoot. Soon the sweat on my face was wet not just with sweat but with tears of exasperation. I didn't even possess the vocabulary to ask someone to take the load from me.

I wasn't the only one suffering, through the prism of my own pain I could hear young soldiers crying out to stop for water or to be able to remove their load…just for a moment. I could hear them but they were in another dimension, I was locked inside my own world of pain and discomfort as I placed one foot after the other in a burning desire to continue on this “mere 5km march”. The struggle became one of internal desperation, constantly fighting with my body while failing to shut out the screams coming from within. And then the realisation that if I could just be rid of the weight on my back I would be able to carry on, or rather that without jettisoning the jerrycan I simply wasn’t going to make it.

Before I knew it I was shamelessly begging the new soldiers around me to take the weight from my back. I pounced on them one after the after begging them, using the few words of Hebrew that I knew jumbled up with my English. One after the other they waved me away, too encumbered with their own personal pain to help me with mine. I went from one to the other “pleeeeease I begged, all restraints imposed by self respect and dignity long since forgotten as the pain in my body utterly dominated me. Eventually I fell only to hear someone behind me say, “okay Brity, I’ll take it.” The joy that coursed through me on hearing these few words was one of the most wonderful feelings that I had ever experienced. I shrugged the jerrycan off my back and allowed it to fall to the dust with a thud.

I watched the smiling soldier pick it up, he gave me a playful punch in the arm, took the weight onto his back and moved off. I didn’t yet know his name but he had shown me something that my middle class London life had forever deprived me of, it was my first experience of receiving a helping hand when I was in pain and it came from someone I didn’t even know. The army would teach me what it is to be hungry, to be tired to be in real, indescribable pain. The army would teach me how to balance those needs, to control my mind, even in the midst of suffering and how to simultaneously be mindful of those around me whose need was greater than mine. They did it by making me feel the extremes of horror and the relief that comes from a helping hand. Merely by taking my jerrycan Forrest had forever burned himself into my consciousness, he had relieved my pain when I had most needed it and I would never ever forget it.

Moving on was a joyful experience, I was so light I felt that I could fly. It was a feeling of elation that lasted only a few moments. Now I was aware of pains and straps stamping their authority on my body that I had been too preoccupied to notice earlier. Ran and Alon were having a great time running up and down the columns of their soldiers, showing us just how easy it was. Ever so slowly the burning sun rose over the dunes, our first march ended at the top of a steep hill. We walked up while the Sayeret walked down, having already completed it. I bumped into one of the guys who had been in my group during the gibush he nodded to me on his way down “don’t worry Brity you’ve made it to the end!” I grunted but in my head I was thinking “fuck you Sayeret man I am with the Orev and we should have had the honour of finishing first". It was a watershed moment.

I made it to the top of the hill unsure of how walking half of what I had run every day had been quite so hard. I had taken weight on my person and on my back and I couldn’t understand why it had proven to be such a challenge. I turned to Forrest who was still carrying the jerrycan on his back and wearing a triumphant smile on his face, he nodded to me and I nodded back. A soldier fell onto his knees and started to throw up into the dust and sand. The sergeant walked up to him and patted his back, at the same time gave him words of encouragement. It was Iddo, he had a first degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and slept in the bed next to mine. Every night Iddo had given up some of his free time to whisper to me in broken English what we had covered in the lessons that day while we looked over each other’s shoulders to make sure that neither our officer nor commanders were in earshot as he did so.

While he was being sick Ran took me aside, “jerrycan?” he said, I nodded towards Forrest, who was standing off to the side with the offending item. He looked at me, “you finish with the pack you start with Marc, always!” It was somehow worse for the fact that he was saying it with a soft voice, he seemed so disappointed in me when he said it. There was nothing for me to say, I nodded my head and learned the lesson, I had been weak, not physically, everyone had found it tough going, but mentally, in my pain I had given up the equipment I had set out with, the taste of failure mixed with the relief of finishing and the sand that was still in my mouth. 

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HAIFA, Israel –  A single Syrian missile strike on a bakery near Hama killed more than 60 innocent civilians last week, so how did Israel manage to fire more than 1,500 high powered missiles into densely-populated Gaza in November, with the total loss of 161 lives, of which 90 have been acknowledged by Hamas itself as active combatants?

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Beyond the Green Line: Beginning of the Beginning

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. 

