by Roni Eliav
We continued to practice. Senior officers came to observe and offered irritating comments. We made tweaks and adjustments, and carried on practicing. The shayatim vehemently argued that we were overdoing the preparations, and that they would have already carried out the operation a long time ago if it was up to them. We answered that it was precisely for that reason that every operation of theirs ends up facing enemy fire. They said that was the way they liked it, that unlike us they liked fighting.
Tuesday was the day the shayatim would come down to the Tavern pub. We started going on Tuesdays as well. The beer flowed like water, and lighthearted banter often escalated into out-and-out brawls. But at the same time, we struck up some genuine friendships which eased the burden we imposed on them with our endless preparations.
I quickly became persona non-grata among the navy commando command chain. They detested my endless jabs about their impatience. I became very grateful to have Golan backing me up.
Finally, the day of the operation arrived. We drove out to the docks and loaded our gear onto a ship. Unlike us, the shayatim sailed out with their ship anchored two nautical miles (2.3 miles) off their coastal base. Admittedly, their entrance was much more impressive.
The following day, we sailed out. The ship was packed to the brim, without so much as a place to sit. The crowded deck prompted us to take over the skipper’s cabin. A mix of our guys and shayatim crowded in the small cabin. Someone found the skipper’s bar, but after some deliberation, we chose to leave it be. Tempting as it was, we did have an operation to perform…
At last light, the rubber boats were lowered into the water on the side further from the shore, even though we had sailed far out into the sea anyway. We loaded our gear, which by then had become very familiar, and made our way onto the wobbly boats. I remember I didn’t feel scared. It all seemed very surreal and detached.
The rubber boats sped away, and we had to hold on tight to avoid falling off. We were sprayed with droplets of cold, salty seawater. Despite being covered in gear from head to toe, we were starting to feel cold. Finally, we got sufficiently close to the shoreline. The boat operators killed the engines and let inertia carry the boats forward. We formed a long, straight line of softly gliding boats— a testament to the operators’ impressive skills. As the night sky grew darker, so too did the air grow colder. The small expeditionary force silently took to the water.
I went into the sea, my chest immediately seizing up from the shock of the freezing water. I started making small motions with my feet to get my fins going and stabilize myself. We began “clawing” in formation, with the navy squad commander leading the way. We turned around and looked at the beach. We didn’t need night vision equipment to see that there were people there.
We waited. As we lingered in the water, I felt I was starting to drown. Despite insisting on practicing in full gear, the actual accumulated weight we carried was far greater than what we’d trained in. The small movements with my feet did little to help. My head occasionally submerged, and I was starting to feel panicked. Suddenly I felt a large hand grab hold of me: the navy squad commander put his mouth by my inflatable flotation belt, and blew with the ferocity that only a shayat could muster. I instantly felt my buoyancy double.
The beach refused to clear of people, and we had to carry on waiting. The cold was becoming a problem, and the soldiers on the boats were losing their patience. We remained in this condition for over an hour. We were freezing, our hands gone completely numb.
And then it happened. A small fishing boat with a dinky little motor set out of the harbor. Unbeknownst to him, he was heading straight towards our rubber boats. We looked on helplessly. It was down to the commander of the rubber boat fleet to call this play.
The soldiers in the boats could have scattered, could have taken out the fisherman, could have apprehended him… but instead, they did nothing. The small fishing boat sailed breezily between the row of rubber boats like a general inspecting roll call. After passing our boats, the fisherman turned his vessel around and passed through them again—as if refusing to believe what his eyes just saw. He carried on unmolested and made his way back to the harbor.
A ruckus started. No one knew what to do. We didn’t know if we’d been. To solve our dilemma, a Soviet-made Syrian battleship left the harbor towards us, and a hasty retreat promptly followed. As the boats retreated, no one thought to come pick us up.
