For two weeks, I along with 9 other Otzmakim volunteered with a paratrooping army base. Upon arriving to the base, we got our uniforms, which would be our wardrobe for the next two weeks. We started to do our volunteering by helping to organize some of the warehouses, although we spent just as much time taking breaks (hafsakas) as actually working. This was true for the majority of the time we were there.
The first night we had a welcome activity with our madrichot and afterwards we celebrated Hanukah and one of our soldier’s birthday. Then Tracy and I watched the newest combat soldiers training, which we later found we weren’t actually allowed to see. It was legit though, some soldiers invited us to go with them, and it was really cool. The commander was much nicer than I had thought to them; he managed to yell at them with encouragement rather than intimidation. He went around to all the soldiers and hit them to try to throw them off balance and prepare them for unexpected circumstances. He did however punish them by making them crawl with one person on top of another, instead of by themselves—although I wasn’t sure what they did wrong to deserve that. Also, he emphasized teamwork. As they were doing the drills, when there were only a few people left to finish and they were tired and he had them stop, wait for all the soldiers to go where they were and finish together. It was amazing to me that none of the soldiers seemed to be bothered by having to redo those parts all over again. At that moment it was so easy to see how the soldiers form a brotherhood. They all had each other’s backs and it was a really great atmosphere. The base in general was had very welcoming atmosphere. Everyone in the army is like a big family; forever connected to each other because they all had to go through the same stuff and they went through it together.
The next morning we did a flag rising, which we did every morning. We stood in three lines in the proper positions and then one of us would raise the flag, after which we would salute the flag and sing the hatikvah. That night our madrichot explained to us the drafting process and what happens in basic training and then we experienced parts of it. We took the intelligence test, which was 4 math problems, and a maze, of which almost nobody (including myself) passed. Then we went outside and learned how to properly receive the commander. This includes correctly saying a sentence in Hebrew without anyone laughing or smiling. Every time someone laughed we had to run back and forth and do pushups until someone said it correctly without anyone laughing. Richard took a crack at it a few times, and then Ariel stepped up to try and do better and accidentally said she wanted to sleep with the commander instead of receive him. Overall it was really entertaining and a great look at the first steps of the army.
The next morning Tal and Laura gave us our unit assignments based on our intelligence tests and physical skills as they observed the night before. I would apparently be an educational officer. After that we had our worst day of work the whole time, which was cleaning out a warehouse that had been broken into some time ago. There was bird poop and dirt everywhere- it was a disgusting mess. It was ok though, because that night we had fun learning Krav Maga—the Israeli combat defense training. It was really fun and a great workout. The “warm-up” knocked the wind out of pretty much the whole group- there was lots of running and jumping and switching of directions. It was really fun though and gave us lots of energy to work on the kicks and punches to follow.
The next day, we cleaned guns, which was really cool at the beginning, but after a while began to lose their excitement. We took lots of pictures with the guns and marveled at the fact we got to work with them, but then it was just a lot of grease and repetitive cleaning. That night though things got way more interesting, Our madrichot had told us in the morning that Syria has hidden weapons and that Israel was thinking of attacking. Because of this they were doing a test run of the attack on the base and we had to go to bed early so we wouldn’t be in the way. They also said we couldn’t tell anyone because the info was top secret and we weren’t even supposed to know. We clearly were very gullible, because we all bought it. There was no test run, or a plan to attack Syria, what happened was a crazy midnight mission/initiation for all of us. Our madrichot along with some other soldiers came in and yelled at us to get dressed in like 30 seconds and get outside. We put on all the army gear- helmets, vests, pads, and were split into two teams look for cardboard people they had hidden. We had to run, crawl, duck, and practice what soldiers would do on a mission. At the end, we were presented with dog tags-, which every soldier gets to show they are part of the army.
I went to Tel Aviv for the weekend with most of the group, where we went out and relaxed. We ate lots of yummy non-army food and enjoyed the Tel Aviv nightlife. I also went shopping and finally got some much needed boots to keep my feet warm. At the end of the weekend, it was raining like crazy, so we stayed mostly indoors. We came back to the army base and it rained a lot the next couple days, so we didn’t work very much. It was so cold!! So we drank lots of coffee and tea, layered up, and played lots of cards. Eventually we a worked a couple days and had a few other evening activities. We concluded our 2 weeks with a trip to Akko and Haifa, which was really fun. Overall, the whole experience was really great and I learned a lot about the army and it’s place in society.
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