- May 8, 2002
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Hi all!
Well, I am honorably d-i-s-c-h-a-r-g-e-d. I schlepped (see http://www.vidlit.com/yidlit/) out to my unit's depot last Monday & was officially and duly discharged from the IDF (Israel Defense Forces; http://tinyurl.com/4aydz) reserves. I will be 42 in a few months & thanks to recent legislative changes here, since I'm neither an officer nor a doctor, I have been discharged.
I feel very mixed. I'm both pleased & a little sad. It'll be great not to have to disappear for 3-4 weeks a year for annual stints of reserve duty and leave DW & Da Boyz at home but I will miss not so much the camaraderie as the deep, in-my-soul satisfaction at just being one of the guys, at being an ordinary Israeli, of taking an active part in, and being defined by, this common experience. Back in high school (in Pittsburgh; my 25th reunion is next year, more about that in a minute), I was never a member of the "in crowd". (This was way before I decided to become orthodox & move to Israel.) I certainly wasn't a social outcast as I was a social marginal. My friends were other marginals & I lived in the school library. I've never wanted to stand out, to say, "Hey, everyone! Look at me!" as I've just wanted to belong, to be one of the guys, to do ordinary things & have ordinary experiences.
Well, I did decide to become orthodox & move to Israel (in November 1986) but I brought with me this very intense desire to belong & to be ordinary. And as a modern orthodox Jew, as opposed to ultra-orthodox Jew, see http://www.jewfaq.org/movement.htm#US) here in Israel, this means serving in the IDF. As an older (I was in my late 20's at the time), married (December 1988), new immigrant, I was inducted (in February 1991) for four months' service. I did a special 3-week basic training course (with other older immigrants, not - thank God! - with 18-year-old Israeli kids) & then the 13-week medic course. During this 16-week period, I was home only on weekends. After finishing the medics course (with a final mark of 88) & being appointed a medic (rank of corporal), I was assigned to a reserve medical unit. We were an intermediate unit, more than a battalion aid station but less than a field hospital. We functioned as a unit only during exercises & emergencies. In order to complete our annual stints of reserve duty & get our annual quota of days in, we were assigned to a pool of medics. Every year, we'd get called up, meet all together at some base & then get sent out to various units, wherever they needed a medic. This way, I got to meet lots of different people & see many parts of the country.
I had to get used to dealing with the heartache of leaving DW, and then leaving DW and Yohanan, and then leaving DW and Yohanan and Naor, for 3-4 weeks a year, sometimes over various Jewish holydays. (And of course DW had to get used to both seeing me disappear for 3-4 weeks and seeing an empty place at the table and sleeping in an empty bed and having to deal with the horrible fear that the knock at the door might be a soldier from the IDF Adjutant's Office saying, "Please come Mrs. L, your husband is in Rambam Hospital in Haifa.")
The first time that I went off to reserve duty after Yohanan had learned to walk and he was old enough to notice my absence, DW said that he'd waddle into the various rooms of the flat, look inside and ask, "Daddy?" I remember the first time I went off to reserve duty after we had adopted him, I was afraid that he wouldn't remember me when I came home. I remember how overjoyed I was when I came home and he looked up at me & his face lit up and he got all excited & started waving his arms.
I've been on the Egyptian border (1993), on the Lebanese border (1992), in Lebanon (in 1994, by about 300 yards) and in the Jordan Valley, including on the northern end of the Dead Sea (lots of times).
In the late summer of 1993, I was at a little base on the Egyptian border, between Sinai & the Negev, way out in the middle of nowhere. One night, I drew the all night/wee hour patrol shift. Myself & three other guys were about 20 miles north of the base, on motorized patrol. We stopped for a break. Our Bedouin tracker made coffee on his little portable gas burner & we turned off the lights on the jeep to enjoy the stillness. We were at least 20 miles from the nearest electric light & it was a perfectly clear night. I looked up and just stared in awe at the heavens. I have never, either before or since, seen such a display of stars, the sky was carpeted with them! I could see the Milky Way. I saw falling stars. It was awesome (and humbling). I said the blessing: "Praised are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who makes the wonders of creation." I stood there, just gaping upward, for about 10 minutes until it was time to resume patrolling.
