Anecdote Theater: IDF Adventures, Part 1
In January of 2010, just before I left for Lishkat Giyuz, the Israeli recruitment office, I logged on to a forum board that I frequented at the time and wrote, “if you don’t hear back from me in a few weeks, it means I’m probably stranded in the middle of the desert, a lone Russian man my only companion.” I’d been living in Israel for four years at that point, but I’d mostly been around other Americans. I was nervous. I had no idea what to expect. But I was also excited. I mean, I had no idea what to expect!
In retrospect, I think the IDF felt the same way about me. What do you do with a 23 year-old with a business degree? But I showed up, got sorted with all the other recruits, got my picture taken, got my injections, and ended up in a room with a guy who said, “I know you took the test to be an officer. You’re not going to be an officer. Do you wanna maybe join the Air Force?” It wasn’t an order or a command. I probably could have said no. I probably could have named any non-special forces unit right then and there, and the guy would have said “okay,” and shuffled me off in that direction.
But Air Force sounded interesting, so I went with it.
I picked up my uniform, got changed, and ended up on a bus that just took me to another part of the base. I had no idea what was going on.
I remember the experience of walking in boots for the first time. And I do mean the first time. I’d basically lived my life in sandals before then, or sneakers if I really had to. I had never worn boots before, let alone heavy leather combat boots. It gave me a strange feeling of invincibility for the handful of hours before I got over it.
It turned out that the place they took me was sort of a temporary holding area. I had not yet figured this out, but my confusion should not necessitate yours as well. There were sergents putting us in basic formations and giving us orders, but really that was just so they wouldn’t have a bunch of 18 year-olds (and me) running around with zero structure. I could have, at any point in time during this procedure, said “screw this” and found my own corner to read a book, and nothing bad would have happened to me. I never saw any of the people from that holding area again in my life.
But, naive, unquestioning me, I’d just assumed that folding dirty blankets and moving them by hand from one hot shipping container to another was some kind of essential task, and I threw my back into it.
At the end of the day, a bunch of soldiers were called to get on more buses, and were taken elsewhere. I was not. I ended up on a cot in a tent, and it was that night that I lost my beret.
The beret, it should be noted, is an integral part of the IDF uniform, and must be worn by soldiers at all times. I was not yet aware of this.
Anyway. The next day I got to go on a bus with a small handful of other soldiers, and it took us to a train station where we boarded a two-hour train for Be’er Sheva. In Be’er Sheva, we were put on a four-hour bus for the Ovda Air Force Base.
Reader, for those of you unfamiliar with Israeli geography, I want you to know: between Be’er Sheva and Ovda, in those 200 kilometers, there is naught but sand. The departure point and the destination for that trip are, essentially, on either end of the Negev Desert.
I still had a Nokia brick phone back then, and reading was proving difficult with the constant rumbling of the bus, so, as one would assume, I spent those four hours training myself to recite the 50 US states in reverse-alphabetical order, based on the fact that I could already recite them forwards.
It occurs to me, suddenly, that on my maiden voyage to Alaska, I spent much of my time training myself to recite the 45 US states (in forward-alphabetical order) that were members of the Union as of 1898. I wonder if that means anything.
In any case, I got about halfway through the backwards list of states and had managed to give myself a reasonable headache by the time the bus arrived at Ovda. And so, three days after the rest of the unit, I joined basic training.