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Sunday night, I came back from kitchen duty, when I was shocked to find out we were at war with Syria. Turns out that the Hezbollah, backed by Syria of course, was starting to get real obnoxious, so we invaded Syria a little in order to teach them a lesson. Lebanon then joined into the fray, so the 7th Brigade was sent to the Lebabnese border. I though nothing of this and went to sleep, even though they told us we had to sleep in uniform. Big deal, not like I can't sleep in uniform. Then at 1:30 am we were scrambled. A terrorist had entered the base and started shooting. We quickly dispatched him to Allah, did a body count and went to sleep. Monday was a normal day, a whole bunch of time wasted, went to the shooting range for a bit, and came back. We went to sleep a bit early, but it was fine. After I got off my shift of guard duty, I got out of my fatigues and into my tankers' overalls. I had a hunch which was proven true when at 6:00 AM all hell broke loose. People were shooting at us, and there was great confusion. After we took care of the threat, the order came down for us to move out. Within 10 minutes we had to pack and be ready to go. We loaded everything up on the tanks, and drove out. We went to our first staging area, and rolled out the camo nets. We had a quick refresher on the situation, and suddently more gunfire. Our camoflauge wasn't good enough and we were spotted from the air. We quickly folded everything up, got in the tanks, and moved to another area. We camoflauged the tanks again, and then had another refresher course on navigation, foot patrols and urban warfare. Then it turned out that our food was dropped in the wrong area, and we had to go find it. We went on patrol, found our food, killed the terrorist who tried to set up an ambush, and then went to the nearby village to find a house that we could eat in in (relative) safety. As we were finishing our meal another terrorist started shooting at us, so we quickly moved out after taking care of him as well. We got to the tanks when it was dark already. We ate another meal and went to sleep. At 12:00 we were woken up to take out a company of enemy tanks spotted in the area, and then laid in ambush for a terrorist cell which was launching rockets into Israeli territory. We eliminated them, and went back to sleep. The next morning we went to our former camp site to pick up some trash left behind. As we were waiting for orders, chemical agents were dropped on us, and we had to fight off an attack by the Hezbollah. We then got up into the tanks and my company pressed the attack forward. After trading fire with some dug in tanks, we took them out, and proceeded through the cleared part of the minefield and conquered the surrounding terrain so the rest of the brigade could pass through. Our mission successful, we joined the brigade as it was going through, and advanced into enemy territory. As night came my company was called up to do the same mission in a different area. It was much shorter because the enemy broke and ran. That night we slept near our new safe zone. At 6:00 Thursday morning we were awoken with more gunfire, this time sporadic gunfire. It seemed there was still some enemy around. We were mopping up when the word came down. Syria wanted to negotiate, the Lebanese were withdrawing from the fight, and we hit the Hezbollah infrastructure so hard they couldn't fight anymore. As we got back to base and were getting ready to park, someone climbed up on the tank and before my commander could shoot him, stabbed him in the neck. My loader shot the terrorist with his M-16, we gave my commander first aid, and then we brought him back to the battalion's first aid station. It turned out to be a superficial wound, and by the end of the day he was back with us. Other forces came into the area, so we were free to do some maintenance on the tanks, and I was allowed out for the weekend.
Sounds realistic, doesn't it? That's what my past week was like. this past week was war week, and although it was very hard, it was crazy fun. In another 15 days I finish my advanced training and go to Mivtza'it, the operational part of my career. Looking forward to it.
"Retreat, hell! We just got here!"-Captain Lloyd Williams, 2nd Marine Division, Belleau Wood, France, WWI
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