As we were riding around that night I remembered how back in Pittsburgh when my brother (3.5 years younger than me) & I were little kids, we would be afraid to go all the way downstairs first thing in the morning (we were always up before our parents) lest the monsters down there get us. So we'd go as far as the landing on the stairs & then call for Shane. Shane was our big German Shepherd (whom we adored). We'd call for Shane & wait there on the landing until he came to the foot of the stairs, all bleary-eyed & wagging his tail. Then we knew that it was safe to go downstairs (and get cereal & put on the cartoons) because good, good Shane had chased the monsters away. And I thought about this and I looked around and saw that I was armed to the teeth (M-16 with 5 clips, a heavy swivel-mounted machine gun & a box of grenades) on guard against monsters who were all too real. All I could do was remember that time when the only monsters were the ones in two little boys' collective imagination & who could be chased away by the family dog.
This base was right opposite an Egyptian base. I remember sitting up in the guard tower & looking through the big binoculars at my opposite number in the Egyptian guardtower. I'd wave at him & he'd wave back. There was a volleyball net at our base & the guys & ladies there would often go out and play volleyball. And since it was August, the ladies would wear shorts & t-shirts. Whenever there would be a volleyball game on our side, all the Egyptians (all men) would crowd up in their guard tower & take turns og...observing our t-shirt-and shorts-clad young ladies.
I still have a small callous just on the palm of my right hand just below the babyfinger from when I spent 2 hours sweeping & mopping the synagogue at the base where I was at in 1995.
I remember seeing the Hale-Bopp comet through the big binoculars in the guard tower at the base I was in in the Jordan Valley in the early spring of 1997. I remember, that year, marveling at the incredible flora (lush grass, flowers of every color) and fauna (storks, foxes, ducks, mice, hawks, and gazelles) in the glorious springtime in that part of the Jordan Valley. I remember how glad I felt & how cool it was that one of the Jordanians in the base opposite ours could fall asleep at his post because he knew that we were no threat, thanks to the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. (However, as I observed through the binoculars, the officer who discovered him asleep was not very amused. Ouchhh!!!)
I remember, in February 2003, being in the base guard tower (in the Jordan Valley) on a Friday evening, as Shabbat (i.e. the Sabbath) was coming in, in the midst of a howling rainstorm, as the tower windows (shatterproof) were rattling in the wind, and singing the mystical Lecha Dodi ("Come my Beloved") hymn (http://www.headcoverings-by-devorah.com/LkhahDodi.html, the 2nd & 5th audio links are the nicest), and feeling as close to God on Shabbat as I've ever felt.
I wrote this excerpt in my 2002 reserve duty diary during a wee-hour stint of guard duty up in the observation post:
I remember one year when we were all sent off to the quartermaster to get our "stuff" (2 uniforms, sleeping bag, kit bag, helmet, coat, etc.). The quartermaster handed ready-made piles to us & told us to try everything on right then & there to see if everything fit & if we wanted to replace anything. I pulled on a pair of olive-drab pants & discovered that they were enormous & were way too big for me. I said, "Hey, my wife and I could both fit into these." The guy next to me replied, "That could be interesting."
My company commander is/was a real sweetheart, a very nice guy, who looked out for us, went to bat for us, etc. One year, we were all waiting around, on the day we had to report, to receive our assignments. One of the guys sauntered in very late. We kidded him that the company commander would be upset (he wasn't). The guy, a big burly fellow, said, "Ah, I'm not afraid of him. I'm afraid of only two things in this world, God and my wife." One of us (not me!) asked him, "So who are you afraid of more?" He replied, "I can see that you're still single."
Twice, in 1992 and in 1995, I was on reserve duty during elections here. I voted at a mobile IDF voting booths (all ballots here in Israel are paper ballots).
In August 2000, we had a 1.5-weeklong exercise at a huge base down in the Negev (the desert region comprising southern Israel). We were in the classrooms at the base for a week and then packed up & shipped out for a 3-day field exercise way out in the desert. It was HOT, it was dusty (and we had huge trucks, halftracks, jeeps & such driving all over the place, kicking up LOTS of dust) and I was forced to go 66 hours (by my calculation) without showering. Sanitary facilities consisted of a convenient gully or ravine. I got home (just before 01:00) as dirty as I've ever been and as trans-exhausted as I was (I got about 6 hours sleep during this 66-hour period), I went traight into a shower. I had to shower myself twice; one wash just didn't do the job. I slept for 14 hours afterwards.
