PALMACH HANEGEV, 9TH BATTALION
I.D.F. NO: 63144
At 19, as a member of the Habonim Zionist Movement, I was idealistic, dogmatic and prejudiced against anyone who did not think the way I did.
I was involved briefly in American politics, and worked hard for liberal candidates and causes, especially for civil rights. My small participation in sending arms to the Haganah from Los Angeles was exciting – my work in fund-raising and rallies for the Haganah was not. When the emissary of our movement from Palestine said that it would be good to volunteer, I stepped forward, as did most of the other guys, but they soon found family and school reasons not to actually go. I was recruited by “Land and Labor for Palestine” in spite of the fact that I was untrained in arms and warfare.
I said farewell to my friends and I got on a Greyhound bus for the long ride to New York, where I spent a few days with my folks. The British Consul in New York told me that I received the last visa for Palestine that his office would issue.
A meeting was arranged at a designated street corner at a set time, and I was to be taken for some training. On boarding the bus I found a bunch of other guys, mostly older. Many were combat veterans or said they were. We were taken to an estate somewhere in New Jersey, where we spent two days training in physical fitness and unarmed combat.
After returning to New York and saying goodbye to my folks I boarded the “Marine Carp,” destination Haifa and Alexandria via Beirut as the first port of call. Of the 400 passengers on board, most were Arabs, but there were also many Jews going back home to Palestine.
The “Marine Carp” was a converted former Liberty ship and the accommodation was frugal. The women were bunked six to a cabin. The men slept in huge bays with racks of pipe-metal framed steel spring bunks five-high. By some tacit understanding we Jewish men, some 75 of us, were given one bay to ourselves, though it was not full. Amongst us were Palestinian Jews as well as a few volunteers from Canada, Mexico and elsewhere, off to fight in Palestine. Oded Bourla, a Sephardic Jewish poet who had been our trainer in New Jersey, remained the designated commander of the Americans, including five of the women in the “first class” cabins.
The Atlantic was very rough and most of us on board were badly seasick. Later, while cruising through the calm Mediterranean, the news came through that the State of Israel had been declared. Somehow the Arab passengers had moved away from where we were when we heard the news.
We Jews gathered in the dining hall and roared out our joy; we sang Hatikvah and many other songs, and danced the Hora until we dropped. The fears and doubts were kept inside for that evening. The crew joined us: their union was communist-led and they were all radicals, very much on our side.
My own fears and doubts were devastating. Though credulous and enthusiastic, I knew that there would be a co-ordinated attack on the new state by the neighbouring countries, all well-equipped, trained and armed by the French and British. I knew that the Yishuv was lacking in arms and trained soldiers. The Arabs kept threatening that they were going to kill all the Jews and I believed they meant it.
To me, it seemed likely that we were facing another Holocaust. My own position was that I would go and do whatever I could, even if it meant going down with my people. I was now 20 and had experienced almost no physical pain or fear in my life. Sometime before this, I had promised myself that I would replace Ari Lashner, an American Habonim leader who had been killed by an Arab sniper on the perimeter of Kibbutz Kfar Blum. Ari had been my hero and role model, and I had pledged, privately to myself alone, that I would go to Israel and if not fill his shoes, at least put my body and my energy to service there in his honour. Now I renewed that vow.
So overall I was able to put up a cheerful and optimistic face and prepared for our arrival in what was now Israel in a few days, hopeful that my first call to Beirut in Lebanon would go smoothly. Lebanon was now officially at war with the new State of Israel.
We later learned that the captain of the “Marine Carp” was concerned about the well-being of his Jewish passengers while in Beirut. It was an American ship and therefore we were unlikely to be bothered. He contacted the US Consul General in Beirut by radio-telephone and asked for instructions. The story I heard, from good sources, is that he was told there would be no trouble and he could bring his ship in.
At 5 am we pulled into the harbor at Beirut and tied up alongside a pier. The US Consul was there to greet us. So were about 400 Lebanese soldiers in tight blue wool uniforms – it must have been awfully hot for them when the sun came out fully. The soldiers came up the gangplank and set up machine gun posts in the main corridors. An announcement was made on the loudspeakers: all Jewish passengers were to assemble in the main lounge.
We didn’t do that. We bunched up in little groups throughout the ship, talking and trying to work out what to do. My group crowded around Oded Bourla in the shower room next to our sleeping bay. Some of the wild ones said we should fight. Two of them had pistols. We gabbled like a bunch of geese. There were an awful lot of Lebanese. Then came another announcement on the PA system: if the Jewish men would come along and be “interned” in Lebanon, the Jewish women would be allowed to continue their voyage to Haifa unmolested. The women were under Lebanese guard while we decided. This was clearly a serious threat. Most of the women were the wives of men on the ship; couples had been separated because of the barracks-like sleeping arrangements. We decided to submit. The Israelis among us were fearful but they accepted the decision. We Americans felt confident that we’d be repatriated in a few days at the most.