All Alone in the Wrong Unit

The Sergeant scared me, he wandered around the plugah with an expression that said he was looking for a fight and a swagger that told you he could win it. He knew the effect he had and relished in it. I'll never forget when he saw me sitting on the side of the parade ground, the moment we made eye contact I knew I was in trouble he skulked right up to me; "Marc" he barked, "What the hell are you doing?!!" I looked at him while trying to formulate the words I needed to say though none came to mind, in the end I feebly said "just sitting here" I eeked out. He looked me up and down before breaking out in a grin, "great have fun with that" he said before skulking away leaving me wondering what had just happened. 

Those first few days were lonely. Our officer had given the team one order so far and that had been that no one was permitted to talk to me in English, which pretty much meant that no one spoke to me at all. I didn't really want to get to know anyone anyway, they hardly looked like the paratrooper soldiers I had expected, when I looked around instead of seeing tough soldiers I only saw children. I wanted to leave, I wanted to be in the Sayeret, I wanted to be left alone. My mobile phone was in my pocket but I couldn't bring myself to make a call back to London and admit it to my family. I considered asking to leave the Orev for the regular Tzanhanim battalions, perhaps trying to get out of the army entirely. My body was going through the motions still but my mind was elsewhere, somehow in some way I felt that I had been betrayed but there was no one to blame.

A small corner of the plugah had been set aside for the smokers. It was in the smoking corner that I met people, it was the only place where we could go and not be on the clock for the little missions we were always being given. The only times we were allowed to go there were meal times and in the free hour before we all had to be asleep. It was there that guys from all of the different units gathered to share their stories of torment at the hands of the army. I didn’t understand much of what was being said but people there laughed so hard when I tried to speak Hebrew that they quickly accepted me. It wasn't great fun sitting there watching people laughing at me but they didn't seem to mean anything by it. I quickly came to realise that I was the one who had to adjust. When you're the odd one out you can accept it and go with it or rebel against it and go on your own. I chose to stop trying to do everything alone, to stop sulking over the fact that I wasn't in the Sayeret and most importantly to let go of all of the preconceptions I had fostered with regards to life in the IDF. I was rewarded by having a place to go and people to talk to.

This was how I met Haim, he had been amongst those laughing in the smoking corner and sought me out while I was wandering around the plugah. “Hey Brity, you’re a funny guy, now we’re friends and you’re coming to my house for Rosh Hashannah!” It wasn’t an invitation so much as a statement. This put me in a bit of a bind, I had been looking forward to our first weekend off and was in no way certain that I wanted to spend it in the company of strangers, certainly not those who were a good 5 years younger than me. I nodded none the less figuring that I could get out of it later.

That same day we were treated to a lecture from our officer. He spoke about the meaning of the word tzevet, a term that was almost holy in the IDF. Myself and the 17 others who composed the August 2002 intake to the Orev were now part of a tzevet and as such we were expected to help one another at every possible moment. We would be spending the rest of our army service together, we would endure all that the  training staff would throw at us and then we would endure everything that the enemy would throw at us. Unlike elsewhere in the IDF the members of August 2002 Orev Tzanhanim would remain as one organic unit throughout their service. 

That day we were finally issued our rifles and I signed off on a distinctly battered M-16 assault rifle. Before being taken down to the rifle range we had to pass a qualification test, it was all in Hebrew of course. In the wake of a lesson on the weapon tests were distributed. I didn’t have a chance at passing it, I could neither read nor understand anything. I looked at Ran silently pleading with him for help but he ignored me and gave the order to begin. I looked down at the page, there were diagrams of the rifle with multiple choice questions around them. I felt the tension rise within me, if I couldn’t pass this then I couldn’t go to the range with the others.

I barely heard creak of the seat next to me as my Sergeant occupied it. “How’s it going?” he whispered in my ear. I tensed up, not knowing how to answer, I didn’t have to. He put his finger next to one of the answers to the first question. I turned to him and he simply nodded his head back to the page. I circled the answer and his finger instantly moved to another and then another. My Sergeant, who an hour ago had made us all run around the base, stand to attention, then run around the base again because we hadn’t swept the sand out of the tents was sitting next to me giving me the answers to the test.

When I had circled the answers he rose and without another word walked out, Ran tried and failed to suppress a grin, to my left the rest of my tzevet were staring at me. Later, once the tests had been marked the Sergeant read out the results. Everyone had passed the test and I had scored the highest with 100%, he insisted on playing out the charade to the end and started clapping, he glared at the others and they started clapping too. Ran found the whole thing hilarious and had to step out of the room to get rid of his fit of giggles. I was petrified everyone was now going to hate me, instead they were all patting my back as we left the room. We all knew what had happened but no one cared, they surprised me with their warmth, these guys didn't know me at all but they were happy to accept me. These guys I had been thrown together with were growing on me, despite myself.