I ate army food that ranged from lousy to mediocre to pretty good (but was almost unifornly bland; I started taking a bottle of Tabasco sauce along with me). I slept in sleeping bags a) on a stetcher under the stars, b) in tents, c) in barracks, d) in underground bunkers, and e) in the back of an open halftrack. I froze (wore 3 pairs of socks), and melted in 100-degree heat. I learned the joys of getting a full aerobic workout simply by walking (thanks to the enormous quantities of thick, viscous mud stuck to my boots). I cultivated my love of Turkish coffee in the IDF (and learned from my Bedouin & Druze comrades the importance of buying the good stuff).
I remember all the books I read. One of the first things I would do when I got a call-up order for any given year was to get books to take with me. I read Nelson Mandela's autobiography, a history of the Boer War (DW is originally from Cape Town), a history of Carthage, the Fellowship of the Ring in Hebrew, a history of the NILI spies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nili), Bram Stoker's Dracula (which I re-read; I reread it every few years; Stephen King wishes he could write half as scary a book!), etc.
In 2003, my last stint of duty (we didn't do anything in 2004; an exercise we were supposed to have was cancelled), I was a male escort. Really. I was seconded (as the Brits say) to a unit in the Jordan Valley. We rode shotgun (actually, we had M-16's) on all the buses, vans etc. that were used to take kids from the various communities in the Jordan Valley to and from the various regional schools. It was nice riding around in a proper vehicle (i.e. one with working shock absorbers), sit in an upholstered & cushioned seat (instead of in a backside-jarring and kidney-rattling jeep) and chat with the kids. One of the very little ones came on the bus crying about something & I got him to stop crying and actually smile by walking my fingers ("Here comes the Spider!") and getting him to squash the spider (by slapping at it; I do this with Naor & he loves it).
Not having to go off on annual stints of reserve duty means that I won't have to be away from home (well DUH!, ssv!) and won't have to deal with the existential loneliness of a sleeping bag but that doesn't mean that I won't miss the unique atmosphere of the traditional send-off/welcome-back that wives of soldiers (even middle-aged reservists) have shared with their soldier hubbies.
In 1995, I was part of the medical crew that escorted the first contingent of Palestinian Authority policemen from Jericho to Kalkilya. I hope this great experiment yet works out and that my kids will never have to face off against the kids of the policemen I helped escort. Something that weighs very much on my mind is the knowledge that in 10 years, DW and I will have to drive Yohanan off to an IDF induction center as he begins 3 years' compulsory service, and that we'll have to repeat the process for Naor a few years later. Our babies!
(cont.)
Well, I am honorably d-i-s-c-h-a-r-g-e-d. I schlepped (see http://www.vidlit.com/yidlit/) out to my unit's depot last Monday & was officially and duly discharged from the IDF (Israel Defense Forces; http://tinyurl.com/4aydz) reserves. I will be 42 in a few months & thanks to recent legislative changes here, since I'm neither an officer nor a doctor, I have been discharged.
I feel very mixed. I'm both pleased & a little sad. It'll be great not to have to disappear for 3-4 weeks a year for annual stints of reserve duty and leave DW & Da Boyz at home but I will miss not so much the camaraderie as the deep, in-my-soul satisfaction at just being one of the guys, at being an ordinary Israeli, of taking an active part in, and being defined by, this common experience. Back in high school (in Pittsburgh; my 25th reunion is next year, more about that in a minute), I was never a member of the "in crowd". (This was way before I decided to become orthodox & move to Israel.) I certainly wasn't a social outcast as I was a social marginal. My friends were other marginals & I lived in the school library. I've never wanted to stand out, to say, "Hey, everyone! Look at me!" as I've just wanted to belong, to be one of the guys, to do ordinary things & have ordinary experiences.
Well, I did decide to become orthodox & move to Israel (in November 1986) but I brought with me this very intense desire to belong & to be ordinary. And as a modern orthodox Jew, as opposed to ultra-orthodox Jew, see http://www.jewfaq.org/movement.htm#US) here in Israel, this means serving in the IDF. As an older (I was in my late 20's at the time), married (December 1988), new immigrant, I was inducted (in February 1991) for four months' service. I did a special 3-week basic training course (with other older immigrants, not - thank God! - with 18-year-old Israeli kids) & then the 13-week medic course. During this 16-week period, I was home only on weekends. After finishing the medics course (with a final mark of 88) & being appointed a medic (rank of corporal), I was assigned to a reserve medical unit. We were an intermediate unit, more than a battalion aid station but less than a field hospital. We functioned as a unit only during exercises & emergencies. In order to complete our annual stints of reserve duty & get our annual quota of days in, we were assigned to a pool of medics. Every year, we'd get called up, meet all together at some base & then get sent out to various units, wherever they needed a medic. This way, I got to meet lots of different people & see many parts of the country.
