4TH TROOP, ANTI-TANK ARTILLERY
Joe Warner left Canada with the second group of Canadian volunteers who traveled together via New York and Cannes to the Displaced Persons camp at Grand Arénas, near Marseilles. Given the secretive nature of the trip, he was obliged to spin a convoluted story at passport control when entering France. Eventually, the customs woman turned to him and said “When you fellows get to Palestine, be careful, boys, there’s a war going on there.” The secret, it seems, was not so secret!
At the DP camp, Joe and the others were given new identities and settled in amongst the Holocaust survivors. When it was time to leave for Palestine, a problem occurred when the insurers of the ship refused to give cover to the voyage because of the war at their point of destination. So yet another journey was begun, this time to a camp called Tretz in the mountains, where the group began to train themselves, doing whatever they could to keep in shape and to build up a military spirit. A few weeks later, the camp was packed up and they were sent to yet another camp in a fishing village called La Ciotat, where a small fishing boat and a gendarme, paid off by the Haganah, were waiting to leave. It was during the brief time at this camp that David Ben-Gurion announced the formal Proclamation of Independence in Tel Aviv, bringing the State of Israel into existence. With two hundred Holocaust survivors, forty fellow volunteers, and a useless crew of drunk Frenchmen, Joe Warner’s rickety ship headed for Palestine.
He had intended to use his expertise as an air crewman. However, after arriving in Israel and acclimatizing himself, he found himself at the recruitment center, where it was clear there was nothing for him to do since there were hardly any planes to speak of. Still keen to find a place to serve, he wound up in the army, where he had heard that an ex-American officer by the name of Lester Gorn was recruiting people for a mortar unit. Machal volunteers were generally in demand by commanders anxious to bolster their units with trained men. In fact, the possibility of joining the air force did present itself one night in a bar, when he was asked by air officer if he would join the Air Transport Command. However, since that did not sound too glamorous, Joe Warner turned it down. It later transpired that it was this same Air Transport Command that was flying in equipment from Czechoslovakia. Joe regretted turning it down for the rest of his life, and remained stuck in the army.
The first real action he experienced came when the unit was sent to Neve Yam to stop sniper fire from the nearby villages; the fire was aimed at the vehicles bringing cargo from the Haifa port for the rest of the country. Upon returning to base, the unit was suddenly told that since the capture of some Egyptian equipment, it was no longer to be a mortar unit, but was now an anti-tank unit. This turned out to be an extraordinary group, since all its sixty members were Machal volunteers: Americans, British, South Africans, Canadians and Australians. Officially, this was now the 4th troop of the anti-tank regiment of artillery, who fought together with Givati infantry against the Egyptians.
These small operations notwithstanding, the most serious action undertaken by Joe Warner and his unit was about to begin, namely the capture of Hill 113, the attack on Iraq-el-Manshiya and finally the police station at Iraq-el-Suweidan. These were crucial strongholds that formed part of what was called the “Faluja pocket,” an area of land firmly occupied by the Egyptians which controlled the roads leading south to the Negev and west to Hebron, Bethlehem and Jerusalem. The battle for Hill 113 was a bloody affair. Almost any time someone moved, they were fired at from the police station at Iraq-el-Suweidan. If Joe Warner had missed real battle in WW ll, and had only glimpsed it so far in Israel, this was about to change.
“The first time you see a dead body, you are shaken up terribly and it scares the hell out of you… but then it gets to the point when it is an everyday occurrence. When we were taking Hill 113, we had a supply truck come up to us and some of the guys were leaning up against dead bodies for support – you become hardened… but you are always scared. Anyone who is not scared needs to be in an insane asylum. And when someone near you gets hit, you wonder, why him and not me?”
An incident occurred when two young inexperienced Romanian recruits became frightened and jumped into a pillbox that the other soldiers had constantly avoided because it was always fired upon. Frozen stiff with fear, the two Romanians could not or would not budge despite entreaties from the other soldiers who could see they were in danger. Eventually the pillbox was hit, and both soldiers were killed.
At Iraq-el-Manshiya there was also tremendous bloodshed. Guns were to bombard the stronghold and create an opening for a unit of infantry to enter, whilst a second unit would follow them to reinforce the position and defeat the enemy forces. However, when the first unit went in, the second did not arrive and the entire group was massacred. The position was eventually taken, but it was a painful and costly operation.
Finally, the police station at Iraq-el-Suweidan was attacked, which was also no pushover, and it took eight attempts before it yielded. The Egyptians had stationed a brigade of Sudanese soldiers there as reinforcements, commanded by a Sandhurst-trained officer, Major Taha. This was a serious and well-trained group of volunteers who knew how to fight efficiently and effectively. Joe Warner was involved in the fifth and sixth attempts and was slightly wounded. As a result of the wound, he was hospitalized and missed the eighth and ultimately successful attack.
Despite the UN-brokered truce that was supposed to be in place at the time, the Egyptians began a counterattack against the Israelis on Yom Kippur 1948. (Twenty-five years later they would repeat the same maneuver in the form of a full assault that would become known as the Yom Kippur War.) The fighting was fierce but in the end, superior Israeli firepower and strategy brought victory for the Israelis and soon the Egyptian forces in the Faluja pocket were surrounded. Negotiations were held at Kibbutz Gat between the two forces, but despite the hopelessness of their situation, the Egyptians refused to surrender, preferring to keep their honor, and fighting to the end. Nevertheless, events transpired differently, and the besieged men hung on, hoping for reinforcements that never came. Only in the armistice negotiations did the beleaguered Egyptians in the Faluja pocket find a way to leave. The success of these costly and bloody battles that Joe Warner had participated in guaranteed Israel’s access to the Negev and the road to the south.
Some time after the exploits of Faluja, Joe Warner was approached by his infantry officers and asked to use the experience he had gained as an apprentice pharmacist in Toronto. The lack of doctors was a problem at the time, and even rudimentary first aid skills, combined with his knowledge of pharmacy, would be useful. He was given an armored car to travel to the Givati headquarters near Rehovot to gather supplies. This would prove fortuitous in ways that were not directly connected to the war, but would nevertheless change the course of Joe Warner’s life. The mission was easy, and given the popularity of Machal volunteers, Joe Warner received plenty of supplies from the staff at the Tel Aviv clinic. Some time later, when Joe was on a three-day leave, he returned to Tel Aviv. In search of a haircut, he sat down in a barbershop and began talking to the barber. It transpired that the barber had not only lived in Toronto for a while, but had been the barber on Spadina Avenue and had cut his own father’s hair on a regular basis!