The next day target practise began, naturally this being the IDF there were no fully functioning shooting ranges but simply empty areas marked out as shooting ranges. This meant that we had to bring the rifle range with us. At 0600 we were standing outside our tents staring at the mountain of equipment that had been placed in front of us. The majority of it consisted of ammunition though there were also jerrycans full of water, a radio pack, targets and steel stakes to hammer into the ground with the massive sledgehammer that we would be bringing also. To transport the equipment we had an open stretcher and, for some unfathomable reason a large, white, collapsible table.

The Sergeant took out his stopwatch and gave the usual impossible time limit within which we were to have all of the equipment either on our backs or on the stretcher and the table and to have both of those already in the air. The next 2 minutes saw a rush of movement as we clambered all over each other to try to get the job done. “How much time do you have left?” Ran asked us all, we didn’t know, we had forgotten to organise someone to keep time. Then someone piped up and said “1.46” and the collective sigh of relief was palpable as we raced back to our original 3 lines. To be late was acceptable; to go over the time limit was not, once we were reassembled one of the guys made the formal request for more time to complete the task. 

We continued in this way until we were standing there with all of the equipment on our backs, the stretcher with equipment on it in the air and the white table also in the air with a corner resting on a shoulder of four soldiers. Wearing my full combat equipment and holding a rifle in my hands I felt like a soldier for the first time since beginning training. I was under the stretcher and carrying a jerrycan on my back. The Sergeant led  us to a back gate which was chained closed with a padlock. He pulled the chain off with a loud clang and then led us out of the base, into the empty desert beyond. 

Boot Camp Begins

I had rolled the dice and I had lost, the Sayeret had been denied to me and this other unit, this… Orev was to be my home. I had exercised the last of my options when I had volunteered for the Gibush, now the army owned me and I was going to have to figure out how to live with the consequences of the decision they made. Thankfully there wasn’t much time to contemplate my utter failure. Myself and the 17 other guys I had been thrown together with were directed to two large, 10 man tents with ten metal cots apiece and a small locker next to each cot. There were 6 tents in total to house all of the new soldiers being trained up and facing those tents were 3 more for the training staff. In between their tents and ours was a rectangular parade ground measuring about 20 by 40 meters and at the end of that stood a big tent that served as a dining room, next to it stood a portable showering unit with the three showers and two toilets that over 100 of us would be sharing. 

There were a few people sitting on their cots chatting to one another at the far end of the tent but even if I did have the communication skills to chat to them I had no interest in being friendly. I walked out of the tent fingering the mobile phone in my pocket, considering calling home and figuring out a way out of the army. Instead I just sat down in an obscure part of the plugah feeling sorry for myself. I wasn’t left to my own devices for very long. Above the cacophony of foreign voices I heard the distinctly familiar sound of my name being called. I looked around for the source and saw a swarthy, dark skinned,soldier wearing a red beret calling me.

I slowly got to my feet and went to find out whether there had been a mistake and I was supposed to be in the Sayeret after all. “Marc Goldberg?” was all he said as I approached him, I nodded and he motioned for me to follow him. He moved around the back of the staff tents to where several tables and chairs were waiting. He introduced himself as my new commander his name was Ran and he introduced himself with a smile. His English was non-existent and my Hebrew was awful but we managed to struggle through a few of the basics.

He wanted to know if I was happy that I had been placed into the Orev and I nodded in the affirmative, worried that if I said no they would simply throw me out of the Paratroopers. He explained that he was one of four staff members who would be training my team during boot camp. He was responsible for half the soldiers in the team and another commander bore responsibility for the other nine. Above him was my Sergeant and above him my officer, beyond the officer I didn’t need to worry. The interview was mercifully brief and at the end he patted me on the shoulder and told me not to worry so much and that it would be ok. I wondered how he had been able to read my mind without it dawning on me for a second that a mere year and a half before he had been sitting in my seat and remembered exactly how it felt to be in a new place and not know anyone.

My officer also interviewed me that day, Ran came to find me and led me to the same table that the two of us had sat at earlier. My officer was a hulk of a man at over 6” tall and rippling with muscles, this was clearly not a person to be taken lightly. He motioned for me to sit down and introduced himself as my officer without giving me his name. “You’re not to talk English anymore” he said and then he went on to tell me to work hard and that he was happy to have me in his team, then he simply stopped talking. The short interview was over. Unlike Ran he never smiled, in fact he didn’t betray a single iota of emotion at all. After an awkward silence I walked away from my interview only for him to call me back and tell me to salute him, after saluting…my officer I made my way back to the hustle and bustle of my new plugah. So far boot camp wasn’t anything like I thought it would be, I had expected a drill sergeant of the kind I had seen in Full Metal Jacket to be shouting at me all the way through instead all I had were Ran’s smiles and my officer’s distance. 

