What does not break us only makes us stronger

Ask any Israeli soldier who served in the armored corps what part of his army service he hated the most, and he will answer unequivocally “tipul shvui,” the weekly tank inspection.

After completing 10 weeks of basic infantry training, followed by an additional 10 weeks of tank crew school learning the rudimentary skills of serving as tank crew members, we began one of the most difficult courses in the Israeli army. For 12 grueling weeks we averaged less than 15 hours of sleep a week, training day and night in our tanks in the field, with no showers, eating cold battle rations in the blistering heat of the Middle Eastern summer. Heading out of base in our tanks to the simulated battlefield environment on Sunday mornings, the entire week was one long nightmare of dust and diesel fumes, shell blasts and grease.

In an effort to simulate battle, we trained until we were so tired it was too dangerous to maneuver in tanks. We would finally head back to base in the early dawn hours of Thursday morning. And then the dreaded inspections would begin.

Forced to work on our tanks all day Thursday and into the night, we were not allowed to sleep or shower until our commanders were satisfied that every last screw was tightened, every last nozzle properly greased and every corner of the tank cleaned and scrubbed until it practically sparkled. And every week, no matter how hard we tried, we always failed the inspections time after time until they were finally satisfied the tank was ready for battle.

Often, the failed inspections would be followed with forced runs around the tanks or similar exhausting consequences, such that we were extremely motivated to pass inspection as early as possible, especially when we were due for weekend leave; if the Commanders did not think we were taking the inspection seriously enough, we could lose our weekend pass in an instant.

But it seemed that no matter how hard we tried, it was never good enough. Our commanders always found something wrong, a smudge of grease left on the main gun, a few drops of water missing from the battery, not enough oil, or too much, on the heavy machine gun and so on. And then you had to start all over again.