Excerpts from “An African Shopkeeper”
(The memoirs of David Susman)
I followed the events in Palestine with great apprehension, and wondered what I could do to help the infant state. Jeff, as usual, had no hesitation, and I received an unsurprising phone call from him. A friend of ours, Leo Kowarsky, was secretly recruiting volunteers with some military or technical skills to help Israel stem the invasion. The call was mainly for pilots and doctors, but our firsthand experience of infantry combat, said Jeff, would surely be of inestimable value to the new Israeli army. All we had to do was to persuade Kowarsky that Israel would be doomed without us. With some misgivings on his side, and much importuning on ours, he agreed to include us. We were to join a covert mustering base on a farm outside Johannesburg to help train and organize other volunteers, whilst awaiting precious space on a flight to Israel.
Father was horrified. Just when it appeared that I would settle into a responsible life, with a degree tucked under my belt, I would be putting this, and, said he, my very life, at risk again. How could I be so irresponsible? To his added irritation, I took the high ground. How could a Jew stand by when the very existence of the remnants of our people was threatened after the nightmare of the Holocaust? If the Arabs succeeded in destroying the new State of Israel, no young Jew could live with the memory that he, personally, might have helped save the situation. It was, I regretted, a duty that I could not shirk. Father’s response to this tirade of self-righteousness was to send in my brother-in-law, Osna’s husband Jack Wilton. Jack was an eminent surgeon, a gentle, sweet-natured man with a firm sense of purpose. Father was aware of my admiration and affection for him, and hoped I would be returned to sanity by his wisdom. Jack and I spent an entire night arguing the issues. Early the following morning, he turned up at the rooms of Lionel Melzer, a doctor with a distinguished war record who was putting together a volunteer medical team to fly to Israel. He would be happy, he told Lionel, to join his team. I can’t imagine how he explained this outcome to his father-in-law, who was now faced with two members of his family exposing themselves to mortal and unnecessary peril, as he believed. Two weeks later Jeff and I, with some thirty other healthy young men, arrived at Palmietfontein Airport to take our chartered flight to Rome, from where we were to trans-ship to Israel. The United Nations had imposed a ban on men of fighting age traveling to Israel, and we were careful to proclaim that the purpose of the flight was “tourism in Italy.”
We were met at Rome airport by two tough Israelis, who ushered us on to a bus, and whisked us into the centre of the city. Accommodation had been arranged at the Albergo Boston, off the Via Veneto, and I rejoiced in the contrast between this comfortable hotel, and the transit camps we suffered during the previous war. The next four days passed quickly. Volunteers from America, Britain and other European countries joined us, and the representatives of Zahal, the newly constituted Israel Defense Forces, were at their wits’ end to keep us all together, and out of trouble. This was a thankless task, given the delightful fleshpots of Rome. A friend in Johannesburg had sent me an introduction to a charming Roman hostess, a principessa who lived in a small, elegant palazzo in the centre of the city. At short notice, she put together a dinner for me, including a few leading industrialists, politicians and their wives. When she saw me, she must have been somewhat shocked by my youth, not to mention the informality of my dress, although I had excused that in advance, saying that I was about to embark on a hiking tour through the Apennines. None of this was apparent in her behavior, or that of her other guests, and I did my best to comport myself as befitted the scion of a “distinguished South African family.” Father would have shaken his head in disgust. Again, I was taken with the charm and courtesy of Italians. This time, I was exposed to a wealthy and influential cross section, a great contrast to the poor, working-class people of my army days. They addressed me just as graciously and sympathetically as had my friends in Naples, and greeted my only slightly improved Italian with open admiration. This in spite of the fact that most of them spoke a fluent and barely accented English. Bel’ Italia!
I returned to the hotel late that night to find an anxious Jeff awaiting me. We were to pack up and be ready to go to Ciampino Airport within hours, for the last leg of our journey to the Holy Land.
MY SECOND WAR.
We took off for Haifa from Rome at dawn, stopping only at Athens for refueling. Lydda airport was still controlled by the Arabs, as was the main Haifa-Tel Aviv road. To reach our mustering point south of Tel Aviv, we were bussed along a roundabout and hastily prepared road behind the Carmel mountains. There was little distinction between military and civilian activity in the beleaguered country. Our bus was an ordinary city bus, in the colors of the Egged Bus Company, and driven by its owner-driver. As with many Israeli utilities, the company was a cooperative, and its members were fiercely independent and totally unimpressed by rank or authority. In the months ahead, we would make many journeys in these ramshackle busses, some right up to the battle front, and I acquired a deep admiration for the courage and sensibility of their drivers. On this first occasion, the driver gave us an articulate and accurate description, in fair English, of the state of affairs on the various battle fronts.
The picture was grim. The Syrian and Lebanese armies had advanced from the north, and the Iraqis from the northeast. The professionally-trained Arab Legion of Transjordan, led by a British general, Glubb Pasha, had cut off and besieged the city of Jerusalem, and the Egyptians were 30 miles to the south of Tel Aviv. The Arab Liberation Army of some 6000 mercenaries, under the command of a long-time Palestinian insurgent, Fawzi-el-Kaukji, had advanced to within nine miles of Haifa. Their pay, we understood, was to come from the supposedly rich loot of destroyed Jewish settlements. Jeff and I were later to meet Kaukji’s troops in Galilee, and to share the pleasure of driving them out of Israel.
