by Uzi Eilam
When my father died of a heart attack in 1951 on the day before Purim, I quickly went from being a teenager to being a man. From that moment on I knew I would need to provide for myself and to forge my own path in life, and that I would receive no substantial support from anyone else.
I wanted to change my life by moving from the kibbutz dairy barn to work outside with the field crops, but my efforts were unsuccessful and I was stuck working in the dairy barn all summer long until the beginning of my senior year of high school. I felt trapped, like a fish in a net...amiliar image from my father’s work in the kibbutz fish ponds. Desperate to change my circumstances I began to prepare myself for the high school matriculation exams, which most kibbutz teenagers did not take in those days. This decision was a vague, internal declaration of divorce from kibbutz life, although I was not aware of it at the time. During most of the summer, until the beginning of the school year, I spent my free time alone, studying English with the diligence and determination that stemmed from my inclination to leave the kibbutz and be free to pursue a wider range of activities and work.
As the beginning of the school year approached, I asked a girl in my class if she wanted to study for the matriculation exams with me. At that time kibbutz high schools did not usually prepare their students for the matriculation exams because the exams were viewed as a door to the effete values of non-kibbutz life. So it was clear that we would have to take the exams outside the kibbutz. After speaking with a few other classmates I quickly emerged as the leader of a group of eight students who were determined to take the matriculation exams. Although the school’s initial response to our plan was decisively negative, we refused to give up. In fact, we even told our teachers we would stop attending class and pursue an independent program of study instead. A few weeks later the teachers relented and we suddenly had teachers for maths, physics, chemistry, and English. The fact that we were a tightly knit group of students who supported one another played a major role in our success.
English was our major weak point, and I worked hard to improve my language skills by reading books in English with the help of an English language dictionary. I continued reading books in English during my military service as well. My fellow soldiers and, later, the soldiers in my charge, liked to say that instead of cigarettes and sweets my “elephant pack” — the heavy pack each soldier carried during marches and exercises — was filled with English books.
At the end of the school year we took the external matriculation exams with a great sense of excitement and trepidation. After a tense period of waiting we received our test scores just a few days before being drafted into the IDF. I had passed all the exams — even English — the subject that gave me most concern.
My father, Baruch Trachtenberg, and mother, Shifra Kovelman, in their Saturday best when they moved into Kibbutz Tel Yosef in 1932
Proudly wearing a broad belt on my Bar Mitzva just before the State of Israel was declared in May 1948. The height of the celebration was pistol practice.
2
From Gadna to Academia
Our IDF enlistment procedure began before the matriculation exams. The first stage was a medical examination, where I was dealt an unexpected blow. After being called back for a second test I was diagnosed with a cystic heart murmur that was audible when my heart contracted. I couldn’t believe that as an athlete who was constantly exercising and working out that I had a heart defect. The additional examination I requested changed nothing, and with a heavy heart I prepared for my enlistment knowing that I would not be accepted to serve in a combat unit. At first I considered trying to get accepted into the Academic Reserves, a recently established program in the IDF that allowed people to complete a first degree before their military service. My plan was to study mathematics and physics — my two favorite subjects — at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. But I submitted my application after the deadline and was not accepted into the program.
After I my initial induction into the army I reported to the Gadna training base on the grounds of the old British police station at Givat Olga, on the Mediterranean coast. At the end of a training course we were awarded the rank of corporal and began our service as Gadna instructors.
With his trumpet at the Hapoel convention in Tel Aviv where Uzi Eilam and the kibbutz band performed
Why I Didn’t Make It to Unit 101
At the beginning of August 1953 a rumor spread that a secret incursion unit was being set up within the Jerusalem Brigade. Volunteers from other IDF units and various kibbutzim and moshavim were recruited for the new unit through an informal network of friends. The volunteers assembled for a meticulous selection process carried out by Shlomo Baum and Arik Sharon at the unit’s base near the ruins of the Arab village of Sataf. Eventually, approximately 50 men were selected to begin training, which involved long-distance reconnaissance, shooting and target practice while running in mountainous areas, sabotage, and the use of explosives and hand grenades. The personal weapons issued to soldiers in the unit were different than standard IDF issue. Each soldier in the unit carried a Thompson Submachine Gun (a Tommy Gun) and a commando knife, typically wore civilian dress (short pants and sandals), and displayed little regard for military discipline, rank or chain of command. Instead of these traditional aspects of military culture, unit 101 soldiers were imbued with combat values such as courage, steadfast focus on the goal of a mission, and flawless implementation. In January 1954, Unit 101 merged with the 890th paratroop battalion, and Sharon was appointed as battalion commander.
Many of my classmates from Ein Harod and other kibbutzim joined the unit, including the famous scout Meir Har-Tziyon and Yair Tel-Tzur of Afikim, a close friend who was later killed when his jeep drove over a landmine in the Sinai desert whilst in command of the 890th paratroop battalion. I was keen to join the unit and rather naïvely requested a formal transfer. After getting no response my patience reached its limit and I requested an interview with my commander, only to learn that he simply had not bothered to pass on the transfer form. I was furious, and the experience brought back the trapped feeling I had on the kibbutz after my father’s death — the feeling that had motivated me to rebel against the kibbutz and begin preparing for the matriculation exams.
