Finally Deployed

After eight months of training, and then another three or so of brigade-wide retraining that we unluckily stepped right into, my unit has found its place in "combat." I use that word lightly, especially considering that we have found ourselves in the West Bank during one of the quietest periods in Israeli history. Knock on wood and all that, but I simply believe that it's peaceful because we've brought the hammer down hard on the terrorist groups. Operation Cast Lead sure as hell put a beating on Hamas, and I don't think they're ready for round two.

But they will be, eventually. For now, peace.

While the rest of my platoon took a pre-dawn bus to our base in al-Madina al-Muqaddasah, I was chosen to stay at our previous base in order to help put the final touches on cleaning up. Logistics officers, jobniks with big ranks that you couldn't care less about, were roaming the area, just looking for an excuse to yell at the young, arrogant combat soldiers. "You're aren't leaving here until..." was the line of the day. I heard that no less than twenty times.

Suddenly, in the middle of carrying some containers back to the kitchen, the commander watching over us told me to run to the transport truck waiting at the base's front gate. "HURRY," he told me numerous times. It seemed like the truck was waiting for me, specifically. However, upon getting to the gate, there was no one to be found. After waiting nearly two hours, I finally hitched a ride with a transport carrying our shipping crates which we use to store gear.

"Jump on up!" the animated driver told me. For the entire five hour ride I was all alone in a tractor-trailer with a reserve duty soldier who rambled on and on with his wife on the phone. With just three hours of sleep the night before, I fought back my leaden eyelids the entire way. I was told to not let this guy stop at his base for the night, but rather to carry on all the way to our deployment, so I had to stay awake. And as they warned, between calls to his wife, he called just about every officer in the IDF for permission to go sleep at the truck base.

Finally we neared the border crossing into the West Bank. The driver started showing his true colors pretty quickly. He made a call to his dispatcher on the speakerphone. It essentially went like this:

"Uh, so when I cross over, what happens? I only have one soldier with me. Is that enough?"

"Yes."

"OK, are you sure? Because it's just one soldier, and you know, it's at night! How will I know if I'm going into a bad area or not?"

"There's nothing to worry about."

"Well!.. Famous last words, no? OK, I have one soldier, but should he put the magazine in the gun, and a bullet in the chamber? Ready to shoot!"

"No, that's not necessary."

"Is there a signal truck that could guide me to the base?"

As he drove hesitantly toward the border crossing, unarmed Israeli civilian cars zoomed by, headlong into the territory. My jumpy driver and his wide-open eyes rubber necked the entire way to our base, making terrified comments one after another. I giddily seared into memory the crossing, marveling at the towers and guard posts and concrete barriers and mazes of chain-link gates used to check Palestinian pedestrians. All the things the world hates Israel for. What all the protestors were losing their minds over. Every little detail shone brilliantly under the yellow, sodium lights. I was happy to finally be deployed, after so much waiting. The frightened driver was ready to get the hell out.

My favorite line of the night? While driving past an Arab town with a green-lit minaret, he asked seriously, "Do they have rockets?!" And then once we made it to the base, with relief he inquired if we had "finished the Arabs finally?" That's less racism/prejudice than it is excitable cowardice.

After wishing him a good night and laughing at his catharsis upon reaching the safety of a Golani base, I made my way to our barracks. I entered the small, squat building to cheers from my platoon. I had no idea what al-Madina al-Muqaddasah was all about, and at night I had seen nothing, but I had arrived.

Time for patrols and guard duty and checkpoints and guard towers and seated ambushes and arrest operations.