We found ourselves alone, nine soldiers abandoned a couple of hundred feet away from the Syrian coastline. We started laughing out of fear and tension. We slowly started “clawing” away from the beach. After putting a safe distance between us and the shore, we activated a radio to signal our location: if someone wanted to come looking for us, now they had a way to find us.
The cold was getting worse: our body temperatures dropped, and none of us could feel our hands and feet. We tried keeping ourselves warm by “clawing,” by urinating in our wetsuits, and by sticking close together. Our lightweight wetsuits turned out to be inefficient, and hardly retained our body heat. The shayatim put us in the middle of the huddle to heat us up, which did help a little.
Just before dawn, we heard the rattle of a helicopter engine. The sound was music to our ears, but we were worried they wouldn’t be able to spot us. We all turned on our xenon flashlights, which we carried for this scenario exactly. The helicopter reached us, stabilized itself above our heads, and lowered a cable. The shayatim showed us how to bolt ourselves to the cable, and the helicopter pulled us up one by one.
The flight mechanic gave us his earphones. Since we wore no rank insignias, he didn’t know who commanded the force and handed the earphones to a random soldier. The soldier, a shayat, uncharacteristically handed the earphones over to me—as if to say: you got us into this mess, now you get us out!
The pilots were as cold and calculated as ever. They told me they had to take us in two rounds, since there were too many of us. I explained to the pilot that the soldiers in the water were in critical condition, and asked where he was taking us. He replied that he was flying over to a nearby warship with a landing pad, about 20 minutes in each direction. I asked where our boat was, and the pilots told me it was about 5 minutes’ flight away. We agreed they’d drop us off in the water by the boat. On the way, I was informed there was some sort of showdown going on, with no shots yet fired. It turned the Syrian battleship and our ship were maneuvering in range of each other’s radar. They had powerful radars. The Israeli navy sent out two warships to help us. A warship is an incredible machine, so the enemy’s inferior ships didn’t dare so much as go near them. But either way, we had to rush over to our ship that was waiting for us—it had to get out of Syrian territory as soon as possible.
We reached the ships, and had to lower ourselves into the water. We had no idea what to do, and the shayatim had to demonstrate for us. The conclusion was unavoidable: we did not cover enough possible scenarios in preparation for the operation. It was simply not possible to acquire so much professional proficiency in such a short time. The flight mechanic held me up as the helicopter got as close to the water as it could, and dropped me down. I jumped legs first, like the shayatim told us. I sank like a stone, the water was freezing, and my flotation belt floated me back up. I “clawed” towards the back of the ship, and was quickly pulled out of the water. Finally—solid ground! Albeit made of iron, but anything was better than that black watery abyss.
Aboard the ship, it was chaos. The sailors yelled at us to get out of their way. There wasn’t an inch of space, but everyone desperately looked for a place to sit down and rest. I elbowed my way to the skipper’s cabin, took off my gear, changed into a dry uniform, and slumped in the corner.
The cabin was desperately overcrowded. Everyone was tired, and an oppressive feeling of failure lingered in the air. Someone rediscovered the skipper’s bar, and this time there was nothing to hold us back. There were expensive whiskeys there wh
ich we sipped straight from the bottle as if they were canteens of tap water. None of us had even tasted expensive whiskey before. A nice warm feeling pervaded our bodies. We were tired and hungry, and became intoxicated almost immediately. Pretty soon, the place was a mess of drunken rambling, bickering, and brawling. It was intolerable, but we didn’t have the energy to get up and get out of there.
After two brawling drunks toppled over me, I finally made the effort and got out of the cabin. Dawn had broken, and the ship sailed south on the open sea. I lit a cigarette after going a whole night without nicotine. I felt dizzy. We knew we’d failed, and that we’d be haunted by this failure. It was already clear to me then that our ceaseless insistence on avoiding contact had inhibited the shayatim and caused them to stand by passively when the small fishing boat passed us. I wondered how long it would take for us to get blamed for that.