Our destination was a recently evacuated British Army camp Tel Litwinsky, which was being used, inter alia, to register and allocate the hundreds of newly arrived volunteers like ourselves. It was totally chaotic. Names and details of the newcomers were supposed to have been sent ahead by the Zionist Federations of the countries from which they had come, but a large number of men found that they were not on any list. South Africans seemed to have been better organized in this respect, but men from other countries were wandering aimlessly about. This was not the problem one might think. The camp was continuously visited by military leaders, from platoon commanders to heads of brigades, desperately recruiting for their battered units. (There were no ranks in the army at that stage – you were called Mefaked (commander) of whatever size unit you were responsible for. Saluting was unheard of.) A likely young man could be approached by five or six such commanders, and was hard put to choose. My observation was that you could have brought into the camp a battalion of SS troops, and they would have been snapped up. We were described as “Machal” (the acronym, in Hebrew, for Volunteers from Outside the Land), and Machalniks were in great demand in all units because of their perceived skills and discipline. Machal was ultimately to consist of some 4,400 foreign volunteers (including scores of sympathetic Christians), of which one of the largest contingents was South African, some 800 altogether. At that time, the newly formed Zahal (the acronym for Israel Defense Forces) consisted of about 40,000 combatants, of which Machal formed a significant proportion. In certain disciplines, however, it would be dominant.
Amongst the Machal volunteers were a few senior officers from World War II. The best-known of these was Colonel “Mickey” Marcus, a West Point graduate who made a major contribution to Israel’s military thinking and organizational concepts. Mickey was tragically shot by one of his own sentries on the Jerusalem road, hours before the first truce. Ben Dunkelman, a Canadian, became Commander of the 7th Brigade, in which I served. Many years after the war, I came to know Ben quite well, when he headed one of Canada’s largest clothing factories. Marcus Sieff had been a full colonel in the British Army, and, on Ben-Gurion’s personal request, played a major role in planning the logistics of the young army. My friendship with Marcus, which started during his visit to South Africa, blossomed whilst we were together in Israel, and thereafter grew to become one of the sweetest relationships of my life.
South African pilots formed the foundation of the little air force, and with makeshift, secondhand aircraft, created the air superiority which was the turning point of the war. A distinguished SA wartime bomber pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Cecil Margo, was invited by Ben-Gurion to plan and set up the air force, and did so with great success. Cecil was later to become an outstanding South African Supreme Court judge, and our friendship thrives to this day. Syd Cohen and Smoky Simon were South African flyers who soon became popular heroes in a country where almost every fighting man was truly heroic. With many other Machal pilots and aircrew, of which perhaps the most outstanding was Dov Judah, they flew mission after mission across enemy lines, and still found time to train a large number of Israelis. The first aircraft of the IAF consisted of single-engine Austers and Piper Cubs, acquired initially for observation and reconnaissance. These little aircraft were known as Primuses, after the sporadic spluttering sound of the paraffin stoves. The early bombers were small, twin-engine Rapides with the door removed. The bombardier would hold a 6 or 8kg bomb over the side, and drop it when his pilot screamed at him to do so. It took as much skill not to fall out with the bomb as it did to drop it accurately.
The Headquarters of this rag-tag Israel Air Force was in the Hayarkon Hotel, on Ben Yehuda Street in Tel Aviv. I attended many wild parties there during the war, and it was at one of them that I met, for the first time, the nephew of Israel’s first president, an obstreperous young lieutenant called Ezer Weizman. Ezer later became head of the IAF, and, later still, minister of defence. He has retained his fearless and attractive character throughout his life, and today, as president of Israel, he pays warm tribute to the SA pilots with whom he flew in the War of Independence. The official commander of the IAF was Aharon Remez, son of the then-minister of transport. Unkind critics said that they quite understood his appointment as chief of the Israel Air Force, but how could he possibly have only reached the rank of flight sergeant in the British RAF?
South African medical personnel played a leading role in the war. Professors Arthur Helfet, an eminent orthopedic surgeon, and Jack Penn, an innovative and pioneering plastic surgeon, were amongst the first to arrive. They were soon followed by the anesthetist Lionel Melzer, who brought with him a large team of specialists, including my surgeon brother-in-law, Jack Wilton. Until Ben-Gurion’s intervention, they met stubborn resistance from senior Israeli doctors, most of them pre-world war refugees from Germany, who would not accept that their training in the great German medical schools of the 1920s and 30s was outdated, and often dangerous. Jack Penn told of successfully completing an intricate facial operation, watched by a group of these reactionaries. “Ach ja,” they pronounced, “but you have ze equipment.” “It’s the technique you should be watching,” said Penn, “You could do it with a kitchen knife.” They laughed at this ridiculous statement. Later that day, he was to do an even more complicated reconstruction job on the face of a mutilated tank driver. He went into the hospital kitchen beforehand, selected the sharpest knife he could find, and honed it himself to a razor edge, before returning to the operating theatre. Here, again surrounded by the local surgeons, he said to his theatre sister, “Go and get me a knife from the kitchen.” His detractors watched in discomfort as he completed the complex work immaculately.
There were many South African nurses amongst the ranks of Machal. Perhaps the best known were Sisters Audrey (Bennie) Benedict, and Marie Roux, non-Jewish theatre sisters whom Jack Penn had brought from home. Bennie and Marie were highly skilled medics, and quickly became passionate Zionists. It was heartwarming to hear them holding forth in fierce defense of Israel’s policies, and its inalienable right to independence. After the war, Bennie married a succession of prominent South African Jews, and remains a well-loved and active member of the Machal Association.
At Tel Litwinsky, Jeff and I, with a number of other South Africans, were collected by an elderly American, Colonel Wilson, a non-Jew who was putting together the pieces of the 72nd Battalion after its decimation at the failed battle for Latrun, towards the end of the so-called “Ten Day Offensive.” The 72nd was part of the 7th Brigade, which was supposed to consist of English-speaking soldiers, in the hope that communications between units would not be further complicated by the Tower of Babel that had led to some recent disasters. A few words of broken English sufficed to include you amongst the “Anglo Saxim,” as we were termed. I had in my unit, from time to time, Bulgarians, Poles, Costa Ricans and refugees from the Displaced Persons camps of Europe, in addition to Americans, Canadians, British, and of course South Africans. The most common language was Yiddish, which I barely understood. It was surprising, however, how quickly we came to understand each other whilst under fire.
