To America and Back
Page 35
The recruit Naum Kaplansky arrrived in the Recruits Reception and Mobilization Camp, received a personal military number, a kitbag, one pair of ‘complete shoes’, Khaki uniform, a khaki beret, and some othert personal belongings like underwears and Mess-tins(urensils). He was soldiered to one of the most poor armies in the world, using old rifles from WW2, three types of worst tanks, five types of old artillery canons. But it had relatively new French Airfighters, that were the best and most efficient of all the said weapons; and Humik had known that he wouldn’t have anything with them.
Three days was Humik in that camp, which was full of young civilians and soldiers walking there together, and searching for the best army dresses that would fit their own height and/or width, but of course in vain. In the fourth day there came a military truck, that took thirty ‘fresh flesh’ for the killing machine – to the camp of Beit Daras in the south of the country, about an hour drive from the country’s center.
They came to the recruits’ training camp, which was said to strengthen their muscles and fill air in their lungs and make their heart a strong pounding machine, and cause their feet to run as fast as a horse’s ones, and very important: cause them feel that everybody must concentrate on his only target, and to forget the imaginative world in which he had lived before.
‘You will pass here a few very intensive grey months; but in the future you will be longing for them, because you’d know that you had given here your utmost, your juice, your sweat. Hopefully not your flesh and blood; well said. But you are a recruit, a pissed off liquid, a tired animal, expected at any moment to fall to the ground. You’ll always be active, operative, quick moving. You’ll be climbing –passing – running –limping –penetrating–bursting-folding–kneeling-bending-creeping-etc.
A full list of all of the private soldier’s detailed tasks and activities can be found in Training Book number wx125 in the Military Officers’ Library, if you madly want to have a look…
‘But what you want and need most of all’ Humik thought-‘ that ‘they’ will let you lie down and get rest, like in the NY Cellar, beside dear Raphaella, the damned looking girl. She had accomplished the promotion course already. I hope Nathan has permitted her to do that. She had still time left to marry him. But what’s burning for such a couple to marry? I heard that among our comrades here, no recruit has been married. They say, that our young officer, Lieutenant Amikam, is already married, but his wife is not allowed to visit him here: His superior commander prohibits anyone of his stuff to meet anybody from outside, even on Saturdays. h’s like an acrobat, Amikam. He demanded from us to perform only what he himself could demontrate to us: a fast climbing on ropes hanging on and between timber pillars, slipping on the Omega stretched ropes for one hundred meters; running into a pit and jolting to get out and getting into mud; and before all that – smear your face and hands with coaled powder.’
“You should cheer up, don’t be sore,” so said tall Israel Moshavnik to tired Humik. Moshavnik’s father wasn’t a simple person, so were telling all the Group members to each other. ‘He is a friend of the special units commander, Arik’.
Humik’s recruits’ small unit -ten men- direct commander was sargeant David Nizmy, born in Tunis. But after a while there suddenly came an order from the high command, that he should be replaced. Why? Lieutenant Amikam, who was sitting on one of the mess’ tables, his long ornamented stick in hand, explained that very simply to the tired recruits: “They need him somewhere else. I know he was excellent and you loved his singing while marching at night. He taught me also the poem and song ’at that night, without light, how nice were your pigeon eyes’, and so on. Villensky and Zeira had written it. Now you’ll sing it by yourselves.” But what Amikam had not known was, that Nizmy told his recruits that they could hand a written protest to the High Command, if they were feeling that something very very bad had happened to one of them, that their commander was a real sadist or that some commander had given them an unlawful order, something scandalous. For example: Killing innocent citizens, or even cattle or hens that belong to the enemy…
Humik’s training team got second ensign Salom Levy instead of Nizmy. Some of the recruits had known the guy from Haifa. Before being mobilized, he was selling Fallafel food on Carmel Mount, near theater cinema Hadar. How had the army changed such a simple guy and made him a commander of recruits, that still cannot differentiate between left and right?
Really, Humik had not been hurt while Levy was training with them a bursting attack over a high sandy hill. But recruit Eli Tabakh shouted to his comrades, that his commander had almost shot his leg. “I’ll submit an official complaint about him,” he shouted, and the second ensign had heard, “I still feel the buzz of the shooting bullet under my shoe-sole.”
Then came a sudden stormy raining day, and the recruits were deeply plunged into mud. When returning to their tents, they thought thay would sleep calmly, just listening under two blankets to the nice rainfall. But all of a sudden they were feeling they were floating on a pool, and everything had become wet. So they squeezed the water out of the blankets and went to some deserted place, a small Arab ex-village nearby, whose houses’ walls were having holes caused by training artillery forces. In the rest of that night they were sleeping there very densed, touching each other, while seated on the hollowed cement floor. There was not enough place to lie in that stormy-rainy night in such a forgotted corner of the universe.
The coming weeks were better. Winter had almost become to an end, and the recruits were attacking many ground targets in screams, shooting bullets and throwing handgrenades. One soldier was also bombing the unseen enemy from a two inches’ mortar shell, to make it look and heard like a real battle.
But then had ended the chapter of fighting-like-in-the-films, and began the sand eating chapter, while ‘navigating in singles or in couples’ at night, and so on. At that time Leutenant Amikam came to a visit, and the recruits demanded him to replace the ‘Fallafel Ex-seller’, who became sick due to the bad weather.
There was a tumult, and Officer Amikam told them to be quiet.
“Enough, kids.” he said, this time his stick had changed to a whip, which he waved in the air, “Let the kinderkeeper speak: You’ll move from here to the ‘Seeds’ within a month. Have patience to the end of your period.”