The two guns were stripped down to small parts and hidden on (in, actually) the bodies of a number of the men, as was the ammunition. Somebody had a compass. Each took from his bags what he thought best. And so we slowly ambled up to the main lounge. The US Consul was there, and he collected the passports of the US citizens (and, it transpired, turned them over to the Lebanese commander). Some of us passed notes to the crew for our families. In glum, defeated dribs and drabs we went down the gangplank and climbed onto Lebanese army trucks. The Lebanese left behind some old, sick men, but 69 of us were taken away. The Jewish women waved and called to us as the trucks drove away from the pier.
The trucks drove through the city of Beirut and out through its suburbs. Through small towns and valleys and villages we drove, until the pressure on my bladder became extreme and I pissed off the rear of my truck after getting sign-language permission from the soldiers who guarded us. After what seemed like about four hours, the last part of which was climbing high into the cool hills, we arrived at Baalbek. We were taken to what had once been a French Foreign Legion barracks, a handsome building with large rooms opening out onto a long balcony on the second floor. At the head of the stairs, we found a washroom with a water tap, a pissing-trough, and an Arab squat latrine.
In the three large barracks rooms were piles of boards made of nice, soft pine. Three of these for a sleeping pallet, a thin blanket, a tin bowl and a spoon were issued to each of us. The guards turned out to be Palestinian Arab refugees. The Lebanese themselves acted frightened of us, very nervous. Some of the Palestinian Arabs were alright, some were sadistic bastards.
We were given a meal: a small cube of goats’ milk cheese, a radish, a green onion and two pitas (the large flat kind, not the pocket kind). We could get water from the tap. That’s what we got every day for our three meals, though sometimes we each got a large spoonful of beans in tomato sauce for dinner instead of the cheese. I weighed 150 lbs when I got there, and 110 lbs when we got out six weeks later.
And so to bed, worried and fearful about what tomorrow would bring.
The morning brought the US Consul, all the way from Beirut. We gathered together to meet with him. He told us that we were a real nuisance, that the Lebanese were treating us very well, and that the families of the Americans were working for our release. He heard our requests for medicine for the two of us who were down with severe measles, and agreed to get us what we needed, we could give him the money now.
We had elected some leaders from among us, and they mentioned that the last time an American citizen had been taken by force from a ship (not even a US flag ship, at that) the US Navy had a cruiser in the harbor the next day and the citizen was released under the threat of our guns. The consul assured us that there was no danger of that happening now. The consul showed a marked distaste for Jews; of course he was accredited to an Arab state, so that would explain it.
The virulent anti-Semitism of US diplomats in Arab countries was well known. In fact the State Department had been against Truman’s recognition of the Jewish State right from the first day, and continues until the present time.
It was not until the 1960s when I subpoenaed my files from the US State Department in connection with my citizenship case that I felt the reality of the discrimination. The important document about me started out thus: “This obstreperous member of a despised race…” The US Consul in Beirut had endorsed it thus: “Right!” So much for the consul. When we read in the local French language newspaper that he had been on the podium at an anti-Israel rally at the American University of Beirut and had seen fit to stay there while a resolution calling for our (US prisoners) death was passed by acclamation, we were not really surprised.
The next big event for us was the Selection. That term refers to the procedure in the concentration camps in Europe, where those who were to be killed that day were separated from the rest. We had contacts with some of the guards, who would bring us news and other stuff for money, so we were prepared. The camp commander showed up with a specially big and tough retinue of guards, and called us all together. He had all our passports before him, and told us that the Israelis would be taken to a different location. We had discussed this possibility and it seemed to us that this would enable the Lebanese to kill the Israelis without risking the consequences of killing citizens of the USA or Canada. So the night before we had all – Americans, Canadians, the two with Argentinian passports, and the Israelis (who had British passports) – shaved our heads so we would not be easily identified
from our passport photographs.
The first man was called forward and asked his name. “Yisrael ben Yisrael,” he replied, “Israel son of Israel”. And so said the second shaven-headed man, and the third, and the Selection was called off.
After we’d been there for a month, and our families’ efforts to get the US State Department to move on our case seemed to be stuck, despite the best efforts of then-Congressman Jacob Javits of New York, we started to plan an escape. We had some Israelis among us who knew the topography pretty well, and they worked out a route to Israel, though we had no idea where the actual front line might be. We had the weapons we’d smuggled in, and accepted the fact that we would have casualties. We were tired now from poor nourishment, and dispirited from being prisoners, but we felt we had to do it.
A few comments about being a prisoner: for me, the worst part was being so utterly helpless and not knowing what would be done to us. While it is true that I have always felt a particularly strong psychological need to control my environment, I’m sure I was not alone in this distress. We were only imprisoned for six weeks but it seemed like forever, and of course until the last day we had no idea if or when we might be freed. When I read of the hostages in Beirut these days, some of whom have endured over ten years of captivity incomparably worse than mine, I feel sick and angry. That’s something that might bring me to kill.
Just as we were getting ourselves ready, storing food at the expense of eating it, and so on, we got some hints that we might be released. Then the US Consul came to visit. The Lebanese offered to release us and let us go back to the USA, providing we would each swear never to attempt to go to Israel. That included the Israelis. We agreed. An oath under duress is okay.
