The most memorable thing about guard duty had been the loss of Oran. The constant need for sleep and sloshing around in the eternal mud of the base had not been fun and much as I would like to say that the army had done it with some kind of special Jedi training purpose in mind I can safely say that there was nothing behind it other than an indifference to the suffering of soldiers. It was in the wake of our guard duty that we set out on our 60km march, meaning that there was only a month to go before the final 90km march and our red berets.
The 60km was where we lost another of our number, the medic who wasn't Netanel and who no one ever called for when we simulated a wounded comrade. He arrived a couple of weeks late to boot camp having failed his medic's exam at the end of the course so he had to stay on and re-take it. He never quite managed to integrate into the team. His inability to complete the 60km surprised no one and made many of us sigh with relief. It was just the inevitable departure of someone who was never one of the us to start with. To Mark's credit he tried to alternatively cajole and bully him into staying on his feet through the final 15kms but he was wasting his time and his breath and we all knew it. Soon he was sitting on the ambulance that had been following us at a snail's pace. He and Oran suddenly became fast friends while the rest of us merely waited for them to be officially dropped.
That march was nowhere near as tough for me as the previous one, I felt justified in not taking anything on my back this time and so moved freely. Once it was over we were sent to bed and woke up the next day when Green decided that we all needed to go for a run in full kit, so run we did, very slowly and laughing at each other's inability to move. We arrived back at the base and changed, we had earned a trip back home but before we did we were called to a briefing. The Captain stood before us and in characteristic fashion said "next week we are going to be guarding settlements, I trust you will carry out this mission in the greatest tradition of the Paratroopers." And then we were free for a day and a half to do whatever we wanted before "guarding settlements in the best tradition of the Paratroopers" began.
The settlement of Eli was not the settlement that I, along with four others had been tasked with guarding for a week. The bus transporting all of us travelled along a solitary road dropping small groups of soldiers in various lonely looking settlements. Ya'ar had been smiling when we drove through Eli, it reminded him, he said of Tekoa, another settlement further South that he grew up in. The bus dropped him off on a lonely looking hilltop before depositing me, Mark and another three of my team mates on a lonely hilltop of our own. The settlement I had been tasked with guarding didn't actually have a name, officially it was called Eli outpost B. It was a hilltop next to the settlement of Eli, it consisted of about six caravans and one house. The house had a small area fenced off, within which resided a solitary horse.
It was heaven.
Inside our caravan there was a fully functioning shower complete with shower head and toilet, there was hot water and no human excrement on the floor around it. I was there along with Netanel, Yoni and Elad with Mark in charge of us. The caravan had a kitchen equipped with a small electric stove and a sink. There was an actual roof over our heads, there were two bedrooms, Mark took one of them leaving the four of us to the other one, we had an electric heater. We also had no rain water dripping on me in the night, no worrying about a tent falling down, no more worrying about when we were going to get to sleep.
It was infinitely reasonable.
I took first guard, it was a four hour shift and I spent the first ten minutes wandering around the entire perimeter of the settlement. It comprised entirely of these temporary caravans save for the one structure, I couldn't fathom anyone choosing to spend their life there but here they were nonetheless and here I was guarding them. At the beginning of January a double suicide bombing in Tel Aviv had killed 23 people and wounded 120, there were attacks almost every day. While I had been trudging through the mud of the base I had been safely insulated from the horrors of the second Intifada by the army, but now I was plonked right into the middle of it in an area likely to be attacked.
I had no particular job other than to be armed and ready and there were no restrictions as to where I was to stand for my time on guard so I just wandered around taking the place in. There was a road that came into the settlement and went in a loop around it. The settlement was on a hilltop and as a result the caravans were on different levels. The house with the horse was on the top and along a short road there were about three or four caravans next to each other. The families there had created small gardens for themselves with little plastic slides for their kids. There was some grass growing but alot of mud too. Continuing my circuit I pulled a right around the final caravan and walked down the hill to another row of caravans which belonged to students at a nearby religious seminary as well as our own home for the week. They consisted of the remainder of the settlement, walking past them along the small road I found myself walking back up the hill to complete my circuit at the house.