The following days were more like a summer camp than the army. Sleeping in tents and running from lecture to lecture, none of which I understood. I didn’t talk to anyone very much at first, it was difficult because of the language barrier but it wasn’t just that. Everyday I watched the new recruits to my beloved Sayeret wander around the plugah with their chins out and heads held high and every day it made me feel like I had failed. They would say things to me like “don’t worry the Orev is good too” and I would despise them for it. If the Orev was so good how come none of them had requested it as their first choice?

There was lots to do in those first days, we didn’t have rifles yet and we were only slowly receiving the tools that we would need in order to fight. Our rifle magazines and equipment were signed for and we spent hours being instructed how to work on them to bring them up to standard, we would have to tape them up and put pieces of parachute cord on them to make it easier to pull them out of the equipment pouches on our battle dress. This was when I began to meet the guys I had been put with and as I met them I slowly forgot my need to belong to the Sayeret and believe in the Orev.

Training in boot camp was mostly divided into a series of 1 and 2 minute missions. We would all sit in a tent with Ran holding a stopwatch. He would give an order saying, "within 1 minute you have all taped up one magazine…go!" There would be a rush around the tent as we all lunged for the tape to get the mission accomplished in the time available. There isn’t any time for shyness in this situation and I became adept at sign language in order to get what I wanted. At the end of each minute we would all be sitting precisely where we had been at the start. If the mission wasn’t complete we could request more time but we all had to be back where we started and sitting in silence at the end of the prescribed time, if not a punishment would follow. At first the punishments were nothing, Ran would simply tell everyone very clearly how important it was to be ready, it was later, once the Sergeant got involved that the punishments would really begin in earnest.

The Moment of Truth

Once the interviews were over with we were led back to our plugah. Had it really only been three days since I had left it behind? Someone let out a loud whistle, someone else let out a cheer and then the whole plugah was applauding those of us who walked back in, they cheered us all, no one even knew if they had made it into any of the units but that didn’t seem to matter. It made me all of the more proud of the spirit of of these guys. This was the mindset of the Israelis, always encouraging each other, always lending a hand even before one was asked for. I looked around at the people sitting up on their bunks applauding us, none of whom I knew and felt the sense of belonging that had so eluded me in England. I found my bunk and dumped my gear on it before stumbling my way to the shower and then dumped myself into a sleeping bag on my metal cot and passed out.

At 0600 the next day I stood in a line with all the other guys who had successfully completed the gibush and watched an officer read out names and units from his list. My fists were clenched and I repeated over and over in my head “Sayeret, Sayeret." Perhaps if I whispered the word over and over again to myself they would let me in! I had really done everything I could this time, I had carried a sandbag on my shoulder for hours, I had called through the desert, I had done everything asked of me and now the reward was about to arrive. I had abandoned England and my life there for this one moment so please God and the spirits up high as well as those in the IDF paratroopers please just send me to the place I have to be.” The officer looked up as he took a breath. He went back to his list and read off some more names, before, finally I heard “Goldberg”. “Here,” I say, still silently praying, fists clenched, eyes closed voice in my head whispering Sayeret, Sayeret, and then I heard it… “Orev”.

WHAT THE FUCK DID HE JUST SAY?

I felt the tears forming,Orev? No, no, you said the wrong unit, you got it all mixed up! Why? This was the only challenge in my life that I had truly worked for, truly aspired to with some reasonable hope of success. I had never felt motivation like this for anything before, I would have paid any price, done anything they had asked of me to get there. I had sweated day in and day out, exercising, making sure I was eating the right food and most of all wanting, envisioning, dreaming and thinking about it and doing all in my power that I could to make it happen. And I had still failed!

It had all been for nothing. I had failed! My dream was dead. Now there was nothing I could do about it, the army had me for the next two years and my soul was broken.

I had lost my will to serve, I had lost my will to obey orders. In that ever lasting moment the sky had fallen in on me, the two years of my life that I had already signed away stretched before me like a yellow brick road without an Emerald City waiting for me at the end.

Over the next couple of hours I went through the same motions as everyone around me, giving back equipment and getting more, I was utterly absent from the process though, I wanted out of the army completely. I had been cheated, I had tried and I had failed and now I had no options left before me. The word Orev floated endlessly through my mind. What did it mean, this word Orev? What pathetic unit had they thrown me into? 