We arrived off the shore of the navy base in the afternoon. The shayatim took about an hour to unload their equipment into boats, and then sailed off to their base. We continued on to Haifa Port, our ship now half empty. We unloaded our equipment onto trucks sent especially from the unit. We drove back, and spent an hour silently unloading the trucks.
After that, I finally went to take a long, hot shower. I must have spent at least an hour in the shower, before crashing down on my bed. Just as I was about to sink into the sweetest of deep slumbers, I felt someone violently shaking my shoulder and calling my name repeatedly. My consciousness slowly resurfaced, I opened my eyes and focused on the sight of a soldier with a scared look in his eyes. When he saw that I was up, he almost yelled: “We can’t find Assi! No one can remember the last time they saw him!”
I jumped out of bed and ran to the telephone in the hall. I then decided I couldn’t manage this situation from a hallway, so I put on a pair of shorts and ran as fast as I could down to the radio room. I pounded on the door until a soldier who was sleeping there groggily woke up.
“Just a minute,” she called out.
“I don’t have a minute, open up NOW!” I yelled.
I leaped inside when the door opened. To my surprise, it was Tal, Eitan’s ex-girlfriend. She was only half dressed, causing us both to feel embarrassed.
“You look great like that…” I said. “Now get me the unit commander, the operations officer, and the operations branch officer.”
She didn’t lose her cool, going over to make the call while laughing, clearly enjoying the compliment.
“If I’d have known you were going to storm in like that, I would have waited for you naked…” she said.
“Be careful what you wish for,” I replied. “Did you get hold of him already?”
I brought the unit commander and the rest of them up to speed. They immediately alerted the commander of the navy, the air force search-and-rescue units, and just about the entire army. Meanwhile, I found myself gawking at Tal’s long bare legs. She acted like she didn’t notice.
“Couldn’t he possibly have just fallen asleep on the boat?” she asked.
“What was that?” I asked, snapping back to reality after staring at her spellbinding legs.
“Couldn’t he simply be on the boat?” she repeated impatiently, slightly pulling up her oversized long-sleeved T-shirt, teasingly revealing the magnificent curve where her upper hip met her bottom.
“You know what, maybe…” I said, unable to look away. “Let’s give them a call.”
After several failed attempts, she managed to get hold of the base in Haifa and the officer in charge of the ship. He answered in a sleepy voice. I asked him if I may have forgotten a soldier onboard.
“There’s a soldier pacing around here, looking for a ride out of the base,” he answered.
“Can you please call him over to the phone?” I asked, praying silently that it was Assi.
A couple of moments later, Tal extended one of her long legs and pressed it up against mine, making my blood boil. I reached over and placed my hand on her hip. She didn’t pull back, so I left it there.
It turns out it really was Assi! After a night of drinking, he’d simply fallen asleep in a dark corner. Nothing had stirred him—neither the stops nor the unloading. I told him to wait there, and that I’d send a car out to get him. I let everyone know, including the motor pool officer. I let out a sigh of relief, and crashed down on the small cot Tal had been sleeping in before I rudely burst into the radio room.
“That was a close one…” I said. “I was sure I was going to have to go back out to the sea, or to Syria.”
Tal gave me a look I wasn’t sure how to read.
“Well, I’m gonna go. I have to go to sleep,” I said, but didn’t move.
“You’re not going anywhere, mister,” she said. She got up, locked the door, turned off the lights, and took off her shirt.
“I thought you’d never do that,” I quietly uttered. Those were the last words I would say for the next hour or so.
During the briefing the following morning, the commander of the navy said: “The operation was a success, but the patient is dead.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” the commander-in-chief of the army said. He wasn’t the type to be easily dismissed with vague metaphors.
“It means what it means…” the commander of the navy replied.
“For your sake and everyone involved, that better not mean what I think that means,” the commander-in-chief said sternly.