Looking around I could see Eli not far away, a much larger settlement which surely would have been more fun to live in. I couldn't understand why anyone would choose to live there, but then I found it difficult to understand why anyone would ever choose to live outside of Tel Aviv. I was switched by Elad whose big head was visible from a distance and I went back to our caravan to lie down. To my surprise no one prevented me from doing so and I slept, in my clothes, until Netanel woke me up the next morning to guard. My second stint at guard duty passed in a blur and I understood that I could really get used to this way of life. Perhaps that's why it wasn't scheduled to last longer than a week.
When I woke up I was told that it's time to cook lunch and that as the oldest person there I'm the one who's cooking it. I couldn't stop smiling, could it really be that there is a side of the army that's like this? Everyday we cook and relax and pull a few hours of guard duty? After the mud and sleep deprivation there was something to all of this that didn't sit right, as if all of that luxury was some kind of other test, perhaps to see if we get too used to it. I took the whole thing in my stride, agreeing to cook some pasta with tuna for everyone. I added in some sweet corn and some tomato ketchup and the delicacy was ready.
On Friday night we were invited over to a member of the settlement's caravan for dinner. We say the prayers and sit down to eat. The caravan belongs to a couple, the husband was in a unit called Sayeret Golani, the sister unit of the Sayeret Tzananim that I was so desperate to join. Funnily enough shortly after failing to be accepted into that unit I had learnt that it was, as a point of fact, nowhere near the standard of Sayeret Golani. That made a lot of sense to me at the time. The man was about 26 and he mentioned that he had spent way too much time in the training camp of the Golani special unit. I had heard that above the entrance to their training area there was a sign that said God can't hear your prayers and the Chief of staff doesn't know about them, welcome to Sayeret Golani. Just to let them know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were going to get seriously fucked with. And now even though he was done with his army service he still lived with a short M16 close at hand in a place where there was every likelihood he would need to use it.
The caravan was well equipped, there was an oven, a dishwasher, a washing machine and even a drier. It surprised me to see the place so well equipped since from the outside it looked like such a dump of a portable home. She made us roasted chicken and we sat there and ate, conversation moved in fits and starts. Mark, as our commander, did his best to make the atmosphere jovial though no one could seem to think of anything to say. Elad whispered to me that the woman was a daughter of a famous head of yeshivah there in the territories. She looked about 23 or 24 years old and had long brown hair tied into a pony tail, she was short and had a smile that lit up her face, she smiled often and it was a joy to behold every time she did so.
Sitting there in that caravan I couldn't help but wonder once again what these two lovely people were doing in a caravan on a hilltop. She chattered away regardless of the awkward silences left by myself and my comrades, or perhaps because of them and we all shovelled the food in our mouths. We put some food aside for Yoni so that there would be something for him after I switched him over.
When it was my turn for guard duty, I thanked our hosts and took the leftovers to Yoni who was waiting near the house where the road enters into the settlement. We exchanged a couple of words before he went to our caravan to tuck in. Darkness was in full effect and Mark was due to join me when he finished dinner. Until he did I wandered around thinking about the man from Sayeret Golani who lives with a short M16 never far from his hands and why he would have chosen to do so.
An hour or so later Mark joined me and we wandered around the settlement together, he told me about his magic eyes that allow him to see in the dark without night vision goggles. I put him to the test while we stood on the hilltop settlement looking into the ravine below, I told him there were specific objects down below and he pointed them out to me. I had to admit he was pretty good. We passed the time talking about my upbringing in London and his in Russia it was difficult to comprehend what it must have been like for him to grow up in a place where being a Jew was essentially illegal. His family had been desperate to get away for years and years before arriving in Haifa. We got on pretty well, he knew what it was to come into the army barely being able to speak the language and he was usually pretty understanding, except for that time he gave me the MAG.
