Secret Soldier: The True Life Story of Israel's Greatest Commando

by Moshe Betser

  “We might need you here,” he tried.

  “You’ve got enough fighters here,” I shot back. “I’m sure that if we go down, we’ll join the battle. At the very least, I want to know that we tried. Just like in the Golan. Whatever we can do, we’ll do.” He gave up the argument, knowing I had already turned down Avraham Arnan’s pleas for me to return the Unit to base.

  I told the staff to prepare what I needed: all the maps and aerial photographs from the south, as well as the Southern Command’s radio codes, and replenished equipment. I arranged for an air force flight down to Refidim, the huge air force base in the Sinai, then I called together the crew commanders and then afterwards the entire force.

  “We’re flying south to Refidim tonight, to meet up with Amiram Levine’s force,” I began. I saw the shock in their eyes, but plunged on, not giving them time to protest. “We’ll continue our involvement in this campaign, just like we did on the Golan Heights. It’s another front, and another enemy — Egypt. But it’s the same war and we’re the same fighters.” To them, it sounded like they had just finished a 120-kilometer march and I told them to do another hundred. But none questioned the decision or complained.

  While they went over their equipment, I took a briefing from an intelligence officer on the state of the war in the south. We had managed to stop the Egyptian advances, and Arik Sharon’s division had crossed the Canal west into Egypt, north of the Great Bitter Lake. But the Egyptian Third Army field on to the east bank south of the Great Bitter Lake, and the Second Army, pushed back across the Canal, was pounding Sharon’s forces to the south as well as keeping a full press on the IDF reoccupying the east bank.

  At midnight, we flew into Refidim. Amiram Levine met us with APCs. We went to Umm Hashiba to meet Shai Tamari, chief of operations for the Southern Command, who brought along the command’s intelligence officer. But going over the maps and latest reports, it became obvious they did not have an assignment for us.

  So, we went to see Haim Bar-Lev, the former chief of staff now running the Southern Command. Disagreements between Gorodish, named Southern Command commander in July, and Arik Sharon, his predecessor, forced Dado and Dayan to name Bar-Lev as supreme commander for the southern front.

  Bar-Lev’s icy blue eyes considered us for a few minutes as we presented our argument in the crowded headquarters bustling with officers and messengers. Squawking radios and the distant thumping of artillery and tank fire punctuated the conversation.

  “If you get to SAM-6’s,” Bar Lev finally said, in his slow, drawn-out drawl, “that could be helpful.” Shades of Avraham Arnan all over again. The meeting turned into a long-drawn-out affair.

  “We can take out missile batteries,” I argued. “But it’s precisely the kind of assignment we should have prepared for in advance in case of war. Now, logistical pressures make it absurd to think we can manage to get what we need to do it.”

  Bar-Lev listened carefully, but had nothing more to suggest. Toward the end of the meeting, he surprised me with a question. “Where’s Omer?” he asked.

  His son, Omer, served as a regular soldier under my command. A decade later he would become commander of Sayeret Matkal. I noticed the general did not ask how Omer was, just where.

  “He’s with me,” I said. “He’s fine. We finished on the Golan so now we’re here. He’s fine.” Bar-Lev smiled, asking nothing more. But when our audience with him finally ended — without any decision — he asked me to pass on a message to his son.

  “Tell him his sister Zohar got married yesterday, just as planned,” said Bar-Lev, who would pass away twenty years later while serving as Israel’s ambassador to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.

  At the end of our inconclusive meeting, Arik Sharon walked in, a white bandage on his forehead. I heard he was hit by some slivers of shrapnel. He and Bar-Lev huddled in the corner for a few minutes, then went into the briefing tent for about fifteen minutes before leaving the front command headquarters.

  I followed the burly general who founded the 101st, the first of the elite reconnaissance forces in the IDF, out of Bar-Lev’s command trailer.

  “Arik,” I called out to him. He turned his heavy body and, recognizing me, grinned broadly. “We’re here with several dozen fighters,” I said, “with APCs. We want to join in.”

  “Come,” he said, without hesitation. “These people here have no idea what’s happening. We’ve been across the Canal for three days, but now I’m stuck in the orchards south of the Ismailiya-Cairo road. I have a force from Shaked, but I have plenty of work for you.”

