Zimmer was a clever and powerful person. He later became a lawyer. None of us could answer his argument. The anti-Hal organization was dismantled. We channeled our frustration in a vicious ditty we performed in one of the school’s parties, called “The Ballad of the Perfect Pilot.”
“My baby shall be the best of pilots,” chants Hal’s mother merrily from the window, hanging his diapers to dry.
“By God, how can you tell that in advance?” the next-door housewife asks, clasping her hands in awe.
“That’s easy,” the proud mother sings, her voice embellishing. “He floated to me through the air.”
“Flew in the air? From where?”
“From Mr. Smith, the neighbor.”
THIS WAS THE FIRST TIME I had to face the question of whether our national situation was so bad that it demanded employment of undesirable elements.
In the coming years, this was a dilemma that kept recrudescing, and sometimes it was my call to determine whether state security justified compromise with pigs. There were always people around who argued that there was no other alternative, that one must use what’s available, and that the security of Israel justifies all means. Some even forwarded the theory that since war is a dirty business, dirty types are better fit for it. In a certain kind of American film you find this theory, too.
I want to testify to something I learned from experience. There is no functional connection between swinishness and effectiveness in war. The myth is false. I have never seen good things coming out of the trash can.
HAL GOT HIS WINGS with the rest of us and became a pilot and an officer, if not a gentleman. But he never justified the expectations or the investment in him. Shortly after a stupid accident, he vanished. I heard he left the country, and there were rumors that he became involved in illegal businesses. Many years later, when his name came up by chance, one of our instructors from back then said, “We were all waiting for you, the cadets, to get rid of him.”
This taught me something about where the buck stops.
THE EARLY 1960S PASSED SLOWLY, and without me noticing, time began accelerating downhill toward the earthquake of June 1967. The dominance of the Super Mystere dwindled, and a new magic fighter landed in Israel. This was the Mirage III, whom we called in our language “Sky.” If the Super Mystere was a plump, black-haired beauty, the Mirage was a blond courtesan, slender and cheeky. My Super Mystere suddenly looked to me a little cumbersome and round, like an overripe woman. She was not fat yet, still attractive, but…
The Mirage brought on delta wings a new epoch in the history of the air force and eventually in my own life, too, but I didn’t know it yet.
IN THE BEGINNING, just a few chosen pilots were sent to France for training on the new fighter. This was such an honor, and a marvelous opportunity to leave our claustrophobic little country and see the greater world outside, that pilots who were not chosen for Mirage training got really mad. They even wrote a blues ballad, and soon angry and disappointed people sang it all around the air force.
“How is it?” asked the poet who wrote that song. “How, by all that’s holy, does it happen that among all of us so fine, Lieutenant Liss will go to France? Huh? For fuck’s sake, why is he the only one to eat croissants?” And Lieutenant Liss was further immortalized like this:
To the Mirage he proudly strides, to fly Mach 2 high in the sky,
Have fun in France, but not until he passes the whorehouse drill…
He walks down Paris streets, and suddenly happens on Brigitte,
To Place Pigalle they go, of course, and she suggests some intercourse.
The crowd roared the chorus “How did it happen?” to an old tune from a Tel Aviv nightclub.
The solo continued to abuse Liss, who apparently crumpled under the sexy star’s lust for the pilots of the IAF. “Says Lieutenant Liss, ‘Oh, yes, indeed, but I am just a Boy Scout kid, and keep your distance, let’s not kiss, I am afraid of syphilis.’”
But then our Mirage boy was gentleman enough not to leave the star in an empty bed for the night. “I have a friend, his name is Nick, he comes along and shows his stick. If you don’t mind, then I shall keep behind the door to take a peep.”
“How did it happen?” roared the crowd, enjoying immensely this abuse of the brown-nosing pilot and his mother.
In admiration, I asked the poet about the wonders of his art. “Writing songs? That’s no big deal,” answered Lieutenant Arnon. “Just put a prick in every other line and you will always have good lyrics.”