I decided to leave Gadna and reverted to the plan of joining the Academic Reserves. By then, however, I had begun thinking about what I would do after my military service, and this time I requested to study electrical engineering at the Technion in Haifa instead of mathematics and physics in Jerusalem. Engineering seemed like a solid profession to me. I passed all the tests, and my application to study at the Technion was accepted.
Struggling with the Kibbutz to Study at the Technion
A week later I was summoned to the IDF’s Induction Base to be discharged and transferred to the Academic Reserves. I left the base feeling free but deep in thought about how to broach the subject with my kibbutz, which had to approve my studies. I met the kibbutz secretary and told him that I had been accepted to the Academic Reserves to study electrical engineering at the Technion. He promised to raise the issue before the central committee and told me that it would have to be decided by the kibbutz general meeting. I began working on the kibbutz as was expected of me, but this time I insisted on working in the field crops.
From the moment the general meeting came to order I could feel opposition to my academic career plan growing. One of the main opponents was Shmuel Hefter, a founder of Tel Yosef and a veteran of the Hashomer Jewish self defense force. This short, sturdy man, with a wrinkled sun darkened face, spoke out against studying in general and academic study in particular. He argued that learning how to operate a Caterpillar D-2 tractor required no more than nine lessons and that this should be the basis of all kibbutz study programs. After discussion the secretary announced that another general meeting would be called to consider the subject and vote.
The day of the second meeting arrived. I was filled
with anxiety, and I dreaded the prospect of having to endure another session of ridicule against higher education. The kibbutz secretary, however, led the discussion wisely. When he saw how determined I was, he let me speak first in order to explain to the members that the academic year was already underway, that the army had released me specifically in order to study, and that this was what I wanted to do more than anything. The meeting voted to approve my studies — and I was finally able to breathe easily.
The Technion
I immediately travelled to Haifa, where I used my first days to make up for lost time by concentrating hard on my studies. I passed all my exams at the end of the academic year, which for me was actually only a six-month period. Serving in the Academic Reserves entailed going through a three-month officers’ training course in the summer. In the meantime I met with the kibbutz secretary who told me that the kibbutz would most likely make me study agriculture instead of engineering because that was a skill that the kibbutz considered useful. With this new information I decided it would be best for me to complete my military service and to put off all decisions about academic studies for the time being. I informed the Technion of my decision, and was told that that I would be able to continue my studies at any time of my choosing in the future.
Combat Fitness!
I was happy to take part in the officers’ training program, and even happier to find out that there was no combat fitness requirement. Toward the end of the course I had another meeting with the medical committee. I was set on serving in the paratroops, and combat fitness was one of the requirements. I told the doctors who examined me that I was about to complete officers’ training, that I regularly took part in all the long runs, and that I would carry my friends’ rifles when they get tired. I argued that there was no way that my fitness was inadequate. This time the doctors agreed.
3
At the Forefront with the Paratroops
My First Meeting with Arik Sharon
I was tremendously pleased when my request to serve with the 890th paratroop battalion was granted at the Induction Base at Tel Hashomer. When I arrived at the Tel Nof base, where the 890th Battalion was stationed at the time, I had an interview with battalion commander Arik Sharon.
In a voice we all quickly learned to imitate, Sharon asked me my name and where I came from. He already knew everything about me: that I had come from the Gadna program, that I had grown up on Kibbutz Tel Yosef, and that I had been a classmate of the young men who had served under him in Unit 101. “I asked the guys,” he told me, referring to my classmates. “They told me that you’re alright.” Because of my training experience from my service in Gadna, Sharon assigned me to A Company as a squad commander under the command of Sa’adia Alkayam, who we all called Supapo.
Supapo
The atmosphere in the paratrooper base was very different from that of other military units. To me, it seemed less like a military unit and more like a group of irregular guerilla fighters. I bunked in the officers’ quarters, along with company commander Supapo and his deputy Moshe Yanuka.
As for weapons, the Uzi submachine gun that Israel Military Industries (IMI) had just started to produce was not yet widespread, and fighters were proud to carry heavy submachine guns. I too received a Tommy Gun, with the high caliber 11.43 millimeter ammunition, as opposed to the 9 millimeter ammunition used by Uzis. Tommy Guns were also heavy, weighing almost 5 kilograms compared to the 3.5 kilogram Uzi with its wooden butt.