  I jumped at the opportunity and called Amiram out of Bar-Lev’s headquarters, telling him about Arik’s invitation. We grabbed a chopper back to Refidim, planning to get the crews organized on the APCs. But Elazar “Cheetah” Cohen, an air force colonel famous as a chopper pilot, intercepted us at the landing pad, maps in hand.

  “We’ve got forces past Fa’id,” he said, referring to an Egyptian air force base on the western bank of the Great Bitter Lake, inside Egypt. “The Egyptians ran away, but we want to take the air base, turn it into an advance air field for transporting fighters and supplies.”

  “Now, that’s a mission for us,” I said to Amiram. Taking an air field out of enemy hands was right up our alley. With Arik’s headquarters between Fa’id and Deversoir nearby, the air field mission gave us something specific to do, not a vague request.

  Cheetah gave us some aerial photos, and Amiram and I started making plans. Cheetah promised us two Sikorskys, to carry a few dozen soldiers and four jeeps. We had pretty much finalized our plan when Amitai Nahmani came over to me, a determined look in his eye.

  “Muki,” he said in a tone of voice that worried me. “It’s not fair.”

  “What?” I asked, but I already knew what he meant.

  “You already fought up on the Golan. It’s not fair that you take this mission and we have to stay behind again.”

  He was right; it would not be fair for my boys to get the assignment when his still had not see any action. I handed him my notes, and we shook hands. I watched Amiram join Amitai’s company as they boarded the two choppers, unhappy to be waiting behind.

  After an hour went by without word from them, I decided not to wait any longer and told my staff officers to ready the fighters for the APC trip over the Canal to Arik’s command. But I also kept trying to get through to air force headquarters at Umm Hashiba to find an airlift. While I was working the radios, Amiram’s code came on the air. “We’re coming back,” he said. “We have casualties. I’m wounded.”

  “Where’s Amitai?” I asked.

  “Amitai too. You’re in command now, Muki.”

  “Okay, no problem. Where are you?”

  “Landing in Refidim. Dropping off Cheetah. But we’re not getting off. We’re going back to Israel. To the hospital.”

  I took two officers and raced by jeep to the pilots’ quarters at Refidim, asking for Cheetah. “He’s in the showers,” the desk man said at the entrance to the pilots’ dormitories at the huge base.

  I ran down the corridors to the showers and burst through the door. The humidity of the hot water heated by the solar panels on the roof of the building made a sharp contrast to the arid desert air. “Cheetah!” I called out.

  “Muki?”

  His soap-covered head came out of the shower stall.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “God, we were stupid,” he said. “We went into the field figuring they already ran away. Amitai drove the jeep. Amiram sat beside him. I sat in back with Moshe B. An RPG hit us. Direct hit. The jeep lit up like a flare.”

  He paused ominously, and then plunged on. “Amitai’s dead,” he said. “Amiram’s legs are full of shrapnel. Moshe’s face is burned bad. They should all be in the hospital by now. I’m okay. Just a torn eardrum.” He scowled, and then ducked his head back under the water to rinse off the soap.

  “Where’s Amitai now?” I asked.

  He paused befo
re he answered, a tense moment for us both. “We left him there,” he finally admitted. “At Fa’id. He’s dead. By the jeep.”

  “The rest of the force?” I asked.

  He looked down. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted.

  I rushed out of the pilots’ dorms back to the airfield, in no doubt about my course of action. I used the radio to raise contact with Amitai’s force. Shlomo Baidatch, one of Amitai’s junior officers, responded to my call.

  “Where are you?” I asked him.

  He named the twenty-first coordinate on the Barrel Road, a powdery-dust road that ran north-south parallel to the western bank of the Great Bitter Lake.

  “Organize the force for an overnight stay,” I ordered. “Stay there. We’re on our way. We’ll be there by morning,” I promised.

  We drove all night, through battlefields and around them, but we stopped for nothing. We drove across the pontoon bridge that Arik’s engineers managed to erect at the end of the Canal, where it enters the Bitter Lake, and continued on, into Egypt, into Africa.

