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Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Welcome to the Vatikot

“Hey, where is guard station 'blue'?” I asked a fellow soldier. Looking at me, he simply pointed, no response. Frustrated, I continued walking, before stopping another soldier, one I've never met, “Can you tell me how to get to 'blue'?” He pointed at a sign on the wall, but a word. We were the new tzairim (youngsters) in the vatikot, and the older soldiers had started their games.

Rewinding just a bit, I'd to like to explain the process of being absorbed into a new company after training. As I explained quite briefly, once training on the bach is finished, the entire draft moves together into what's known as the plugat maslool (training company). This company is considered the youngest of the warriors and spends a period of four months learning on the job, so to speak.

After the four months are over, the company is broken up and each soldier is absorbed into one of the vatikot, a new company with a specific specialty, made up of soldiers from a few different drafts. There, he will remain for the rest of his service.

After our Tekes Sof Maslool (a brief ceremony recognizing the end of your first year in the army), I, along with half of my pluga (company), were assigned our new pluga. Each platoon in the company has a specific task and needs to go through a course learning this specialty accordingly. I won't disclose the nature of my new company nor what we do, but after a short course learning the basics of our specialty, we joined the rest of the company on our new border.

We arrived to our border rotation, the Hermon mountains in the north, as the youngsters of the company. While we had to deal with the unique operational challenges of watching arguably the hottest border of Israel, we also quickly found out that each company has it's own traditions of seniority and games. After being essentially ignored for the first couple of weeks on our border, we understood entirely what was happening.

While the severity of these games differs everywhere and can sometimes cross the line in certain units, it can also be a fun aspect to the service, passing the time between mundane mindless tasks.

As youngsters, we were tasked with kitchen duties and the worst guard duties, essentially pulling triple our weight for our new company. Whenever there is work to do, it immediately falls on the shoulders of the tzairim, considering the vatikim (old soldiers) have already done their fair share. While it can sound unfair, the workload is certainly not unbearable and each platoon, old or young, still executes a large number of tasks. The youngsters simply receive the less appealing ones.

After some frustrating interactions, I found the “blue” station and finished one of my many guard duties to start my time as a deployed warrior. We understood why exactly we were being ignored. In the eyes of the vatikim, we had yet to truly sacrifice or “sweat” for the company, and therefore were not worthy of joining the family yet.

The sacrifice came soon after, during our masa aliya. Yes, another masa. After being entirely convinced I was done with the dreadful, torturous task known as the masa, we were told we needed to do one more, this time to earn our way into our new family.

And so it began. We arrived at the lowest point of a Hermon peak selected by the company, and up we climbed. We climbed and we climbed, exhausted, until we reached the top with our base in sight. Smiling, I exclaimed to a friend, “very hard, but we're done!” I was wrong yet again.

The officer in charge of the company arrived and led us to the ski lift. “Everyone on the ski lift, you're going back down.” We were shocked, but mostly amused. We rode the ski lift to the bottom, smiles on our faces due to the absurd change in course.


Still in good spirits riding the ski lift.


Up we went again, this time starting with three stretchers. We huffed and puffed, exhausted as we climbed, finding yet another stretcher. 


Before finding eight stretchers!

We continued, finding another along the path, then another, until we were up to eight stretchers. Everyone carried and no one could switch, we simply did not have enough people.

Our shoulders searing with pain and the legitimate thought on our minds that they may break, we persevered, once more climbing the mountain and edging closer to our base. As we were within a short run's distance, we noticed fire leading our way, our companies name spelled out in flames.

Then came the smoke grenades. Before we knew it, the vatikim, who had until this point been ignoring us, came running out, singing songs of the company and pushing us to the finish line, congratulating us as we went and hugging us as we finished. We had paid our first dues. We had been welcomed into the family.

-Brett

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