Then we waited some more.
One morning, the Lebanese army trucks came grinding into the courtyard. We needed no further notice, put our belongings into our pockets and lined up with the weakest and sick ones at the head of the line… just in case. But no, they took us all. Huddled together in heaps at the bottom of the truck, we were too weak to sit upright and too scared that it might not be for real to sing or joke around. But yes, they took us to the pier, and there was the same “Marine Carp,” this time on its way back to the USA on another round-trip.
Weakly, still very fearful that the ordeal was not really over, we climbed up the gangplank. Crew members helped us on board and down to the sleeping bay and up onto the bunks. Later they gave us a festive meal of turkey and all the trimmings, ice cream, the lot. We gorged ourselves and soon returned the goodies, which our shrunken and tender tummies refused to hold.
The ship now carried many refugees from the war zone, Americans going home, many of them Jews. I met some politicos who told me with great excitement that they had a message for us from the Haganah! Special arrangements had been made, they said, and the ship would make an unscheduled call at Palermo, where the Haganah awaited us and would take us off the ship and on to Israel! Huzzah!
As they say in Israel, “Lo dubim v’lo yaar,” “No bears and no forest.”
Yes, we did pull in at Palermo. But nobody, it seemed, awaited us. Of those who decided to make a break for it anyway, some bought crew papers from crew members, and some went over the side and swam ashore. Three of us, lacking in funds or experience or imagination, pried fillings out of our teeth and went to the captain and begged to see a dentist. The captain agreed, and called an escort of 18 carabinieri to take us to the dentist. Foiled!
The three of us, scrawny young Dave from Montreal, hulking Big Joe (“Gonna kill me a thousand Ayrabs!”) from New York, and scrawny young me. We were taken in a truck to the center of town. Off we got and went upstairs to the dentist’s surgery, leaving two carabinieri to guard the downstairs entrance. Once inside, Joe offered to go first. Dave and I sat in the waiting room, with two carabinieri guarding the door and all the other patients sitting around in the room with us.
What the hell, I thought, what the hell. I can’t get out of this. But I can give it a try, and then I won’t be so ashamed when they drag me back to the ship. I had stuffed my pockets with packs of American cigarettes before I left the ship, prime currency in Europe in those days. I stood up, walked briskly to the door, handed a pack of cigarettes to each of the guards, said “vino, vino” with great brio, and walked out. To my surprise, nobody stopped me. (Why did I say “vino?” Well, I couldn’t think of anything else, that’s why.) I walked briskly down the stairs. The guards at the street door barred my way with their carbines. I handed them each a pack of cigarettes and said my magic “vino” at them. They seemed confused but did not stop me. I marched down the main street of Palermo with calm and confidence until after a minute I heard them yelling and their pounding feet behind me, so I picked mine up and ran like hell.
I ducked into a shop, a pharmacy, and the woman behind the counter, quickly seeing that I was running from the police, grabbed my arm and pulled me down to a crouch behind a counter where I couldn’t be seen from the street. After a minute the chase seemed to have passed me by so I got up, said “grazie” to the woman, and walked out of the shop.
Turns out that all the carabinieri ran down the street after me, so Dave Sidorsky, finding himself all alone in the waiting room, stuck his head into the dentist’s surgery and told Joe Nagdimon what had happened, and then walked out and down the stairs and out the front door and away. Nagdimon chose to stay and be taken back to the ship.
There were over 20 of us who got off the ship in Palermo, but ten went back to the ship before it sailed. The rest of us were rounded up into a cheap restaurant by street urchins who seemed to understand what was going on. We had a meal, and decided to look for Jews to help us. In Palermo there were none left so we took a train to Naples, where we found some, but they wanted nothing to do with us because the police were after us and sent us to the Jewish Agency in Rome, where we finally found people to take care of us.
After some more adventures in a DP camp near Rome, I was assigned to lead a bunch of sturdy young Bulgarian Jews on their way to Israel in a chartered airplane. This was on about July 9th.
I ARRIVE IN ISRAEL AND JOIN THE ARMY
The airplane landed at an airstrip outside of Haifa and young men were taken away in a truck. The two mystery passengers were somehow identified to me as pilots, and I was shocked to know that I might have had to try to coerce the charter plane crew to land without their help.
Then I was alone there, except for a grizzled man and his pickup truck. I remember he asked something like, “Well, what about you?” and I replied that I was to go to Kibbutz Ramat Yochanan where my garin was. (The “garin” was a nucleus of people from Habonim in the USA, living and working at Kibbutz Ramat Yochanan until they would get word of the location of a new kibbutz of their own.) So the man indicated that I should get into the back of the pickup, and we drove off. But he didn’t take me to Ramat Yochanan. He took me to Haifa and dropped me off at the Technion, which appeared to be a sort of hostel or camp for unassigned odds and sods. I stayed there for a few days.
We were marched down to the old town for meals, in line, but there was no sort of registration or sign-in that I could see, so I felt free to wander.