The answer wouldn’t be long in coming, my misery was painfully insignificant to the army as the regular logistical operation swung into action. Every soldier on the base was now assigned to a permanent unit, new equipment was dished out, signatures were given on forms that weren’t read and the process of becoming a real paratrooper began and I didn't care any more, I wanted to go home.

Those of us who were in any of the special units of the Tzanhanim were led away to our new plugah by a somber looking soldier I had never seen before and would never see again. The new plugah was a carbon copy of the previous one but was slightly further away than the others. He nodded at a couple of the 10 man canvas tents that seemed to comprise just about all of the accommodation that was on the base and read names off a list. Mine was one of them and so into the tent I went with my kit bag and grabbed the nearest metal cot I saw. I sat there for a moment wondering what to do next.

With all of the administration involved in sending new soldiers to their units there was nothing to do but think about the collapse of my dream. The idea of being a member of the famed Sayeret had utterly consumed me I had never really considered what to do if I didn't make it. I replayed the gibush over and over again in my mind, perhaps I had eaten too quickly, maybe I hadn’t helped people out enough, there had to be some clue, some reason why I had been sent to the Orev and not the Sayeret. What had I done wrong? What could I have done differently? What had they wanted to hear in the interview? There must have been something but I couldn’t understand precisely what had happened. 

I had heard of the Orev unit, I didn’t know much about them but I did know that they weren’t as “special” as the Sayeret and now I was one of them.

Beyond the Green Line: The Interview

The mere fact that I was having an interview came as a surprise to me. As far as I had known the gibush was over the moment we were told that we had made it to the end. Once it was all over the men who had been instructing us and making notes on us shared a little about themselves and dropped the barriers that had existed between us over the past 3 days. Most importantly for me they told us what units they had been in and when they had served. I knew that they were impressed with me and that my lack of Hebrew hadn’t harmed my chances but had enhanced them as they knew it added an extra element of difficulty to my gibush but the prospect of an interview scared me far more, I wasn't prepared, I didn't know what kinds of questions they were going to ask or what answers they wanted to hear.

I wasn't sure how I was going to be able to impress a bunch of hardened soldiers sitting across a table from me. I could barely speak, I didn't even know the Hebrew words for knife and fork, how on earth was I going to be able to explain to them that feeling of emptiness I had felt back in Manchester when I found myself unable even to enter the recruitment fair?  Would they even care? I didn't know the answers to these and the other questions that kept popping into my head, my eyes kept closing of their own free will and I dreamed of the metal cot I had left three days ago. When my turn came to be interviewed I was led away from the guys I had been with for the past three days and told to sit on a bench in front of yet another canvas tent. There was a dark skinned kid with bushy eyebrows already there waiting, we sat there next to each other looking into the emptiness of the desert. There was enough time for him to tell me that his name was Avi before he was called into the tent and I was left to wait on my own.

The only other interview I could remember sitting through was to work in Sony selling TV’s for a summer, I doubted that experience would be of much use. I sat there on that bench watching the sun drop ever further down towards its Mediterranean resting place "You're almost there Marc", I told myself, "just this one last hurdle and you're there" the adrenaline was storming it's merry way through me while I sat on a bench, watching the sun drop ever closer to the desert floor, waiting to be called into an anonymous green tent where my fate would be decided eventually the gesticulations of a reservist shook me from my reverie, it was my turn to enter into the dreaded tent.

Waiting for me inside were five reservists, a representative of each of the units looking at the new recruits. One of them had been running my team on the gibush. He was the very big, very bald man who now for some reason was wearing a ridiculous cowboy hat. The others all looked a lot younger. They were tough though and good looking. Some of them wore T-shirts with their unit insignia on them, though I didn't recognise which units they were at the time. The interview began when the cowboy leaned forward and said “Marc what can we do with you? You don’t even speak Hebrew?”

I have to admit that a part of me had been expecting them to bow down in admiration at the fact that I had come all the way from London to put my life on the line for their country. Unfortunately with that first question it was clear that was not going to happen, it appeared that they might consider me more of a burden than a solution. I was unprepared for the line of questioning and after what felt like a very long silence I simply blurted out “within a couple of months of army service I’ll be fluent” my voice sounded very loud to me, I could feel a bead of sweat trickle down my back. I instantly regretted the outburst though before I could dwell on it someone else leaned in with another question. “But why are you here at all?” This clearly wasn’t going well. Surely it was obvious that I had arrived to serve in the army, was I really going to have to search my soul and start talking about England and my feelings of teenage angst? I answered that it had been my dream to serve in Sayeret Tzanhanim. He dismissed this with a flick of his rather large wrist, “Why is that your dream, Marc?” He asked quietly. They were all looking at me, I didn't know what to say.

