"Sometimes in order to live somewhere, you have to die there."

Hagit Rhein, mother of Capt. Bania Rhein who fell in Lebanon, and Eliyashiv, in combat somewhere in Gaza.

We Happy Few

A friend of mine once referred to me as a warrior. I told her that my buddies in the army would never let me hear the end of it if they got wind of that. We don't think of ourselves as warriors.

We come from all walks of life. Nir, my crew commander is an insurance agent and our crew is made up of a bus driver, some high tech geeks, a guy that gives marketing seminars and I am an English teacher/farmer/landscaper.

This week the brigade my battalion belongs to carried out an exercise designed to simulate a scenario where Israel has been attacked and the reserves have been called up to push back an invasion.

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On Sunday we made the transition from civilians to soldiers and the next day we set off to meet the enemy.

The idea was to refresh our skills as artillerymen and to test our ability to function under stress, deprived of sleep and even proper food. But they didn't have to teach us to work as a team.

I don't recall ever receiving a direct command, and that goes for the rest as far as I know. We know what is expected of us and the job gets done on a basis of mutual respect between the ranks and concern for each other.

And its not all hardship either. There is the ritual of making Turkish coffee on a primus and sleeping around a bonfire made of ammo bundles after dark when the desert gets cold. (I crawled up with Zacki on to the grating over the engine, which was still warm, and nodded off looking up at the Milky Way in a crystal desert sky.)

I think that people who are awed by warriors or the idea of the warrior are people that have never been at war. For us war isn't about glory. It's a job and a dirty one at that. The truth is that we have better things to do. And in modern Israel, more and more of the burden of national defense is borne by less and less of us.

My friends and I in the 670th aren't warriors. War isn't what defines us by a long shot. I think I would call us citizen soldiers, with an emphasis on citizen. We take up arms out of a sense of responsibility, not lust for battle. We reluctantly leave our homes and change into uniform because somebody has to. Because if we don't, we won't have a home to return to.

The ordinary citizen is the foundation our country is built on, the mortar that holds society together and the reservists are what stand between home and obliteration.

I think that the reserve army is one of the things that are still good about Israel. One of the things that are still beautiful and unspoiled. And even if there are fewer and fewer of us, I believe its worth it.

"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers."

(William Shakespeare)

(I have created a new blog called "Six Seventy" - http://sixseventy.blogspot.com/ - where I will down load pictures from our various adventures in the army. It is for and I hope will be by the soldiers of the 670th, so it's in Hebrew. You are welcome to visit.)

יצרתי בלוג חדש על מנת להוריד תמונות שלנו צהתעסוקות השונות

http://sixseventy.blogspot.com/

Changing of the Guard

Last week my battalion, the 670th Artillery Bat. took a refresher course. They had first aid lessons and ammunition updates, and we got to practice loading, aiming and firing on squeaky clean simulators designed to replicate our ancient M-109 self propelled howitzers.

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I don't know what it is, but something was missing. Was it being covered with dust, the blast of gunpowder when the ol' girl fires, the smell of men that haven't bathed for a week or the taste of the Turkish coffee we make when we think the CO isn't looking? (But he really knows, 'cause he always just happens to show up when it's ready.)
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Soldiers have stories they can't tell. There are things about being in the army that you can't explain. You can't understand if you weren't there.




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Israeli soldiers have this tough macho image, but it's not true. Lior (on the right) came out of the closet recently. I don't usually use the G-word to describe people because I believe a person's preference is a personal matter, but Lior final admitted what I've suspected for some time. He's a Geek.

The crazy thing is that Lior snagged a wife most men can only dream about. A couple of weeks ago he brought her to a brother soldier's wedding and she stole the show. She gave the Vulcan salute and said, "Live long and prosper." How many female Trekys live on planet Earth? (It blew me away; after she did that I hardly noticed the bride.)

Tzachi (on the left) lives in an institution for the criminally insane in Tel Aviv called Florentine. The rational behind releasing him for reserve duty (and letting him bear arms) is that when he's in the army he's off the streets. I know exactly how long he's been in the 670th - he arrived to do his first tour of duty as a reservist at an outpost I commanded on the Syrian border two weeks before my youngest Odelia was born.


I'm something of a dinosaur in uniform. Nir, my crew commander was on vacation in Holland, so Ori took his place. Ori hadn't been born yet when I joined the army.