After I’d been at the Technion for five or six days, a few of us were put in the back of a pickup (arranged by whom? on what basis? I knew nothing), and driven along back roads to avoid the fighting. We were deposited at Tel Litwinsky, a huge old British army camp. There I was given a bunk in a tent (from whence my Borsalino hat was stolen when I went to the washhouse), and somehow or other my cousin Danny Rappaport found me. He knew his way around and spoke Hebrew well and had a pickup at his disposal. We walked and talked and I nipped out of camp with him and went to Tel Aviv for the day with my Aunt Tamar and Uncle Mulya and young kid cousins Oded and Yoram. Then back to camp, delayed by an Egyptian air raid. The next day I was escorted to an office and told I had to “sign up.” I was given the choice of signing a limited sort of pledge which would put me in the Israeli army with less likelihood of compromising my American citizenship, or a full-scale oath of allegiance. I took the big one. Thus I “volunteered” for service in the army, and was assigned to an “Anglo Saxon,” that is, English-speaking unit, the 72nd Battalion in the 7th (Dunkelman) Brigade, near Haifa.
EARLY DAYS IN THE IDF
Having been assigned to the Dunkleman 7th Brigade, I traveled up to the Haifa Bay area and found myself in an English-speaking unit. I was put into a signals squad, living across the road from the main camp, but only after some days of lonely confusion and a sense of nobody being in charge. I think I was assigned only after buttonholing some officer-type and demanding some structure.
Most nights we’d go down the road a piece to the canteen of the Nesher Cement Co., and drink beer. My best friend was a cultured, crafty Hungarian Gahalnik in the 72nd. He found me, I think, naive but okay, and kept telling me the ‘inside story,’ which of course meant nothing to me. It is true that I was naive. I was thrilled to be a part of the army, but distressed that my particular part seemed all screwed up and not serious. I asked my company commander to let me transfer to another unit, the 79th Battalion, where George Alper was and he said it was alright. George had been in Baalbek with me, and was our designated military commander when the ten of us escaped in Palermo. No, said Capt. Klein, a piggy-faced Chicagoan, I should be proud that I was in the 72nd: no transfer. Without his approval, nobody
could take me. Except, I had heard that the Palmach could, illegally.
The Palmach was the striking force within the framework of the Haganah, tied to the kibbutz and labor movement, Mapai/Mapam/Ahdut Avodah. Its origin was in the Night Raiders, a force trained in the 1930s by the English eccentric Orde Wingate to counterattack Arab terrorists and gangs rather than maintain a purely defensive posture, as was overall Haganah doctrine. People who joined the Palmach had to undergo very intensive training, mainly in terrain recognition and survival. They lived in kibbutzim, worked in the fields, and had a tradition of stealing kibbutz chickens for cook-outs at which a main feature was singing and telling “tchizbahtim,” tall stories about their exploits and those of their comrades. It was an elite group.
By the time I had got to Israel, David Ben-Gurion was in the final stages of molding a national army out of the Haganah and intended to bring the Irgun and the Stern Gang into it as well. He could, therefore, not exclude the Palmach, despite the opposition of its officers and the left movement. In July 1948, the Palmach still had a separate command structure but was prohibited from recruiting. Despite that, they ran a secret recruiting post in Tel Aviv; it was in a home, one heard, on Rothschild Boulevard, and there one Uri Meretz would sign you up if you were already well-trained. (In 1990 I met Dalia Golomb, whose home it had been; her father was Eliahu Golomb, an early Haganah commander. Dalia knew Uri Meretz well). All recruits came in as privates, whatever their rank. Shades of the Foreign Legion! And in the Palmach a wounded comrade was never left behind, never.
So, since I could not get a transfer from the 72nd to the 79th… I deserted and ran off to try to get into the Palmach. I reckoned I could bullshit my way in, despite my lack of training. Not having experience or sense enough to know about fear of consequences, all I wanted to do was fight for my country heroically. Youth has its moments. I hitchhiked off to Tel Aviv (no formalities on the roads, no checking of papers or anything organized at all), stopping off to stay with Uncle Zyama at Bet Herut on the way. In TA I stayed with Aunt Tamar and Uncle Mulya while I scrounged around and looked for the secret office. Somehow, ineptly, I failed to locate it. Went back to the 72nd at Nesher, hangdog, hung around a few days and found it still pretty bad – sloppy, ignorant officers, no grounds for confidence in them at all – and slipped off to TA… and this time I found the secret recruiter. I went into the office and said I’d come to see Uri Meretz. Bellied up to his table and coolly told him I’d been two years in the Ranger Battalion, US Army. His eyes lit up with pleasure, and he signed me up. The next morning Mulya took me on the bus on his way to work and dropped me off at the meeting point, a truck pulled up and I climbed on. I was in the Palmach!
