by Uzi Eilam
At home in the Yehud neighborhood of Givat Avia, I spent a quiet Saturday with Naomi and the two children. Jupiter, our vigilant German shepherd puppy, was also happy to welcome me home. During my short leave, I worked on finishing the ditch that all homeowners were obliged to dig since citizens were required to improvise air-raid shelters. On Sunday we travelled to the Tel Nof air base with the rest of the brigade to equip ourselves with the necessary equipment for the drop and to deliver the equipment that was supposed to be dropped later after we completed the conquest of El-Arish.
We set up camp in the fruit groves of Kibbutz Givat Brenner. At dawn on Monday June 5, the Israeli Air Force began its operation, and our ears were filled with the roar of aircrafts taking off and landing at the nearby Tel Nof base. We followed the radio reports tensely and were encouraged by their optimistic tone. During our final briefing just before noon I said my final words to my battalion and briefly went over the mission of parachuting into enemy territory south of El-Arish, attacking the city, and conquering it from the south. My men looked particularly nervous as I tried to imbue them with confidence. I stressed two other directives as well, both lessons from past wars: property was not to be looted and prisoners were not to be harmed after they raised their hands and surrendered their weapons. I was convinced — and I remain convinced today — that these two imperatives are not only crucial from a moral perspective, but that if not respected they can pose a serious threat to our ability to fight.
But after that final briefing the mission was suddenly aborted and were sent with the rest of the brigade to Jerusalem for what we thought would be just a routine manning the armistice border that ran through the city. My company commanders and I set out for Jerusalem, while deputy battalion commander Dan Ziv, battalion Headquarters Company Commander Zvi Bash and Master Sergeant Vander were charged with transporting the entire battalion to the Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hakerem by bus. It was only when we got close to Jerusalem that we heard bursts of heavy machine-gun fire whizzing over our heads and understood that the war had begun in Jerusalem as well.
The 71st Battalion was assigned the task of breaking through enemy lines at Wadi Joz and the tomb of Simon just north of the Old City. I took my company commanders to tour the area and make plans. The city had already been shelled, and from time to time the sound of automatic weapons could be heard along the border. Almost instinctively I walked towards the interconnecting trenches north of Shmuel Hanavi Street. As night fell we saw the positions from which the Jordanians were firing and the barbed-wire fences and minefield between them, and marked the location as a possible point to break through the lines. Another possibility was to break through via Mandelbaum Gate, and from there to approach Wadi Joz and the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarah. Gur approved the plan, and I continued planning the details of the operation under the pressure of time.
One major difficulty was the fact that we only had one aerial photo of the city. Central Command Intelligence, which was headed by Lieutenant Colonel Gideon Mahanaymi, my friend from the paratroops, had well-organized, detailed files of all the Jordanian positions along the city’s border. Command headquarters also had detailed and updated aerial photos of the entire area in which we would be fighting. Unfortunately, however, we were never provided with any of this material. Some 59 years later, during the second Lebanon war, history repeated itself, and field intelligence files for southern Lebanon, which were full of information about Hezbollah’s fortifications system, remained in the safes of the Intelligence Branch, and never reached the fighting forces that needed them most.
We needed a place with some light to plan the attack, and I looked for local residents who would be willing to open their door to us. The couple that emerged from their bomb shelter to help us opened not only their home but their hearts as well. They made generous sandwiches, and the strong smell of hot sweet coffee soon filled the apartment. Only later, after the battle for Jerusalem, did we learn that they had given Yoram Zamush, the commander of A Company, an Israeli flag — the flag that was hung on the lattice at the edge of the Temple Mount complex above the Western Wail on the day Israel conquered the Old City.
The final plan for the Battalion’s push into Sheikh Jarah and Wadi Joz is described in full, albeit in a brief and somewhat monotonous manner, in a document entitled “Details of Battalion Operations — the Campaign for Jerusalem,” which was written on June 15, 1967, when everything was still fresh in our memory.