We were bussed to a camp outside of Haifa, in the foothills of Mount Carmel, in a village called Nesher. A large brewery adjacent to the camp produced beer under the same name, and we wondered what problems a ready supply of Nesher beer must have created amongst the recently departed British troops. The battalion adjutant was a Texan (called Tex, of course), whose task it was to sort the newcomers into companies and platoons whilst the colonel slept, ultimately for three solid days. Tex was one of the rare heavy drinkers in the Israeli army, and we soon realized that the effective commander of the 72nd was a noisy but competent Israeli sergeant major, with great experience from the Jewish Brigade. Jeff and I were appointed sergeants, and each given a platoon of 30 men, in “B” Company, to knock into shape. We were told that proper ranks were shortly to be introduced, and we would each report to a second lieutenant as soon as qualified English-speaking Israelis could be found.
In the beginning, the training was a nightmare. My platoon was a polyglot group of disparate characters and varied ages. None of them had combat experience, and most had only ever seen a weapon when looking into the barrel of a concentration camp guard’s rifle. In common with the rest of the Israeli army, we had few weapons. I was issued with six or seven rifles for my platoon – three or four early British Lee-Enfields, .303 caliber, a couple of Czech Mausers, 7.9mm caliber, and an extraordinary French musket to which a magazine had been added, probably by Arab insurgents between the World Wars. I was not able, on that first day, to get hold of a single round of ammunition with which to train the men to shoot. On top of this, many were physically unfit – years in the Nazi concentration camps, followed by a numbing spell in D.P. camps in Europe and Cyprus, left them undernourished and weedy. I looked them over at their first straggling line-up, and recalled the comment of the Duke of Wellington, surveying his troops at the start of the Peninsular War, “I don’t know what you’ll do to the enemy, but you frighten the shit out of me!”
After a few days of running up and down hills, crawling over simulated enemy ground, dissembling and reassembling the few available weapons, and eating huge portions of the disgusting meals served up by a cook borrowed from a nearby kibbutz, they began to look like the beginnings of a combat unit. Then we received a consignment of Czech rifles, followed, a day or two later, by a large crate of loose and varying bullets. It was a painstaking job to sort through the latter, allocating the caliber to fit our various weapons, and was not nearly completed before our first action. However, I was now able to train at least some men on the rifle range with live ammunition meanly dished out, a bullet at a time. We also acquired two dozen hand grenades, which I allocated among the few who claimed knowledge of their use.
A few days later, I was acting Company Duty Officer when the field telephone rang just after midnight. “B” Company was to assemble, fully equipped, at 3 am that morning, to be transported up to the Lebanese border where, it was reported, an enemy attack was expected. Here is the firsthand account of that night by Gordon Mandelzweig, as reported in Henry Katzew’s comprehensive story of South African Machal, “South Africa’s 800.” Gordon had come to Israel in the same group as I did.
“We were called out one night before we had any training and before any arms were issued to us … My rifle was brand-new, still wrapped in greased paper. I kept my ammunition in a sock – nowhere else to keep it. On the truck with me were some youngsters, refugees from Europe, who had never handled a rifle. Somebody was showing them how to load and fire. (Author’s note: that was me, David Susman). We arrived at our destination early in the morning. I have no idea precisely where it was. We were told to dig in. I cleaned the Czech rifle issued to me as best I could but then found I could not load it because the British .303 rimmed cartridges I had received would not fit the Czech rimless rifle. Fortunately I managed to swap the ammo with someone who had a British rifle and rimless ammo. Thank heaven there was no attack. We returned to camp.”
We had arrived in Israel in the middle of the “Ten Day Offensive,” the period of intense fighting between the end of the United Nations-imposed first truce, on July 9th, and the beginning of the second truce, on July 19th. Here is Yigal Allon’s historic comment:
“When the Ten Day Offensive was over – stopped, as the Israelis had predicted, by a UN ceasefire – 677 square miles of Arab controlled territory had been taken by the IDF; the threat to Tel Aviv, Haifa and the coastal plain obliterated; the corridor to Jerusalem widened, and the siege of Jerusalem finally lifted; a deep hole gouged out of the Arab territory in the centre of Palestine, and all the main Arab bases in the Galilee overrun. Twenty percent of the effective Arab fighting force had been lost – and the War of Independence won – though not ended.”
The first truce had lasted for 28 days, and both sides used this period to strengthen their forces and to acquire better and more effective armaments, notwithstanding the UN ban on such activities. The second truce saw the formal establishment of the Israel Defense Forces, incorporating all quasi-independent units such as the Palmach, the Irgun and the Haganah under one central command. Ranks were introduced, complete with badges, as was saluting of officers, to the disgust of the kibbutzniks who formed the core of the early combatants. (Wags said that the salute consisted of clapping the hand to the forehead with the comment, “Oy! Are you an officer too?”) The 72nd battalion acquired, overnight, a completely new command structure. A seasoned Haganah commander, Jack Lichtenstein, replaced the worn-out American colonel. Tex returned to his home in Texas, and our new company commander was Captain Norman Schutzman, an affable American World War veteran. With Norman came three 2nd Lieutenants, Aya Feldman, to command Jeff’s platoon, Aharoni Landman, mine, and Stanley Medicks, the third. The two sabras had been to military school together, and seen their first action in the disastrous battle for Latrun. Stanley had come from Kenya, with two countrymen, Ian Walters and Jack Banin, and has retained his passion for Israel, and for Machal, to this day.
