Black Hawk Down (but back up)

This past Sunday (by now a few weeks ago) is a day I'll never forget. I knew we would be doing this sometime but I wasn't sure exactly when. Well it was time.
Each general infantry brigade (Tzanchanim, Givati, Kfir, Nachal, and Golani)  has two ways of getting into battle. Tzanchanim either walk in, hence the extremely long masaot we do, or we are flown in by helicopter. Now was the time where we practice on helicopters.
We walked out the base onto a huge field and waited for a few hours. Then finally three desert-camo painted helicopters land a few hundred meters from us. We were given a speech about it and told how to get on and off it. Ideally, loading is supposed to take 20 seconds and unloading 30, but we obviously took it a bit slower when we tried. We walked back to base for dinner and then at night went once again to this field for the exercise. After seeing other classes go up, it was our turn. We all crouched in a line near a light where the Black Hawk would land. A few more minutes passed and then we saw some lights in the air flying towards us. When it was a few meters off the ground, a huge storm of dirt flew up around it making the helicopter invisible and blinding all of us. After it died down though we ran towards the door and piled in just like we were taught. It's hard to describe what it's like to lift off in a helicopter.  I guess the closest comparison would be to a magic carpet. You don't really feel yourself being lifted up until you look outside and see how fast you've risen. By the way, it's REALLY loud inside. We flew for about 7 minutes and then landed somewhere far from the base. Luckily, a few minutes later a bus came to drive us back to base. I can probably say that that was the most fun I've had so far in the army.
Yesterday, we all were taught the very basics of how to shoot a MAG machine gun. This is a really big gun (it fires 7.62mm rounds) that is carried by one person in each machlacka. Unfortunately we only got five rounds to fire but it was fun for that half a second.
Since about a month ago, after the regila, we made the transition into advanced training. The new August draft has come to the base so now they are the babies. The relation between the soldiers and commanders is a bit different now because we call them by just their names. No need for mefaked. We also no longer salute to commanders in the plugah. In the future, we are supposed to be able to be friends with our commanders but not yet.
So what have we been doing the past month? Mostly we have been in the shetach, doing even more advanced exercises with an entire machlakah. We had a week of certifications, where, since I already have one, I worked in the kitchen most of the time. Last week we had a week called machlakah mitkadem plus nagmash. It was more or less like the other weeks in the shetach except for two things. The first was the nagmashim. A Nagmash is an APC or armored personnel carrier. The week before a few people took courses and became drivers, so we drove around a bit and practiced some drills. For example, these things can flip over pretty easily, so if it does, you sort of grab something and hang on for dear life. Two days later we had our first tarpal, or targil plugah. This time we were going to conquer a monster of a hill with an entire plugah!! That's about 100 people. It all started with a bang. They simulated breaching a wall with an explosive called Boogaloo or something like that. The ground shook underneath us. Then we ran through a smoke screen ( seriously, just like in the movies) towards the hill that was being thrown up in dust by the machine gunners from another hill. And then with thousands of bullets we captured the hill.
This past week was advanced shooting. I thought it was going to be really cool and advanced but it was more of just a reminder of how to shoot, and believe me, you get pretty rusty.
This past Friday we traveled to Tel Nof, an air force base. Yeah, you guessed it. It's time for Jump School!! We just dropped our stuff off, met our instructors, and left. The course isn't supposed to be overly hard, but it has some of the toughest discipline in any course in the army for obvious reasons. So in two weeks I should be walking around with silver wings on my uniform.
In other news, we only have two masaot left, 40km and then the final 50km masa kumta on Succot.

