We got a baaad history...

When my cousin was 18 he moved to Israel and joined the army. They put him into Shiryon, the tank unit and they didn't really take into account the fact that his Hebrew was pretty weak (cough@#$ I wonder what that's like*$# cough#$ cough hack). In a tank there is a driver and a navigator. The driver can't see and the navigator can't control the tank. My cousin was driving and the navigator told him "He'et" a nice word for "slow down". My cousin didn't know that word. He crashed the tank. He caused $83,000 worth of damage. Now for my turn. We were on an afternoon patrol last week (8 hour hummer ride from 4pm to midnight) on the Jordanian border. We spent a lot of it sitting at the border crossing and at 10 to 12 we started driving back to the base to switch up. Our hummers are open hummers, most with no windshields and I was sitting behind the driver with my fleece sweatshirt on backwards over my face so the wind wouldn't bother me. The driver, at one point lost control and I felt the car turn sharply so I took the fleece off my face and we crashed into the fence. I'm the only one who got hurt and I didn't really get hurt that badly. Some wicked bruises and scratches from the barbed wire on the fence. My favorite phrase in this whole army is "maximum, sick leave". For example: "Ya'el, aren't you scared to go to the shooting ranges with the borderline disfunctional commanders in your unit?" "Nah, maximum, sick leave." Or: "Ya'el, you aren't worried about going out with a driver on his first patrol?" "maximum..." You get what you wish for.

Comments

[Slavie]

hey. im starting the army in febuary. any way i can get in touch with you to ask a few questions?
Thanks

[yuliam]

Hi, my name is Yulia Mestechkin. I am doing research for a documentary about olim for Israeli TV. I read your blog and forwarded some posts to the director Avi Hemi. He found it very interesting. I would really like to talk to you. Please reply to my e-mail yuliamest@gmail.com or to my mobile phone 050-7931889. Looking forward to hearing from you, Yulia

[Matt]

Tough one (helpful, I know). Hang in there, kid.