There was a ragged bunch on the truck. I don’t remember who the others were. The trip to the base of the 9th Battalion, Negev Brigade, at Beer Yaakov was short and hot. We were dumped in a barracks. No orientation, no nothing. Somebody told me to walk down the road to another camp to get my Army Card (#63144) and Identity Card. I came back with the cards, we were given a meal and taken forward by truck in the dark, turned out at the side of the road, one of us said he would lead us and so we walked through the enemy lines to our Negev base at Kibbutz Ruhama. En route we stopped to make sure nothing in our pockets would jingle or reflect light. We inched forward, apparently through a gap between Egyptian posts: the front line. When we were clear we lay up for a while at an interim stop (maybe it was Kibbutz Nirim), where I met some of the other Americans there already: Yehuda Lev, Al Wank, Al Twirsky, and Canadian Harvey Sirulnikoff. There was also a contingent of Jews from South Africa, mostly rural types and splendid marksmen, mostly veterans of WW II. I didn’t see any of them again until the re-organization at Beer Yaakov in September.
So we ended up at Ruhama, where the unit was called the Negev Beasts (Hayot HaNegev) and operated as motorized commandos, in two half-tracks with Bren guns mounted.
After hanging around with no purpose for a week I was ordered to go out on an operation. We got into the half-tracks at dusk. They chanted some sort of song, to the girls and the others who were staying behind. Harvey Sirulnikoff and I had Czech Mauser rifles as our weapons, and a couple of grenades. We were warned that the grenades were unreliable, so we should throw them immediately after we pulled out the pin. Off we rolled into the night.
We drove for a couple of hours, then stopped, then the half-track shifted about from spot to spot – all this on open scrub desert near Iraq-el-Suweidan police fortress. Then we stopped and all piled out except for the machine gunner who covered us from the half-track while we ran around a bunch of tents looking inside but there was nobody there. Then we got back in and drove back to our base.
I went on two more such operations and now there was action and the enemy was the Egyptian army. The big Sudanese fought hard, the smaller Egyptians seemed to have no energy (though in January, when they were defending prepared positions inside Egypt, they fought hard and well). I was given the Czech rifle and some bullets. I expected somebody to teach me to use it but soon realized it was up to me. So I asked Migdal (a tall South African who clearly knew all about rifles) to come with me to the wadi behind the latrine and I told him my problem and he showed me how to load the clip of five bullets into the rifle and work the bolt to put one in the chamber, how to sight, how to squeeze the trigger on the out-breath, how to work the bolt again and how to put the safety on and off. I fired a couple of shots into the wadi to get the hang of it and it seemed to work just fine. People sometimes cleaned out their guns by firing off a round or two, and nobody took any notice of mine.
I felt better equipped the next time we went out, and used the rifle effectively.
One night the kibbutz invited us to come down and see a movie. The screen was a bed-sheet draped over the side of a large truck. We sat on the ground. The movie’s sides were covered in subtitles: Hebrew on one side, French on the other, since the movie was “Gilda” and it was in English. Wow, what a movie! That Rita Hayworth was S-O-O-O sexy. That was one hell of a good movie.
The Palmach was a people’s militia. There were no ranks, only responsibilities. Members who had appropriate training and were accepted by the troops as leaders were given commensurate responsibilities. Those who had passed the training course for squad leaders (said to have been more difficult than the training given Royal Marine Commandos in those days), were termed squad leaders. My platoon in the 9th Battalion consisted of three jeeps, each with a front gunner who was the squad leader, a driver, and a rear machine gunner – which on my jeep was me. Platoon leaders had passed that course. The platoon leader of the three-jeep platoon next to mine was a stolid, chubby fellow nicknamed Motta; as Motta Gur, he later became Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces. The formation above platoon was a company. The largest formation was a brigade (a number of battalions and independent units, such as the Negev Brigade), and the largest command was a Front (e.g. Northern Front).
Palmach training had been very tough. Physical fitness was required to a very high standard. A detailed knowledge of the countryside was ensured by frequent and exhaustive marches and surveys of the terrain of all of the country – and outside its borders too. Every person was trained to function as part of his or her group, but also as an autonomous fighter. Each one was required to understand the objective of every action so that each could go on to achieve it alone, if need be.
The style of life was very informal. No ranks, of course, and no saluting. Discipline was self-induced, and based on trust as well as full briefing for all involved. All were called by given names or nicknames, including brigade commanders and all senior officers. Brigades were named after their commander (“Carmeli”) or a geographical feature of their fighting locale (“Negev”). At harvest time, all hands worked together in the fields.
In the guerrilla war that preceded the War of Liberation, Palmach units almost always displayed devotion and self-sacrifice; they generally fought skillfully, too, though sometimes they too got into a “balagan,” or screwed up and often were committed against overwhelming odds in men and weapons. They took very heavy casualties, particularly in officers because the command to charge was always “follow me.”
THE NEGEV BRIGADE – September 1948 – March 1949
In September of 1948 my unit, Hayyot HaNegev, was brought back to its main base in Beer Yaakov to be reorganized. We took in some new people, and broke up into three units: half-tracks as before, an armored car unit, and a jeep commando. I chose the jeep commando. Albert Monteux, my mentor, explained that on the half-tracks there was too much crowding, and the armored cars would burn up with those inside them if they got hit. The jeeps had a crew of three (four, sometimes) and one could always have a place to store a bag of onions which Albert pointed out would make all the difference in cuisine on long patrols. He was right. Our food was canned Canadian kosher corned beef, biscuits and jam. An onion made the corned beef palatable cold or cooked, and one could have an onion with the dry biscuits in a pinch.