The War in Jerusalem...ersonal Perspective
During the first stages of the battalion’s operations in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarah following the breach, I had to function as a combat soldier, and at most a squad commander. This was the situation when I led my operations officer, my intelligence officer, my headquarters company commander, and my runner in taking over a Jordanian position on the border that was pouring fire on the opening we had made in the fence and preventing the entry of our forces. It was the same story when my small staff and I were dragged into battle with Jordanian forces near the American Colony Hotel. When being fired upon, the immediate soldierly response is to charge the origin of fire, and that is exactly what we did. A few years ago during the battalion’s annual Jerusalem Day gathering, my radio operator during the war told me that during that skirmish, when the Jordanians lobbed a hand grenade at us, I quickly pounced on him, knocking him to the ground and lay on top of him. “That’s how you saved my life,” he told me. I did not remember that part of the battle, but I clearly remembered feeling physically detached from the battalion. This troubled me, even though it was only temporary and I was in constant radio contact with my company commanders.
Uzi Eilam leading the 71st battalion of reserve paratroops in the Six Day War from Augusta Victoria towards the conquest of the Old City Jerusalem
After my staff ’s battle in the American Colony, deputy battalion commander Ziv managed to broaden the breach in the fence to allow jeeps with recoilless guns through. I climbed onto the engine mounting of one of the jeeps and was able to see all the places where the battalion’s companies were still engaged in fighting. During the early hours of the morning I reached the house where the battalion staff had established a temporary headquarters. It was a large house belonging to a wealthy family, and I instructed my men to use only one or two rooms and to let the family members go about their business.
By afternoon almost all the gunfire had ceased and Gur summoned me and the commander of the 66th Battalion to a commanders meeting in the yard of the Rockefeller Museum during which he presented new orders. Yossi Fredkin, commander of the 28th Battalion, was still stuck near the Rivoli hotel with most of his battalion, contending with Jordanian forces who were engaging them from the walls of the Old City. Gur presented plans for a night-time conquest of Augusta Victoria and the Mount of Olives. The plans placed most of the burden on the 71st Battalion, which had sustained fewer casualties than the others. After he finished issuing the orders I told Gur that Yoram Zamosh, commander of A Company, had requested to be the first to enter the Old City, if and when we were to do so. Gur’s response to my request was simply “OK,” and to this day I am still not certain whether he gave it ample consideration or simply answered without thinking, distracted by the imminent assault on Augusta Victoria and the Mount of Olives. The Old City was not even mentioned in the course of the order issued at the Rockefeller Museum. Shlomo Goren, Chief Rabbi of the IDF, also made no reference to the Old City when he joined us at the museum after the issuing of the order. Instead, he spoke of his mother’s grave on the Mount of Olives. I promised to personally escort him to the grave once we were in control of the Mount of Olives. At that point, I never imagined that just one day later I would be standing by his side moments after our entry into the Old City, and that I would actually end up escorting him to the Western Wall.
The attack that began that night was initially halted due to an error of the supporting tank forces, which turned toward the br
idge near Gethsemane instead of turning left and advancing to the saddle between the Augusta ridge and the Mount of Olives. We were joined by the reconnaissance unit of the 80th Brigade under the command of Micha Kapusta, who tried to turn the tanks around and send them in the right direction. They paid for their efforts with the death of five soldiers, killed by Jordanian fire from the city walls. As we waited to begin the attack we received word from Central Command that the 60th Armored Brigade of the Jordanian army had started mounting a counter-attack in Jerusalem. Gur scrapped the planned assault on the Augusta ridge and the Mount of Olives, and we spent the entire night deploying teams to stop the Jordanian armored forces. Our teams were armed with bazookas and rifle grenades, and we also integrated a platoon of French manufactured SS10 anti-tank missiles into our defensive formation. As morning approached I returned to our temporary command headquarters exhausted after two sleepless nights, and I was surprised when operations sergeant Eliezer Lavi told me that the woman of the house had sent me a plate of chicken fricassee and some fresh aromatic hot coffee. At that moment it was just what I needed, and the taste of the food and smell of the coffee are still as fresh in my memory today as they were early that morning.