The 72nd was moved to a more comfortable camp at Samaria, up the coast, half-way between Haifa and the pretty, neatly laid-out town of Nahariya, which had been founded by German refugees before the World War. It was said that you could tell when you were nearing Nahariya by a sound like the buzzing of bees. As you grew closer, you realized that what you were hearing was the constant exchange of “Bitte schon, Herr Professor,” and “Danke schon, Herr Doktor.” German Jews took a lot of flak from other Israelis. Known universally as “Yekkes,” the acronym for “Jews who find it hard to understand,” they were meticulous and uncompromising, and fiercely critical of the lackadaisical informality of the sabras. They addressed their friends and neighbors formally, and learned to speak a perfect, biblical Hebrew, albeit with a heavy Teutonic accent. Yekkes brought to Israel a set of high quality standards in their every venture, their contribution was enormous in the fields of culture, engineering, science and medicine. They could be arrogant and inflexible, as we have seen from their resistance to the modern medical methods of the newly- arrived doctors. Nonetheless, I believe that the pre-war German refugees played a major role in shifting Israel from a Levantine, East European ethos, to its cultured, Western standards of today.
We used the second truce to train, equip and bring our men up to standard. Language was always a problem – I recall a hilarious session at which my interpreter was the sergeant of the third platoon, an East End cockney with a smattering of Yiddish. The subject was “Stoppages of the Sten gun.” It went something like this:
Me: The Sten is virtually foolproof.
Jack: Yelke schlemiel kan schiess mit ein Sten.
Me: Sometimes, a stoppage does occur.
Jack: Aber, er gibst ein stoppage.
Question from the floor: Vos ist ein stoppage?
Jack: ??? Du schiess, ja? Du schiess noch ein maal, ja? Und PUNCKT, er schiess niet. DOS ist ein stoppage!
One dark, gaunt young man, who had come to England in the last batch of Kindertransports, and spent the war in a foster home in Yorkshire, had the most peculiar accent – a mixture of Polish and North Country. We called him Ghandi, and were constantly amused by his grappling with the morality of war. “It’s playing with an instrument of death,” he would announce at rifle practice, with the broad vowels of Harrogate, and the guttural ‘r’ of Cracow. Ghandi later was to distinguish himself on the field of battle, in spite of his aversion to killing – his high principles recognized the need to play his part in the survival of his people.
The weeks at Samaria passed quickly, and I found my platoon commander, Aharoni Landman, allowed me to train my men in the way I thought proper, and we remained on cordial terms throughout the war. Jeff’s commander Zachariah (Aya) Feldman was a quiet and deeply committed Zionist with great moral and physical courage. He was the son of the general manager of the Palestine Electric Corporation, and would have become one of the patricians of the new Israel. After his death at Malkiya, in October, Jeff became very close to Aya’s father, and joined him in the PEC, until he left Israel. The third platoon commander, Stan Medicks, was a competent and likable officer with whom we remain friendly today, over half a century on. The ferociously independent men that made up “B” Company quickly accepted our company commander, Norman Schutzman, and morale improved in leaps and bounds. “D” Company was commanded by an Englishman, a non-Jew who went under the name of David Appel. He was probably the most experienced soldier in the battalion, having served in a parachute brigade during World War II, and then as a training officer thereafter. David had fallen in love with an Israeli girl after the war, and had chosen to cast his lot with the IDF when the war commenced. He too molded his men into an effective fighting unit, and the 72nd soon became one of the elite combat groups in the IDF.
Once again, my military career left me with a great deal of leisure. Jack Wilton, soon joined by my sister Osna, was living in the charming little Lev Hacarmel Hotel in Haifa, and, together with a number of other South African medics, kept open house for those of us visiting from the front, parts of which were only ten miles away. We had other South African connections in Haifa, all of whom were warm and welcoming to Machalniks. Abraham Levy, a friend of my father, had come to Palestine in the early 30s, as a chalutz (pioneer), and was managing director of the Migdal Insurance Company. His wife Milly was a sister of Jack Penn, and a passionate Zionist. Osna was once talking to her in the street, and said, “Milly, I must go, it’s getting late.” Milly drew herself up in affront and said, “In Israel it doesn’t get late.” Maurice Rabb’s brother, Lenny Rabinowitz, was also a chalutz, and worked in the Migdal under Levy. He was a qualified lawyer, and later became a High Court judge. His ebullient wife, Sara, was, and still is, a concert pianist. Sara and her children are very close to the Susman family, and she attends our celebrations in various parts of the world whenever she can. Another tough South African pioneer was Louis Shapiro, who had started in Palestine as a border guard during the first Arab insurrections, and later became a high-ranking police officer. He and his wife Hetta must have served hundreds of generous meals to countless young soldiers at their apartment on the Carmel. Louis fell upon hard times in later years, and I was pleased to be able to be of some modest help to him before he died, and to Hetta thereafter.
Haifa is the loveliest city in Israel. Its suburbs are built, in layers, on the slopes of Mount Carmel, and most of its residents enjoy stunning views of the bay and beyond, to the crusader city of Acre. It is seen by Tel Aviv as a sleepy backwater, but even in 1948 it boasted a substantial share of Israel’s heavy industry, its own Symphony Orchestra, and a technical institute of international standard, the Technion. It also provided us with two or three nightclubs, mostly situated in the business district of Central Carmel. Israelis, in the main, are an abstemious people, and such nightclubs as there were existed for pop music and dancing. The Arizona, however, was a noisy and undiscriminating drinking hole, patronized mainly by the foreign press, and by Machalniks from the four corners of the world.