(And the cute blond is younger than my daughter. She also out ranks me. Note the officer bars.)

Serving in the Israeli Army has been a significant part of my life - it is one of the reasons I came here. I don't know how much time I have left before my soldiering days will be over. Sooner or later my body will betray me, or they will just kick me out.

There's never been much ceremony at the changing of the guard in the 670th. The guys I knew when I joined got tired and then you didn't see them anymore, and new faces took their place. One day I will be gone, and then I will be just another one of the stories the guys tell to pass the time.

Out with Irene

Barry gave us the movie Blackhawk Down on CD a few months back and since then Netanel has played it dozens of times, sometimes even as background noise while he's on the computer or studying for a test. .
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As war movies go, Blackhawk Down is just about as realistic as it gets without getting shot at. It's all there – a senseless mission, the snafus, the command detached from reality or humanity - soldiers getting screwed more by their thickheaded officers than the enemy, commanders in the field (generally NCOs) that save their men from above mentioned officers and enemy alike.


In the autumn of 1993 US Rangers and Delta Force had been dropped into the middle of a civil war between Somali warlords with the naïve idealistic objective of restoring order. On October 3, Operations issued orders for a questionable daring mission codenamed "Irene" to apprehend hostiles in the heart of Mogadishu, but a series of mishaps on the ground and breakdowns in communications end up with the Rangers under siege with critically wounded casualties and isolated units scattered in a city stirred and swarming.

At this point, I want to clarify that my qualifications as a military analyst are from the ground up. In my 26 years in Israeli army uniform, I have never been more than a crewman of an M-109 self propelled howitzer. My crew has never fired a live round at a live person, not even during the 2006 war in Lebanon (Because our battalion's new crop of crew commanders fresh from regular enlisted service were unable to make heads or tails of the outdated equipment we have in reserve battalions and the 670th was declared "unfit for combat" that summer.)

The Israeli Army is ever short of infantry for duty on the borders and on the West Bank, so a good 80 to 90 percent of my service over the years has been as a foot soldier far from my beloved howitzer. I've been out with "Irene" a few times.

"Irene" was your garden variety abduction operation in enemy territory (called "an arrest" by the military). I've participated in a few "arrests" over the years, if on a much smaller scale. In an operation like this you have 3 units:

1. The attack team. This unit makes the arrest and is as small as possible with the best soldiers available. Few so they don't get in each others way, best so that they don't shoot each other or the arrestee by mistake.

2. The isolating unit; to prevent anyone from coming to the aid of the arrestee.

3. The extraction force, by far the largest of the three, remains out of the picture but ready to come to the aid of the first two units should something go south during the operation.

Delta was the obvious choice to enter and apprehend, and Rangers lowered from Blackhawks were assigned to isolating the site. The extraction force was a convoy of (Rangers?) on Hummers.

What went wrong?

Surprise is essential. Going in at high noon, "Irene" depended on the speed of its helicopters to compensate; but since evacuation was on wheels, dealing with an armed response was inevitable.


Using the Blackhawks to achieve fire superiority over the city made them more or less static elements of the isolation force. Since their main advantage is fire in motion, they became sitting ducks.

Ideally, the attack and isolating units leave the scene independently. Assigning the extraction force with evacuating detainees with their captors meant that there was nothing left in reserve in case something went wrong. When the convoy got lost in the city, evacuation was delayed, compounding the fiasco.

Another thing about the movie is how you see the Rangers more or less ignoring the Somalis shooting at them. This is pretty accurate. You have "suppressive fire", which isn't really meant to kill anyone but just to get the other guy to take cover; and "effective fire" when you shoot through sights in hopes of actually hitting someone. The Somalis were using a third kind of fire which is called "making a lot of noise, but not hitting much of anything except innocent Somalis". The difference between "effective fire" and shooting off your gun is the big difference between Hizbullah fighters and gun toting Palestinians.

Netanel and I watch the same movie, but we're not looking at the same thing. Our points of view are from different places in life. "Irene" for me is just one more screw up, only on a much grander scale than any I have participated in. Here in Israel, more often than not the guy you're after isn't home and nobody is eager to risk dear life to get him.

For Netanel it's different. It's starting to sink in; before you know it he will be in uniform and on his way to "Irene". He's started asking questions, technical questions; picking the brain of that old soldier, Abba.

