HOWARD (CHAIM) COSSMAN
72nd Infantry Battalion, IDF No: 63118
Howard Cossman recalled: “Having seen the picture of a Jewish girl with a rifle on her shoulder on the back page of the ‘Montreal Herald,’ I decided that if this is all they’ve got, I’m going to help. So I left my job as a salesman and returned to military life, having previously served in England and Germany during World War II, but this time I’d be serving for a cause close to my heart.
In April 1948, I enlisted with Machal despite the attempts of many people who tried to talk me out of it. As with many Machalniks, my trip to British-occupied Palestine was a roundabout affair, taking us through many ports of call. We finally docked in the Holy Land and were received by members of the Haganah, somewhere near Tel Aviv. I always had in mind that this was not what the world wanted us to do. Despite the secrecy, I remember the Marie Annique breaking down somewhere in the Mediterranean and all us volunteers making the most of the situation by swimming in the warm waters, which was the greatest part of the voyage.
I was no hero, and most of our battles and activities were in the Galilee and usually at night. The others in our company were the heroes; they were learning by experience and it was not always pleasant. When I think back now, 60 years later, I admire and respect the unbelievable courage of these people. They had a job to do, and they did it well.
Many of the volunteers in our company, mainly from England, were concentration camp survivors, or Kindertransport boys who had lost all their families, and it made them fearless in battle. Many had seen so much death that it did not scare them any more. On one occasion, a survivor Machalnik, feeding the machine-gun belt during a clash, was completely blasé about his
whereabouts. I had to tell him to put his head down because he wasn’t afraid of the return fire overhead.
Apart from the fighting, I have mostly fond memories of my time in Israel. When I arrived I looked around and saw that everyone was Jewish – cops, street cleaners, everyone. I had grown up in Montreal, brought up with gentiles, but in Israel all of us were Jews. It was wonderful.
I also had a brief brush with a famous Israeli personage when I encountered the first President of Israel, Chaim Weizmann, while we were walking up the steps to his Tel Aviv hotel. Dumbfounded, I managed to say, “Hello, Sir”. He said hello back and kept going.
After the war, I hung around Israel for a while, working on a kibbutz as a night guard, but eventually returned to Canada in August, after I became homesick. I had thought of staying, but I’m a city boy, not a farmer, and truthfully, I missed my family.
I think of Israel often, but have never returned. I always wanted to go to the Kotel and pray. I pray every morning and strongly believe in God. I am proud of the modern-day State of Israel and its achievements, and am also amazed at the situation with the Arabs in the region: Israelis are out there in the world, helping countries with everything they have to offer. But the only thing the Arabs still have today is something that they had years ago, and that is hatred for Israel.”
Joe Woolf, a former comrade and website researcher, adds:
Cossman had arrived with a group of 19 Canadians in early July on the converted fishing vessel Marie Annique.
His name is included in an early 72nd Battalion roster of 20th July 1948, as well as on the rosters for the end of September, 15th October, and 28th October. All this can be seen at the IDF Archives at Tel Hashomer.
The writer had joined his squad at the end of August when he was posted to the completely English-speaking “B” Company of the 72nd Battalion, all part of the 7th Armored Brigade commanded by Canadian Ben Dunkelman.
We were in our first action on the 7th and 8th September when “B” company, with only two platoons was sent to remove a troublesome group of observers and snipers from Kaujki’s Liberation Army from a peak in the Western Galilee, Mount Kabul, overlooking the Arab village of Tamra.
Commanding our squad was British Cliff Epstein, with Canadian Hymie Klein as his second in command and in charge of the Spandau light machine-gun group. Along with Howard Cossman and me were a number of Canadians: Jack Belkin, Alec Dworkin, Alter Leff and Hank Meyerowitz; we also had two Brits, Hymie Blackman and Joe Korenstein, as well as an Indian volunteer, Ezra Makmull.
The two platoon commanders were Israelis: Aharoni Landman and Zachariah Feldman, both lifelong friends, and the two platoon sergeants were South Africans Jeff Perlman and David Susman, also lifelong friends.
Under cover of our 3-inch mortars, we reached the peak with relative ease at about 2 a.m. But at daybreak, all hell broke loose when well-placed enemy Bren machine-guns raked our positions.
We held the peak with difficulty; three Machalniks were killed – Sydney Leisure of Toronto, Belgian Benjamin Hirschberg, and Shlomo Bornstein, a Brit. About a dozen men were wounded, including David Susman and Hymie Blackman.
In the histories of war, this engagement would be considered a skirmish, but for the Machal men from 12 different countries, it was a torrid and unforgettable 48 hours.
We returned to our base camp at Samaria, and for some weeks we were engaged in intensive further training, many mountain patrols and one deep penetration raid in which South African Lou Hack was killed.
On the night of 29th October, we set out on the Hiram Operation to clear the Galilee up to the internationally recognized border with Lebanon. Cliff Epstein, after a period of hospitalization with cave fever, was by then in command of another squad and Canadian Hymie Klein was in charge, with me as second in command.
Two members of “B” company were killed in the Hiram Operation – platoon commander Zachariah Feldman and Shmuel Daks from Britain; he had arrived on the last-minute pre-war Kindertransport from Austria.
Then followed another period of training at a different base camp, St. Luke’s, south of Haifa, and a long session of two months in holding positions opposite the Syrians, while heavy fighting continued in the Negev up to the Egyptian border.