  Just before dawn, we found Baidatch and the rest of the force, just where he had promised. “Amitai told us to wait behind while he went in with Amiram, Cheetah, and Moshe,” Shlomo began mournfully. “They figured the Egyptians all ran away. We should have gone building by building.” Although shaken up by what happened, he gave a clear and concise briefing. “They drove down the runway advancing on the field. That’s when the enemy hit. Under fire, we got the wounded out. But we couldn’t reach Amitai. He’s still lying there.”

  I called together the force. “The first thing we’re going to do is get Amitai out of there,” I told them. I told Baidatch to organize a team for the mission.

  This time, instead of driving in through the front gate, we flanked the air field’s buildings, coming in through the fences around the base, working our way carefully toward the burnt-out jeep and Amitai’s body.

  In the dim light of dawn, the blackened burned body looked even more grisly than I had feared. I shivered in the desert chill at dawn and mourned silently for Amitai, another friend lost to war.

  The Egyptians had gone, said crew reports from fighters dispersed throughout the base. But I did my own survey of the surroundings, wanting to figure out where the attack on the jeep had come from.

  I found the answer in an underground MiG hangar with a view toward the runway. Beside an open, half-empty crate of RPGs, I found shell casings from Kalashnikovs. Most telling, I found a setting of food. Two half-empty bowls of corn porridge told what had happened.

  The Egyptians fired from inside the hangar when the jeep came down the runway. But instead of holding out at the air field, they ran away while Baidatch and the company evacuated the wounded.

  I reported to division that we field the field. They sent the Fiftieth Battalion to relieve us and hold the field. “Make sure they bring in a burial squad to come in and take care of a body,” I added. The IDF’s rabbinical corps handles burials for the army.

  A little while later the Fiftieth showed up, led by my friend Yoram “YaYa” Ya’ir, who began the war as deputy battalion commander, taking command just before the war because his battalion commander broke his leg. We met in the middle of the runway.

  “Amitai is dead,” I told him. “But the field’s in our control. Where’s your burial crew?”

  He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. A bearded soldier carrying a clipboard approached me. I pointed toward Amitai’s body, lying on the runway. “His name is Amitai Nahmani,” I began.

  The bearded soldier field up his clipboard, as if it put him in charge. “What’s the name of the dead man?” he asked.

  “Captain Amitai Nahmani of Kibbutz Givat Haim,” I said.

  The student rabbi looked at the body and shook his head. “He’s burnt. It is impossible to identify him. You absolutely sure it is him?”

  “A hundred percent,” I said, making no effort to hide my distaste for bureaucrats.

  “And you are?”

  “Betser, Moshe. Captain. Address: Nahalal.”

  He wrote very slowly and deliberately, and then handed me the form to sign. I had started to scrawl my name when I noticed he accidentally named me as the dead soldier and Amitai as the notifying officer.

  “He’s Nahmani,” I said, handing the clipboard back to him with a smile. “I’m Betser. I think you got our identities mixed up.”

  It shocked him so that he began blessing me in Aramaic.

  “It is okay,” I said, embarrassed by his outburst. “You might be right, but I think it is a bit too soon, no?” But my joke left him speechless. “Relax,” I chided him. “Nothing happened,” I added, trying to ease his anxiety. “Mistakes happen.”

  But, trembling, he kept mumbling a blessing for long life over and over as he went through the process of filling out a new form.

  DEATH IN THE MANGO GROVES

  While the UN Security Council met in New York to discuss a Soviet demand for a cease-fire on behalf of Egypt, we met with Arik Sharon in a collection of mobile trailers and camouflage nets serving as a field command north of Fa’id in the flatland west of the Canal.

  He pointed on the map to a five-hundred-meter-wide stretch of plantations to our northwest. “Beyond the groves is the Ismailiya-Cairo road. But the enemy’s filled the groves with snipers and artillery spotters. It’s difficult to get across and our progress is slow. But it’s imperative that we be on the other side before a cease-fire,” he emphasized.

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ll look at it. Maybe we can handle it.”

  An uneasy quiet prevailed as I headed back to my half-track, a few hundred meters from Sharon’s trailer. I looked back at Sharon’s command center. Soldiers took down camouflage nets, readying for the move to the plantations. My uneasy feeling grew stronger, and I began running toward my vehicle.

