Targad

Targad stands for Targil Gdud, or battalion exercise, which according to our unit is an opportunity to test us and our readiness for war. For us, it is the most dreaded week of the year. Allow me to describe it. After getting back to base on Sunday, we quickly got our equipment together for a check with the General of Tzanchanim. Some more preparations later and we went to sleep for a good 8 hours knowing that we wouldn't be sleeping that much the next few days. And boy were we right! We loaded buses early afternoon on Monday that drove us to the Jordan Valley. Once night fell we started walking with our heavy bags. And walking. And walking. And walking. It seemed to go on forever but as the sun came up we arrived at our destination: 30 kilometers from where we started! Then without resting we did an exercise. Guess what we did next? Walked of course! Another exercise during the day and night and some more walking during the night and we arrived to where we would be sleeping. Remember we had been awake more than 48 hours by now. We slept for about 5 hours and then waited for our next transport. This time instead of walking we used Black Hawks to fly up to the Golan Heights. Since we were the last to fly, the pilots landed us quite close to where we needed to be the next morning (the rest walked). It would have been nicer to walk. Here we were on top of a hill in the middle of the night in the winter without much warm clothing. It was freezing! I won't get into too many details, but two words explain it: body warmth. Before morning we walked not far to our next exercise, this time with the participation of tanks. I actually knew someone in one of the tanks. More walking and another exercise took us into the night, now Thursday night, and just a few kilometers separated us from our finish line. I would say in total we walked about 50-60 kilometers. Upon arriving on Friday morning there was a bit of a ceremony with the General and some food to eat. The Targad was extremely difficult, but we're already at the point where it doesn't bother us. We've been through it all and a few kilometers doesn't hurt too much. It's always worth the huge feeling of accomplishment at the end. Next, we took buses to the base and spent Shabbat there, most of the time sleeping. On Saturday night we ended our time as a Plugah and split up in two. My machlakah went to the Palchod and the rest went to Plugat Mivtzait. My new Plugah is made up of older guys as well so we will probably get all the work. We'll see. The next day, Sunday,  we cleaned the base, gave in our guns, and loaded buses home for a full week. I mostly rested but one day I went snowboarding on Mount Hermon. Now I'm heading back to base for my next week. Let's hope it's an easy one.