THE YEAR WAS 1963. Peace in Israel.
The end of our first five-year enlistment was nearing, and our small group scattered to the winds. Umsh left active service and went to fly transports at El Al. Soon he was mostly abroad, and lost to us. Uri Sheani, the gunnery champ, married Shula and fathered two girls. The young family was sent to Uganda, where Uri taught military flight training. Our mutual affection kept us in contact in spite of the distance, and from time to time I received letters and magnificent black-and-white photographs of exotic African women with exposed breasts.
Yakir, the rooster, went an inch too low. His aircraft hit the surface of the Sea of Galilee when he was demonstrating low flight to a student. I saw the splash and the gray water close over them. Their remains were never recovered. After I got back, I had a long, dreary drive to take Yakir’s just-widowed bride back to her parents in the north.
Zimmer was already a law student at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His protégé Hal disappeared into thin air, and nobody missed him. Brutus, my opponent that horrible night over Atlit, went back to his kibbutz and turned into an inventor of agricultural machines.
ZBB got promoted and was selected to fly Mirages at Ramat-David. Soon his special talents stood out there. We didn’t see each other as much. I almost missed his piercing, clever look. And Goldie—he was upward bound, as foreseen by all. While we all toiled to learn to lead formations in the air, he had already finished a term as squadron deputy, and the IAF sent him to college.
All my original friends were gone now, and I found new ones. I got closer to Nissim, the redhead Bulgarian who saw us first on the veranda of the Scorpions. His home in base family housing was always open to me and to the shy soldier-girl who sometimes came to visit me. Nissim’s clever wife, Etty, knew how to listen to us and give advice when needed. Zorik, a commander who became a friend, also used to invite confused youngsters to his home, and his wife, Tali, saw to it that they did not get out hungry. Another close friend was Mossik, a happy-going and crazy flier who loved to wrestle on the lawn and break bones. He brought to the squadron’s parties a stunning brown-eyed girl with honey-colored hair, also named Etty. Soon the likable young couple Ilan and Judy Gonen joined our small fraternity.
AS FOR ME, I WAS on my way out.
I was already twenty-three years old, and after three years in the Scorpions, flying fighter planes had nothing more to show me. I gave up any desire to fly Mirages, since it required another enlistment. I preferred to return to my friends in Kibbutz Givat-Brenner and to join them in the grand, righteous partnership of building a socialist-Zionist society in Israel.
On Saturdays I was in the kibbutz, picking oranges and cotton, loading hay and raising my hand in the general assembly on behalf of equality and similar principles. I hoped to marry the girl who loved me, and study medicine in Jerusalem. In my imagination I saw myself as Dr. Spector, distinguished physician and kibbutz member, who once a week puts aside his scalpel and does his reserve duty flying Super Mysteres at Hatzor.
This was a beautiful dream. I even obtained a pipe and began practicing with it in front of the mirror.
I SHARED THESE THOUGHTS with my friends and commanders, and it never crossed my mind that I had hurt somebody’s feelings, especially not the special and stormy commander of the air force, Gen. Ezer Weizman.
Weizman had never said two words to me before, but when he appeared one day at Hatzor and gathered all the pilots for a pep talk, he suddenly pointed
a long finger from the podium at me.
“You! You decided to become a doctor!” Weizman knew every pilot by name, and knew all about us.
Embarrassed, I rose to my feet.
“Yes, sir.”
“You want to be released from the service? What, flying isn’t good enough for you?”
I didn’t answer. What could I say?
“You want to be a dentist!”
Laughter. I blushed.
I heard in Weizman’s offended tone a feeling of insult and began to heat up myself, but suddenly I grasped that from his point of view as air force commander I was doing something against him. At the time Weizman was leading a campaign to mobilize the best youth for aviation. It was clear and public knowledge that he wanted the air force to become the leader of the Israel Defense Force, and perhaps all this involved his career as well.
