Starting bomb school

First off, sorry for the late post. I wanted to write sooner, but never could find the time.

It has defiantly been an intensive and interesting pass few weeks. To start off, we had our masa Alyiah to Beitled (June 13-19). Beitled is an army base used by Gadsar Nahal and Tzanchaniem. This new base of ours is a definite improvement from our regular bases for a few reasons.

1: instead of tents there are rooms with AC

2: this base is only meant for Gadsar or the Special Forces of Nahal and so there are no regular soldiers there.

3: there is more food and better tasting food.

4: there are actually a lot of girls on the base (usually there were no girls at all.)

5: the base is also home for different units (Tzanchaniem and others)

6: The base is big and is therefore called the land of Madas (physical running or working out.)

7: We stated lochami training. Basically it is Krav Maga, stance shooting and short range shooting all in one. The reason for this training is to teach us how to shoot in close quarter areas, such as a house or other small places

8: the base is near Tel Aviv so it is closer to the kibbutz and the center of civilization (means that parents can actually come and visit us when we close base and that there is always good food on the weekends.)

The following week (June 20-25), we left the base and went to Balatz (the base used by handasa Cravi or combat engineers. The base is located in the south, 40 km north of Eilat so the weather there is always hot and dry.

The reason why we went to Balatz was to start learning our specialty course, bomb defuse and setting.

We spent the first week learning about all different types of bombs, cables and detonators. The first thing you learn is the bomb sequence of events. Basically it starts from the igniters, then runes through the wire and goes to the exploding material. The course is a lot of fun. We also spent one of the days in the bomb range (a shooting range but longer and designed to blow up mines.) It was cool to finally put into practice what we have learned. We also spent the week learning about hot entrees. Hot entrees are when we enter a building in the middle of the village. The difference between a hot entree and a regular bomb is that hot entrees are meant to be placed quickly and have a lessen amount of explosives, causing less casualties and causing less structural damage then a regular bomb.

This past week (June27- July 2nd) we spent learning on mines. We learned the difference between anti-tank mine and anti personnel mines. We also had a targil one night, where we pretended to enter a village and we had to enter it using one of the hot entrees and blow up some items we found inside the house. My job was to help blow up the items we found in the house and then get out. It was a lot of fun and I finally can say that I have a better understanding of what it is Palchan Nahal does.

On a sadder note, my MM is leaving me. He has decided that he doesn’t want to be a MM of soldiers in training and would rather be a MM for fighters. It was very sad to see him leave, but we all know that he is doing what he wants and we wish him the best of luck in the future.