I had to get used to dealing with the heartache of leaving DW, and then leaving DW and Yohanan, and then leaving DW and Yohanan and Naor, for 3-4 weeks a year, sometimes over various Jewish holydays. (And of course DW had to get used to both seeing me disappear for 3-4 weeks and seeing an empty place at the table and sleeping in an empty bed and having to deal with the horrible fear that the knock at the door might be a soldier from the IDF Adjutant's Office saying, "Please come Mrs. L, your husband is in Rambam Hospital in Haifa.")
The first time that I went off to reserve duty after Yohanan had learned to walk and he was old enough to notice my absence, DW said that he'd waddle into the various rooms of the flat, look inside and ask, "Daddy?" I remember the first time I went off to reserve duty after we had adopted him, I was afraid that he wouldn't remember me when I came home. I remember how overjoyed I was when I came home and he looked up at me & his face lit up and he got all excited & started waving his arms.
I've been on the Egyptian border (1993), on the Lebanese border (1992), in Lebanon (in 1994, by about 300 yards) and in the Jordan Valley, including on the northern end of the Dead Sea (lots of times).
In the late summer of 1993, I was at a little base on the Egyptian border, between Sinai & the Negev, way out in the middle of nowhere. One night, I drew the all night/wee hour patrol shift. Myself & three other guys were about 20 miles north of the base, on motorized patrol. We stopped for a break. Our Bedouin tracker made coffee on his little portable gas burner & we turned off the lights on the jeep to enjoy the stillness. We were at least 20 miles from the nearest electric light & it was a perfectly clear night. I looked up and just stared in awe at the heavens. I have never, either before or since, seen such a display of stars, the sky was carpeted with them! I could see the Milky Way. I saw falling stars. It was awesome (and humbling). I said the blessing: "Praised are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who makes the wonders of creation." I stood there, just gaping upward, for about 10 minutes until it was time to resume patrolling.
As we were riding around that night I remembered how back in Pittsburgh when my brother (3.5 years younger than me) & I were little kids, we would be afraid to go all the way downstairs first thing in the morning (we were always up before our parents) lest the monsters down there get us. So we'd go as far as the landing on the stairs & then call for Shane. Shane was our big German Shepherd (whom we adored). We'd call for Shane & wait there on the landing until he came to the foot of the stairs, all bleary-eyed & wagging his tail. Then we knew that it was safe to go downstairs (and get cereal & put on the cartoons) because good, good Shane had chased the monsters away. And I thought about this and I looked around and saw that I was armed to the teeth (M-16 with 5 clips, a heavy swivel-mounted machine gun & a box of grenades) on guard against monsters who were all too real. All I could do was remember that time when the only monsters were the ones in two little boys' collective imagination & who could be chased away by the family dog.
This base was right opposite an Egyptian base. I remember sitting up in the guard tower & looking through the big binoculars at my opposite number in the Egyptian guardtower. I'd wave at him & he'd wave back. There was a volleyball net at our base & the guys & ladies there would often go out and play volleyball. And since it was August, the ladies would wear shorts & t-shirts. Whenever there would be a volleyball game on our side, all the Egyptians (all men) would crowd up in their guard tower & take turns og...observing our t-shirt-and shorts-clad young ladies.
I still have a small callous just on the palm of my right hand just below the babyfinger from when I spent 2 hours sweeping & mopping the synagogue at the base where I was at in 1995.
I remember seeing the Hale-Bopp comet through the big binoculars in the guard tower at the base I was in in the Jordan Valley in the early spring of 1997. I remember, that year, marveling at the incredible flora (lush grass, flowers of every color) and fauna (storks, foxes, ducks, mice, hawks, and gazelles) in the glorious springtime in that part of the Jordan Valley. I remember how glad I felt & how cool it was that one of the Jordanians in the base opposite ours could fall asleep at his post because he knew that we were no threat, thanks to the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. (However, as I observed through the binoculars, the officer who discovered him asleep was not very amused. Ouchhh!!!)
I remember, in February 2003, being in the base guard tower (in the Jordan Valley) on a Friday evening, as Shabbat (i.e. the Sabbath) was coming in, in the midst of a howling rainstorm, as the tower windows (shatterproof) were rattling in the wind, and singing the mystical Lecha Dodi ("Come my Beloved") hymn (http://www.headcoverings-by-devorah.com/LkhahDodi.html, the 2nd & 5th audio links are the nicest), and feeling as close to God on Shabbat as I've ever felt.