At dawn I was again summoned by Gur, who had not assembled a command group but rather sought to refresh our memories regarding the night-time attack on Augusta Victoria and the Mount of Olives. “This time,” Gur explained, “we will have the support of the Air Force and the support of the 155th Artillery Battalion.” The brigade was still recovering from the difficult battle at Ammunition Hill, and the Augusta Victoria ridge was defended by a dug-in and well defended company fort. I was aware of the dangers posed by another battle like Ammunition Hill, but I trusted the ability of my men and I knew that the attack plans had taken the risks into consideration.
It was a cool and quiet morning at battalion headquarters. The window overlooking the valley that lay between us and the Augusta ridge and the Mount of Olives was wide open, and the sun began to rise in the sky...eep and calming blue. A soothing quiet pervaded the entire sector, and a festive feeling of sorts was in the air. We were not overly concerned by the threat posed by the Jordanian company position on the Augusta ridge, and we had not yet started to think about the Old City as part of the day’s plans. Yoram Zamosh, commander of A Company, stayed back to command the reserve force consisting of two half-tracks vehicles we had used to evacuate the wounded of the previous day. Zamosh knew that he was supposed to wait in a gorge in the Valley of Olives near the Palace Hotel until receiving further orders. Our assessment was that we would not need him during the battle for Augusta Victoria, and this turned out to be accurate. The battle up the ridge to the Jordanian army position was easier than we expected, and it was there at the peak that we received Gur’s order via radio to enter the Old City through the Lions’ Gate. There were no preliminary orders, and no planning or coordination. Clearly, the historic significance of the reconquest of the Old City had overshadowed all standard combat procedures.
Zamosh’s force was closer to the Lions’ Gate that all other units of the brigade, and I immediately ordered him to enter the Old City. I could clearly picture the image of the city and the wall’s gates, and I remember thinking that it seemed wrong to have the entire battalion enter the through the same gate. Acting on this assessment I ordered deputy battalion commander Ziv to enter the city with D Company and the supporting company via the Dung Gate. I quickly descended the road leading to Gethsemane and the Lions’ Gate with my staff, and C Company, under the command of Ze’ev Barkai, followed us down to the Lions’ Gate. I do not recall our route to the road that led to the Lions’ Gate. I was floating, as if in a dream.
A Company was there led by its two half-tracks, and it was not moving. I jumped into Zamosh’s half-track and, over the rumble of its engine, yelled, “Why aren’t you going in?” He said that our tanks were shelling the gate, and explained that he was waiting for them to stop shooting. Before he finished speaking we were overtaken by the half-track and command car of brigade commander Gur himself, who had decided that history required that he personally be the first to enter the Old City. In my opinion, this flew in the face of all relevant military considerations. I sent A Company after him and followed with my staff. The positions along the City walls and on both sides of the gate were manned by Jordanian soldiers, and we exchanged fire a number of times on our way to the Temple Mount.
Before long we reached the Temple Mount plaza and I was astounded by its whiteness, its largeness, and the quiet that pervaded it. Gur was there, and I asked for his authorization to look for the Western Wall. By that point the flag that had been hung by Zamosh and Moshe Stempel on the lattice on the edge of the Temple Mount was waving high above the Wall. I do not recall how I found the stairs that led to the Wall, but within minutes I was standing with the small staff of the 71st Battalion in the small yard that had stood adjacent to the Wall for centuries. The small yard was empty and silent. I gazed at the giant stones and the small plants poking out from between them. And, although I neither cried nor prayed, it was clear to me that we were experiencing an historic moment of exceptional importance.
Benny Ron, my weapons development officer, had a camera and can be credited with immortalizing the first pictures by the Wall after its conquest. I was informed by radio that Rabbi Goren had arrived at the Temple Mount plaza along with his assistant and right-hand man Rabbi Menachem Hacohen, and that the two rabbis were with the Battalion’s B Company. I sent a soldier to bring the rabbi to the Wall, where I met him. Goren was in a highly elevated spiritual state. He was grasping a shofar (a Jewish ceremonial ram’s horn) which he had brought with him. He tried to blow it, but the excitement of the occasion stopped him from making a sound. “Rabbi,” I said to Goren, “Give me the shofar. I play the trumpet, and I know how to blow a shofar.” I succeeded in issuing a number of clear, loud blasts from the shofar, and Benny got the historic moment on film, adding it to the collection of pictures that captured the Israeli army’s first moments by the Western Wall. We sang “Hatikva” and Naomi Shemer’s new song “Jerusalem of Gold,” and then went back up to the Temple Mount plaza to make preparations to continue searching and mopping up the Old City.