But for me, if anything is harder that going out with "Irene", it will be those three long years when Netanel will be out there with an "Irene" of his own.

Tranquility

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My battalion, the 670th Artillery, has a mascot. His name is Shalva, which means "tranquility" in Hebrew. It's hard to imagine what Shalva's dad was thinking but easy to guess what he was drinking the night he named his boy; because tranquility isn't what comes to mind when you think of Shalva.

His story is that when he was a young man in Russian Georgia, he vowed that if the good Lord would allow him to live in the holy land, he would serve in the Israeli Army until the end of his days. God kept His end of the deal and Georgians are men of their word. The scuttlebutt is that Shalva is 61 years old and he has never missed a tour of duty since the 670th was formed in the late 70's.

Shalva swore to serve, but he never said how he would serve. When I first encountered him in the mid 80's, he was the terror of the battalion. You had to go through Shalva to get uniforms and gear. About 50% his limited vocabulary in Hebrew was swear words, which he reserved for those of us he liked, and he used his huge, shaved belly to literally bounce everybody else out of his way. Sometimes it was easier to go a few weeks in uniforms big enough for two of me or so tight that they crawled up to my knees and barely reached my elbows than to try my luck with his temper.

Wisely, our officers usually didn't trust Shalva with any duties involving weapons, but from time to time he was needed to do guard duty and he would show up fully loaded and with two water canteens full of vodka. Fortunately, he was always assigned to posts chosen for their distance from anyone he might harm. Relieving him of duty was a risky business and done with care.

The 670th finished another tour of duty this week. I had been released this time, but showed up on the last day to see how my friends had fared. I found Shalva for once living up to his name, fast asleep on a pile of winter gear. Time has taken its toll on Shalva and he's not nearly as fearsome as he used to be. You can find him in the mess hall at the officers' table; he cusses them out even more than he does the rest of us, but they know that just about the only thing he fears more than the Almighty is rank, and they know that he will be in the battalion long after they're gone.

There are many legends about Shalva in our battalion. To this day, nobody knows his last name, or even if he has a last name. Maybe he is an angel; a drunken, smoking, foul mouthed, grumpy angel, but our guardian angel nevertheless.

Perhaps Shalva's dad named him well after all. Because in the close to quarter of a century that I have been in the 670th, we have know tranquility. We have made lifelong friendships, served our country and without exception returned everyone, every time safely to our families.

That's tranquil enough for me.

On Soldiers and Snails

Last winter my battalion pulled duty patrolling a stretch of the security fence south of Kalkilia intercepting Palestinians crossing over in search of employment in Israel, or "snails" as they are called over the army radio. For the most part this entailed stopping the local Palestinian cabbies and checking their passenger's ID lest they be transporting snails.

Late one day we passed by "snail central", an empty lot where the cabbies wait to collect snails on their way home. I told our driver to stop and grabbed a young guy my daughter's age to cover me. At first the cabbies thought I was looking for trouble, understandably considering that I was decked out in 18 kilos of ceramic armor, a combat helmet and an M-16.

"Anybody got a light?" Everybody relaxed and one of the braver ones pulled out a lighter and before I knew it I was standing there in the middle of 20 or so curious cabbies; not as a soldier among snails, but as one of that brotherhood called smokers. We smoked and cracked jokes and got acquainted.

"Tell me, how much is cab fare around here?"
One of the guys shrugged. "It depends. Usually about 5 shekels (1.50 dollars), maybe a little more if it's far, a little less if it's close by."
I was feeling a little mischievous. "And if I wanted a ride. Would you take me?"
A guy my age played along. "Sure. Why not?"
"And do you have a special rate for soldiers?" (Soldiers get a discount on public transportation here.)
"Of course," the cabbie laughed, "For you it's 10 shekels."

After that evening the atmosphere was almost friendly in our sector, at least for me. The cabbies would grin when they saw that it was their smoking buddy pulling them over and I would go though the motions. I was just doing my job and I realized they were just doing theirs. After all, without the army, there would be no such thing as snails, and without snails the army would probably send middle aged guys like me off to do something a lot more dangerous.

When I got home, I wrote "Reserves and Reservations". My battalion started another tour of duty in the same sector last week. For the first time in more than 20 years I asked to stay home this time. It's not that I mind the "snails"; it's just that every year it's a little bit harder than last to function in the cold.