Here it was that I first met Pataqui, a wealthy, bemedalled Nicaraguan in a snow-white tunic, who claimed to have fought in every one of the numerous South American wars of the past 20 years. Around his generous girth he wore a gun-belt carrying two large pearl-handled pistols. He spent most of his brief time in Israel unsuccessfully attempting to recruit a Spanish-speaking company, and had approached a number of 72nd Battalion South Americans to this end. No one took his military prowess seriously, but he was an amusing and generous drinking companion, full of outrageous anecdotes about his experiences in the battlefield and the bedroom. He would sit at his favorite table in the Arizona, surrounded by pretty girls and freeloading soldiers like me, and hold forth until dawn. We took great delight in encouraging Pataqui to describe each of his many medals. “THEES,” he would bellow, “is the one for the war we lose against Nicaragua, and THEES for the war we lose against Costa Rica, and THEES against Uruguay,” and so on. “Are they all for lost wars?” we asked. “Ho no,” he roared in delight, “THEES one is for the wound I receive jumping out of the bedroom window of the wife of the Jefe di Policia in Caracas!”
Whilst I loved the people and the beauty of Haifa, it was Tel Aviv where I began to spend more and more of my leave. To start with, it housed the head office of Africa-Israel Investments, a company in which my father was a founding shareholder, and whose board of directors were largely ex-South Africans. The dingy little offices in Ahad Ha’am Street became my headquarters in Israel. Father had asked the chairman, Jack Gering (later, Geri) to help keep me out of trouble, and, apart from advancing me money from time to time on his behalf, he and his colleagues entertained me generously and introduced me to a wide group of Israelis. Geri became a cabinet minister in Ben-Gurion’s government – his portfolio was Rationing, by far the most unpopular. One of the first acts of the newly constituted Post Office was to issue a set of stamps depicting each member of the first cabinet. It was said that the one with Geri’s face on it had to have the glue on the front, and not the back, because that was the side people spat on.
Tel Aviv is an ugly modern city, started in the early 1920s some five miles distant from the ancient Arab city of Jaffa, to house the growing number of Jews seeking a home in the Holy Land. Its core is the present-day financial district, including Lilienblum Street, where my father had built a house for his father. By 1948 it had spread in all directions. It was the largest city in Israel, with a population of over 300,000 Jews out of the 650,000 who then constituted the entire Jewish population of the country. Tel Aviv is noisy, brash and very exciting. The cafes on Dizengoff Street were centers where young Israelis congregated every evening, drinking mitz or gazoz (fruit juice, sodas) and Turkish coffee, and intensely debating the issues of the times deep into the night. Hayarkon Street ran along the sea front, and on it were four or five reasonable hotels where foreign correspondents could do some serious drinking, and rub shoulders with the new hierarchy, both civilian and military. Marcus Sieff always stayed at the Kaete Dan Hotel, which became my own favorite eating and drinking hole. I had made contact with him soon after our arrival, and he made himself free to see and entertain me as often as he could.
Marcus was a powerful force in Israel during the War of Independence, and his influence on the country’s leaders grew over the ensuing years. He had ready access to Ben-Gurion himself, and was highly regarded by Chief of Staff Yigal Yadin, and the brigade commanders of the IDF. Marcus had distinguished himself after the Allied invasion of Italy as Port Captain of Bari, where he received an OBE for competence and courage under fire. He was tough-minded and decisive, and totally outspoken in all situations. Throughout his life he commanded the respect of world leaders from many countries. He could pick up the phone and be instantly connected to Henry Kissinger and “Scoop” Jackson in the USA, to James Callahan, Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher when they were prime ministers of Britain, and to each and every Prime Minister of Israel, from Ben-Gurion in 1948, to Netanyahu in the 1990s. He was not an intellectual like his father, but he had a unique ability to make things happen. In times of crisis his insight and determination would, again and again, prove invaluable to the many causes he espoused. He was the most effective manager I have ever worked with, always excepting his uncle, Simon Marks. In those early days of our friendship, I had no idea that we would one day become as close as brothers, both at work and at play. I did, certainly, realize how fortunate I was to have a friend of such stature, who listened so seriously to my tales of the problems (as I saw them) at the front, and who, from time to time, instigated immediate action to remedy some of them. I learned to be cautious and circumspect in my reports – it was a heady experience for a young infantry sergeant to have the surrogate ear of the prime minister.
It was not only as an outstanding strategist that Marcus acquired his popularity. He was a joyful and generous companion, surrounded by the prettiest girls, and always ready to share them and his favorite champagne, Dom Perignon, with his friends until the early hours of the morning. Like most of his family, he adored amusing company, and became restless on the very few occasions when he found himself alone. His life, through to his seventies, was a non-stop series of dinners and parties, interposed with serious and concentrated attention to his weighty responsibilities. He thrived on this regime, requiring no more than three or four hours of daily sleep, and exhausted his associates by being at his desk and ready to go from seven o’clock each morning.
The three months of the second truce were used by both sides for furious lobbying in the United Nations, and for strengthening and regrouping armed forces. The 7th Brigade was preparing for a drive to clear the Arab armies out of Galilee, and we were occupied with maneuvers and exercises to this end. In spite of the truce, we embarked on a series of harassing and observation patrols against Arab posts, mainly at night. On the evening of the 8th September, Jeff’s platoon and mine were called out to remove a company of Arab Liberation Army forces who had occupied a hill overlooking the village of Tamra, in Central Galilee. Jeff’s platoon commander, Aya Feldman, and our company commander, Norman Schutzman, accompanied us in the ubiquitous Egged bus to the base of the hill just after 9 o’clock that night. Norman and Aya set up the command post in the village, and Jeff and I deployed our men across the hill and moved up, toward the peak.
