My army service, part six

Whilst attending the kibbutz's Memorial Day (or evening) ceremony, I was reminded of this event that occurred twice when I was in the army. I have absolutely no recollection of this day and the following Independence Day when I was nearing the end of basic training. I suspect that we stayed on the base, guarding, but I may be wrong. The second time, approaching the end of my service, was somewhat different.

As I have probably written before, I spent most of my service in the chief medical officer's headquarters near Tel Aviv. Our small base was only one part of a huge base that housed at least ten different units; I have written before how once I was duty sergeant¹ for the entire base, and once before that I spent a very boring weekend guarding the southern entrance to the base. For Memorial Day, each unit contributed one or two soldiers who would stand guard over the memorial monument for the entire 24 hours.

For some reason, I was chosen to represent my unit. All the soldiers who were to guard were gathered together a few hours before the memorial period began and received an explanation of what we were to do. Each soldier would be one of a pair that would stand guard over the memorial, not moving for 15 minutes, with one foot straight and the other touching it at a 90 degree angle (quite uncomfortable); this would be repeated three times, once an hour. The officer in charge of the ceremony asked if there was anyone who lived far away, and I raised my hand. As a result, I was one of those chosen for the first shift of guarding: I was 'on' from 6 - 6:15pm, 7 - 7:15pm, 8 - 8:15pm and 9 - 9:15pm; after that I was free to go home. Others had to spend the night on the base.

I didn't return to the base the next day, granting myself an unofficial holiday, to the slight annoyance of my direct superior, the laboratory manager who was expecting me to conduct some experiment with her. This allowed me to escape the burden of the Independence Day (ID) parade that presumably took place on the morning before the evening of ID; I'm fairly certain that the parade wasn't held on the morning of ID itself, but I have to admit that I haven't thought about this in 44 years.

It was an honour to have been chosen to guard over the monument, but as I say, I have no idea as to why I was chosen.

Internal links
[1] 1913

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
476	29/04/2012	Two films	Films, Meg Ryan, Steig Larsson
703	29/04/2014	Yo'av Tibon, RIP	Personal, Obituary, Kibbutz
1127	29/04/2018	DBA update	DBA
1313	29/04/2020	Stormbringer!	Nick Drake, 1970, Joe Boyd, John and Beverley Martin
1389	29/04/2021	DBA: Methodology chapter	DBA
1611	29/04/2023	The seer (new song)	Peter Hammill, Song writing