I wrote this excerpt in my 2002 reserve duty diary during a wee-hour stint of guard duty up in the observation post:
I remember one year when we were all sent off to the quartermaster to get our "stuff" (2 uniforms, sleeping bag, kit bag, helmet, coat, etc.). The quartermaster handed ready-made piles to us & told us to try everything on right then & there to see if everything fit & if we wanted to replace anything. I pulled on a pair of olive-drab pants & discovered that they were enormous & were way too big for me. I said, "Hey, my wife and I could both fit into these." The guy next to me replied, "That could be interesting."
My company commander is/was a real sweetheart, a very nice guy, who looked out for us, went to bat for us, etc. One year, we were all waiting around, on the day we had to report, to receive our assignments. One of the guys sauntered in very late. We kidded him that the company commander would be upset (he wasn't). The guy, a big burly fellow, said, "Ah, I'm not afraid of him. I'm afraid of only two things in this world, God and my wife." One of us (not me!) asked him, "So who are you afraid of more?" He replied, "I can see that you're still single."
Twice, in 1992 and in 1995, I was on reserve duty during elections here. I voted at a mobile IDF voting booths (all ballots here in Israel are paper ballots).
In August 2000, we had a 1.5-weeklong exercise at a huge base down in the Negev (the desert region comprising southern Israel). We were in the classrooms at the base for a week and then packed up & shipped out for a 3-day field exercise way out in the desert. It was HOT, it was dusty (and we had huge trucks, halftracks, jeeps & such driving all over the place, kicking up LOTS of dust) and I was forced to go 66 hours (by my calculation) without showering. Sanitary facilities consisted of a convenient gully or ravine. I got home (just before 01:00) as dirty as I've ever been and as trans-exhausted as I was (I got about 6 hours sleep during this 66-hour period), I went traight into a shower. I had to shower myself twice; one wash just didn't do the job. I slept for 14 hours afterwards.
I ate army food that ranged from lousy to mediocre to pretty good (but was almost unifornly bland; I started taking a bottle of Tabasco sauce along with me). I slept in sleeping bags a) on a stetcher under the stars, b) in tents, c) in barracks, d) in underground bunkers, and e) in the back of an open halftrack. I froze (wore 3 pairs of socks), and melted in 100-degree heat. I learned the joys of getting a full aerobic workout simply by walking (thanks to the enormous quantities of thick, viscous mud stuck to my boots). I cultivated my love of Turkish coffee in the IDF (and learned from my Bedouin & Druze comrades the importance of buying the good stuff).
I remember all the books I read. One of the first things I would do when I got a call-up order for any given year was to get books to take with me. I read Nelson Mandela's autobiography, a history of the Boer War (DW is originally from Cape Town), a history of Carthage, the Fellowship of the Ring in Hebrew, a history of the NILI spies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nili), Bram Stoker's Dracula (which I re-read; I reread it every few years; Stephen King wishes he could write half as scary a book!), etc.
In 2003, my last stint of duty (we didn't do anything in 2004; an exercise we were supposed to have was cancelled), I was a male escort. Really. I was seconded (as the Brits say) to a unit in the Jordan Valley. We rode shotgun (actually, we had M-16's) on all the buses, vans etc. that were used to take kids from the various communities in the Jordan Valley to and from the various regional schools. It was nice riding around in a proper vehicle (i.e. one with working shock absorbers), sit in an upholstered & cushioned seat (instead of in a backside-jarring and kidney-rattling jeep) and chat with the kids. One of the very little ones came on the bus crying about something & I got him to stop crying and actually smile by walking my fingers ("Here comes the Spider!") and getting him to squash the spider (by slapping at it; I do this with Naor & he loves it).
Not having to go off on annual stints of reserve duty means that I won't have to be away from home (well DUH!, ssv!) and won't have to deal with the existential loneliness of a sleeping bag but that doesn't mean that I won't miss the unique atmosphere of the traditional send-off/welcome-back that wives of soldiers (even middle-aged reservists) have shared with their soldier hubbies.
In 1995, I was part of the medical crew that escorted the first contingent of Palestinian Authority policemen from Jericho to Kalkilya. I hope this great experiment yet works out and that my kids will never have to face off against the kids of the policemen I helped escort. Something that weighs very much on my mind is the knowledge that in 10 years, DW and I will have to drive Yohanan off to an IDF induction center as he begins 3 years' compulsory service, and that we'll have to repeat the process for Naor a few years later. Our babies!
(cont.)