The machine guns on our jeeps were the Czech Spandau MG32 type, very fast-firing and sturdy. They got blocked up by sand easily, but were easy to clear. The bullets were in belts of fifty, four belts to an ammo box and we had brackets welded in for four ammo boxes. A 4′ x 4′ x 4′ metal box was welded on the rear panel on the outside of each jeep, for supplies. Three jeeps were a platoon, nine a company. The company commander’s jeep carried a two-way radio. We were supported by armorers and mechanics in two command cars, for our two companies. Motta (Gur) commanded one company and ‘first’ Nissan and then Israel ‘the other’, in which I was rear gunner on a jeep commanded by Romik and driven by Shloimeleh. This was the Jeep Commando of the Negev Brigade. We were in the 9th Battalion, whose commander was then known as Chaim Kidoni and now is called Chaim Bar-Lev. The Negev Brigade commander was Nahum Sarig.
And so it was back down to the Negev, on a bitterly cold night. The jeeps and half-tracks and armored cars are in convoy, slow going with many stops and starts. By 3 am we are frozen and miserable. We are stopped and just sitting there, too cold and tired to bitch about it. Suddenly… figures coming towards us over the fields. Gun up, safety off, ready! Turns out to be not Egyptian soldiers but Jewish settlers from a nearby village, Kfar Warburg, come to bring us poor heroes a little comfort. They hand three small bottles of arak into each jeep. We murmur our thanks, unscrew the caps and glug the stuff down; in a minute we are warm and comfortable. I will never forget that kind act.
We get through the lines with only a little shooting. No longer near Ruhama, we are now based at Nirim, a front line kibbutz that has defended itself against severe attacks. The Egyptians attacked with tanks, artillery, air support and infantry in strength. The 45 defenders had minefields all around – and that proved very effective – about 40 rifles, two Stens, two Brens all with very small quantities of ammunition, and a PIAT and four missiles.
Now we headquarter in a grove of bare young trees, and we go on the offensive. Night raids against Egyptian posts and camps, we roar into them with machine guns blazing and throwing grenades around and screaming like banshees, and roar out again before they have collected their wits. Some damage, lots and lots of panic. We learn that Egyptian intelligence reports refer to us (nine jeeps, two half-tracks, six armored cars) as a Russian armored column of division size. Raids against Rafiah and Gaza and the police fort at Iraq-el-Suweidan known as “The Monster.”
Then comes the attack on Beersheba. Us jeepniks lie along the outside of the battle zone all night, but bullets do whistle our way (if you hear it, it hasn’t hit you…). I am nervy because of a strafing incident the day before.
We’d been resting in a grove of trees, my squad of three jeeps, and we were spotted by a trio of Egyptian Spitfires. All the other Israelis ran for the slit trenches we had dug but I was the squad anti-aircraft gunner so I ran to my jeep and unsheathed the machine gun and waited for the order to fire. I guess that the platoon commander, Nissan, thought we had not been seen or that they might not attack so he ordered me not to fire. I saw the planes dive for us in a strafing run and unthinkingly dropped down behind the nearest shelter – a very wrong move indeed since it was my jeep that had turned out to be THE target. Down came the first plane. Crouching beneath the jeep I saw the puffs of dirt from its 20-mm cannon shells marching in a straight line right for me. It was happening too quickly. I was paralyzed with fear. Rifle fire, bayonets, artillery, mortar shells – none of those triggered acute terror in me… but the strafing did. I knew beyond any doubt that the next third or fourth shot would hit me. I knew it. Boom… boom… and no more, the first plane swerved away without firing the fatal third burst. I leaped up and galloped over to a slit trench and threw myself into it, as the second plane attacked. The shots were now aimed at the trenches, not the jeeps. We had dug the trenches carefully, deep and with small mouths. Nobody was hurt, though we had two killed and two wounded in another air attack later that afternoon. So I am a little gun-shy on the night of the attack on Beersheba, but I can hold my water.
In the morning we attack the city, in line next to Teddy and his French Commandos (that is the name by which I know the unit). Scattered firing, signs of flight and abandoned military equipment. We drive on. Our objective is an Egyptian command post in the railroad station, a fine stone building. The others cover me, I burst inside… no resistance. I take a tommy gun and bag of .45 ammo from an Egyptian sergeant… go into the next room and find an Egyptian major. Handsome man, very military bearing, spoke good English: “We didn’t think you could attack us; our Intelligence said you were defeated and fleeing north to Tel Aviv.” I took a splendid fleece-lined canvas British “Officers Warm” coat from his room for myself, and led him out to the prisoner interrogation area.
That was all of it, in the city. No Arabs anywhere, just Egyptian troops marching off to the POW enclosures. I got a small rug and four cartons of good cigarettes.
