- 18 hour days – waking up at 6am to clean the toilets that had been made revolting by other courses (most of the doctors on the course are sufficiently OCD to ensure that the toilets remained more or less a uniform colour)
- Mind-numbing lectures, entirely in Hebrew – for example, our two-day course on occupational medicine, learning all about how to distinguish chromium poisoning from cobalt poisoning, just in case someone decides to start mining underneath the base and storing heavy metals in their bedroom.
- Atrocious food - really, atrocious - I’m not a fussy eater, but somehow they managed to make even the humble cucumber revolting by either leaving in the sun too long, preserving it in what I can only assume was formaldehyde, or drowning it in garlic salt). Want a boiled egg? No problem. But it came from a chicken who probably died in 2008, and has since been gamma irradiated and stored in an airtight jar in a hot warehouse. If the odd bitter taste and slight black colour of the yoke doesn’t put you off, the botulism will. Don’t get me started on the scrambled egg (from egg powder) or the shakshuka (from egg powder)... or the soup (from soup powder), the potato mash (from potato powder) or the salad (from salad powder... probably).
- Commanders who did their best but were ultimately little kids on power trips. Some of them were great – the overall boss was a doctor whose experience justified his role. But most were age 21 or so, just about managing to grow some stubble, and lacked a hint of common sense. Like the time I was reprimanded for checking my gun was safe and unloaded before returning it to the warehouse (as is obligatory), because I hadn’t been ordered to, and because the commander (and everyone else) had forgotten about it.
- Exams – exam to assess trauma care = fair enough. Exam to assess communication skills = fair enough. Exam to assess ability to deploy a field hospital = fair enough. Exam to assess the differences between different types of helicopter = borderline. Exam to assess the understanding of legal obligations of the state and army after a soldier is exposed to a trace of asbestos = pushing it. Exam to assess details of what to do in the event that our field hospital is attacked by various methods = scary. Week in, week out, exams. Some logical, some medical, some based on out-of-date 200 page books about the old army structure, which we must still be examined on because no-one has been bothered to make an updated version with the correct information in it. So I know all about the central care clinics of the old days, but as they don’t exist anymore, no one has checked if I know how it’ll work in the next war.
- Life in the field. The big field exercise is a blog entry in itself. So much to say... see below.
- Army mentality. It would be unfair to say that the army was more ridiculous and irrational than every other organisation and company in Israel. It isn’t; it’s just that the army is so big, all of that ridiculousness is confounded. For example, not long ago I required a new felt tip board marker during a classroom exercise; having discovered that such a valuable commodity was not kept in supply in the classroom cupboard, I went over to the logistics department to get another one. After a 5 minute debate, I left empty handed; unless I could return the empty old one (to prove I did indeed need it for classroom activity), I would only get a new one if I had attained the rank of lieutenant or higher. In addition, here are the three golden rules of the army that apply at all times.
- The law of time
It’s reasonable that punctuality is important both to ensure efficiency, and discipline. But what happens if one completes the task early? This is something that we experienced many times; an exercise that finished early, a lecture that finished early, or even a lecturer that failed to turn up. Logic would suggest that we use the extra time to work on a different project, or move some other activity forward to allow us to finish our day earlier and get more sleep... or even go home! But the law of time suggests otherwise. It dictates that if something is due to start at 1700, it must not start earlier, as this would not comply with the law of time. If our day is due to finish at 2215, it must not finish at 2200 – as this would severely impact on the reliability of the law of time... it could have vast and never-ending consequences on...er... the law of time. Thus, the self-fulfilling prophecy of punctuality and subsequent wasted hours continues.
- Wet is clean
It’s very difficult to clean a floor that hasn’t been scrubbed in years. Grime, caked on mud (and probably excrement), and a bad paint job that means most of the floor is cheap army paint anyway, preclude any possibility of truly making the toilets feel like the risk of catching a significant disease is low. Inspections of cleaning are made immediately after the allotted cleaning time is over (needless to say, if one finished early, the law of time is activated, and one will automatically reclean the same area, to avoid the risk of being sent off to clean some other, more filthy area, until time runs out). So how can a commander know if the room has been cleaned? Simple! It would be wet! Therefore, a bucket of Israel’s precious water, flung over a toilet and the surrounding floor, and haphazardly cleared away, is sufficient to pass the commander’s inspection. Heaven forbid you wet it too early, allowing drying time, or much worse, make the effort to squeegee away all the water... as clearly, the room would therefore be dirty again.
