Kfotz!!!

I must begin by saying that it is impossible to properly describe the feeling of something like jumping from a plane but I'll do my best.
We gathered on the base at about 2 in the afternoon to prepare for our first jump. With just helmets in hand we walked to a building where all our parachutes are rigged. As a side point, one night we were taken to see how a parachute is folded. First of all, it takes about 30 minutes for some 18 year old girl I don't know to fold each parachute. They fold about 10 of these every day so I have no idea how they don't get bored and make mistakes. Watching a parachute being folded was probably the first time it sort of hit me that we were about to do what we were about to do. Its kind of like seeing your life being packed into a bag.
So we received our main chutes and reserves in a bag that carries both. Really heavy. Then we loaded buses to the air force base next door and unloaded right next to a runway of sorts. This is the same place that the Tzanchanim have always used to take off. In 1967, they were all geared up to be dropped into Egypt (I think) when they were told to take off their chutes and load buses. Destination? Jerusalem, where we captured the Kotel.
Although still hours before the plane was scheduled to take us, we set up all our gear according to the door we would be jumping from. After a break and a safety speech, we were told to strap in to our parachutes. Next we were all thoroughly checked and told to take off our helmets and sit down. It still didn't feel real to me. Until the plane rolled in. It sounded like a thunderstorm was coming in. Standard procedure is to wear earplugs next to it, important especially because it passes within meters from us. By now we are all standing on shaking legs watching as the rear ramp of the plane was lowered. Just as we had practiced, we shouted "Hey, Hop!!", turned towards the plane and waddled towards it (ever tried walking in a harness?) through the hot exhaust wind of the propellers . Our instructors then sat us down in zigzag formation, the ramp closed and the plane started to taxi.
After a few minutes we got to the runway and the plane revved its engines to lift off. According to paratrooper tradition, the plane will not take off unless everyone yells "Hey, Hop, Hey, Hop" continuously. We made it up. At 100 meters, which is the lowest possible height at which we could jump out, we raised the end of the yellow rope which was strapped to a wire that runs the length of the plane. Needless to say there was a lot of tension and anxiety in the plane. So first we said Tfilat Haderech L'tzanchan (I remember when I first saw it at the beginning of training and I thought it was a joke, but its not, and on the plane, believe me I've never prayed with more concentration), and then sang, including obviously the tzanchan song. A few minutes later, at 400 meters, the plane filled with fresh air and a howl as the side doors were open. If anybody wasn't shaking yet, they were now. As the plane neared the drop point the first cluster was told to stand and move towards the door. The red light turns on. Looking out of the plane, one can see the beach of the Mediterranean Sea. It should be only seconds now...GREEN!!! Kfotz!! Kfotz! Kfotz! The rest of us just feel the wire being pulled as the yellow rope opens the chute. The instructor looks outside to make sure nobody is left hanging out there (it once happened). Then the next group jumps. And then it's my group. We stand up and walk towards the door. I was the fourth last in my group. Red light....GREEN!! I look at the other door and see them shoving them out the door. After feeling a few tugs on the line from people leaving, I'm next. I toss my yellow rope down the wire, get into position at the door and next thing I know I'm outside in what feels like a tornado counting 21...22...23...and then all the confusion stops. I look up. The canopy opened normally. I think to myself, okay, what next? I'm forgetting some sort of check or something. Nope. I'm forgetting to enjoy. And then it hit me. Pure silence. Absolutely nothing. I imagine space is something like that. Soon after though it is broken by screams of joy by all. Everyone is just happy to be alive. I look around and see myself surrounded by a few parachutes in a long line of open canopies with a couple white reserve chutes opened. They say it takes about 40-50 seconds to reach the ground but I swear it took me 10 seconds until I had to identify my drifting direction. That happens at about 100 meters. I think I had a drift to my left or right, which makes for a simpler roll. At about 50 meters I start to hear people on the ground shouting "Raglayim tzmudot!!" which means legs together. At this point I start to feel the breathing pattern of the parachute. We don't fall at a constant speed. The parachute takes in air and fills up so you slow down, and then it lets out that air through the top hole which is when you fall faster. And over and over. The amount of force with which you hit the ground has a lot to do with when in the cycle you hit the ground. I brace for impact with legs together. Its hard to tell when exactly the ground will arrive so I wait and wait, and boom, I'm on the ground. After a few seconds of confusion I check that I'm uninjured. My parachute pulls me in the direction of the wind but I quickly get it under control and on the ground. Then the next feeling is hard to describe. The exhilaration has ended, but there is an ultimate high, and at the same time you're just feeling thankful that you're alive. Before folding up my parachute I take a few minutes to enjoy the moment and look up in wonder as the same plane drops the next cluster of tzanchanim. I ask myself: "I just did that? That's crazy!" But I loved every second of it. Except carrying the parachute to the collection point. Although once there everyone is hugging everyone, making sure that they are actually alive and not dreaming. Tension in the air is now replaced by a high.
Somehow though, the IDF always finds a way to spoil the fun things. Instead of bringing the bus to us, we had to walk about a kilometer with these heavy parachutes (and the next jumps with vest and gun) on our backs to where it was parked.
I asked a bunch of people if they remember jumping or being pushed and not one person including me could remember. I have no recollection of hearing the command "Kfotz with a hit on the back. "From the moment you're standing at the door until your parachute opens you seem to forget everything, your mind just goes blank. Despite that, the training was so good that you sort of turn into a robot paratrooper. Everything in the process is completely automatic. As soon as you leave the plane it's just you and your parachute, no instructor to help you, so we have to be absolute experts at jumping, and we are.
In addition to three day jumps, we also jumped twice at night. Wow. The view from the plane is just a bunch of lights and darkness. Only once you start falling do you start to see the ground and spot your landing. A bit more dangerous but nothing we can't handle.
Now that the jumps are over and I have my wings, I just dream about jumping again. It's such a great adrenaline rush and just an indescribable experience. If you're planning on joining the IDF, I recommend going to Tzanchanim just for the jumps. Its a great reward after a tough training. And who doesn't like walking the streets with a shiny pair of wings?