It was a clear, moonless night, and we could see the enemy troops ahead only because of their white and red galabiehs. We met some desultory resistance, and a few shots were fired on both sides, but we succeeded in reaching the top at about two in the morning without suffering casualties. I spread my men across a line, just below the crest, and instructed them to dig in, as best as they could in the stony soil, to await the expected counterattack at dawn. There was a small goat kraal (pen) protected by a low dry-stone wall on a ridge, and I took a section of men into it, and settled down to await the dawn. The stars were brilliant – I recall hypnotically humming the aria from Tosca, “E lucevan le stelle” until one of my men whispered hoarsely, and quite correctly, “Oh, shut up, David!” We could see the lights of Haifa and the Carmel twinkling in the distance, and I thought of Jack and Osna sleeping peacefully in the comfort of the Lev Hacarmel Hotel, with no idea of the drama which, I was sure, lay ahead of us.
At first light the Arabs started their counterattack. Bullets began to whine overhead, and, as the light improved, some of them found their mark. I heard high-pitched voices from all sides calling for the company medic, a South African called Locky Fainman, and it soon became apparent that the Arabs had advanced to three sides of our positions. For the first half-hour they were so well hidden that we could not see any one of them, and I remember admiring their stalking skills as they picked off any of our men who even moved in his shallow shelter. Locky took his life in his hands as he scuttled from one wounded soldier to another, dressing their wounds and trying to drag them to cover. He was bending over a young American from the Bronx, Dick Feuerman, who was bleeding heavily from a bullet in the shoulder, when his helmet slipped off and struck Dick on the head. “Poifect!” screamed Dick, “Now finish me off wid da bayonet!” There wasn’t much else to amuse us. I was peering over the wall of our kraal when, at last, I saw a line of Arabs crawling down the hill towards us, about 100 yards away. I called to the five or six men with me, and we unleashed a fusillade of shots at them, hitting a few, and driving them back. I raised myself to fire at a bearded wild-eyed Arab who persisted in advancing, enjoyed the sight of him throwing his arms up and falling backwards from my shot, when I felt a hammer blow in my back, followed immediately by a deafening crack. My tin helmet flew off my head, and the force of the bullet spun me around. I dropped to the ground, dazed, and lying on my right side.
After a few seconds I opened my eyes. I was not in great pain, but I was horrified to see a thick gout of blood flowing out of my mouth on to the ground around my face and chest. “Oh, God,” I thought, “A lung wound!” Benny “Toets” Landau, a second-year medical student, shouted to his buddy Gordon Mandelzweig, “Dave’s been hit. What shall we do?” “You’re the doctor,” Gordon snapped back. By the time they unwrapped a field dressing and started to fasten it around my neck, I was sitting up, in an uncontrollable rage. “Not my neck, you idiots, my back!” I yelled. I was surprised to find the wind to shout – perhaps it had missed the lungs, I thought. (In fact, as I later learned, the bullet, a dum-dum, had hit me just below my left shoulder blade, and exploded out of my neck, tearing a large hole in it, destroying muscle and tissue on its way, and knocking off my tin hat. The blood-flow from my mouth had entered from the neck wound, as I lay on my side, and spilled out again.) Gordon and Toets, and the other three men in the kraal, looked at me as though I were crazy, and waited, crouching behind the stone wall, to see what next.
I stood up and looked around the battlefield. Jeff heard that I was hit, and, in a temper, shouted at his platoon to fix bayonets and charge. His mixed bunch of South Africans, Americans, Englishmen and Holocaust survivors ran, screaming like banshees, up the hill, many of them with their bayonets still in the scabbards. This macabre sight must have terrified the Arabs, for they turned and fled, leaving rifles and other equipment on the ground. The remainder of my platoon fired continuously at the fleeing Arabs, and in no time the hill was secure again. I made my way down, through slopes of bright red poppies, to the command post in the village, where I reported to Norman what I could of the action, and sat waiting for an ambulance to take me to hospital. A German-speaking doctor approached me to change the dressing on my neck, and once again I flew into a temper. I could not understand why he persisted in addressing my neck, when it was my back that was becoming more and more painful. However, the entry wound was barely visible, and the exit wound enormous, and he, poor man, assumed that I was simply confused. When the ambulance arrived, I clambered into the front with the driver, and told him to go straight to the Italian Hospital in Haifa’s lower town, where I knew that Jack Wilton was operating. I had no intention of submitting myself to the ministrations of what I took to be yet another uncomprehending Yekkishe doctor. The driver’s instructions were to take the half-dozen of us to the Bogroshov Hospital on the Carmel, which had been fitted out as a casualty-clearing unit. However, he agreed to stop by the Italian Hospital to leave word for Jack that he was to come immediately. Moments after we reached the Bogroshov, Jack was there.
In the context of the war, the battle for Tamra was a minor skirmish. It was unusual only because it included the first bayonet charge. Of the sixty Machalniks who climbed the hill the night before, three were dead and eight wounded. We could not be sure of enemy casualties, but there were seven dead Arabs on the hilltop, and I believe that probably three times that number must have been wounded. The action consolidated the confidence and skills of the 72nd battalion, and stood it in good stead for the battles that lay ahead.
Jack patched me up with his skilled and gentle hands, and I spent the next three weeks in the hospital, shamelessly spoilt by the pretty nurses, and receiving an endless stream of well-meaning visitors. The very first was my loving sister Osna, who took one look at my wound, and burst into tears. She returned again and again, with the same result, and it took a number of visits before she managed to conduct a coherent conversation with me. Men from the 72nd came frequently, including Aya and Norman, and, of course, Jeff. Most of Jack’s medical colleagues dropped by, blending professional curiosity with friendship, and Jack Penn announced that he would patch up my neck without a trace, as soon as the wound healed. He was as good as his word – when I returned to Johannesburg in December he took me into hospital immediately, and did a fine reconstructive job. He was amused when I suggested that he leave a half-inch scar above my shirt collar, so that I had something to brag about.