What was the end of that exchange? I don’t know. We were marked as a team that had failed, meaning we went into deep freeze. Essentially, we had become “non-operational”— not officially, but very much so for all practical matters. Time trudged along slowly after that, long and dull, but on the other hand it gave me the time to develop an interesting relationship with Tal— a relationship marred with feelings of guilt for having an affair with the ex-girlfriend of a soldier of mine.
Chapter 14
WALKING OPERATION
In those days, there were several ways to mobilize an operation: by vehicle, by aircraft, or on foot. There were interesting combinations as well. But the most distinguished and revered of all were always walking operations, carried out with nothing but your own two feet, your back, and an unflagging will.
Finally, another operation. After the debacle with the navy commandos, we were frozen out for several months. The incident had happened in open water and we were at fault for the operation’s failure—and a team that has failed, for whatever reason, is always marked. We could read the faces of senior officers, looking at us and thinking: You had your chance. Other teams teased us as well: we were pegged as the team that went “from unbridled to idle.”
To stay sharp, I subjected my team to a rigorous daily fitness regime: we would first run a couple of miles, and then take a few rounds scaling up and down the rope; we would do chin-ups, hand “walking” over parallel bars, and concluded this part with push-ups on the parallel bars. We repeated this routine five times. After that, we’d either do hundreds of sit-ups, or instead drive down to Sidna ‘Ali beach, where we would sprint up the road’s gruelingly steep incline; we would then sprint back down, go into the water and run a hundred paces, followed by push-ups and sit-ups. We’d repeat that routine ten times. Occasionally, we ran gladiator rounds— or “Juantorena” rounds (named after the legendary Cuban Olympic runner, Alberto Juantorena, who was at the peak of his popularity back then) as the soldiers called it: we would run in a row, and the last runner would spring up to the head of the row; the soldier now last would spring up to the head of the row, and so we’d repeat for 6 miles. Our muscles grew and our backs strengthened. But we were losing patience.
My only solace was that Tal turned out to be a passionate and creative lover. We thoroughly enjoyed our time together.
I hounded the office secretaries to remind the unit commander of my existence. I intentionally sat down next to him in the mess hall.
I sucked up to the intelligence officer and his deputy, so they’d bring my name up in discussions of operations. I even tried to sweet-talk a company commander I detested—all to no avail. Every evening, we’d play bridge in the new rec hall. We’d go out for drinks at the Tavern, where we often came across shayatim whom we still blamed for botching that operation. On several occasions, confrontations escalated to brawls. As previously mentioned, we would call them uchtabutim (octopuses) and they called us tizonim (hill-runners); for highly-trained, testosterone-charged, aggressive young men, those nicknames were enough to spark violent scuffles.
My frustration mounted, so when the unit commander finally called me into his office, I was about to give him a serious piece of my mind. It took me a good couple of minutes to realize what he was saying: “Walking operation.” I looked at him incredulously. The unit hadn’t carried out a proper walking operation in years.
“But it’s still on the fence,” he quickly warned, seeing my excitement. “If you don’t prove that your team is able to keep the schedule to a T, I won’t send the operation for approval.”
I wanted to hug him, but just barely managed to restrain myself. I walked out of the office with a stupid smile plastered on my face. The secretaries, who already knew, congratulated me. I assembled the team and broke the news.
“This is a test,” I told them, “we’ve been given a second chance after messing up the first one. You’re going to work hard— I’ll see to that— and you’ll rise to every challenge.”
I went in for a meeting with the operations officer working on this project. We prepared a training program, recalled a discharged soldier into active service to oversee the team’s professional training, worked out a program for walking practices, and then for simulation models. All in all— it took three months of preparation.
The sports officer detailed the fitness program he had worked out for the team. I looked at it and burst out laughing. “You must be joking,” I told him, “this is chump change. You’re more than welcome to come see the actual workouts my team will be doing. Do you know where the tires and weighted vests are stored?” I asked him.