And another thing: Only shortly before, Weizman himself had sent me for a two-month leave to appear in a feature film full of propaganda for the air force. This movie was showing at that time all over the country, and for a time I was a media item—the handsome, curly-headed Israeli pilot. I was interviewed in ladies’ magazines, and my name and picture were on walls everywhere. I was flooded with letters from ambitious boys and romantically inclined girls. And lo, this symbol was going to betray him. Weizman raged, and he wouldn’t let me off the hook.
“A dentist, eh? Answer me!”
“I was thinking psychiatry could be helpful.” I told the truth, and instantly bit my tongue. I believe he never forgave me for this reckless answer.
DURING THE FOLLOWING MONTHS I took the bus to Jerusalem to visit the school of medicine. I audited classes, and even bought Human Anatomy and Physiology in a used bookstore, and began memorizing the volume.
Then another surprise. The kibbutz also viewed my intention to become a physician with an unsympathetic eye.
One evening Jos’l, who had been my class’s teacher and later became the kibbutz’s treasurer, called me for a talk. He sat me in the office of the kibbutz and treated me to a jeremiad on those degenerates who frequent bars and nightclubs and drink alcohol. The members of the steering committee sat around, nodding like Chinese sages. I didn’t understand what any of it had to do with me, and suspected it was a prank. At last they got to the point: Hooligans and drunks from Weizman’s flight school must first get cleaned before they approach the kibbutz with applications of any kind.
This was perfectly fine with me. I said I would happily invest a year or two in the fields and the dairy, to go to medical school. They smiled, but the committee was just the first step. Within a month I was invited to present my case to the general assembly of the kibbutz.
As usual, the assembly took place after Saturday night dinner. The long tables were cleared of white cheese and jam cans, and aluminum teapots were scattered about. Hundreds of members took seats or roved around, talking. The secretary rapped with his fork on his cup time and again, and finally it was quiet enough. He had put my case first on the agenda.
“Iftach Spector applies to go to medical school—”
Before he could finish, the storm of noise resumed. The ladies crocheting in the first row put their needles aside and began discussing my personality and what my mother was doing.
“He is Shosh’s son, isn’t he?”
“She won’t stay on the kibbutz.”
“I hear she has someone in Tel Aviv.”
“Really?” Ringing of a needle falling on the floor. “Do you know who this one is?” And they stopped, looking at me.
Then the men said to each other, “It’s mandatory that he sign a letter of obligation. Otherwise he’ll just get an education and never come back here to do anything.”
I stood there in the crowded dining room, waiting to be called to the table to stand before them and present my case. I couldn’t avoid hearing comments behind my back. Among the kibbutz’s older members, especially the women, some saw me as a “jobnik,” not a real kibbutznik but one who just wants a cushy job. They said I intended to go “white collar” at the expense of the kibbutz and evade hard physical work. I looked left and right at the hundreds of faces I considered friends and family. I heard them speak. The children from my class with whom I had grown up, hid in corners. I was on my own.
I raised my hand and asked the secretary to end the discussion.
“I’m withdrawing my application.”
A tumult broke out; I felt stares on my back as I went to the door and left the hall. From behind, I heard the fork ringing against the cup.
“Silence! Next item.”
I went to the scales room, the small house at the entrance of the kibbutz where trucks stopped for weighing. It also housed the telephone switchboard. Suzy, the operator, let me place a call to my base. I found my friend Mossik there, and he came from Hatzor with a military truck. We threw my bed, mattress, and clothes in it and drove away. At Hatzor we unloaded my few belongings in the bachelor officers’ quarters and went to sleep. So I was homeless and broke until next payday. My dream blew away like fog in the wind. This is how I remained “temporarily” in the military, where I made my living.