Regila!! And then 21

     In the army, every soldier is supposed to get a 5 day break about every 4 months. This break is called a regila. After finishing our 4 month basic training, we received our first regila which as it turned out, gave us a shabbat, the week, and the shabbat afterwards. A week sounds like too short a break and it is. But since that is the most we'll get, it is a precious week in which time must not be wasted. The first shabbat I spent with a guy in my kitah at his house in Beit Gamliel. After that I spent the next week in Jerusalem with a family friend but every day from Sunday to Thursday I managed to go to some body of water. On Sunday I met up randomly with a friend from my kitah and we drove to a natural spring just outside Jerusalem. The next two days I went to the beach with the lone soldiers from my plugah and a friend from Toronto. We had heard that the water was filled with jellyfish, but being the brave soldiers we are, we didn't let it stop us from going in. The next day two friends from my kitah invited me to go with them on a hike in the desert outside of Jerusalem. You'd think I'd be sick of walking in the desert, but this trail, every 15 minutes had a bigger and better spring. About a half hour into the hike you get to a place called Ein Tamar, an oasis, where they have built a pool for the water to fill up. It was pretty busy but it was still a ton of fun. On Thursday, my kitah had planned a barbeque at my friend's house in Beit Gamliel. Unfortunately, not the whole kitah was able to make it. But the best part was that someone there called up his cousins who live on that yishuv to ask them if we can use their pool. They said yes so we drove over and swam for a while in a beautiful pool. A great way to end a regila! Shabbat I spent at the same place in Jerusalem and prepared for my Sunday return to base. The fun was over but I'm ready to finish training already.
     Surprisingly, unlike most Sundays, everyone including myself was in a good mood and ready to go back to base. And this time we would be doing three weeks straight on base, known as "21". On top of that, all three weeks were in the shetach, as is most of advanced training. The first week was a step beyond Chulyah, namely Kitah, in which we learned how to work as a whole kitah. A few week ago, someone in Givati was shot accidentally in the back by his friend while doing this exact exercise. The shabbat after that we were sent to Chevron to guard. Normally the hours there are crazy, but luckily I was sent somewhere near Chevron where we slept a lot and guarded just 8 hours each the whole shabbat. We returned to the base late on Saturday night and the next two days we spent preparing for a competition between all the units. The events were shooting, fitness, and knowledge of the weapons and stuff. For some reason though, on the day of the contest I was told to put on my nice uniform and be ready to leave with a few other people from my machlakah. We knew we were going to Jerusalem but we had no idea why. First we stopped at the president's house but from there we were told to go to the Knesset, the main government building. We found out that we were going to sit in the audience of a ceremony to honor the fighters in the Warsaw Uprising. Before that though, we were taken on a tour of the Knesset. We sat in a conference room and watched a short movie about the place, saw some works of Mark Chagall, and walked around the new and old buildings. But the best part? Going into the main hall. Yeah, that place where all the arguing takes place. We didn't go down into where all the ministers sit, but we did sit on the balcony where important people sit. Laura Bush for example sat where we sat.  Unfortunately, they were not in session at the time, but if they were, anybody is allowed to sit and listen. As a side note, there is someone in my kitah who always feels the need to snack on something. Always. No matter what, where, and when. However, it is very against the rules. Get caught and you could stay in for shabbat. Nonetheless, he manages to always snack. So not surprisingly he brought jelly bellies into the main hall and carefully ate them. That's courage!!
The next week thing we did was something I had been looking forward to for a while: urban combat. We learned just the very basics of fighting in an urban environment but it was a ton of fun. While in most of the army, shooting live rounds into these buildings is forbidden, on our base there are special walls which allow us to shoot live. Hopefully next time we learn this kind of stuff we will use paintball.
Another shabbat in, this time with kitchen duty and guarding the base. We could have used more rest because the we knew the week ahead would not be easy. Instead of kitah, this was kitah mitkadem, or advanced kitah. And as opposed to being a more chilled couple of days on the shetach, this was going to be more war-like, something like hell week (see Hell Week post). It began with a masa of 5+5, but we were carrying all our stuff for the week. This is the start of our new type of masa. The masa to get the beret has always been 80km, but it has been changed to 40+10. Sounds a lot easier right? Well, not exactly. Each person will be loaded up with 40% of weight in relation to his weight. That makes the masa a lot harder in my opinion. And this past masa is starting to prove that. As usual after a masa we were all drenched in sweat and for risk of hypothermia, we all put on dry uniforms and went to sleep for a couple hours. The next day we did a kitah exercise, walked a lot, carried "wounded" on us and on stretchers. Again we slept during the day while it was too hot. That night was rumoured to be a layla lavan, or white night, where you go through the night without sleep. In the end we slept for an hour and did some more exercises in the night and day. By 11am we were on a bus heading back to the base. And then before we knew it we were home the next morning.