- Being confused with police
During officers’ training, all soldiers wear blue lapel tags on their shirts. Symbolically, this represents the real officers’ lapel markings, supposedly hidden beneath, which are then exposed when the blue is ripped off by the course commander during graduation. Unfortunately, this means officers sometimes get confused with military police, the useless vermin who spend their lives giving soldiers fines for having scuffed shoes or a wonkey badge. Army doctor = loved. Soldier in officers’ training = loved. Military Police = Hated. Quite amusing to see how many people seemed to glare until they discovered I wasn’t looking to give them a ticket. (We were told a rather amusing story of a military police officer who was assaulted some years back, when he tried to give a soldier a fine for having muddy shoes. The soldier had just returned home from the immense stress of the Lebanon war, sleep deprived and physically drained; when he was stopped by the officer, he snapped. Good for him!)
Life in the field
Part of the course involves a week of very high-level strategy training. In conjunction with other courses – such as the commanders’ course, we took part in a full-scale war simulation, where Israel had (once again) been attacked by Syria. Needless to say, I’m not exactly going to publish on the net details of who, what, how, why, where... or in fact anything else that bears any military significance (although Syria probably know all that anyway), but I do want to tell you about...er...being close to nature.
After days of preparation, planning, meetings, maps, logistics and so on, I joined a unit as their medical officer as Israel went to battle. It all started in the middle of the night, with a nice sleep out in the cold night air, underneath the stars, hoping that the scorpions weren’t feeling too pissed off and that the hypothermia would ease off when we started our moonlit hike with heavy backpacks and M16 assault rifles. It was a long trek towards a virtual enemy, through swamps, razor wire, mosquito hotspots and the small but nonetheless significant risk of taking a wrong turning and entering a minefield. We had approximately six hours to reach our destination before sunrise.
A few miles into the hike, something rather unfortunate happened. My stomach gurgled. In itself, that wasn’t such a problem. But it happened to be the battle horn of Operation ‘Adam ate something that wasn’t prepared in sanitary conditions’. After 30 minutes, my stomach was so bloated that not only had I opened my belt, but also all the buttons on my trousers, and was eyeing every tree we passed for a suitable place to...er... deploy my troops. But responsible for hundreds of soldiers, on a tight deadline which influenced the entire mission, there was no way to stop, and no way to leave the group. Onwards we trod, through the night, no end in sight and no time for a break.
A couple of hours later, luck dealt me a good hand while dealing someone else a harsh one. A vehicle in another unit overturned, leaving several injuries and resulting in a halt to the mission. We buried ourselves in the grass, silenced the radios and waited for an indefinite period, while one of my colleagues dealt with a compound fracture and arranged evacuation of the injured. My chance had arrived!
I snuck away from the group, holding my cramping stomach in one hand and a first aid kit in the other (gauze being the only option available to me...) while climbing over the rocks and tall grass to the ruins of an old building 50 metres away. It was the perfect location – open to the elements from above, but surrounded on all sides by the remnants of a wall, currently at shoulder height, offering sufficient privacy without the risk of walking into a rats den. I found my spot, began to prepare, when suddenly...
“Freeze! Identify yourself!”
Yes, of all the places, in the dozens of square miles of wilderness in which we roamed, I had chosen a spot around 5 metres away from a covert spying unit, complete with night vision, just on the other side of the low wall. Did I care? No I did not.
Some time later, feeling much happier, and lighter, we continued on our way into battle, complete with the boyish fun of real tank fire, live bullets, and helicopter evacuations of my virtual patients.
So, here I stand at the end of the course. I have been placed in a base in the middle of the wilderness between Shechem (Nablus) and the Jordan Valley, where I will spend the vast majority of the next year of my life. More to follow soon...
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