We need seven days to reach ‘shemini’

First, there was the screaming and yelling. When my blanket was thrown off and I felt the freezing air, I finally woke wup. It was 3 am and we had seven minutes to get dressed in full uniform and be outside in perfect rows of threes or … there was no or.

At 1 am, we had finally been allowed to go to sleep after an incredibly long day in basic training. Now I was so tired I could barely stand. Then “Sergeant Itzik” showed up. We knew we were in trouble, we just had no idea why.

“Did you check your pakalim?” he yelled. (Pakalim are the individual extra equipment charges each soldier had: different soldiers were responsible for the platoon’s stretchers, machine gun, shoulder-carried anti-tank weapons, the radio, and so on.)

One by one he checked out the individual pieces of equipment to make sure they were “ready for battle,” while his yelling got louder and louder. Then he got to the jerrycans: “Did you take care of the jerrycans?” he screamed? They needed to be filled with water.

When he gave the first jerrycan a kick, the thud of his boot hitting a full jerrycan gave the right answer. But when he kicked the second jerrycan, the hollow sound his boot made as it sent the obviously empty jerrycan hurtling into the air still haunts my dreams. I was responsible for one of the the platoon’s two 20 liter jerrycans.

I could sense the dread that immediately descended upon the entire platoon. We were obviously in for a long night. I looked at my buddy who was responsible for the other jerrycan who was thinking exactly what I was thinking: “I know I filled that jerry can before hitting the sack.” No way had one of us forgotten to fill it; we both remembered filling them the night before.

It took me a while to figure out that our commanders had emptied out one of the jerry cans. Images of my friends back in college in the U.S. were swimming through my brain as it dawned on me that we were totally at the mercy of these sadomasochists with three stripes on their arms. And what was the point?