What are we praying for? What do we want, and why?

You are snuggly under your blanket or in your sleeping bag when all that peace and serenity comes to an abrupt halt. Shouting and yelling, darkness turning into abrupt harsh light, sleeping bags and blankets thrown off and the bitter cold immediately pervading every aspect of your being.

You have exactly seven minutes from the time the guard is told to wake everyone up, to be standing in rows in your uniform on the parade ground with boots laced and buttons closed, ready for anything, for a new day of hell. 

We were a few weeks into basic infantry training in the IDF, and of all the horrible, sadistic systems they employed to break us and build us, this was the one I hated the most. Going on as little as three or four hours’ sleep, after exhausting days full of running, marching, shouting and yelling, we would fall into an exhausted sleep in our tents, only to be roused in the pre-dawn freezing cold darkness to start all over again. Anyone caught trying to sleep in uniform would instantly lose their weekend pass, and the process of waking up, getting out of your sleeping bag in the freezing cold to get dressed and outside on time was so intensely depressing I still recall that feeling, so many years later.

On this particular morning the sergeant had apparently unscrewed the light bulb in the tent so we had to do all this in the dark, which made it even worse. Years later I would understand, as an officer, the value of being able to wake and be ready for battle in a matter of moments, but at the time, it simply filled me with an intense depression unlike any I had ever experienced. 

And I still remember the feeling on that particular morning, standing on the parade ground shivering in the cold as our sadistic sergeant eyed us all, and realizing with horror, I had forgotten my gun in the tent. A feeling of pure terror and depression gripped me; every soldier is told at the beginning of basic: your gun is like your wife; sleep with it shower with it, never leave it. I was in a lot of trouble. Never had I wanted anything as much as I wanted that sergeant to finish our roll call and dismiss us so I could get back into my tent and get my gun without being seen.