Every soldier I had spoken to since arriving in the country had told me about how he couldn’t wait to get out of the army, how could I tell these guys that I had come to Israel with visions of glory and to become the ultimate Jewish warrior? I had to say something that made sense to them. The problem was I had been so focused on getting into the army that I had never really asked myself why I wanted it so badly. With suicide bombers blowing themselves up in Israel’s heartland I hadn’t expected anyone to wonder what I was doing there, certainly not anyone in the army. “This is the best army in the world, the only one that is willing to look after Jews”. Was the line I came up with, I looked at their faces and I could see that they were unimpressed with me; I shifted uncomfortably on my seat once again. “So do you just want to kill an Arab or something?” said a wiry, thin soldier. He was wearing a cap with one of the unfamiliar unit insignia on it. “No” I blurted out, painfully aware that the very people I wanted to impress were starting to wonder if I was a psycho. “If I'm going to spend 2 years in the army I just want to make sure that I serve in the best unit that I can,” I said with as much confidence and authority as I could muster. The mood relaxed somewhat and the big guy gave a small grin and looked at the soldier to his left who gave one too. Perhaps they were smiling at my naiveté. Perhaps they felt awkward too, perhaps they just thought that a young man who had no idea what he was getting  into had just walked into their tent.

Then they started with questions about my choice of unit. “Why Sayeret Tzanhanim Marc? You know there are other units too, would you consider going to a unit other than the Sayeret?” I told them this was the unit I wanted, the best unit in the army and the reason I had come to Israel. But inside I wasn't so sure any more. If I answered in the wrong way they might not send me to any of the units, “Sayeret Tzanhanim is of course my first choice but you guys are the ones who know most about the army and I will go where I am sent.” I said. Heads around the table nodded and I felt pleased that I had finally said something that provoked a relatively positive response.

After a couple more questions they released me, I walked out of the interview with a sick feeling in my stomach. Their questions had caught me off guard, especially the one about just wanting to kill an Arab. I hadn't even considered that I might actually have to kill someone before. The interview marked the end of the gibush the adrenaline in my system was gone and my eyes attempted to close themselves despite my brain telling them to remain open. I was in the hands of the army now and they would decide my fate. 

The End

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again

Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need...of some...stranger's hand
In a...desperate land

Lost in a Roman...wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah

There's danger on the edge of town
Ride the King's highway, baby
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, baby

Ride the snake, ride the snake
To the lake, the ancient lake, baby
The snake is long, seven miles
Ride the snake...he's old, and his skin is cold

The west is the best
The west is the best

Get here, and we'll do the rest

The blue bus is callin' us
The blue bus is callin' us

Driver, where you taken' us

The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery 
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived, and...then he
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door...and he looked inside

Father, yes son, I want to kill you

Mother...I want to...WAAAAAA

C'mon baby,--------- No "take a chance with us"
C'mon baby, take a chance with us
C'mon baby, take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the blue bus

Doin' a blue rock
On a blue bus
Doin' a blue rock
C'mon, yeah

Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

It hurts to set you free
But you'll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die

This is the end

The Path to the Sayeret

I had thought about the gibush a great deal and expected the worst, it was with the worst in mind that I had trained, running everyday followed by pushups and situps. I wasn’t sure whether it would be enough but that was what I had done. The only solid fact I had about the gibush was that it lasted three days and nights. I expected to be deprived of sleep, beaten and starved, in the year between my arrival in Israel and the second gibush my imagination had run wild with thoughts of all different kinds of torture and I was determined to survive everything and anything in my quest to make it into the Sayeret.

The allotted time came; those of us who had requested the gibush were taken away from the plugah to the edge of the base. We had been instructed to bring an army issued bag with various items; a shovel, a one man tent and two army issue water canteens. There were a couple of hundred of us and we were spilt into groups of about 15 to 20 people. We all stood there as our names were read out and one by one we were given a group number and sent in the direction of the soldiers who would be directing our individual groups. I moved silently over to the knot of fighters who were standing next to a number 19 that had been written on a piece of cardboard and attached to the chain link fence on the edge of the base. I stood there waiting as one by one the other wannabe Special Forces fighters arrived at my group.

The men who were running my gibush seemed to be in the most part reservists. The man in charge was around 40 and was short and chunky. One of the others was a massive hulk of a man who stood at over 6” and seemed to consist of pure muscle, he seemed to be around the same age as the smaller guy. He was someone that I wanted to impress. Later I would understand that with the exception of the smaller man everyone there representative a different special unit and that later they would sit down and argue over who got to have who. Altogether there were 5 members of staff helping to run my particular gibush.