It became obvious to me soon after arriving at the hilltop that my job wasn't really to stop terrorists myself while on guard duty, it was simply to die loudly should any terrorists actually come. Everyone living there was armed and there were my friends around too, all I had to do was squeeze the trigger before dying. Oddly enough I took some comfort from that thought. It meant that the actual defence of the settlement wasn't really on my shoulders when I was guarding, it was just about me firing that one shot, then I was allowed to die.
When Netanel and I guarded together we talked about what to do in different scenarios. We would quiz each other on what to do if say we saw a terrorist run into one of the caravans, if we saw someone running away from the settlement, if we see someone trying to break in and so on. I instinctively said that I would go into the caravan after the terrorist and kill him. "What are you crazy?" he asked me, you sound the alarm and prevent anyone else from going in or coming out until the hostage rescue team comes. "But he could have killed everyone by then" I protested, "he'll easily kill you if you try to go in after him" he retorted, he might have had a point there.
I liked arguing while on guard duty, it made the time pass more quickly. Occasionally an army jeep would turn up at the settlement during the night. Those guys were conducting eight hour patrols and they were just as bored as we were so we would chat for a half hour or so when they arrived to pass the time, it also had a military purpose ensuring that for certain periods of time the number of soldiers in the settlement doubled.
Every time I guarded I wondered if this would be the time when a terrorist attacked, if this was the time that I would be called upon to fire that magic bullet. I envisaged a commando raid, a bunch of guys wearing balaclavas and carrying Kalashnikovs. Sometimes I hoped they would come so that I could be a hero and take them all on.
Some nights each shadow seemed to me to shelter a terrorist, I would hear random noises and think that maybe something was happening, a child's swing creaking, the wind whistling, a dog crunching gravel as it wandered along the side of the road. Every noise might have been someone coming to kill me but no noise was. I wasn't overly worried, I had my rifle and the knowledge to use it. The feeling of responsibility on my shoulders to protect the settlement from any intruders came and went during each of my four hour shifts as my mind shifted from one topic to another while I walked around in the dark.
The days passed by one by one, sleeping in a room was something I was just getting used to when Yuval called me up with news that next week was urban warfare training.
The 60km was where we lost another of our number, the medic who wasn't Netanel and who no one ever called for when we simulated a wounded comrade. He arrived a couple of weeks late to boot camp having failed his medic's exam at the end of the course so he had to stay on and re-take it. He never quite managed to integrate into the team. His inability to complete the 60km surprised no one and made many of us sigh with relief. It was just the inevitable departure of someone who was never one of the us to start with. To Mark's credit he tried to alternatively cajole and bully him into staying on his feet through the final 15kms but he was wasting his time and his breath and we all knew it. Soon he was sitting on the ambulance that had been following us at a snail's pace. He and Oran suddenly became fast friends while the rest of us merely waited for them to be officially dropped.
That march was nowhere near as tough for me as the previous one, I felt justified in not taking anything on my back this time and so moved freely. Once it was over we were sent to bed and woke up the next day when Green decided that we all needed to go for a run in full kit, so run we did, very slowly and laughing at each other's inability to move. We arrived back at the base and changed, we had earned a trip back home but before we did we were called to a briefing. The Captain stood before us and in characteristic fashion said "next week we are going to be guarding settlements, I trust you will carry out this mission in the greatest tradition of the Paratroopers." And then we were free for a day and a half to do whatever we wanted before "guarding settlements in the best tradition of the Paratroopers" began.
The settlement of Eli was not the settlement that I, along with four others had been tasked with guarding for a week. The bus transporting all of us travelled along a solitary road dropping small groups of soldiers in various lonely looking settlements. Ya'ar had been smiling when we drove through Eli, it reminded him, he said of Tekoa, another settlement further South that he grew up in. The bus dropped him off on a lonely looking hilltop before depositing me, Mark and another three of my team mates on a lonely hilltop of our own. The settlement I had been tasked with guarding didn't actually have a name, officially it was called Eli outpost B. It was a hilltop next to the settlement of Eli, it consisted of about six caravans and one house. The house had a small area fenced off, within which resided a solitary horse.