Then, on to the jeeps again. Since the Egyptians were fleeing, a small column was organized to chase them as far south as we could. Off we go, in high spirits. Stop at a little oasis a few miles out to take map bearings… alas, a hidden tank fires one round and kills our brigade second-in-command, a fine and popular commander who was exposed in the open hatch of his armored car. We are crushed at the loss, and end the pursuit.
We go back, sadly, to Beersheba. There my unit is assigned to our living quarters, an abandoned Arab group of houses around a courtyard with a fountain and trees. The houses are well-built of dressed stone but inside they are filthy with feces and other refuse. We put our sleeping bags out on the flat roof, that first night.
We talk, too nerved-up to sleep. There was Harvey Sirulnikoff from Canada, Sam Rosen from the USA, Aryeh Englesberg (Arnon, later) from England, “Moshe Stern” the crazy-talking English gentile (said to be a deserter from the British Army), and “Eskimo” (well, he said he was an Eskimo but I think he was a Belgian). There were the South Africans: Jack Lipshitz (my buddy; he got shell shock with the 8th Army at Monte Cassino, and I had to “make siss” for him before he could piss), and Migdal, and Big Max with his Oom Paul pipe, and young Georgie Jamieson. There was Albert Monteaux, said to have given up high rank at IDF Headquarters to come in with us as a private.
Albert was older than the rest of us. There was a story that he was of a prominent wealthy French Jewish family and that he had fought in the Maquis as a devout communist, been captured and tortured by the Gestapo. In 1954 when I visited Paris I asked the Israeli Consulate there if they could locate him for me as an old friend, mentioning that Albert Monteaux was his nom de guerre in the Palmach. They said they had no records of him. An hour later he phoned me. We had a meal together and he gave me to understand that he was now in French Military Intelligence, doing something high-level about the Viet Minh). Ah, it was Albert who taught me always to carry a supply of onions on the jeep, to make the food palatable.
That night on the roof in Beersheba we talked about life and death, mourned those who had died and wondered about the progress of the wounded, talked a lot about what had happened to us that day, about fear… We talked about banding together after the war and settling down to raise chickens in a cooperative village (and in fact some of them did, mostly South Africans, just south of Haifa; we visited them in 1958, and then dropped the contact). Nobody talked about their children, none of us had children.
The next day we started to clean out the houses and when they were clean the compound was taken over for Regimental Headquarters and we were assigned another filthy place so we cleaned that out and we were not moved again. Rusty rigged up a drum on the roof that we could build a fire under, for hot water for showers, but water of any sort was rarely available; Yehuda Lev was driving a water tanker at that time, and it would roll up every few days and we’d crouch under its four pipes and wash ourselves off.
That was when we started our scouting and night probing patrols in enemy territory, testing their defences and contacting our isolated outposts, down Maaleh Akrabim and through Ein Husub and the Red Wadi to Sdom.
But first came the concert given in Beersheba by Leonard Bernstein at my invitation. This is how it came about: My Aunt Yona was Lenny’s Hebrew teacher while he visited Israel. She got me a ticket to one of his concerts, and took me backstage to meet him afterwards. He was sitting down, stripped to the waist and having his sweat wiped off by a couple of pretty young women, drinks all around, a very excited “theatre” atmosphere. “Lenny,” trilled my aunt, “I want you to meet my nephew Elihu, the conqueror of Beersheba!” Oof! I tried to vanish, but Lenny took it in his stride (he probably was used to my aunt and her dramatic pronouncements) and greeted me cordially. “Lenny!” trilled my aunt, “on behalf of all his heroic comrades, Elihu invites you to give a piano concert in Beersheba!” “Oh, yes,” says I, dutifully. Lenny protests that Beersheba is behind the battle front, and that there may not be a good piano there. Aunt Yona overrides. She can and will arrange for a plane to fly Lenny and His Piano down to Beersheba. And so it was. I was to introduce him, but was out on patrol when the blessed event took place. I’m told it was a really good concert, and much appreciated.
My unit, all nine jeeps, was now assigned to scouting the way to the Potash Works, at the bottom end of the Dead Sea, from the south. We went down Maaleh Akravim, twisting down the hairpin curves, and over scrub desert to Ein Hussub. This was, I suppose, an old British army post; there was a stone building on a slight hill near the spring, and a small wooden barracks building. We camped alongside the hill for a few weeks, scouting up to the Dead Sea and relieving the Jewish group that occupied the Potash Works compound. Lost two men on Israeli minefields, nobody had the maps. It was hard riding, and tense particularly when we were in Jordanian territory and saw tracks of the Arab Legion patrols (and once even had them in our gun-sights in a good ambush situation, but did nothing).
My memories of this period are confused. We lay up most of the day, and went out a lot at night. No fighting, but a lot of tension. Part of the tension was finding our way, by map and compass reckoning and time. Part was the knowledge that we might be under Beduin eyes, since they were prone to snipe (and very accurately, too) and it was hard as hell to winkle them out once a fight started.
