Nov
4
2007
Manning the Dead Zone (Part IV)
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To read the first part of this piece about guard duty on the Green Line click here
AN ANTI-TANK gun exercise took place six weeks into my sentry duty. There was some form of firing practice every month or two. One might imagine conscripts would look forward to these trainings, if only for a change of scenery, but the only one interested in my outpost was me, and I was not even scheduled to go, since the military only trained three-month conscripts on rifles. But my camp commander accepted my request to participate in the firing exercise, and so on the scheduled morning—a cold overcast one that prompted even more grumbling among those required to attend—I found myself jam-packed along with twenty-five other conscripts in the back of an army truck heading south-west of the capital.
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Oct
4
2007
Manning the Dead Zone (Part III)
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Part I of this piece is the August 4 entry
One of my outposts on the Nicosia Green Line
CONSECUTIVE DAYS of sentry duty took their toll, especially when the shifts were every four hours. For days on end you might not get much more than three hours of continuous sleep. You were also punished if you were caught sleeping before ten pm or after six am. Although there was a designated midday “rest period” between one and four, it was generally only good for a short nap: unless you had the ten-to-noon shift, both lunch and sentry duty fell within those hours. This restrictive sleeping schedule combined with the many hours of being on foot all day ensured you were never fully rested. I assume the idea was to accustom soldiers to the sleep deprivation conditions of war, but the only thing the soldiers acclimatized to was the capacity to sleep through anything. I am sure that if a grenade had exploded outside our window, only half of us would have awoken; the other half would have required a direct strike.
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