It was heaven.
Inside our caravan there was a fully functioning shower complete with shower head and toilet, there was hot water and no human excrement on the floor around it. I was there along with Netanel, Yoni and Elad with Mark in charge of us. The caravan had a kitchen equipped with a small electric stove and a sink. There was an actual roof over our heads, there were two bedrooms, Mark took one of them leaving the four of us to the other one, we had an electric heater. We also had no rain water dripping on me in the night, no worrying about a tent falling down, no more worrying about when we were going to get to sleep.
It was infinitely reasonable.
I took first guard, it was a four hour shift and I spent the first ten minutes wandering around the entire perimeter of the settlement. It comprised entirely of these temporary caravans save for the one structure, I couldn't fathom anyone choosing to spend their life there but here they were nonetheless and here I was guarding them. At the beginning of January a double suicide bombing in Tel Aviv had killed 23 people and wounded 120, there were attacks almost every day. While I had been trudging through the mud of the base I had been safely insulated from the horrors of the second Intifada by the army, but now I was plonked right into the middle of it in an area likely to be attacked.
I had no particular job other than to be armed and ready and there were no restrictions as to where I was to stand for my time on guard so I just wandered around taking the place in. There was a road that came into the settlement and went in a loop around it. The settlement was on a hilltop and as a result the caravans were on different levels. The house with the horse was on the top and along a short road there were about three or four caravans next to each other. The families there had created small gardens for themselves with little plastic slides for their kids. There was some grass growing but alot of mud too. Continuing my circuit I pulled a right around the final caravan and walked down the hill to another row of caravans which belonged to students at a nearby religious seminary as well as our own home for the week. They consisted of the remainder of the settlement, walking past them along the small road I found myself walking back up the hill to complete my circuit at the house.
Looking around I could see Eli not far away, a much larger settlement which surely would have been more fun to live in. I couldn't understand why anyone would choose to live there, but then I found it difficult to understand why anyone would ever choose to live outside of Tel Aviv. I was switched by Elad whose big head was visible from a distance and I went back to our caravan to lie down. To my surprise no one prevented me from doing so and I slept, in my clothes, until Netanel woke me up the next morning to guard. My second stint at guard duty passed in a blur and I understood that I could really get used to this way of life. Perhaps that's why it wasn't scheduled to last longer than a week.
When I woke up I was told that it's time to cook lunch and that as the oldest person there I'm the one who's cooking it. I couldn't stop smiling, could it really be that there is a side of the army that's like this? Everyday we cook and relax and pull a few hours of guard duty? After the mud and sleep deprivation there was something to all of this that didn't sit right, as if all of that luxury was some kind of other test, perhaps to see if we get too used to it. I took the whole thing in my stride, agreeing to cook some pasta with tuna for everyone. I added in some sweet corn and some tomato ketchup and the delicacy was ready.
On Friday night we were invited over to a member of the settlement's caravan for dinner. We say the prayers and sit down to eat. The caravan belongs to a couple, the husband was in a unit called Sayeret Golani, the sister unit of the Sayeret Tzananim that I was so desperate to join. Funnily enough shortly after failing to be accepted into that unit I had learnt that it was, as a point of fact, nowhere near the standard of Sayeret Golani. That made a lot of sense to me at the time. The man was about 26 and he mentioned that he had spent way too much time in the training camp of the Golani special unit. I had heard that above the entrance to their training area there was a sign that said God can't hear your prayers and the Chief of staff doesn't know about them, welcome to Sayeret Golani. Just to let them know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were going to get seriously fucked with. And now even though he was done with his army service he still lived with a short M16 close at hand in a place where there was every likelihood he would need to use it.
