IDF No. 63117
Sam had never received any military training before being assigned to the 72nd Infantry Battalion, made up largely of Anglo-Saxon volunteers. Whilst most of his comrades had fought in World War II, Sam Wasser had never even handled a gun. In effect, his training was learned ‘on the job’ in a series of stints at guarding outposts. Quite soon after, fellow Canadian Joe Weiner, second in command of the 79th, came looking for drivers for his battalion. Sam accepted the job readily, having driven the family grocery truck from the age of 15. Finally, he was given a basic course in how to fire the vehicle’s arms, the cannon and its machine-gun, and with his uniform, the vehicle, and a minimal amount of training, was ready to face the enemy. Not long afterwards, his unit was joined by a group of fighters from the Irgun underground movement. The Irgun men traveled in halftracks, while Sam’s unit offered a support role. These were battle-hardened men with deep grudges against the Arab population for atrocities that had been carried out against their families. In joint actions, the Irgun men would go in first, and Sam’s group would follow them in their vehicles.
One of the major operations in which Sam Wasser saw action was Operation Hiram, the battle to secure control of the Galilee. For Sam, this meant two major battles – to clear the road to Tarshiha and then to capture the Sasa junction, from which they could control most of the region. The Tarshiha battle involved a great deal of firing and the use of mortars on both sides. One fellow soldier was a South African, trembling with fear. In helping to calm him down, Sam also remembers how he himself was helped. “It was his first time and he was trembling. That was when I realized you could be scared, and of course what helped me was trying to help him”.
The convoy continued to move through the darkness, heading for Tarshiha, until the morning broke. At this point, Sam and his comrades looked up and for the first time saw their fellow troops strung out in their vehicles, facing the blaze of morning sunlight, alongside the hail of gunfire, mortars going off and people being wounded. This was a brutal initiation under fire. After much coordination between the units, the road and village was taken. This was quickly followed by the advance on the strategically important junction at Sasa, which allowed the Israelis to control the roads through the Galilee. It was in the wake of this success that the incident mentioned above occurred.
Throughout the operation, the overall leadership came from the Brigade Commander, Ben Dunkelman, a fellow Canadian. “We felt great confidence in him because Ben had been a major figure in the Canadian Army, and had been decorated. It was weird being called WASPs, coming from a place where we were called dirty Jews to suddenly being called ‘Anglo-Saxons.’
The 72nd and 79th Battalions were known as the Anglo-Saxim since a large proportion of the soldiers were native English-speakers. In battle, they were under the same orders as everybody else, but they shared a distinctive common identity with each other.
At the end of December 1948, when Sam was stationed in the north with the 79th, this Anglo-Saxon identity was reinforced when Christmas came around and for some people at least, thoughts turned to home and the customs of their countries of birth. Quite remarkably, this was anticipated by Golda Meir, a cabinet member in the provisional government, and who twenty years later would be the Prime Minister of Israel. Having left her native Kiev for the United States at an early age, Golda Meir grew up in Minneapolis before making aliyah in her late teens. Why she suddenly remembered the Americans and Canadians in her greetings, and anticipated their feeling of homesickness at that time remains a mystery, but the gesture was a warm one and highly appreciated.
In battle, Sam Wasser came face to face with some of the darker aspects of war, witnessing acts of desperation and brutality on both sides. Quite soon after the Hiram Operation, during one of the periods of truce, Sam was given a pass to go to Haifa, and he headed for the movies. However, 20 minutes into the film, the showing was interrupted by a call-up requiring soldiers to return to their posts.
With time running out on the war, and the Israelis fulfilling their objectives, the prospect of the end of the war brought the inevitable question faced by most volunteers: whether to stay on or return to their countries of birth. For Sam Wasser, the pull of his family proved to be critical. He had already missed the wedding of one of his brothers, and when he heard that his only sister was planning her wedding, he decided not to miss that, as well, and returned to Canada.