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

by Moshe Betser

  It all combined with a problem that began gnawing at me throughout basic training. As far as I could tell, the army had a lot more problems than fake enemies in exercises. Our equipment was terrible. My web-belt became an obsession. It was too tight, too small, inefficient. I kept looking for ways to improve the canvas straps that I needed to carry my equipment.

  On my first leave home, a month after the start of basic training, I spent hours in the tailor’s shop at Nahalal, finding new ways to sew the canvas belts to fit my long torso. I told the Nahalal tailor my problem, but instead of leaving the web-belt with him, I stayed to watch and learn. From then on, I did my own sewing, learning to baste pouches together so they would not flap against my body when I ran, wiring hooks into the canvas for more clips to hang equipment from.

  The web-belts were not the only equipment problem. The small, light Uzis, with their short range and low velocity, made a good tool for house-to-house combat. But at longer distances they lost their accuracy and punch. All during the exercises, aware of the generals watching from the top of a hill in the distance, I wondered if they knew about these problems and others, like the faulty equipment, like stretchers that fell apart.

  Finally, at the end of the exercise, company commanders and then regimental commanders and finally the brigade commander gave speeches summing it all up, saying how it worked perfectly. It sounded like a lot of crap to me.

  But I had hopes for the second stage of our training. The officers announced that new equipment waited for us when we started the second stage of the course — parachuting. I decided to keep the faith, and at the end of the exercise I felt optimistic setting off on the unit’s traditional twenty-four-hour hundred-kilometer (sixty-mile) march through the hills and canyons of the Negev to a small air field at Sde Boker, where a plane waited to take us back to Tel Nof-and a week’s leave.

  I spent the week with my friends and family at home, helping my father on the farm in the mornings and during the rest of the day hanging out with friends on home leave that week. Nurit was also in the army, and I missed her that weekend. Meanwhile, I did exactly what my brother Udi did with his friends three years before when they came home from the army — we talked about our experiences. And my younger brother Eyal spied on me and my friends, just the way I had spied on Udi.

  When I returned to Tel Nof at the end of the leave, disappointment struck. The officers had not exactly lied. They issued new equipment, from uniforms to Uzis — but the same old models we already knew. On my next visit home, I realized I needed to start all over again in the sewing shop, getting my new web-belt to fit properly.

  THE NIGHT OF THE WELLS

  After the airplane takes off, after the release rings are clipped, after standing up, after shuffling down the cabin to the open door with the wind blasting past, after the thump of heartbeat as you fall into the turbulence, after the first few seconds before the chute opens comes the silence.

  More than anything else, it is that sweet quiet above the earth that I loved in parachuting. I’m not a great lover of flying. My feet belong on the ground. But I always looked forward to the quiet that comes from being inside the wind itself.

  After learning to parachute, we went to the squad commanders’ course, where sergeants are picked and future officers spotted. Thirty percent of us had already fallen out, dropped into the regular paratroops or transferred to even easier infantry units. Beginning to feel like real soldiers, we knew how to work in concerted action, aware of our skills and the force we wielded as an organized combat unit.

  One day they assigned us to put on a demonstration for Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. We trucked to Palmachim, to check out the landing zone, and a huge sand dune selected as an enemy position, before climbing aboard the planes for the show.

  As a boy I read newspaper accounts about such demonstrations. Usually the papers said something like “the paratroopers showed extraordinary combat ability.” I imagined all sorts of exciting things — jumps, racing jeeps, soldiers leaping into the air. Now I looked forward to being in the real thing.

  We practiced a few times, but then a senior officer decided that it took too long. So the company commanders planned a little bluff. Instead of jumping with all our equipment, we left the bazookas, mortars, and heavy machine guns on the ground, hidden from the audience full of dignitaries. We jumped with light equipment — mostly Uzis — and picked up the heavy stuff when we hit the ground.

  Sure enough, the next day the papers reported that “the paratroopers demonstrated top-notch ability” for the ministers. It became a joke for us. But it also worried me that the army cheated. My feelings about the army reached an all-time low.

  But then they picked me as a bazooka operator for my first mission across enemy lines, a first taste of real action. Palestinian fedayeen from Kalkiliya, just over the border of the West Bank, when it was still Jordan, disrupted life almost daily in the Kfar Saba area, a few miles northeast of Tel Aviv.

  The infiltrators planted mines against car traffic and attacked farmhouses in the middle of the night. Innocent people died daily. The generals above decided to attack water-pumping stations that served the villagers around Kalkiliya, as well as the only gas station in the area. We wanted to force the Jordanian authorities to crack down on the Palestinian fedayeen.

  I felt lucky to be chosen, one of only three from our platoon attached to a more veteran platoon for the mission. In four months of carrying around the bazooka tube, drilled to conserve ammunition, I had only used four live missiles to practice firing. Now the envy of the other young soldiers in our platoon, I practiced with four live missiles a day, readying for the big day when we would attack the pumping stations.