The caravan was well equipped, there was an oven, a dishwasher, a washing machine and even a drier. It surprised me to see the place so well equipped since from the outside it looked like such a dump of a portable home. She made us roasted chicken and we sat there and ate, conversation moved in fits and starts. Mark, as our commander, did his best to make the atmosphere jovial though no one could seem to think of anything to say. Elad whispered to me that the woman was a daughter of a famous head of yeshivah there in the territories. She looked about 23 or 24 years old and had long brown hair tied into a pony tail, she was short and had a smile that lit up her face, she smiled often and it was a joy to behold every time she did so.
Sitting there in that caravan I couldn't help but wonder once again what these two lovely people were doing in a caravan on a hilltop. She chattered away regardless of the awkward silences left by myself and my comrades, or perhaps because of them and we all shovelled the food in our mouths. We put some food aside for Yoni so that there would be something for him after I switched him over.
When it was my turn for guard duty, I thanked our hosts and took the leftovers to Yoni who was waiting near the house where the road enters into the settlement. We exchanged a couple of words before he went to our caravan to tuck in. Darkness was in full effect and Mark was due to join me when he finished dinner. Until he did I wandered around thinking about the man from Sayeret Golani who lives with a short M16 never far from his hands and why he would have chosen to do so.
An hour or so later Mark joined me and we wandered around the settlement together, he told me about his magic eyes that allow him to see in the dark without night vision goggles. I put him to the test while we stood on the hilltop settlement looking into the ravine below, I told him there were specific objects down below and he pointed them out to me. I had to admit he was pretty good. We passed the time talking about my upbringing in London and his in Russia it was difficult to comprehend what it must have been like for him to grow up in a place where being a Jew was essentially illegal. His family had been desperate to get away for years and years before arriving in Haifa. We got on pretty well, he knew what it was to come into the army barely being able to speak the language and he was usually pretty understanding, except for that time he gave me the MAG.
It became obvious to me soon after arriving at the hilltop that my job wasn't really to stop terrorists myself while on guard duty, it was simply to die loudly should any terrorists actually come. Everyone living there was armed and there were my friends around too, all I had to do was squeeze the trigger before dying. Oddly enough I took some comfort from that thought. It meant that the actual defence of the settlement wasn't really on my shoulders when I was guarding, it was just about me firing that one shot, then I was allowed to die.
When Netanel and I guarded together we talked about what to do in different scenarios. We would quiz each other on what to do if say we saw a terrorist run into one of the caravans, if we saw someone running away from the settlement, if we see someone trying to break in and so on. I instinctively said that I would go into the caravan after the terrorist and kill him. "What are you crazy?" he asked me, you sound the alarm and prevent anyone else from going in or coming out until the hostage rescue team comes. "But he could have killed everyone by then" I protested, "he'll easily kill you if you try to go in after him" he retorted, he might have had a point there.
I liked arguing while on guard duty, it made the time pass more quickly. Occasionally an army jeep would turn up at the settlement during the night. Those guys were conducting eight hour patrols and they were just as bored as we were so we would chat for a half hour or so when they arrived to pass the time, it also had a military purpose ensuring that for certain periods of time the number of soldiers in the settlement doubled.
Every time I guarded I wondered if this would be the time when a terrorist attacked, if this was the time that I would be called upon to fire that magic bullet. I envisaged a commando raid, a bunch of guys wearing balaclavas and carrying Kalashnikovs. Sometimes I hoped they would come so that I could be a hero and take them all on.
Some nights each shadow seemed to me to shelter a terrorist, I would hear random noises and think that maybe something was happening, a child's swing creaking, the wind whistling, a dog crunching gravel as it wandered along the side of the road. Every noise might have been someone coming to kill me but no noise was. I wasn't overly worried, I had my rifle and the knowledge to use it. The feeling of responsibility on my shoulders to protect the settlement from any intruders came and went during each of my four hour shifts as my mind shifted from one topic to another while I walked around in the dark.
The days passed by one by one, sleeping in a room was something I was just getting used to when Yuval called me up with news that next week was urban warfare training.
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