Week 23

I wanted to quit this week. I felt I had reached a breaking point. It was definitely triggered by what we were doing during the week, but also as a byproduct of the past few months. Of being a chayal boded, older than the rest of the guys, having the gap in language and culture, pushing myself to mental and physical points I never have before. It all came crashing down this week. So much so actually, that I told my מ”מ I wanted to drop Kravi. That was it; I was done. I’m thankfully past that thought now but I was genuinely considering it for a day.

What was so hard about the week?

Well, in short, it was another week in the shetach. Shavua Machlaka. Drills, maneuvers and exercises out in the field. Learning how to capture territories and deal with terrorist encounters. This time as a group, as a whole machlaka.

We left on Sunday night for what was supposed to be a stretch in the shetach until Wednesday afternoon. We walked to a little fake village structure a kilometer outside of the base and put our equipment down for the night in one of the rooms. Not rooms really – more like skeletons of a room. Open windows, open doorways, and just a concrete structure. Shelter from the wind when youre lying down but thats really about it.

We went to sleep right away, setting up a shmira schedule beforehand. We were technically given 7 hours to sleep, but in the middle of the night, you’re woken up to do a 45 minute shmira. If you can sleep on a mat on the floor (which I’m not the best at), these nights wouldn’t be the worst. What made this night, and the rest of the nights in the shetach so dreadful was the weather. 40 degrees Fahrenheit, whipping, howling winds, and heavy, heavy rain.

After our first night of “sleep” we grabbed our tik lau and walked 4 kilometers to our first stop. We ran a dry run first and then a wet run, in other words without bullets and then with. As the sharpshooter, I occasionally have a specific function in these drills, to scope out the landscape for enemies and report on what I see. During the dry run, I messed up badly, moving forward when I wasn’t supposed to, not calling out certain commands, and my Mefaked screamed at me during the drill, rightly so. The experience started this internal dialogue of my readiness for actual war. Sure I can stand being yelled at for messing up in drills. But what about messing up in real combat? We’re only 5 weeks away from the gdud where we could actually be running these maneuvers in real scenarios.

We drilled somewhere else and then set off on a march, we thought to another drill, but which turned out to be to Netta, a Yishuv nearby. The army can’t make us sleep outside if it’s raining (a small positive to the constant rain we were drilling In) so they had arranged for the entire pluga to sleep in a multipurpose room on the yishuv. We got to a room with heat and were treated to soups from Netta residents. A welcome change of sleeping arrangements from the previous night.

For some reason, we were given extra time to sleep. 10 hours instead of the usual 7. I’ve never been good at sleeping extended amounts of time and so, even with extreme army fatigue, I woke up before everyone else and couldn’t get back to bed. Time to think is a bad thing in the army and here I was, Two extra hours just waiting around for everyone else to wake up. It was then that I started thinking of quitting. All the intrusive thoughts swarmed in:

“Why am I here at 25? I’m so much older than everyone else?”
“Why did I choose combat? I could get and give the same by doing intelligence?”
“I don’t need to be here. I could drop and join an intelligence unit and it would be totally understandable. Why would I willingly force myself to go back out in that weather and those conditions. I’m done”

Eventually everyone else woke up and I was resigned to going about my day, what promised to be a really hard day, with this thought of “I shouldn’t even be here”. I wanted to speak to the מ’מ but I also wanted to demonstrate that it wasn’t just the fact we were out in this weather that made me want to quit. So I asked him to speak when we got back to base.

We stayed back in Netta and did different drills in the pouring rain. I opened up to different guys I’m close with about my thoughts of quitting and started speaking through it with them. They were shocked and told me it depressed them too, that I was considering leaving.

Around 4 PM we headed out to do the night drills. Our מ”מ said we’d be spending the night in the shetach drilling and would probably get back to base around 5 in the morning. About 45 minutes into our march, we stopped for half an hour and I saw the מ”מ take a phone call.  Turns out, so many guys had had to drop out because of the extreme circumstances or had even gotten hypothermia, that the Magad told us we weren’t allowed to continue. Crazy it gets to that point. We walked straight back to base instead of drilling through the night, not to suggest that that was easy. It was a 2 1/2 hour march, 10.5 km, back to base with a 20 kg pack on us. Not fun.

The next morning, I told my samal that I wanted to speak to the base therapist and about all the thoughts I’d been having. That set into motion  conversations with different commanders. We were spending a day at the range and, as soon as we got there before starting, my מ”מ pulled me aside to speak.