  Euphoric with the assignment, we spent the next two and a half days practicing with the rest of the task force. On the morning of the operation, a final parade drill ended with rousing speeches by the senior commanders. In another few minutes, we would board the trucks taking us to the staging ground in an orange grove near the border. But right after the speeches, one of the older fighters from the task force approached me with a peculiar request.

  “Listen,” said the sergeant. “My platoon commander says I should trade bazookas with you.”

  I used a French-made 82mm bazooka that I knew like the back of my hand. He offered me his 73mm Belgian-made bazooka. I made a face, pretending not to understand what he wanted. A soldier never gives up his personal weapons.

  The sergeant knew that. But he had an explanation. “Yours has more firepower,” he said, “and for this mission the platoon commander says I need something stronger than what I’ve got.”

  I loved my bazooka. I never missed the bull’s-eye in all our practices. But if I argued with him, I might end up missing the mission. Warily, I asked if his worked perfectly.

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Did you try it out? Fire it?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  There’s a control light on a bazooka with which to check whether the trigger mechanism makes the electrical contact that sets off the missile. It is a safety mechanism for the soldier loading the tube to be sure to get out of the way. I took his bazooka, and checked the control switch. It worked.

  A new soldier, eager for combat and assigned to his first real mission, does not argue with a sergeant. I did something no soldier should ever do-I traded my personal weapon for someone else’s. A few minutes later, we boarded the trucks.

  Crossing the border that night, every little noise seemed to reach all the way to Amman. I hugged my bazooka close as we moved silently through the groves, careful to avoid brushing any branches or startling any animals. A single barking dog could awaken the villagers on the outskirts of Kalkiliya, and raise the alarm.

  The paranoia of crossing the border passed as I recognized the landscape as identical to Israel’s. Farmers on the Jordanian side grew the same kinds of crops that season-even if they did not have our technologies. The fragrance of the orange groves could not be divid
ed by the line that cut the country. The recognition that the border did not divide nature gave me confidence and the paranoia quickly passed.

  We heard the pumping station’s rhythmic thump as we approached quietly through the groves. The signal went down the line, and I crouched, my loader behind me, ready to slip a missile into the tube when the order came.

  I raised my right hand away from the trigger, waiting for his pat on my helmet to let me know he had cleared the bazooka’s rear exhaust. I stared down the barrel at the thick walls of the cement building, waiting for the slap on the helmet, the order to fire.

  It came. I lowered my hand to the trigger mechanism, made sure of my aim, and fired.

  Nothing happened. “Open!” I barked, going through the drill. “Release!” I snapped. He slapped my helmet and I pulled the trigger. Nothing.

  “Change rocket,” I tried. He did. Nothing. “Try another one!” Nothing.

  I had never felt such frustration. I unslung the bazooka and pulled up my Uzi, pouring an angry magazine of bullets into the cement walls of the building. If the sergeant who made me change bazookas had come by right then, I probably would have shot him.

  The cease-fire order came down the line while the explosives teams went into action, setting their devices. We began our retreat, the blast from the demolished pumps behind us ripping through the night with a fireball that quickly turned into a thick column of smoke even darker than the starry night. We double-timed it out of the area, heading home before the smell of the smoke could reach our nostrils.

  That night, at the debriefing with our platoon commander, I reported what happened to my bazooka. The next morning, the whole company met for a debriefing. The commanders of each of the attacking forces reported on what happened. After the task force commanders spoke, the platoon commanders stepped up to give their speeches, reviewing the operation. My platoon commander mentioned my bazooka’s failure.

  I jumped to my feet from the center of the crowd of soldiers and faced the officers at the front. “Sir,” I said directly to the senior company commander, a captain. “A very serious thing happened.” A lowly corporal, I chose my words carefully, speaking in an even voice. I left no doubt about my feelings.

  “Go on,” the company commander said.

  “A sergeant took advantage of the fact that I am a young soldier,” I went on. “He knew I did not want to lose my place in the mission. He knew that my bazooka worked and he knew his bazooka had problems.”

  I paused to make sure they understood, thinking carefully about what I wanted to say. “He cheated me and he lied to me about an order from the platoon commander. And,” I summed up, “he created a situation that prevented the proper use of my training at the critical moment of the operation.”

  Afterward, one of my friends from the platoon told me I sounded like a company commander, not a corporal.

  But meanwhile, the sergeant turned red. I looked at his company commander, fully expecting him to immediately dismiss the sergeant from the sayeret. Cheating a fellow fighter from the unit seemed to me the worst thing a soldier in the unit could do.

  But Tzimel, the company commander-the same Tzimel who would one day tag along at Karameh-said nothing to the sergeant.

  Thus, even after my first mission, my doubts about the army remained. I took part in an operation, over the border, with all the elements of combat-preparation, briefing, order, movement, target location, work at the target, return, and performance of the task. I enjoyed that. But the fact that a sergeant cheated another soldier-and that I gave in to him-bothered me.

  A few weeks after what we called the Night of the Wells, Tzimel was replaced and our new company commander, Giora Haika, called me to his office with four other soldiers from our platoon, to offer us an officers’ training course.