AND WHILE THIS INTERMEDIATE period continued, Ali finished her military service. A chaplain married us in a ratty office with dusty windows, on the second floor of the military rabbinate in Jaffa. A minyan was required—a quorum of ten men, mandatory for any religious ritual—and some guys were pulled in off the street. Ali looked very beautiful, thin and slender and fragile in a white dress prepared for her by the seamstress who lived near her mother (a small belly had to be hidden under the dress). On her head Ali wore a garland of tiny white flowers. The dress and the flowers looked out of place in that dreary room.
In the beginning there was no housing available for us, and we had to stay apart during the week and meet at her mother’s on weekends. Then a flat was freed up at Hatzor family housing, and eventually we had a floor on which to unroll our first joint acquisition—a rug. We got a table from the base quartermaster. We slept on my narrow iron single bed from the kibbutz at night, and during the day it metamorphosed into a sofa for visitors to sit on. The jewel in the crown was a brand-new Amcor refrigerator, donated by Ali’s South African uncles.
Mossik—my closest friend at the time, until he was killed a year later—also got married, and the young couple moved in next door to us. A warm friendship bloomed among the four of us, on the common lawn. The summer days were beautiful, and the pain and disappointment after the loss of our home dulled slowly.
News of my son’s birth reached me exactly according to the pilots’ wives’ myth, over the radio. In early November 1964, Ali had been taken to the hospital, and just as I was in the middle of a mock dogfight, the news broke in my earphones. I landed hurriedly, grabbed a vehicle, and sped to Kaplan Hospital, near Rehovot. My beauty was exhausted, her face pale and her lips dry and cracked. I looked around; there was nothing else.
“Is there a baby?” I asked suspiciously. At last they let me watch my newborn son through the glass. He looked like a tent peg, with his big head and the pointed small cylinder that was his body wrapped in cloth. We called him Etay, after the name of one of King David’s heroes. This also was the name of one of the children of the Admons, who adopted me for three years in Kibbutz Alonim.
After two days in the hospital, Ali returned home. There was much washing of cotton diapers, and nights with no sleep from his crying, and one fine morning I collided with another aircraft. We both crashed, but survived. Again I had thoughts whether this is not the place for me, but life had to go on, and the air force was the one place that wanted to pay me a salary. The studies had to be postponed for another year, and meanwhile we became a family and began to build a home. Our baby looked like an angel, fair-haired and round-faced. Zorik came to visit us. He marveled and praised the baby, and we were filled with pride and affection. Zorik was an expert on kids, as he himself told us.
ON DECEMBER 30, 1965, on the turn to my la
nding approach, the control tower asked me to go around again. I opened the throttle, and my small world exploded with a bang. My plane was engulfed in flames, and before I knew what happened, I found myself rolling in the air in my ejection seat, waiting for the parachute to open. I remember with absolute clarity that very brief moment, with my eyes closed and my mind coolly asking what had happened.
My parachute opened. I opened my eyes and there it was, my Super Mystere, still not far from me in a flat turn and trailing a long plume of fire. I saw it sinking toward a house in the near village—a great fear enveloped me—and then it missed the house, hit the field beyond, and burst into flames. Another swing in the air and I smashed into the mud like a sack of potatoes.
I lay on the wet ground, struggling to breathe through this pain in my chest, and thought, “Motherfucker, that Super Mystere went up like a torch!” And then, “What luck it didn’t fall on that house.” And suddenly I got the point: this fire… there was no way I could have caused it. “Well then, this time it is the aircraft’s fault, not mine. This time I was not guilty.” I groaned. That was not the case in my former bailout, after the aerial collision. Then I was guilty. And how.
And again I thought, “Ah, this time it was marginal! The parachute opened right at the minimum height, perhaps twenty meters above the ground. And if that’s true, then I ejected from the burning aircraft in the last split second. How did it happen so fast?”
I didn’t remember any thinking or any conscious decision when the fire boomed around me. I simply found myself outside. And while I was trying to get up, pushing the mud with my boots and exerting a lot of effort just to get to my knees, a strange idea came to my mind. Was it possible that my hands were “preset” to pull the seat’s handles?
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