I was rereading my short series about my compulsory army service when I noticed that I had not written very much about the final months of my service. If I'm going to add another blog entry, then I'll take this opportunity to write about a few more episodes that I neglected to write about.
In the fourth episode, I wrote1 about joining the Medical Corps Headquarters staff - this would have been in mid-July 1980. Two months later would have been the Jewish New Year, and I made great efforts to be released for this; I even asked the secretary of the kibbutz to write a note, explaining that I was essential to the celebrations. Knowing the army mind-set, these efforts probably determined that I would not be released and that I would have to stay on base. I wrote2 about this on another occasion.
As a result of this bad experience, I made a deal with the NCO who was responsible for creating the guard duty roster: I made up a monthly table of when I would guard, including weekends and requested that I would guard on those nights instead of suddenly being released (being surplus to requirements) and having to turn up the following night. I probably guarded more under this system that I might have done so without it, but at least I knew when I was going to guard and so had a bit more control over my life, something very important in the army. This guard duty system was maintained for a few months until I became sergeant.
I don't remember now when this was, but the direct result of becoming a sergeant was that I hardly ever spent any more nights on the base. I vaguely remember one night when I was duty sergeant for the entire base which was a terrible experience (although it only lasted for that night). There was another night that finished by me being carted off to hospital as noted in the fourth episode, and one final weekend when I was duty sergeant for my unit. This was a fairly relaxed affair, although there were a few points that made it interesting. Late on the Friday evening, one of the girls who was supposed to be guarding wasn't feeling well, so I had to telephone another girl soldier who had gone home for the night in order to recall her - she lived very close to the base. Later on, I had to wake up some of girl soldiers in the middle of the night for their 2 am shift; this placed me in a dilemma as I had to enter their guardroom in order to wake them, but this room was out of bounds for male soldiers! I don't remember exactly what happened: I think that I stood outside and called the girls.
Sometime in or around February/March 1981, I and three other soldiers from my unit were sent to guard for a week part of the Tel Aviv coastline. I have no idea as why any of us were chosen for this duty that might seem to be easy but proved not to be; I seem to recall that our unit had to supply guards for some number of weeks and it was my turn to do this unusual service. We were taken to a room in Kikar Atarim in Tel Aviv where our duties were explained to us. There were two bunks for sleeping: each pair would guard for six hours, then be off duty for six hours, then be on again for six hours and off for six hours. During the off hours we would eat (we had minimal cooking facilities and presumably the army provided us with food), wash (public showers) and sleep. The actual guard duty was extremely boring and seemingly pointless.
I have four specific memories of this week: the first involved watching through a telescope as a boat approached the coast and reporting this to our control; it turns out that this was a fishing boat and looked much larger in the scope than it actually was. Another time in the middle of the night, I was woken by the radio: control was calling our guards but they had fallen asleep. I had to get out of bed, answer the control and wake our guards. Another evening the lady who was shortly to become my wife came to visit; my fellow guards lit us with the searchlight as we walked along a wave breaker. The fourth memory was leaving the post and coming home to the kibbutz for a few hours, although I don't recall what I did there.
When it became clear that the lady and I were going to be married, I started making calculations as to when would be the optimum time to do. There would be a week's leave for the honeymoon, so taking this and other factors in account, the end of June would be best. This would leave only one weekend that I would have to spend on the base, as mentioned above, and my planning worked perfectly.
Eventually my release date came around; it was delayed by a week because I had taken a week of 'special leave' in November 1980 when my parents came to visit. This was considering a postponement of service and so had to be repaid. I calculated that of the eighteen months that I was in the army, I spent three months on leave, most of it for medical reasons, although I'm not sure of that calculation now. The 'demob unit' was next to my unit so I could easily go around and say goodbye to whoever I wanted to - primarily those in the laboratory. It was a very low key event; trying to recall it now, the only thing that I remember was that I had to wait until after lunch to be released.
Internal links
[1] 782
[2] 887
| Title | Tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 163 | Left/right hemisperes of the brain | Psychology, The brain | |
| 691 | Research questionnaire / 4 | DBA | |
| 1734 | Introducing the Kobo | Kindle, Kobo |
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