  The truth is that I never considered the army as a professional career. I regarded it as my duty as a citizen, and my responsibility as a bearer of the traditions of my family. While in the army, I wanted to do my best. I believed I did. The dilemma chased me during my entire life in the army. As deep in my heart as my love of Nahalal and home, I loved the spirit of special operations, and now, faced with the question of going home or more time in the army, I knew that I wanted to be an officer.

  I knew that I enjoyed being the leader. In the squad commanders’ course, through which everyone in a sayeret must pass, I learned that I enjoyed my natural ability to organize and control a force effectively. From the squad commanders’ course, I already learned that 80 percent of the work of a combat officer is training and educating soldiers, and I enjoyed that as much as the self-discovery of leadership.

  I asked Giora how much more time the army wanted me for. An extra six months, he said. I did the calculation in my head. It meant serving until June 1967. Okay, I decided on the spot, unable to know then that it would be the first time-but not the last-that the army would ask me to change my personal plans only to have far greater, historic forces change the army’s plans for me.

  THREE STUBBORN FIGHTERS

  A hundred-and-twenty-kilometer non-stop march is long and exhausting, a round-the-clock journey to the limits of endurance. But properly prepared, a soldier can easily handle the seventy-four-mile march.

  To build up to a 120 kilometers, you start with a thirty, a fifty, an eighty, until finally, you can do a 120. Between each of the major hikes, you stay in shape with fast marches of five, ten, fifteen kilometers. In the beginning a quick dozen kilometers does not seem like much, but thirty seems like a lot. Once you’ve done a thirty, a fifty seems possible. The most important thing is that each soldier feel great, not broken, at the end of the 120-kilometer journey.

  There are short rests, of five to ten minutes, and longer, twenty-minute breaks to eat. You carry your combat gear-your gun, your web-belt weighed down with supplies, a little food that you can carry in a pack. Nothing special.

  The biggest problem is the monotony. The first ten or twenty are easy. After thirty kilometers you begin to get tired, and around forty the realization begins to sink in that it is endless. It is a meditative experience, one of the most personal experiences a person can go through. You learn to know yourself, your physical fitness, your body.

  And your head. It is a tremendous emotional effort. At first the soldiers chatter. But very quickly everyone settles into their private rhythm, deep in their own thoughts, knowing nobody can help.

  It goes on around the clock. I learned to think of my family and what they were doing while I walked. At four-thirty in the morning, my father rose to milk the cows. At seven, my young brother went to school. At seven in the evening, they sat down to the evening meal of salads and cheese, eggs and fruits. And we continued walking, along the soft sandy Mediterranean beaches, up and down Galilee’s hills, across the Negev Desert.

  Gradually, people begin to complain. Suddenly, a soldier starts running — he wants it to be over already. The idea is to disconnect your head from your body, not to think of your body. Let your body find its rhythm and it will take care of itself.

  I heard people groaning for kilometers, and admired them, knowing they continued despite their pain. The journey is difficult enough when nothing hurts. If something hurts, it is a nightmare. Growing up barefoot made the soles of my feet callused and strong. I never suffered blisters.

  On my first 120, at the end of basic training, I noticed something strange. I watched the platoon commanders and the company commander. It always looked easier for them. They made the same physical effort and were not necessarily in better shape than us, but it looked so easy for them.

  Only when I reached the officers’ training course did I learn the secret-the psychological advantage built into the responsibility of command. When you lead people under great duress, you have to be a model of behavior. The more complaints you hear, the more agile you become. When you serve as a model, you’re a commander and not a soldier. The responsibility of leadership makes you forget all the pain, effort, and monotony. />
  I met infantry soldiers from all over the army at the officers’ training course. Supposedly the cream of the crop, the best from every branch of the army, it quickly became apparent that those of us who came from the paratroops brigade, especially the five of us from the sayeret, out-soldiered them all. Our combat experience set us apart from all the other cadets, and in fieldcraft we even bettered our instructors.

  About three months into the course, an adjutant from the paratroops brigade arrived at the base to see the five of us from the sayeret. Waiting for him on the lawn outside his office, we wondered why they sent an adjutant. As combat fighters from the sayeret, we never spoke to adjutants, the desk jockeys who worked far from the field.

  Moshe went in first, and came out after a few minutes. “This guy is crazy,” he said. “If we refuse to sign up for at least another eighteen months at the end of the officer course, we don’t go back to the brigade. It’s an order straight from Raful.”

  Some cadets had come to the course from the regular paratroops brigade. I decided that the adjutant had made a mistake. “It’s probably for those other guys,” I said. “He can’t mean us.”

  “I don’t think so,” Moshe said. I still did not believe it. I waited for the others to come out. They all heard the same message.

  I went in knowing exactly what I would do. I saluted. The adjutant offered me a chair. “How’s it going?” he started casually.

  “Okay,” I grunted. He waited for me to add something. But I stayed silent, waiting to hear what he wanted to tell me.

  “Listen,” he said, turning officious. “There’s an order from Raful. Whoever wants to return to the brigade after the course has to sign up for one additional year, in addition to the extra six months that you already committed to as part of the officers’ course.”

  “Wait a minute, I’m from the sayeret,” I tried.