Once we were all assembled the first thing that happened was that the little guy passed around a hat and told us all to put our watches in it. That small action would had a massive affect, there would be no way to know how much time remained except by the setting and rising sun. With that small action completed the instructors marched us out of the base and into the Judean Desert, it was August and summer was at its height. Even the desert nights were stiflingly hot. Once we were away from the base the gibush began. The little guy lined us up in three rows facing him. He gave us 30 seconds to run to a rock a couple of hundred meters away and run back again and to stand in precisely the same formation that we had stood in before we started. We were all chomping at the bit to get going, we were all dying to impress the men standing before us. Looking left and right all I saw were competition for the limited number of places available for my dream unit. I wanted the others to fail, I wanted them to fall so that I could rise.

He counted us down and then I heard him reach “one!” I was off like lightening, made it to the allocated point and was one of the first ones back. I tool care to make sure that the same people were standing to my left and right. It took more than 40 seconds before everyone was back in position, I know because he showed each of us his stopwatch. “Not very good…again!” And we were off again to the rock, I reached it and ran back again as fast as I could. The man at my left was already there and I simply slotted in next to him, waiting for the guy to make it to my right. Everyone arrived to their allocated point and he clicked his stopwatch and shook his head. “38 seconds…again!” Once again we were off, each step kicked up dust that the man behind inhaled my throat was soon dry as we continued on and on in the same way never quite hitting 30 seconds.

Over and over again we ran to the rock and back, I don't know how many times we ran or how much time had passed before he stopped us, “What’s the problem?” he asked, “is it too hard? Why can’t you do it?” A couple of excuses would come from the assembled wannabe warriors, I didn’t dare speak afraid that my poor knowledge of Hebrew would badly influence my chances of getting through.

Again we ran and again we failed, he sent us back to that rock over and over and then it began. “Who wants to sit this one out?” The big man said as he ate a chocolate brownie. “It won’t mean anything bad. There were no takers and off we all went once again, soon the offers were more subtle; "who wants to do pushups by the side while the others run to the rock and back?” Off we went again though this time, on the way back I saw that two of our group were doing pushups while waiting for us to return. I knew that they were already finished. They hadn’t been thrown out of the gibush but these guys were already taking the easy option and the inctructors were watching. “Fill up your water bottles and drink!” barked the little man. “This time you are going to make it in 30 seconds believe me” he said as we thirstily consumed the lukewarm water in our bottles. It was as much a relief for the break as it was to get rid of the dust that had turned the inside of my mouth into a bleak desert.

He lined us back into the original three lines and allowed the two fighters to sit by the side and continue their pushups. He ordered us out again and as one we ran, hit the rock and came back in our original positions. He clicked down on the stopwatch and showed to all of us in turn as we stood there. “See you can do it!” He said, the timer said 29.87 seconds. It was counter intuitive, we were more tired than before but we had become more and more organised. we had, silently, almost subconsciously marked out a specific route to take and a way to get back into formation without bumping into each other. 

The two doing pushups never re-joined our group and sat at the side as we stood in our three lines. The big man took out a plastic bag and began handing out numbered tags. Seeing them made my heart sink, it meant that all I had been trying to do in terms of impressing these older warriors had been pointless up to this point. They hadn’t even been writing down scores for any of us. The tag was placed on my shoulder, it was number 12 and that was what I would be called for the rest of the three day trial. That was when the instructors pulled out their notebooks and started paying close attention to who we were and how we behaved.

The gibush continued through the rest of the night with small tasks on a strict time limit always different but always very similar. I wasn’t touched, no one ever shouted at me, it was simply a case of do as you’re told or sit out, and spend the rest of your life contemplating your own weakness. I was too motivated to consider sitting out, for me this wasn’t about finishing but about excelling. All my life I had been an under achiever, all my life I had to suffer the humiliation of staring at an exam paper and not knowing the answers to any of the questions, but here, in the gibush I felt I had the answers. All I had to do was keep pushing through, be the first, be the most motivated.

At one point we were taken to a stretch of the desert with empty sandbags lying in a heap on the ground. The little man told us to fill them up with as much sand as was “comfortable”, I could see them making notes as we filled the bags up. I filled mine up and stood in a line with the others holding it on my shoulder. We all stood in a row with these sandbags on our shoulders, just waiting. Then he told us to start running and start running we did. I ran with the sandbag on my shoulder for what felt like hours, monotonously running back and forth along a stretch of desert.

