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

by Moshe Betser

  Indeed, field navigation using only a map and the stars became my favorite pastime, and one of the reasons I wanted to go to a sayeret, an IDF special force, where field navigation is a key to the craft of soldiering.

  I loved maps, and matching the terrain to the lines drawn on the paper. The North Star, hanging above the Galilee, became a beacon for me wherever I found myself in the countryside I loved, finding signs of seasonal changes, recognizing winter’s end by the sprouting of wild lilies in the Galilee’s foothills above Nahalal.

  And I knew that in the army, especially in the kind of unit I wanted to join — the paratroops sayeret, the most elite of the reconnaissance forces, which specialized in special operations — I would learn much more about fieldcraft.

  I did not want an army career. I knew the army required discipline. Raised to believe in earned, moral authority, not the authority of rank for rank’s sake, I expected to find army life rankling. Medals for heroism or bravery had less appeal than the challenges I would find in a unit where I could bring to full expression my natural talents as an athlete and my love for the land.

  Nonetheless, I knew I had talents for soldiering — as an athlete, as a field navigator, and perhaps most of all as a leader of my peers. But I left it unsaid amongst my friends from the valley, where bragging is frowned upon and modesty admired.

  So, I spent my last summer before the November draft of 1964 honing my body through the hard work of the farm and athletic competitions. Nurit and I traveled the country, sometimes only the two of us, sometimes with other friends from the valley. We knew we would one day be married — it went almost as unspoken between us as the fact that we knew I would be a good soldier. We would have children and live in Nahalal, in the Dayan family house that she would inherit when she married. The tradition in Nahalal is that the youngest child inherits the farm, after the older children help to build it.

  In the fall of 1964, my turn came to stop playing at being a soldier and get ready to become one for real. In those days only four elite reconnaissance units that the IDF calls a sayeret—Hebrew for “scouts”-existed.

  The Southern Command called its sayeret Shaked, meaning almond. Famous for, among other reasons, its Bedouin Moslem commander, Amos Yarkoni (born Abed al-Majid), one of the unit’s founders in the fifties, Shaked tracked infiltrators in the Negev coming out of Egypt and Jordan.

  The Northern Command also had a sayeret, drawn from the Golani Brigade, an infantry unit that specialized in the northern border’s defense.

  The third sayeret was brand — new in 1964, and so secret that I knew nothing of its existence at the time of my draft. Run directly by the general staff, its very name only became public knowledge in the late 1980s, and then only because its successes made it impossible to keep its existence a secret.

  So the fourth sayeret, the most famous on the eve of my draft, belonged to the paratroops brigade. Famous for its special operations and surprise raids against the enemy, the IDF considered the paratroops sayeret the unofficial heir to the 101st Unit, a legendary force established in 1952.

  The 101st had struck back at the Arab fedayeen, the infiltrators who came across the borders as saboteurs and terrorists. They crossed borders into enemy territory to seek out the culprits and punish them. Ariel “Arik” Sharon, who went on to become a general and a politician, and Meir Har — Zion, who to this day is considered the most legendary of Israel’s fighters, led the fifty fighters in the unit.

  The stories about the 101st describe them as wild and uncontrollable, soldiers who made rules for themselves. Wounded so many times — including once when he personally took revenge on a Bedouin family for his sister’s rape — Meir Har — Zion finally gave up soldiering to build a ranch on a Galilee hilltop.

  The unit’s radical methods forced the politicians to dismantle the unit after only six months. But the 101st proved to the IDF that a very small number of fighters could deliver a very powerful message. It established traditions for using essentially guerrilla tactics in the strategic fight against terrorism. With the dispersal of the 101st’s officers and soldiers into the rest of the army at the end of 1952, those traditions spread throughout all the special warfare units in the army. The spirit of their personal heroism-and the skills they developed as trackers and fighters-remained embedded in the consciousness of the army.

  The paratroops brigade, which Sharon commanded after the dismantling of the 101st, claimed the legendary unit’s mantle as the tip of the IDF spear, and the brigade’s scouts — the sayeret—drew its inspiration from the 101st.

  My parents took me to the Haifa recruiting station on a brisk November day, knowing the paratroops sayeret was my goal. We parted in the manner of people from the Jezreel Valley. I clenched my father’s thick, hard hand and we shook once. ‘To your success,” he said.

  “Goodbye, Abba” I said, then turned to my mother. “Goodbye, Ima.”

  She handed me a bag with a sandwich for the bus ride to the induction center. I towered over her, and bent over to give her a peck on the cheek. She gripped my biceps with her own strong hands and, in a whisper into my ear, wished me luck and asked me to take care of myself before letting me get on the bus to the induction center. That is the way of the Jezreel Valley — laconic and understated, never sentimental.

  * * *

  Nowadays, the induction process to the IDF is computerized and before new draftees reach the center, they pretty much know where the army will send them. In those days, neither computers nor advanced registration existed.

  But some things never change. A sprawling mass of wooden barracks, sheds, and dozens of tents set into clearings among the wooded groves and open fields of Tel Hashomer, east of Tel Aviv, the center draws all the new recruits to the IDF. Three times a year — February, August, and November — buses bring the eighteen-year-olds recruited in that season’s round of the draft.