Then there was an electrical sort of excitement, and it turned out we went to the Egyptian border to ambush an Egyptian army convoy. We dismounted the machine guns and emplaced them on a ridge of a hill. Sure enough, as Intelligence had promised, an Egyptian convoy came along on the track below us. We opened up with everything, I was careful to fire in three-second bursts so as not to overheat the MG’s barrel. After a few minutes we saw trucks break for cover to the sides. Many trucks were hit and soldiers streamed out of them. We mounted the MGs back onto the jeeps and swarmed down after the enemy. We captured about ten vehicles and about a hundred soldiers. What to do with the prisoners? A hillock was designated, some of our less fortunate troops were assigned to guard it, and we rounded up the Egyptians and put them there. My jeep picked up a huge Sudanese soldier to bring him in. He didn’t want to give up his rifle but I put on a fierce face and grabbed it away from him and gestured him to sit opposite my rear seat on the jeep. Then we bounced along to the prisoner point, with him glowering at me and me holding my rifle pointed at him. I was very uneasy, and would have shot him at the slightest provocation. When we offloaded him he stood at attention and saluted me. Relieved that there had been no trouble, I gave him a pack of cigarettes and saluted back.
Then we went on and found ourselves the spearhead of the Israel army’s invasion force, on the Egyptian border in the Sinai. While waiting to go in, I got off the jeep and pissed on the border marker, on the Egyptian side. It was clearly a territorial gesture on my part, and I meant it as exactly that, now that I remember it.
So, down the road we went, with the rest of the column following us. Soon we were out of sight of the rest, bowling merrily through the gentle hills. Cresting one of the hills we found ourselves in a large crowd of Egyptian soldiers. They were milling about, more in bunches than in organized groups, and were moving towards a line of trucks on the road, pointed south to Egypt. They ignored us; I think they took us for Egyptian military as was often the case when we raided Egyptian camps across the border. So there we were, among thousands of Egyptians (three battalions of infantry, we found out later) who had guns. Israel, the platoon commander, radioed back to the column commander for instructions. He was told we were to hang, on, that a support force was coming along at top speed. We waited. Some of the Egyptians were getting aboard the trucks and the full trucks starting to move off. Israel reported and was ordered to stop as many trucks as we could. We circled around to the head of the trucks, and started firing. Some trucks stopped, some broke off and went overland, some barrelled on through. My jeep found itself just behind a truck which was speeding down the road. Romik gave it a burst. This triggered an unpalatable reaction: the canvas at the back of the truck was pulled away unmasking a 20-mm gun which started firing at us. We veered away, and lost that truck.
We had found Abu Agella, a major Egyptian army center. We ended up capturing about 15 trucks and a number of 20-mm guns, some six-pounders, and about 300 Egyptian soldiers. Then we scouted around the camp and found great booty: cigarettes, and good (officer’s) food, ammunition, gasoline, and more.
After a short night’s sleep, the Jeep Commando was assigned to attack another Egyptian air base, this one apparently ten miles from the Suez Canal. Two trucks full of infantry went with us. Intelligence told us that there were about ten airplanes there which we were to destroy, and that the defenses were less than a company of Egyptian infantry. So off you go, me lads, to more glory! When we got there the cupboard was by no means bare. Our post-action estimate was two companies of Egyptian infantry, with heavy weapons support. They depressed their 20-mm anti-aircraft guns to flat fire across the fields and shot the shit out of us as we attacked, before we turned and ran for it, giving me a splendid opportunity to give covering fire to our retreat, as I trembled with soldierly passion as well as fear; I did alright. We in the jeeps took a few casualties, the truck-borne infantry more than a few. And so we slunk back up to Abu Agella and cursed Intelligence.
That night or the next, we were ordered to pull out of Egypt. It seems that an Anglo-Egyptian defense treaty was invoked and the Brits gave us a deadline to get out. As my unit was the spearhead of the invasion, we were ordered to cover the retreat and be the last out. That is why I was sitting there all night, in freezing cold, exhausted and miserable with reaction to the adrenalin-wash from about ten days of combat after weeks and weeks behind enemy lines, on guard with my trusty MG against what was said to be an advancing tank brigade of the Egyptian army. We had two PIATs, for use against the tanks: hoorah. It was such a letdown, such a bummer. If an Egyptian had come up and quietly invited me to surrender and come over for a nice hot cup of cocoa, who knows what I would have done. Well, nobody came. We sat there, on the three jeeps, at full alert, all night of New Year’s Eve, calling headquarters plaintively from time to time to ask if it was time to pull out yet. Finally, just at dawn, the order blessedly came, and we gunned our motors and hightailed it up the road.
That was the end of the fighting, for me. We went up to the IAF airfield at Tel Nof, and hung around there while the army organized itself. Ranks were introduced; as Palmachniks, there had been no ranks, only tasks or levels of responsibility, and salutes (anathema!). My unit accepted these manifestations as lawful and proper, but as individuals we refused to implement them.
The War of Independence was over except for the excursion to Eilat, and by the time that took place I was out and working at Kibbutz Gesher HaZiv.
Condensed by Joe Woolf from the personal story of Elihu King who passed away in 1994.