Joel Chasnoff - The 188th Crybaby Brigade - A Skinny Jewish Kid from Chicago Fights Hezbollah - A Memoir

“Good afternoon, Platoon Two!” he barks.

“Good afternoon, Staff Sergeant!” we reply.

We barely get the last words out of our mouths when the pint-size platoon sergeant jabbers in. “Platoon Two, listen up and listen good because I’m going to say this one time and one time only: I am First Ser geant Guy Ben-Gur, and I am not your squad commander, so you will not call me ‘Staff Sergeant.’ I am your platoon sergeant, which means you will call me ‘Platoon Sergeant’ or ‘Sergeant’ but never, ever ‘Staff Sergeant.’ Clear?”

“Yes, Platoon Sergeant!” we shout.

“Good,” he barks. He is a short, wound up mini tornado who spins, points, whispers, and screams during a single sentence. His eyes dart left, up, down, right as he keeps his eyes on every single one of us and no one in particular. “In the Israel Defense Forces there are rules, and as your platoon sergeant it is my job to make sure you A) know them and B) follow them. One: when you are told to be somewhere at a certain time, you will be there on time. Two: when you see the platoon commander or any other officer, you will stop what you’re doing and salute. Understood?”

A hand shoots up in the back row. “What happens if I see the platoon commander when I’m eating?”

“Offer him a bite and ask if he’d like some hummus to go with it,” the platoon sergeant snaps, cracking us up. “Don’t waste my time with stupid questions. Clear?”

“Yes, Staff Sergeant!” we shout in unison.

The platoon sergeant nearly has a heart attack. “I am not a staff sergeant, I am your platoon sergeant!” he roars. “Is that understood?”

“Yes, Platoon Sergeant!”

“Good! Tomorrow, each of you will receive a Glilon assault rifle and five clips of thirty-five bullets each. Your rifle goes with you everywhere. You will sleep with it, eat with it, shit, shave, and shower with it. If I see anyone without his rifle, you will lose your next Sabbath leave. Dog tags: you must wear one dog tag around your neck and one in each boot. Is anyone either missing a dog tag or have a dog tag whose name or personal number is incorrect?” I and a few others raise our hands. “Fine. Who’s the platoon scribe?”

“I am, Platoon Sergeant.”

“Your name?”

“Yoel, Platoon Sergeant.”

“Yoel—make a list of soldiers who need tags. Give me the list after dinner. Clear?”

I nod.

“It is now”—he checks his watch—“six twenty-six. At six-thirty, you’re lined up outside the dining hall with a full count. Dismissed.”

We sprint off to dinner, driven not by hunger, but by fear of our cold-blooded platoon sergeant.

“Yoel!” someone shouts.

I turn. The platoon sergeant beckons me over with an index finger. “I hear an accent, Yoel,” he barks. “Where you from?”

“Chicago, Platoon Sergeant.”

He smiles, wide and friendly. “My dad’s from Queens,” he says in perfect English.

“I lived in Brooklyn,” I say.

“You know Forest Hills?”

“Of course. Right by Queens College. Your dad still there?”

“No. L.A.” He puts a hand on my shoulder. “So tell me—how old are you, Yoel?”

“Twenty-four.”

He whistles. “What, you thought it’d be cool to be an Israeli soldier?”

“Something like that.”

“Good for you,” he says and pounds me on the back. “I admire that. Now be at the dining hall in thirty seconds or else I’ll open your asshole so wide you can shove a tank in it.”

After dinner, we change into sport clothes and gather on the basketball court for a fitness test.

My Israeli comrades show up in white undershirts, cheap soccer shorts, and off-brand sneakers. One kid named Eldad doesn’t even wear sneakers—he says he can’t afford them—and does the two-kilometer run in combat boots.

Then there’s me, in my knee-length U-Penn lacrosse shorts ($39.99 at the university bookstore), my Champion smart-wick breathable running jersey ($26, Sportmart), and brand-new Nike Air Pegasus cross-trainers ($74.95 at the Nike Store, Michigan Avenue, Chicago).

I feel like such a goddamn stereotype.

That night, ten minutes after lights out, someone knocks on the door of bedroom 3. “Yoel?” he whispers.

I scurry out of bed and hop down. Standing in the courtyard is a short kid in tight red underwear and chunky glasses.

“I’m Clemente,” he says with a Russian accent. “I’m going to take a shit.”

“Thanks for telling me,” I say, “but I think the sergeant was joking about that. You don’t really have to tell me every time you shit.”

Clemente’s face turns as red as his shorts. “Sergeant Eran said he might wake you up. I didn’t want you to get in trouble.”

“Well, then you did the right thing, Clemente. If he wakes me up, I’ll remember: fifty-eight soldiers in formation. One soldier guarding the bunk, that’s fifty-nine. And Clemente’s taking a shit.”

You’d think it’d be difficult for a foreigner to join the Israeli Army. In fact, it was as easy as signing up for a library card. The only hard part about it was convincing the immigration officer at the Israeli consulate in New York that I wasn’t out of my mind.

“Are you out of your goddamn mind?” she screamed at me in Israeli-accented English. Her name was Aviva. She had short blond hair and eyeglasses that she wore on a cord around her neck. Since her job was to help American Jews move to Israel, I was surprised when she spent the entire meeting trying to convince me not to move to Israel.

“You don’t want to go to Israel,” she said. “There’s terrorism. The economy’s a mess. The people are rude. What business does a nice American boy like you have in Israel?”

“Actually,” I said, squirming in my seat, “I was thinking about joining the army.”

“The army?” she cried. She rolled her eyes, clutched her head, then shook her hands at the ceiling. “What, you think you’re Rambo or something? The Israeli Army doesn’t need you.”

She stood up and walked me to the door. “You think about what I said. If you’re still interested in two weeks, call. But I think it’s a big mistake.”

I thought it over. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure. But I figured I could always start the process and then back out later.

I called Aviva to make a second appointment.

“Mazel tov!” she yelped.

“You’re not mad?” I asked.

“I’m thrilled!” she said.

“Then why’d you give me such a hard time?”

“Listen,” Aviva said. “A lot of American Jews think Israel’s paradise. They visit on some synagogue trip, fall in love with the country, and decide to move there. Then reality sets in. The last thing Israel needs is a bunch of whiny Americans who don’t know what they’re getting into.”

With Aviva on my side, the rest was easy. All I had to do was fill out a form, submit two passport photos, and prove I was Jewish.

“And how exactly do I prove I’m Jewish?” I asked.

“Is at least one of your parents Jewish?” she said.

“Both,” I said.

“One’s enough. Just fax over your bar mitzvah certificate. If you don’t have that, have your rabbi write a letter on synagogue stationery. Or you could always just send over a copy of your bris certificate.”

“You mean birth certificate,” I corrected her.

She shook her head. “Bris certificate. From your bris, when you were circumcised. You’re circumcised?”

I nodded. And blushed.

“You have the certificate?”

“I didn’t realize there was such a thing,” I said.

“If there was no certificate, how would you prove it?”

“Well—I could always just—”