OPSEC Is The Name Of The Game

Taking a page from one of my favorite Iraq War bloggers, Matt Gallagher of Kaboom, I feel I have to make this post about Operational Security (OPSEC). OPSEC is defined by the U.S. Army 1st Information Operations Command as:

A process of identifying Essential Elements of Friendly Information (EEFI) and subsequently analyzing friendly actions attendant to military operations and other activities to:

• Identify those actions that can be observed by adversary intelligence systems
• Determine indicators - Adversary intelligence systems might obtain that could be interpreted or pieced together to derive EEFI in time to be useful to adversaries
• Select and execute measures that eliminate or reduce to an acceptable level the vulnerabilities of friendly action to adversary exploitation

With OPSEC on my head, I plan on continuing my blog for at least the next three months. My unit has deployed to an active area, and we have already begun our operations. In all reality, as the army works, we have switched places with the unit that was here before us - so no one should think this is some new campaign or new mission or new operation. The Israeli army works really as a police force, so we're just continuing keeping the peace. That's our mission: keep the peace.

As Kaboom found useful, I too will strictly refer to this area of operations with a made up name. Though the name will be made up, and you can guess all day where this stuff is taking place (and I will never say a word on the matter), I can tell you that it is inside the West Bank. I can say that because as anyone familiar with the geography of Israel knows, it is the only place that the Israeli army operates within Arab population centers. Gaza is a closed-off area, and the northern borders, though hot, are on the other side from Hizbullah and Syria.

So what name will I refer to the area as...? I don't know as I'm typing this! How about...

al-madina al-muqaddasah

What A Relief!

Many months ago during advanced training I found myself trudging through exhaustion in one of our "war weeks." Think Hell Week, I suppose. Finally, after nearly 24 hours of non-stop drills and hiking and carrying loaded stretchers and all types of worst case scenario preparation, we were given a few hours to sleep. I plopped down in a forest with my platoon, fully geared up and ready to pass out. Helmet on head (forbidden to remove), combat vest strapped tight, gun tucked under my arm - pass out I did.

I'm not sure what happened, if anything happened at all at the moment that woke me, but I opened my eyes an hour later to a certain degree of pain. On my left shoulder, towards the back, there was a slight stinging. I pulled the shoulder straps of my vest to the side, pulled my shirt off the area as far as possible, and there on my skin was a raised, bloody bump. I just kinda looked at it for a few minutes.

"What the hell is that?"

The first thing that went through my mind was that I was stung by a bee, or even worse, a scorpion. Eventually I rubbed the bump, and there seemed to be something underneath the skin. I felt like I could move some large, straight, hard chunk of hidden something or other. Despite playing with this thing for a solid hour, missing a most important amount of sleep, I didn't see anything come out. Except blood, of course. And some pus. It was pretty gross.

It wasn't until a few days later that I realized another possibility. My hypochondriac mind reminded myself, much to my dismay, that years ago I had to have a mole removed because I ripped it and that could potentially start cancer growth (namely, melanoma). The more I thought about it, the more it seemed plausible: the shoulder straps of my vest rub that area constantly, and between all the stretchers resting on my shoulder, as well as hundreds of pounds in waterpacks and enormous backpacks full of ammo and food and gear, well, there's no reason that a mole couldn't have been traumatized.

A normal person would have seen a doctor right away. I am in an army run by Israelis, however. I'm pretty sure they don't believe in diseases here, cancer included. I knew not to even ask about some weird bump that sometimes bleeds, sometimes dries up and peels a layer of skin off. Yeah, that sounds pretty bad, right? Crap. What was I going to do? I figured I'd just wait it out...

But then, two days ago, the bump was raised again. I kinda just moved it around, and some pus came out. Gross, sorry, but bear with me. Then some blood came out. A day passed, and the thing looked terrifying! It was raised pretty high, scabbed over, and obviously had both blood and pus underneath. Honestly, I was starting to worry that maybe indeed I had something serious on my hands. What the hell would I do about it? If the doctor in the army dismissed my 101.2 degree fever by telling me to rest, no medicine included, what would they say about a bump? I know: it's a pimple. Bastards.

Well, with all that worry, I finally got home this afternoon. After taking my shirt off in order to take a shower, I glanced at the scabbed bump. I figured I'd be 15 and play with it. I peeled the scab off, and a small amount of pus oozed out. Awesome. And then, for no reason at all, I figured I'd touch around the sides. So as I barely pressed a side, out squirts a long, thin, sharp thorn. It was like Old Faithful how fast that thing flew out. It kinda even scared me to see some foreign, alien object shoot from my flesh.