My post-hospital convalescence was supposed to continue for a further six weeks. The wound was healing slowly, and I needed to learn how to compensate effectively for the loss of the muscles in my left shoulder. A series of concerned girls in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were pleased to dress the wound, and their ancillary comforts no doubt speeded up the use of my arm. I spent many happy days with Osna and Jack and their Haifa friends, and with Marcus in Tel Aviv. I was in constant touch with my unit during this time. The 7th Brigade was confined to reacting to the blatant and frequent breaches of the United Nations-imposed truce by Kaukji’s Arab Liberation Army. “B” Company was in the thick of the counterattacks, and had suffered a number of casualties, the most distressing of which, to me, was the death of a Johannesburg volunteer, Louis Hack, whose family I knew from home.
By the middle of September, even the United Nations was forced to acknowledge that the IDF had every justification for launching a major counter-attack to drive the Arab armies out of Galilee. The brigade was preparing for this operation when news came of the assassination of Count Bernadotte, the United Nations mediator, and the Israeli high command called off the attack. At last, on October 27th, Ben Dunkelman, Commander of the 7th Brigade, was given instructions to proceed with Operation Hiram, his finely- tuned plan to destroy the Arab Liberation Army.
I felt that I could no longer justify my absence from my unit, and persuaded an ever-understanding Jack Wilton to sign me off as fit to return. The proviso was that that my wound, which was still lightly suppurating, be dressed daily by a qualified medic. Who better, I thought, than Toets Landau, the second-year medical student, who would surely be at hand when I took over my platoon again? Within the close family atmosphere of the Israeli army I had no difficulty in arranging a series of transport to take me to the 72nd Battalion, which I rejoined on the afternoon of October 28th. An Egged bus driver who drove the last leg of the journey told me exactly where to find my unit – his intelligence regarding the disposition of our forces was far more accurate than any of the brigade staff officers from whom I inquired along the way. Norman Schutzman was pleased to see me, and told me that “B” Company was about to lead the drive to take Meron and Jish, where Kaukji had established his headquarters. I was to remain with him in reserve until the completion of the operation, and would then be deployed.
We advanced on foot throughout the night, climbing up through fruit trees and olive groves toward the holy Jewish shrine of Meron, which commanded a strategic hilltop, adjacent to Jish. We came under quite heavy artillery and mortar fire as we moved upwards, and I found that my wound had caused me no loss of agility in diving to cover at the first horrid howl of an approaching shell. By early morning we had occupied Meron, and moved on immediately to take Jish. In accordance with Dunkelman’s plan, the attack had taken the Arabs completely by surprise, and we easily repulsed their half-hearted counter-attack. When we paused to take breath, at about midday on the 29th October, we were told that the 7th Brigade had achieved all its immediate objectives, and that it remained only to cut off Kaukji’s retreating forces on their flight to Lebanon. 72nd Battalion was sent to take the Taggart Fort at Malkiya, and to seal the border as best we could to contain the fleeing Arabs. At this stage I was able to make contact with my friends, and, in particular, with Jeff, who glared at the dirty bandage around my neck and growled, “What the hell are you doing here?” I learned that Stanley Medicks as platoon commander and Jeff Perlman as platoon sergeant were in charge of my platoon. They had had a particularly hairy time in the taking of Meron, and Aya Feldman’s platoon, seconded for the purpose to the Etzel “A” Company, was sent to the Lebanese frontier near Malkiya to mop up. Schutzman suggested that I go up to strengthen Aya’s platoon.
As the jeep in which I was riding approached Aya’s position a fusillade of shots erupted, and bullets whined overhead. I ran, doubled up, toward the front, to be met with great relief by one of the platoon corporals, who tearfully told me that Aya had just been shot. His men were sensibly deployed across a rise, and were pouring fire into a retreating band of Arabs who had attempted to drive them off the vantage point. When it was clear that the enemy were in complete rout, I was taken across to where Aya was lying. His eyes were wide open, and there was a tiny bullet hole just above them. I closed his eyes with my fingertips, and he looked as serene and confident as he had always appeared. I covered him with a blanket, and it was agony to accept that this charming and vital young man was dead. His men, who had idolized him, were stunned, and I felt I should keep them occupied, before their morale collapsed. I sent two sections in to the bush below us to search for enemy dead or wounded, and listened without surprise as a few shots rang out, revealing that Aya’s men were in no mood to take care of the wounded. I nearly had a mutiny on my hands when I instructed the men to bury the eight or nine enemy soldiers where they had fallen, but reason prevailed when I explained that we might have to stay in our position for days on end, and it would be unsavory and unhealthy to do so amid decomposing corpses.
We dug in behind the rise, and I was posting sentries when, once again, we came under heavy machine gun fire. Looking down and across the heavily wooded valley towards Lebanon, it was clear that the fire was coming from a stone house about half a mile away. It was becoming dark by now, and I saw no point in wasting fire on a target, which, increasingly, was almost invisible. In my absence the battalion had been equipped, and proudly boasted of two .50 calibre Beza heavy machine guns, each manned by a section, one of South African and other Machal, the other by Gachal soldiers. The one of the Machal group, commanded by Hymie Josman, had been brought up onto the hill. I had also scrounged a large scale map of the area. After setting the roster of guard duty for the night, I collapsed with relief into my slit-trench. My bed at the Lev Hacarmel Hotel, 48 hours earlier, was never as welcoming as the hard, rocky bed I enjoyed that night.