  It is a herding process that begins with chaos and confusion but very quickly turns into the strict organization of the army — even if that army is the IDF, which, as a people’s army based on a universal draft, has a degree of informality intolerable to any other professional army.

  And like new recruits nowadays into the IDF, those of us arriving at Tel Hashomer that day in November 1964 knew that in addition to the two and a half years we would give to the country in enlisted service, another month in reserves would follow every year until we reached our forties. Most of the IDF is not even in uniform at any given time — it is the reserve force.

  This has been part of life in Israel for as long as the country has existed. I wish now, just as I truly wished then, that for my grandchildren — it is probably too late for my children — it will not be necessary. But for all the years Israel and the Arabs have warred, one of the real secrets of the IDF’s strength is that almost every family in our tiny country knows what it’s like to have someone in the army.

  I’m sure induction centers everywhere in the world share the same thing — shouting sergeants. In those days, the most famous sergeant in the IDF was a strict handlebar-mustachioed Yemenite-born tyrant named Hezi, who wore a sharp-pressed uniform and had a whistle hanging at the end of a braided lanyard that draped over his chest.

  He rushed us through a series of barracks where it seemed we were given as many shots as a porcupine has needles, then led us into a huge storeroom. Clerks threw uniforms, duffel bags, helmets, and boots at us. Then we were rushed back to the main hall, where they told us where to find the recruiters for various units in the army.

  The recruiters all promised the sky — adventure, excitement, professional interest — if we met their criteria. Those who did not meet the standards for combat units ended up as desk clerks and drivers, cooks and adjutants of the rear. To be a “jobnik” — noncombat soldier-was worst of the worst for someone from Nahalal.

  From the navy to the air force, they all tried to entice me into their basic training. But I knew where I wanted to go: the paratroops brigade, and specifi
cally to the paratroops sayeret, the most elite force in the brigade. Its appeal to me went beyond the fact my brother Udi had served in the unit before going on to become an officer in the brigade. From everything I knew about the sayeret, it looked like it would be the most fun.

  The tests for the paratroops sayeret began a few days after my arrival at the induction center. In one day, the recruiting sergeants from the unit put us through long- and short-distance races, obstacle courses, wrestling matches, and some intense games of basketball. We all tried to impress the recruiters. Only a couple of years older than us, they seemed much, much older, and a lot wiser. Seventy tried out that first day. They picked twenty. I came in first, second, or third in every foot race. Though I had never experienced any real violence among my friends in the valley, we often wrestled for fun. At six-foot-three, weighing a hundred and sixty pounds of wiry farm-bred muscle, I could get leverage on even the heaviest of my opponents. Because of my height, basketball was always my favorite team sport.

  Over the coming four days, the routine repeated itself daily as they tried out new recruits, cutting away those who did not make the grade. Finally, when there were forty who met their standards, they told us to heave our duffel bags onto the roof of a bus to Tel Nof, the air force base that served as brigade headquarters for the paratroopers.

  And the coddling stopped. Move this, move that, scrub this, clean that — it went on endlessly. They took us out for twelve-mile marches, and just as the base came into view, they sent us marching in the other direction for another dozen.

  We learned about stretcher drills, an IDF favorite for turning a platoon of recruits into a cohesive unit. Soldiers take turns carrying each other on stretchers. It is unpleasant to be one of the four carrying the stretcher, and even worse to be bounced around on top. We did dozens of those, double time around the base, over and over again, learning to work together, learning who shirked and who could be trusted, who had endurance and who merely had bravado. When the sergeants tired of stretcher drills, they made us carry our cots over our heads on ten-kilometer runs, to punish us all for a single soldier’s dirty rifle. They let us have two or three hours of sleep in twenty-four hours. But nobody counted; we were too busy learning the rudiments of soldierly discipline.

  My love of running came in handy. Because I ran fast I could usually grab a few minutes of shut-eye, waiting for my buddies from the platoon. I ran everywhere, able to maintain a natural loping gait that found a rhythm and kept it over long periods of time. So, I stood out both as the tallest member of the platoon and as one of its fastest, always leading the pack or right on the heels of its leader-usually our commanding officer.

  About two weeks after we arrived at Tel Nof, they sent us to Bet Lid, in the center of the country, near Netanya. They combined our platoon with two regular platoons of paratroops recruits, creating a company to go through the three-month basic training together. At the end of three months we faced parachute training, and then another three months learning to command a squad. Only when we finished that course did we become full-fledged soldiers, qualified to wear the red beret and red boots of the paratroopers, silver wings above the left shirt pocket of our green uniforms. By the end of the process, nearly 50 percent of us would be gone, winnowed out and sent to easier outfits.

  As trainees for a sayeret, we worked harder in our platoon than the two other platoons of trainees. While they did a six-mile march, we hiked a dozen. When they finished twelve miles, we did another fifteen. All our platoon officers and trainers came from the sayeret, not the regular battalion. From the start, they gave us the feeling that those who lasted through the course would belong to a very special family of soldiers and officers.