Whew. We're talking about more than four months of suppressed worrying here, people! Today, I tell you, is a good day!

My Luck With Gear

We just got rain gear today. The rainy season starts very soon, and we're expecting a wet winter. Water-proof rain jackets and pants are essential for 8 hour guard shifts outside.

Mine, however, are riddled with cigarette burn holes.

The President of Israel Listens to ME

Last Sunday night was the beginning of Yom Kippur, and I was off from the army. For the first night I decided that I would go to the popular 'meat market' synagogue nearby. I swear I wasn't checking out the ladies on the Day of Atonement. I just wanted to, you know, see to it that everyone was repenting for all that gawking that takes place there (they weren't). My flatmate was walking in the same direction, but then had to take another direction eventually. As I turned onto a sidestreet I noticed a big government Suburban blocking the way to a locally famous synagogue (there are lots in Jerusalem, you know). Next to the Sub was a moveable barricade.

Security was abundant. The first thought that crossed my mind was that they were making sure no bad guys tried anything tricky with all those congregants. I quickly remembered, however, that I had seen some government security doing the same thing one morning as I walked to my bus stop on the way back to the army. As soon as I recalled that, a few guys in suits turned the corner. Secret Service guys. Tall, strong as hell looking. M16's not dangling to the side like a soldier going home, but rather with hands on the grips, pointed forward but to the ground. "Who the hell is this for," I wondered.

And out walks Shimon Peres, the venerated President of this fair state. Here we were, just me and Peres on a tiny sidestreet walking in opposite directions. And about 10 ready to pop badasses culled from who knows which army units. Shayetet (Seals), Sayeret Matkal (Delta Force), 669, Palsar (Rangers), Yahalom (special forces demolitions), Egoz (anti-guerilla warfare), some others probably, and even former Mossad who took an even more prestigious assignment if I had to guess. Me, Peres, 5 feet apart - and the world's scariest bodyguards.

I'm not one to get starstruck or shocked over a fellow human being. I mean, we're all flesh and blood and dust and ashes. But this isn't an ordinary man. He is considered one of the founders of the State, and at this very moment he is probably the most respected man in Israel. Peres is like a modern Israeli James Madison. What do you say to a man like that, in passing, on the eve of Yom Kippur? Do you wish him an easy fast? Tell him he's doing a great job? Maybe even something as cliche as saying, "Good evening, Mr. President"?

And so I found myself as shut up as a Tibetan monk in solitude on top a great, lonely mountain. Honestly, I'm not sure that if I had even tried to speak that the words would have come out at all. And just imagine if the security saw some bumbling idiot, big and as potentially threatening as I could be, making a move towards the head of state! That would have been an inauspicious start to the new year. I think the security, black suits and assault rifles and dark sunglasses and all, probably put the kibosh on any greeting or words more than any other factor.

But now, days later, I really wish I would have said something about Gilad Shalit. If you haven't been reading the news, our soldier captured in 2006 by Hamas is still a hostage. He's been subjected to the discommunication between Israel and her enemies for over three years (1,195 days in captivity) now, and just about the entire country is saying the same thing: bring him home already. We don't care how, just do it. Now.

Man, I wish I would have said exactly this:

"Gilad Shalit."

That's it. Nothing else. In a normal tone of voice, no inflection at all, no gesticulation. Nothing. You know why? Because he knows what the country wants, and it would have been foolish to insult him further. I know that he isn't solely responsible for that situation, and the resolution, but he sure has a voice in the matter. He sure can make some moves.

But I didn't say a word, and that's OK - probably for the best. Definitely for the best. I don't need the Secret Service beating me up before I go to the meat market synagogue, giving me a bloody lip or something. Girls don't like a bleeding, awkward tall guy. Or maybe they'd think I was tough and just beat up some bad guys.

Ahh, the delusions of a sleep-depraved soldier...