I had arranged for the last sentry shift, the predawn two hours, to be taken with a Bulgarian crew member of the Beza machine gun platoon. We yawned and stretched ourselves back to life, and then set up his weapon, firmly planting the tripod into the ground, and assembling the Beza. The stone house was clearly marked on David’s map, as was the hillock that we occupied. It was a simple task to measure the distance – 910 yards, I remember. The Beza was a relatively slow-firing, extremely accurate machine gun, with an effective range of 1200 yards. At our calculated range, the gunner reckoned that the spread of bullets would be approximately 25 square yards, provided that the gun was firmly anchored.
I had decided to hold fire until we had a clear target, and, at first light, a column of about eight men approached the house from a thicket, preceded by a donkey carrying a heavy machine gun and ammunition. We could not believe our luck. They had obviously withdrawn to safety the night before, and were now returning to harass us again. By this time most of our platoon were awake, and gathered with excitement around Berel, the Beastly Bulgar, as he set his sights. I gave the order to fire, and Berel released a ten-second burst. When the dust settled, we saw every single target lying about the house, unmoving, including the wretched donkey. The platoon cheered in triumph – this was a fitting response to the death of their popular commander.
In the early morning I selected half a dozen men to accompany me down the hill and across the stream into Lebanon, as much for the excitement of being the first Israeli soldier into that country (or so I fondly imagined), as for the dubious necessity of confirming the identity of the enemy. We found eight bodies hit by our return fire. (We learned that they were part of a detachment of Senegalese mercenaries, each with heavily scarred faces indicating their tribal origin). Meanwhile a breathless runner arrived from David Appel who had turned up at our outpost to assess the situation for himself, and demanded our instant return. What, he shouted on my appearance, did I think I was doing? Didn’t I realise that I could have caused a major international incident by breaking the UN stricture on the invasion of Lebanon? Thoughtless, idiotic, irresponsible were some of the adjectives thrown at me, until I silently wished I had worked out my convalescence far away from the front. When the tirade ended, he put a hand on my shoulder and told me that Jacky, the battalion commander, had approved my promotion in the field to 2nd Lieutenant, and that I was to replace Aya as platoon commander.
Jeff and I came down from the mountains to Haifa, to be pallbearers at Aya’s funeral, a sad occasion attended by hundreds of prominent Israelis. Israel was a tiny country, with a population of 650,000 Jews, and its army consisted purely of civilians. Everyone knew each other, or, at least, of each other, and every single one of the 6,000 fighters who died, as well as the 40,000 wounded in the War of Independence, was mourned throughout the country. The Feldman family was well-known and highly-regarded, and it was brought sharply home to us what a great loss Aya’s death was to his country, as well as to his loved ones.
The battalion was moved to Saint Lukes, yet another deserted British army camp, on the western slopes of Mount Carmel. I cannot recall that we spent much time there, nor, indeed, that we did anything other than planning our abundance of free time, whilst waiting for our discharge papers. Filled with the passion of Zionism, I had decided that Israel was to be my home, and that I would seek my career in the Israeli Foreign Office. Marcus arranged for me to meet one or two grandees in that infant organization, and I was greeted courteously enough, but with no great encouragement, when I went to see them. The problem, it seemed, was twofold. They had little or no funds to employ trainees, outside of the core staff of men and women who had come to their careers by way of intelligence work or underground arms purchasing over the years. Secondly, I was on the point of returning to South Africa for an operation on my neck. There was no guarantee, said my inquisitors, that I would return. I should approach them again when I was finally settled in Israel. Somewhat miffed, I made preparations for my flight home.
A minor hitch was the return of my passport, which had been taken from me on my arrival at Tel Litwinsky. It was finally returned to me, crumpled and dog-eared, and with my photograph glued back crookedly. I later heard that the passports of Machalniks were used, often many times, to bring to Israel state-less refugees from the Displaced Person camps. Israeli police arrested one ex-Machalnik shortly after the war, on a charge of murder and robbery in Rome. Fortunately, he was able to prove conclusively that he had been fighting in the Negev on the date of the alleged offense, and it was clear that the crime was committed by one of the refugees, traveling on his passport.
Ann Laski and I had been conducting a warm but sporadic correspondence since her visit to South Africa. This became more frequent after she learned of my wound from a visiting Jack Penn, and resulted in her suggestion that I stop by in London on my return to Israel, the following February. I was filled with excitement at this plan. Growing up in a quintessentially British colony like Northern Rhodesia, I regarded England as a second home, and not even to have visited it before the start of my career in yet a third country would have been a glaring omission. Much more importantly, I was longing to see Ann again.
Back in Johannesburg, my first task was to consult with Jack Penn about the wound in my neck. It had healed well, but left a thick and ugly-looking keloid which, we agreed, should be removed. He whipped me straight into surgery, and, aided by his experienced theatre sister Benny, did a fine job of reconstruction, even leaving the joke half-inch of scar showing above my collar. The muscles destroyed by the bullet never recovered, but I learned to compensate for their absence, and the only remaining evidence is that my left shoulder hangs down some three centimeters below the other, creating a major challenge for my tailor.
The two months before my final departure went by quickly. Jack and Osna had also decided to make their home in Israel, as had Jeff. We attended a non-stop round of farewell parties, thoroughly enjoyed by all except my long-suffering parents. The only comfort, for them, was my proposed stopover in London, where I think they hoped that my admiration for Simon and my affection for Ann would persuade me to rethink my Israeli plans. How unpredictable is life! I was ultimately to follow the exact path that Mother and Father wished for me, but not before a few more years of trial and error, and, regrettably, not primarily for the noble purpose of wishing to please them.