  Soldiers everywhere say their basic training was much harder than whatever is given nowadays. In my day nothing in army regulations limited the powers of anyone above the rank of sergeant. An hour of sleep and then three hours of running with our beds over our heads; a twenty-minute catnap, then two hours to build a three-meter-high stone pyramid from rocks we found in the fields. They prepared us for the reality of our work as soldiers, when we’d have to go with very little sleep for days and sometimes weeks at a time, racing around the clock to prepare an operation or fighting constantly in a full-scale war.

  At Bet Lid we began to learn about all the platoon weapons. We carried a pair of 7.62 mm machine guns, as well as a mortar and a bazooka. Our first rifles were heavy, cumbersome FNs, made in Israel under Belgian license. As paratroopers, they expected us to know how to handle it all, and we felt grateful when, after we mastered the FNs, they gave us Uzis for our personal weapons. After the 1967 war, Kalashnikovs captured from Arab troops equipped by the Soviets were issued to combat soldiers, and I learned the Kalashnikov is the best all-around assault weapon available. (I used the same one for the next eighteen years of active service and reserve duty.)

  But I never found any great pleasure in the handling of guns, though throughout my years in IDF special forces my job often included trying out new weapons. I found the lessons in field tactics, topography, and navigation much more interesting than weapons-training. My love of the geography of the Land of Israel gave me an advantage over the city kids — and sometimes the instructors — when it came time to learn the intricacies of maps and navigation across the land.

  But as in any army, mostly we practiced, over and over, until we did it right. Around the clock, day in and day out, we learned to stretch our abilities to our very best, for only the very best would finish the course. Except for two twenty-four-hour weekend leaves toward the end of the first three months of basic training, when I went home to visit with family, friends, and Nurit, we lived inside our platoon and company, barely aware of the rest of the brigade, let alone the rest of the world.

  The central theme of basic training is to turn civilians into disciplined soldiers, and the simple principle says that a soldier has to follow orders automatically, without thinking, unless of course it is highly illegal-shooting an unarmed prisoner, for example. That is why there are punishments for every little thing out of place.

  Rust on your weapon? Dig an eight-cubic-meter hole. The tent is untidy? Move it fifty times tonight until you get it right. All the punishments have one single goal: whatever you are told to do, do it, because one day in battle, in a moment of sheer confusion and chaos, survival will depend on a clear head-and the ability to perform.

  It surprised me at first how easily I took to the army. I never had much respect for authority unless I regarded it as having a fair and moral basis. But the sergeants and officers never found anything to complain about with me. In all the weeks of my basic training, they never singled me out for a punishment. Of course, as a member of the platoon I participated in all the group punishments meted out for whatever fault the officers found in our general performance or in the performance of any individual member of the team.

  A sayeret’s soldiers-even new recruits-are encouraged to speak their minds about ways to improve the unit’s performance, even if it means challenging the commanding officer. In a sayeret, there is no place for blind admiration of senior officers. That suited me fine. My parents raised me to believe in myself, to stand up for what I believed. Throughout my career, officers earned my respect because of what they knew and what they taught me. But I learned there are different kinds of leaders.

  Some earn respect from their soldiers by drilling so hard that the soldiers know the job as well as the officer. Others create respect through fear of their authority, whether sending soldiers out on a twenty-mile march on a freezing winter night, just because a soldier was late for an assembly, or adding another ten miles to a march because a soldier complained.

  The best officers are naturals-combining distance and friendship, an aloofness with intimacy, to inspire the soldiers. I wanted to be that kind of officer like my first company commander, Giora Eitan. The nephew of Rafael “Raful” Eitan-our brigade commander, who rose to become chief of staff and go on to politics-G
iora died on the Golan Heights during the Six-Day War.

  Most of the other soldiers in the platoon came from the kibbutz and moshav farms of Israel, where the values of settling the land are inseparable from the values of defending it. The city boys often knew more about fighting, and in a way seemed tougher than us at first. But many of them had a hard time with the hard work, tending to complain, especially about the repetition of the drilling.

  Maybe one of the many reasons farmers make such good soldiers is that we learn to be patient, whether it is waiting for the seasons or understanding that the weather is beyond control. Just as we knew that we sowed in one season in order to harvest in another, we understood that what we learned in basic training would serve us well in the reality of combat. But the grand finale of the first three months of basic training, a full-scale exercise in the Negev, shook my belief in that simple proposition.

  We trucked south, then hiked into the desert, reaching our position just before dawn. The company captain gave us a rousing speech. The platoon commanders briefed us on our assignment.

  I looked forward to seeing our platoons form into companies and the companies combine into battalions until the entire force of the paratroops brigade combined with other brigades into an army on the move. Now, I looked up at the row of old oil barrels at the top of a cliff. Enemy positions cannot look like this, I decided. With no minefields to cross, no barbed wire to cut, no trenches to traverse, and nobody shooting back, our company’s assignment to take the hill after a pair of air force jets hit it with napalm seemed silly. The whole thing looked fake to me. A lot of hurried night movement, then waiting for hours for nothing, did not make it any better.