I’m on a tank

The first time I ever saw an army tank in real life, it was part of an IDF museum tour on my senior trip. Accompanied by one of our Shalhevet rabbis who had actually driven the same model during his time as a soldier, we listened to a short lecture, looked at the rest of the artillery displays, and then spent quite  some time taking pictures with the tank. I still have the pictures and know exactly what outfit I was wearing when I posed in front of the cannon, but I don't remember much else about that day.

The second time I ever saw a tank was yesterday, dressed in my olive green uniform, and it was much more memorable.

Objectively, the work we're doing this week is monotonous and pretty boring — not to say that I don't enjoy all of it, but I feel like this is one of those “you had to be there” blogs. I can describe everything I did today and recognize that it doesn't sound very interesting on paper (or computer screen) — it's just the part where I'm standing on a tank that makes it cool for me.

Anyway, most of the artillery on this base was used in Gaza this summer, which (apart from being crazy to think about) means that everything either needs to be repaired or is now being returned from recently being repaired. In the morning, the newer-looking tanks are brought in to our side of the field, so the first thing the volunteers need to do is set up a place for them to “park.”

Step one: unroll the tank cover and lay the bottom half down (and then arrange heavy wooden planks to keep it in place) in such a way that the driver can park it parallel to the rest of them. Easier said than done, considering that just the tarp weighs 250 pounds, but all the volunteers work together on this.

Next, we have to get the top half of the cover over the entire tank and seal it. This is the fun part — it's when a couple of other volunteers and I have to (get to) climb up and walk around on top of the tank. The giant tarp somehow makes its way up to us from the people on the ground and — three, two, one, pull — the three of us slowly lug it all the way over the cannon and across the rest of the tank.

Clipping together the top and bottom halves of the cover and sealing it shut takes another ten minutes at the least, and after lunch, it's time to work on the older tanks before they're driven away for repair. We repeat the process in reverse: I climb up to the “hood” and help get the tarp off (gravity is on our side here).

Then the volunteers split up to do a few different, smaller jobs. I spent some time crawling inside the semi-assembled tarps to get underneath the tanks, putting cinderblocks behind the “wheels” as parking brakes (picture #1 at the bottom of the page). Then there's the work required on the actual tarps themselves: Every hole needs to be sealed or covered with new material to prevent the slightest bit of water from getting in. To further waterproof the tank, while one volunteer holds the protruding electrical wires, I use a silicon glue gun to fill in the extra space and keep them in place (picture #2). Once we're sure that the tank is airtight, we seal the cover back up again.

Would this work get old after a few days, maybe a week or two? Definitely. But to a bunch of Americans, is it cool just to be here?

Is it a crazy feeling to be standing on (or even sitting in) artillery that was literally used in a war four months ago?

Definitely.