May God bless every one of the men in the 670th and bring them home safe in body and soul. Amen

Reserves and Reservations

I am a reservist in the Israeli army. I guess I'm a bit of an anomaly; most guys my age have long been released. Unfortunately, reservists are fast becoming a rare species in Israel. Once it went without saying that men in their 20's, 30's and 40's did a month or more of reserve duty every year. Not so nowadays. They say maybe only a fifth of able bodied men continue to serve the nation on into civilian life.

Recently my battalion was sent to a stretch of disputed real estate along the so-called security fence built to shield Israel's heartland from the Palestinian badlands on the West Bank. The fence was conceived as a solution to suicide bombers, and born as a compromise between the desire to end the occupation of Palestinians on one hand and the reluctance to evict the Jewish settlers living in the West Bank on the other. Nobody really loves this lovechild of shortsighted politicians and impatient popular opinion, but too much has been invested in prestige and in cold hard cash to disown it.

There is a surrealistic aura to this particular frontier as it is only a quarter hour's drive from the greater Tel Aviv urban area. Theoretically our mission was to ensure the security, or at least the sense of security, of Israeli citizens living in and passing through our sector, but in practice we busied ourselves by regulating the Palestinians crossing the fence and chasing down those seeking work in Israel. As one born in working class America where freedom, hard work and putting the bread on the table are close to sacred, I couldn't help feeling that our duties rubbed against the values I'd been raised on. And I'm sure that the irony didn't escape and most likely incensed the locals. Visits to neighbors and trips to work that once they didn't think twice about now involve security checks including X-ray machines and metal detector gates that would be the pride of any international airport. Family men that at great cost to safety and comfort seek work for peanuts in black market jobs are treated like criminals. I'm a reservist with reservations.

One morning my company commander and I were musing how we had been cast in a Kafkaesque comedy, acting out a script patently insane. I mean, our particular situation aside, when did the army replace the Interior Ministry? Since when does the military deal with employment, legal or otherwise? And even if so, how is it that an artillery battalion such as ours is saddled with duties suited at best to border police, at worst to infantry? It seems as if someone up there is jerry-rigging an improvisation of half baked half solutions that are so absurd that they'd be comical if only real people weren't involved.

My commander wondered aloud if perhaps those of us at the bottom of the political food chain aren't somehow responsible for the mess our leaders have made. Does our eager acquiescence to the dictates of our leaders not enable them to make bad decisions? Do our inventive solutions to the impossible dilemmas we face not perpetuate mismanagement of the country? And is it our fault that 80 percent of the country is busy making money or just goofing off while reservists carry the burden of national defense? Could it be that good citizenship means refusing to "make do and make it work"? If our leaders are too lazy, too corrupt or too cowardly to find real solutions, is it our duty to force them to do their job by not doing ours?

My commander was saying something revolutionary, in both senses of the word. I was a bit taken aback. In civilian life he's a mathematician; and when you think about it, what he says adds up.

Is the solution revolution?

I'm reminded of the account of how Moses comes down from the mountain with the stone tablets only to be greeted by the sight of Israel partying and their leaders worshiping the golden calf. In the face of society that has totally fallen apart he smashes the tablets. The tribe of Levi rallies to his banner and only after slaughter and the destruction of the calf is order restored. I guess there are times when there is no choice but to literally wipe the slate clean and start anew.

But then we are told of how Israel wandered through the wilderness. When they broke camp, the tribe of Judah was always the first to set out. They didn't look back to see what the other tribes were doing. They saw the pillar of fire, they believed that it was the right way to go and they just went there. And you know what? The rest eventually followed.

I'm a reservist with reservations. I admit that I like the army life and the company of the men I serve with. I believe in what we're doing, even if I don't always agree one hundred percent with the mission. I hope that by trying to be polite and when possible pleasant I made a bad situation better for both my friends and the Palestinians we dealt with.

Messiah comes from Judah, not Levi. I know there are a lot of things are wrong with this country. I suppose sometimes things can be so bad that you need to shake it up, but I hope I never live to see a revolution. For now, if I think something is right, I think I'll do it. I know that others are partying and that our leaders worship the golden calf, but if enough of us are willing to set out, perhaps we will find our way out of this wilderness. So if I see the right way to go, I'll go there. And I hope there will be others with me, but I won't look back. Cause you know what, if we follow Judah we might just find salvation.