  Like a thunderbolt on a clear day, the incoming artillery burst down on us with angry thumping that shook the ground like earthquakes. Just as I reached my half-track, the battery of radios that I had collected to be able to listen in on as many frequencies as possible began squealing with shouts and cries. “Muki!” one radio squawked. “Muki, we’re hit, we’re hit. Wounded!”

  I looked around. To my north, about seventy meters away, I saw a stricken half-track. I ran to it, where men lay scattered like broken chess pieces. Shmulik, Sayeret Matkal’s doctor, worked on Yehuda Hever. I looked down at Hever. “He’s dead,” I said softly. Beyond Hever, Shlomo Baidatch lay badly wounded.

  Shmulik looked up at me. Everyone loved Hever, a reservist. Shmulik nodded sadly, then scuttled over to Baidatch. I went from wounded soldier to wounded soldier, trying to calm them, smiling and reassuring them that the medics were on the way.

  One of the toughest moments I ever faced was finding myself kneeling beside Shlomo Baidatch, a wonderful guy, a good friend, and a terrific officer, telling him he would survive. But it did not look good. Two of us picked him up, and with Shmulik at his side still trying to save him, we ran toward a medical tent. As we laid Shlomo down on a stretcher, Shmulik crouched, still at work.

  A doctor came out of the field hospital, a blood-spattered white smock over his uniform. He took one look at Baidatch and then gently patted Shmulik on the back. “He’s dead,” the doctor said quietly. But Shmulik continued trying for a few more minutes, in vain.

  Arik’s command had already moved out of the area, heading toward the plantation he wanted to cross, while we dealt with our wounded. I radioed his command, reporting our delay and promising to catch up as soon as possible. Meanwhile, I wanted to make sure my two friends received proper handling at an evacuation point for the dead about a kilometer south.

  I took Omer Bar-Lev and his crew. We put the two bodies on an APC and headed south. As the collection point came into view, I realized that it would be the most gruesome experience of my war.

  Rows of bodies lay under the glaring sun. The young faces of regulars and the middle-aged faces of the reservists-th
ey all wore the shock of their final moments, the unscathed innocence of sudden death. The flies swarmed over the blankets covering the bodies.

  But the apathy of the soldiers on duty at the collection point disturbed me most. They sat beside the long rows of bodies, eating tinned corn.

  “I have two dead men here,” I said. “Where can I put them?”

  One of the soldiers pointed over his shoulder. “Over there,” he said, not even looking up, indicating the end of the row in the sand.

  I looked around. I would not leave Shlomo Baidatch and Yehuda Hever on the ground. I went over to a truck parked beyond the bodies. A few bodies lay on stretchers inside. We made room on the truck for our two dead friends, then lifted the bodies onto the truck. We gave them one final salute and then went back to our APC. The entire time, the soldiers on duty at the collection point just watched, silently eating their tinned corn.

  We caught up with Arik a little while later, finding him sitting in the open back door of his APC, reporting on the cease-fire announced at the UN, slating the fighting to end in twelve hours. Arik looked at me. I said, “We caught some direct artillery. I had a few casaulties. Two dead. One of them is Shlomo Baidatch.”

  “Uri’s son?” he exclaimed. Uri Baidatch, a colonel in the paratroops, had served as Arik’s deputy in the days when Sharon commanded the paratroops brigade.

  Arik grabbed his head as if in pain, not caring if the dozen officers present saw him on the verge of tears. He field himself that way for a long minute. We remained silent.

  But suddenly, he turned the switch that I knew from my childhood, from the day my young foal died, raising the wall in his mind that marked the point when he learned of Shlomo’s death and yet enabled him to set it aside, to continue.

  It is the survivor’s wall, enabling us to remember and yet to continue, by preserving behind its apparently blank surface our memories-and the turmoil of our emotions. With each death, that wall both crumbles a little and strengthens a little. Learning to suppress the expression of our emotions became the way to stand up to the difficulties and tragedies of our lives. The wall’s purpose is not to deny the emotion but to dam it, preserve it, protect it, and give us strength to continue.