I told him everything Id been thinking and how I was seriously considering dropping from kravi. He was surprised but he reassured me that he was here to help and would of course assist me with whatever I needed. He told me Im a good soldier and that he wants and needs me in his pluga which was definitely nice to hear but, at the time washed over me. I wasnt really open to hearing praise or reasons for staying – I was determined on leaving.

After a few hours of shooting, the shooting instructor surprised us by shouting 7 krav maga! We ran from the ranges to the pluga, changed and had another Maagal Krav krav maga session. Everyone just beating up the person in the middle.

After a full day of shooting, we finally got shaat Tash, something I was looking forward to more than usual. I needed to speak to friends and family outside the army. I called my parents and spoke to them about the difficulties and felt their support. I called max koffler, a friend and mentor who also drafted at a later age to tzanchanim. He really encouraged me and gave me the boost of motivation to sway me back into wanting/knowing that I need to stay. I’d come this far and I have so many reasons for being here. I turned my life upside down for this, for doing my part in protecting the Jewish people. It’s bound to be hard but I can’t give up now. The conversations strengthened my resolve.

We woke up early Thursday morning for our Bochen tzevet a 2km run, where the Machlaka is split up into groups of 8, everyone has a 20 kg pack on, and we have to carry stretchers of 80 kg. Every 40 seconds we’d alternate with a partner and go under the stretcher. We managed to do it in 13:30, a great time.

Shortly afterwards we got on buses and headed for tzeelim, an army base that has a mini-gaza. A model village meant to mimic Gaza, where the army trains it’s units for urban warfare. While there, one of the guys I’m closest with in my class, came up to me and asked to speak. He told me his father had suffered a heart attack a week ago and even though he was doing fine, he knew it was hard on his mom and he wanted to be home to help. It was impacting his focus and his drive and I saw how hard it was on him. I told him I was there for him and would help any way I could, but the conversation also helped me a lot. It put a lot into perspective. Yes I have struggled as a chayal boded, struggles that the other guys can’t comprehend, but they’re also going through things. Everyone has something they’re dealing with beneath the surface. It isn’t easy for any of us and we’re all each other’s support system.

We drilled for a few hours at night, slept in those concrete open rooms waking up to do shmira, and did another few hours of drills in the morning before heading back to base. Throughout the day, other soldiers I was friendly with came up to me and asked how I was doing. They saw that I hadn’t been myself over the past week and wanted to extend a shoulder of support. It was very kind.

We traveled back to base for Shabbat and, before welcoming shabbat, were reminded of our weird reality here in Israel. The commanders told us we needed to keep our helmets near our beds. Iran had been threatening rocket attacks and if a siren went off, we’d need to grab our helmet and run to scatter in the nearby forest. What a strange reality to have that sorr of circumstance not cause us to even bat an eye.


Shabbat was restful on base. I played exploding kittens with some of the other chayalim bodedim I’m close with, read Game of Thrones (the latest fantasy book Ive brought with me to base to help me escape mentally) and spoke with ben ami, the מ”פ about everything going on. He told me a couple of days before that he wanted to speak on shabbat. Whether the conversation was actually helpful, I’m not sure, but I do think it’s good that he know where my head was at and how difficult it was for me.

On Motzei Shabbat, we had a 5k run and a pluga-wide crossfit workout.

It was a difficult week. There have definitely been harder weeks physically, but the mental rollercoaster of wanting to quit and continuing to push myself through the really difficult situations, extreme weather, and all the while still having the regular chayal boded struggles to deal with, felt like a tight wire act. This week matured me; the insanity of training and the army at-large, finding the motivation and strength to overcome everything thrown at us. It breaks and builds us. It isn’t easy, but one of the things Max told me really stuck with me.

“All the praise we get as chayalim bodedim, all the recognition and support, it isn’t because it’s easy. It’s because it’s hard. When you’re walking for hours, in the cold and rain, know that that’s when you’re earning the support. That’s when you’re doing the difficult things that are the soldiers job. That’s when you say to yourself, ‘yeah I am doing something incredibly hard. No one can understand what I’m going through but I know how hard it is'”

I have 6 more weeks of training. It’s not going to be easy but a soldiers life isn’t easy. The job is hard. It’s the job I signed up for and one I’m proud to be doing. I know I’ll be defending the Jewish people and Homeland and that job was never meant to come easily.  How could I give that up honor?