After completing paratroop training, I started training with A Company. We were working in an area close to the border, which today is known as Hevel Lakhish in the foothills southwest of Jerusalem. On one particular day soldiers were training as squad commanders, and it was Ze’ev Sverdlik’s (today Sever) turn to take the lead. He was walking at the head of the squad when we suddenly saw two armed men sitting on a hill some 300 meters away, extremely close to the border. I am still not certain whether they were on our side of the border or the Jordanian side. In any case, we outflanked them, crept up close, opened fire, and charged their position, killing one of the Jordanians and making the other to drop his weapon and flee. We took the body and the two weapons back to our company encampment.
This incident set off a long series of inquiries with the UN armistice agreement inspectors, to whom the Jordanians submitted a formal complaint. Sharon arrived on the scene to verify what had taken place during the skirmish. After asking a few questions and being told of the circumstances of the engagement, he continued on his way. Later, I was required to accompany our liaison officers to a meeting of the Israeli— Jordanian Armistice Committee, and to take the UN observers to the location of the skirmish to convince them that it had actually taken place on the Israeli side of the border.
What happened afterwards was typical of the way Sharon worked. There had been no reprisal operations and no hostile encounters for weeks leading up to the skirmish. However, a hostile encounter had just taken place, and, sensing the potential for more, Sharon instructed our company and two other companies, including D company under the command of Motta Gur, to place ambushes all along the border with Jordan in the hope of sparking more skirmishes. That was how he did things — inciting contact with the enemy in ways that created pretexts for military action and ensured both the General Staff backing and political authorization needed for reprisal operations.
Shortly after the skirmish infiltrators who had come across the Jordanian border carried out an attack on Israeli territory. In response a reprisal was planned against the Surif police station, which was located on a ridge across from the region of Mavo Betar and Nes Harim, also southwest of Jerusalem, but closer to the capital and higher in the hills. I was selected to command the forward squad in the operation. We set out in a long line after nightfall, and my heart fluttered as we crossed the border. Not only was it my first time crossing the border, but I was leading the entire force, with the battalion commander’s radio operator at my side. Soon after we crossed the border, the radio operator told me that we had been ordered “to move the wagon backwards,” a somewhat silly code for retracing our steps back across the border. “Arik,” I said to Sharon, who was walking just a few meters behind me, “we received an order over the radio to move the wagon backwards.”
“You heard nothing,” Sharon told me in a whisper.
We continued walking, and a few minutes later we received another transmission: “Move the wagon backwards — confirm execution.” When we received the third transmission Sharon understood that we had no choice, and we began to retrace our steps toward the border. When we arrived back at base we learned that the Jordanians had somehow learned of the impending operation, either from an observation post or via intelligence, and had prepared a decidedly unpleasant reception for us. A few weeks later another operation was planned, this time against an Egyptian military command post in Gaza.
Since the end of the War of Independence, the Gaza Strip had been a constant point of origin of cross-border infiltration operations. The operations were carried out primarily by the population of Gaza (most of whom were refugees) at the explicit encouragement of Egyptian intelligence, which had an office in the Gaza Strip. A few months earlier, in August 1954, the IDF conquered and destroyed an Egyptian border post across from Kibbutz Kisufim in an attack known as Operation Kisufim. On February 28, 1955, we embarked upon a larger operation, which would subsequently be called “Operation Black Arrow.” It was only later, when I had the opportunity to work alongside Sharon as his intelligence officer, that I learned how he went about convincing his superiors — the regional command and the General Staff — to authorize such operations.
The Gaza Operation — Operation Black Arrow
We knew that something was about to happen because a few days earlier a jeep from the battalion’s C Company detonated a mine while driving on the patrol road that ran along the border of the Gaza Strip. Sharon managed to convince Ben-Gurion and the General
Staff of the logic of a broad-scale reprisal attack on the headquarters of the Egyptian military forces in the Strip, which was located north of Gaza city. Supapo, who had not been assigned a major role in the aborted attack on the Surif police station, was compensated with the highly coveted role of leading the attack on the Egyptian base.
According to the plan, five groups would take part in the operation: a platoon-sized force from A Company under the command of Supapo; a platoon-sized force from D Company under the command of Motta Gur; a force charged with blocking the road to the south of Gaza city under the command of Danny Matt, with a reconnaissance platoon consisting primarily of former soldiers of Unit 101; a small force charged with blocking the road to the north; and a small platoon-sized reserve force under the command of deputy company commander Moshe Yanuka.
Supapo chose three commanders for the three forces, each of which consisted of approximately 10 soldiers. One force was commanded by Hillel, my platoon commander, the second force was commanded by Tuvia Shapira and I was selected to command the third force. Sharon took part in the operation with a small staff that included deputy battalion commander Aharon Davidi. The overall force that took part in the operation was the size of a paratroop company, about 70 soldiers and officers.
We began by driving south in trucks along with a few parachute folders, women soldiers mainly from kibbutzim, in order to conceal the true aim of the trip. We sang songs and had a good time, and for a moment even forgot that we were on our way to battle. Supapo was in high spirits, for he had finally received a major command position in an operation of the battalion. Our company was charged with leading the force and, as in the Surif operation, Supapo chose me for the front squad.