The war in Jerusalem had not yet ended, and the battalion had a number of wounded men who had been hit by the fire of Jordanian legionnaires who had spread out in the alleyways of the Old City. The 71st Battalion suffered another casualty during our last skirmish in Jerusalem, which took place adjacent to the New Gate, close to the Jewish Jerusalem. I joined C Company, which was fighting a Jordanian force that had dug in at the small Knights Hotel. One of our soldiers had been killed and more were wounded. The force inside was an effective Jordanian squad made up of soldiers who were determined to fight. My sense was that, after two days of fighting and the experience at the Western Wall, the war had come to an end for my men. I took a red-headed platoon commander named Bar-On, a machine-gunner, and two other soldiers, and climbed up the sewage pipes that ran down the wall of the hotel. We scaled the wall to the second floor, where the Jordanians had been located. After a quick mopping up of the hallway and the rooms on the floor we reached a staircase, and it appeared that the Jordanians had already ascended to the roof of the hotel. From there, they continued to shoot downward and managed to hit my deputy Dan Ziv, injuring him in the arm. We charged the open roof, and, in the short gun battle that ensued, during which I was also injured by shrapnel, we killed the courageous Jordanian soldiers. I placed D Company commander Musa Gilboa in command of the battalion and promised to return from the hospital as soon as possible. I called over battalion physician Yigal Ginat and asked him to ride with Ziv and me to Hadassah Hospital “to make sure they don’t dare force us to stay,” which they of course attempted to do. After our wounds were tended to, Dr. Ginat assumed responsibility for the remainder of our treatment and we returned to the battalion.
The battalion had a quiet night in the Kishla
, the old Jerusalem prison dating back to the days of Ottoman rule near Jaffa Gate. The following day the entire battalion left Jerusalem to Abu-Dis and al-Azariyya east of Jerusalem.
Up To the Golan Heights
The war was still not over, and we all knew that Israel still had a score to settle with the Syrians. I understood from Gur that he had no intention of operating his force as a brigade, and, although we were able to rely on the brigade framework for logistical support, no brigade-wide orders were issued. On Friday June 9, I told Ziv and Headquarters Company Commander Bash to arrange transportation to the Golan Heights for the battalion to take part in the fighting there, if and when it began. I headed north with part of the battalion staff earlier, and went directly to the command headquarters of OC Northern Command David Elazar. That afternoon, while the Golani Brigade was waging a heroic battle at Tel-Fakher and the 8th armored brigade was engaging the Syrian forts, Elazar found the time to meet with me. “I am here with a paratroop battalion from Jerusalem,” I told him, even though the battalion was still on its way. “Can we play a role here?”
I was astounded by the gentleness of Elazar’s voice. It had a pleasant ring that I recognized years later, when he was CGS during the Yom Kippur War. “Go to (Major General, Res.) Elad Peled, commander of the division that will attack the central Golan Heights tomorrow. Join his forces.”
Early the next morning I was already sitting with Elad Peled in a position overlooking the Golan Heights. I was charged with leading a force in across the Syrian lines by helicopter that afternoon, conquering Tel Fares, and holding Rafid Junction in the southern Golan Heights. By that point my battalion was operating like a well-oiled machine. I issued the orders to the company commanders with ease, and it felt good to know that the battalion’s entire logistical rear was in the experienced hands of Headquarters Company Commander Bash and Master Sergeant Vander. On Saturday afternoon we assembled in the flatlands north of Sarona in the Lower Galilee and waited for the helicopters to arrive. Flying over the Syrian forces we could see the movement of tanks and other vehicles below, most of which were retreating eastward. We landed on the slopes of Tel Fares and there was no significant resistance on the part of the Syrians. During the night we were already able to leave the Golan Heights and go back to Jerusalem.