At some point the sun rose from her slumber and I carried my sandbag around and around watching the sun come up over a mountain in the distance, I had survived the first night. I wished the sun would come up faster, I wished time would go faster and this whole thing could be done with. It hadn’t taken long before they had gotten every one of us to the point of exhaustion. To my surprise we were to be fed during the course of the gibush, once the sun came up, bringing intense heat along with it we were sat down in a circle and a ration pack consisting of tinned food was tossed into the middle. I knew it was going to be a problem as people scrambled for food all around me and I was unable to communicate effectively. Though this may well have worked to my advantage as I unnervingly noticed that the staff stood over us with their notebooks grading us on how we interacted with one another over the food. Somehow I managed to eat though there is nothing as destructive to your appetite as having someone watching you and making notes on how you go about doing it.

The August heat ensured that during certain hours the physical aspect of the gibush was put on hold. This came as another nice surprise for someone who was convinced that he was going to spend three days essentially getting beaten up. We were allowed to sleep in shaded areas for what I imagine was a couple of hours and also spent time playing certain mind games. At one point the big instructor could see I was having difficulty so he took me aside and explained the rules to me in English, for which I was eternally grateful. It interested me that more people seemed to quit during the downtime than during the heavy exercise period. I remember lying down and watching as a blonde kid very deliberately stood up, looked around and then simply walked away. It made me happy to see him go, one person less vying for my place in the Sayeret.

My attitude towards the gibush changed after a conversation with one of the guys in my group. He was number 8. We spoke in whispers and he told me all about the mind-set behind the gibush he told me about how the instructors weren’t looking for the fittest people but for those who helped out the most. He told me that the instructors were standing over us while we ate to see who made food for others and who just made it for themselves. He told me that they knew we would all become fit through the training that we had before us but what they were looking for is who can still think even when they are exhausted. These were the words that I had needed to hear. The guys around me, the ones I was competing against already knew what they had to do in order to be accepted, some of them had already taken other gibushim for different Special Forces units.

I lay on my back reflecting in the moments before sleep took me. These were the relevant hours, this was the time that would be the difference between success of failure. I was on the very last stretch now, telling my parents that I was coming to Israel felt like something that had happened in another world.  My world now was canvas tents, desert and dust and hornets, meals consisting of hard boiled eggs and cream cheese. My world was this one now, my time in the army had already been given up to a fat sergeant in Jerusalem who looked at me as if I was a lunatic for doing it, now I was here and I owed it to myself to make sure I got to the finish line.

I changed my strategy, now I was the helper guy, now I wasn’t running in front of the pack but helping out someone slower than me. Now it made more sense why we had been running to make it back in 30 seconds, the fact that I had made it back in time hadn’t been relevant, the fact that I hadn’t helped the slower guys was the relevant fact. From that moment I was encouraging the others on, I was the helper, I was doing all that I could to propel others forward, I was doing all that I could to get to the Sayeret. 

On the second day we were formed into a circle, two of us were called into the middle and tasked with forcing the other out of the circle. I refused to lose, I refused to be knocked out of the ring. When my turn came I rushed into the centre ready to taken on anyone, another recruit was called. He was roughly my height, we rushed at one another, the intensity of knowing that everything rested on victory made me heart pound with anticipation. The fight or flight reflex was at its zenith as I went all out for the fight. The rules were no hitting, it was a wrestling match and for a while we tussled there in the centre of the ring of people watching us. A confidence pervaded my body, I never doubted that this recruit was going out of the ring and I took a perverse enjoyment forcing him further and further back towards the edge of the ring. I put in a burst of power that sent him sprawling out of the ring. I remained in the ring while another, bigger recruit was pitched against me, he soon found himself on the ground with my knee in his back. I was on top of the world, I felt the exhilaration of domination. After the gibush the first recruit I had defeated would find himself in the Sayeret, the second in another Special Forces unit called Maglan and I had beaten them both.

The rest of the gibush passed in a blur of demanding physical exercise and mind games. To my surprise we slept at night and during the heat of the day. They put us to sleep in the small tents that we were ordered to take with us, they put us down early and got us up at what I thought was around 4 in the morning, well before daybreak to work us some more. I slept in a tent with number 8 who would school me a little bit more each night in English before we both passed out.

There were no bestial soldiers and there were no beatings, I slept and I ate during the three day gibush. This had been the big exam and I had pushed all of the way through, I hadn't let up, not once and the whole way through I had been thinking of the Sayeret imagining how awful the taste of failure would have felt as it made it's way through me

After an easy gibush I proceeded to fuck up the interview completely.