Video of the Big Pendulum

Watch "משאך" on YouTube

Video of Tower

Once you get over the fact that it looks exactly like a person being hanged, its pretty harmless. It looks more painful than it is.
Watch in HD for better quality.
Watch "מגדל קפיצה" on YouTube

I'll never fly with this company ever again!!

We had been given our main and reserve chutes already. We had loaded the buses and driven to the runway. We had already put on our gear and had it checked. And then we waited. Okay. Delayed an hour. So we waited. And then an announcement "We are sorry to inform you but the jump has been canceled. Yes, we are serious. Take off your parachutes." I couldn't believe it. Nobody could. We were so ready to do it. But it happens. Better to push off a jump than fly on a plane with technical difficulties.
There should be a jump tomorrow but they are not 100% sure. Either way, next week on Sunday we will make up this jump. The only downside is that when we leave the base this weekend, it won't be with wings.

Ape!!

Unless you've been through the IDF Airborne School you have no idea why the title of this post is ape. I will explain shortly.
Right now I am near an air force base in the center of Israel at the school for paratrooping. Once upon a time paratroopers actually used to fall into battle. 1956 was the only time we used that method but luckily for me the tradition of still training paratroopers continues. We arrived on this new base on Friday morning before going home for shabbat after absorption day. All we did was sign in and put our stuff in the tents before hearing a few speeches. Now where does the ape come in. So Israel learned its paratroop skills from some country in Europe and has adopted some of its traditions. One if them is that before any class or speech everyone lines up and when an instructor says "Ape", everyone straightens to attention. After three days of this it still cracks me up.
We got back to the base on Sunday morning where we met up with our cluster instructor. A cluster is basically a unit of paratroopers. When we train and jump we do it in these clusters. Ours is 13 people. The first thing we did was have a class on the main and reserve chutes we would be using. It's the classic circular parachute but what you will probably be surprised to find out is that it weighs about 14kg and only slows your fall to a speedy 6 meters per second. If you were to try to land without the method we are taught you would most likely get injured. Therefore we started our lessons in a giant sandbox doing rolls. The most important thing that must be done for a safe landing is to keep your feet together. Then depending on which direction the wind is taking you, you roll in that direction. First we just rolled from a standing position. Then we did it from a ramp about 3/4 of a meter from the ground. Next we took runs up the to the top of the ramp and jumped off. The technique for this roll seems simple but performing it perfectly takes a lot of practice. My cluster has told me that I roll the best, but some of them, well, they're lucky we do it on sand. Often we, including the person on the ground who just landed on their backside die of laughter at the mistakes.
The next exercise is the small pendulum. Basically you strap into a harness and jump about a meter where it catches you. Then you check your canopy and the instructor will tell you to fix a problem likes twists in the ropes. More severe problems like rips in the canvas or a candle, which is when the chute fails to open, cause you to open the reserve which is on your abs. By the way, the jumps are from 400 meters. If your chute opens, you have about a minute until you reach the ground. If it doesn't, it would only take about 12 seconds. The main canopy opens in 3, until you realize could take another 2. That leaves about 7 seconds to open the reserve. Not a lot of time. Luckily the last time someone got a candle was in the 90s, so the chances are extremely low.
There are also replicas of the plane we will be jumping from, the C-130 Hercules. Before and on them we rehearse the procedure of putting on the parachutes, loading, in air safety checks and finally the jumps. There is a hilarious method to walking on the plane from your seat to the door but it is only for our safety. The commands we call out also have a funny tune to them, which in my opinion are used to calm people down.
Another exercise we do is the tower. Its about 9 meters in height and replicates the jump and jolt of the chute opening. This is the jumping procedure: Both hands on the outside of the plane with feet in a staggered position ready to kick out. With the command "Kfotz!!" and a slap on the back, (which on the plane will turn into a push) you throw yourself out of the plane, put your feet together, head down, hands on the reserve and count 21, 22, 23 and the chute opens. Then you look up and check the canopy. After enjoying for a bit you get into the landing position: head down, arms on the helmet, hand grasping the straps, back and knees bent. And then once you hit the ground you roll. Now back to the tower. You jump and fall about 4 meters before the zipline catches you and you slide for 50 meters to a hill where you should already be in landing position. We also practice opening the reserve and releasing the chest bag. What's a chest bag? That's where we secure all our equipment, gun and vest for me. It's strapped to our harness and is dropped 4.5 meters after the chute opens. It's annoying but that's what's necessary to become a full fledged paratrooper.
Another simulator we use is the Omega. It is basically a low zipline where you zip, jump off and perform a roll. It replicates a fast forward wind so you fall pretty hard.
The last simulator we use is the big pendulum. It is the same thing as the small one but much taller and much more painful for two reasons. First because you fall farther and second because after swinging around for about half a minute a meter above the ground, the instructor pulls a lever and you come crashing to the sand, hopefully with the roll. I hate this thing. Every time I get up there I just imagine my instructor dropping me when I'm not ready and face-planting into the sand. I'm glad I'm finished with it.
And then there is the Eichmann. The instructors deny its existence but we have seen it. A while back they canceled it. I wonder why.
So that's what we did the first week of the course plus Sunday and part of Monday. Right now we are waiting till our first jump at about 4pm. It still hasn't fully hit me bit I imagine once we board the plane it will.
There are two videos of the tower and pendulum that I will post soon. Wish me luck and stay tuned!

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.