We were somewhere in the middle of a military zone on the Golan Heights. Even though our base was only a few kilometers away it was way too expensive (the fuel) to drive the tanks back and forth from the field too our base just for a few days while everyone went home for the weekend, so a few of us were spending Shabbat in the field. The guard duty rotation was two hours on, six hours off. Not that bad considering I once did two hours on, two hours off for three days. Is that even legal? Anyway, It must have been two or three in the morning. I was just finishing a two hour shift guarding the tanks and all of our equipment. My fellow soldiers were sleeping in a large tent, while I stood on top of one of the tanks manning the radio. (Quick aside. I would often tune to the United Nations radio frequency and say “UN out of Palestine” and “Long Live Mao!” for no apparent reason.) Anyway, my shift was up in ten minutes so I had to go wake up Nuriel, who would relieve me. Nuriel, the driver of my tank crew, was a humorous and warm religious Yemenite kid. A bit of a wise ass, but a reliable soldier and a terrific driver. He actually drove while sleeping on more than one occasion. Trust me, that is a very impressive feat. If he didn’t respond to orders because of his slumbering, I would fake that I hurt my hand or something and scream “SHIT” really loud into the radio in order to rouse him. Thanks would be given later during our wind down time after a long day in the form of “Cafe Lavon” or “white coffee.” A delicious spiced hot drink I only had prepared for me by Nuriel and have not heard of or seen since.

So, my shift is ending and I hop down to go wake Nuriel up. I wake him and tells me he’ll be out in ten. I go back to the tanks and suddenly I hear snorting. Snorthing was new to me. I’d heard Jackals before. They are quite loud on the Golan. However, I never quite got used to the cackling of the Jackals. I find it unsettling. Damn Joker.

I shine the spotlight (in Hebrew “projector”) to the source of the sound and see a huge mother fucking wild boar about ten meters away from where I stand. Now, as long as I stay on the tank I’ll be ok. There’s obviously no way it can get to me but Nuriel is on his way out. Should I be concerned? I couldn’t exactly call out his name because I didn’t want to wake everyone else up. I keep my eye on the tent and fruitlessly (and retardedly I might add) attempt to blind the boar with the spotlight. That didn’t work. I figure I’ll just wait for Nuriel to come out. 15 minutes pass, no Nuriel. Must have fallen asleep while putting his shoes on. The damn pig is still running around, mocking me with his snorts.

Now, my options are limited. I can’t run anywhere and I certainly can’t shoot it. I can however, throw stuff at it! The question is, what do I throw? Bullets of course! I start with the standard 5.56 mm, and quickly go through almost an entire magazine and hit him only twice. The bastard shrugged off the bullets as if someone was throwing them at him. I upgraded to the 7.62 mm from one of the MAG machine guns, but those too weren’t effective enough. Nuriel finally emerges about an hour after he was supposed to, sees the boar, screams some obscenity in Arabic slang and runs back into the tent. I then grab the carrot sized 50 caliber bullets from the mounted M2 Browning machine gun and throw them with a hell of a lot of force at the Boar. Good thing that that did the trick. I wasn’t prepared to lob a tank shell at it. One big squeal and the non-kosher beast ran. Right towards the tent where everyone was sleeping. Luckily, he took a quick left and ran into the darkness. I waited a few minutes to be sure he was gone and finally jumped down and headed towards the tent. Nuriel of course had gone back to bed. I woke him by kicking his cot, then affectionately cursed at him, told him the pig was gone and I set my alarm for 5:30 a.m. so I had enough time to clean up all those damn bullets.