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Bringing a Knife To a Gun Fight
This is shit, Yossi thought.
He rocked the stiff military-issue chair backward onto its rear legs and heaved a mighty sigh. The sound echoed in the stillness of the desert. The sun hung languidly in the bleached sky, glinting across the rippling waters of the canal and unconcerned with Yossi's plight.
After spending Pesach on duty, he'd looked forward to a quiet Rosh Hashanah at home with Yael and their two little ones. When he had been called to serve at the Milano strongpoint instead, he'd written a letter of complaint to the Minister of Defense. Surprisingly, the man with the eye patch had responded, releasing all of the 68th Battalion from service except for a skeleton crew. Perhaps Yossi had not been the only one to protest the deployment.
In exchange for a leave during Sukkot, he had volunteered to remain at his post. At 2 and 4 years old, Meir and Avital weren't really old enough to appreciate the High Holy Days anyway. A chance to go on a weeklong holiday with his family later was well worth missing them now.
Milano was a ghost town, as neglected as the rest of the Bar-Lev Line. The Line had been built to guard against an Egyptian invasion, but it had been years since anyone truly believed such an attack would come. Half of the strongpoints that comprised the line had been shut down, and the remaining forts had fallen into disrepair. Duty here was as an exercise in futility. Reserve units, mostly students and men well past their prime, manned the stations, bringing books and games and anticipating no action.
Today was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Yossi had expected the solitude of the nearly-abandoned base to be meditative, an opportunity for reflection. Instead, he felt oddly disconcerted. Worshiping with a congregation of sand and rocks and accompanied by the only the whistling wind, it was easy to imagine that God had already passed judgment and found him lacking.
And the real hell of it all is that I can't even have a damn cigarette.
Sighing again, he pulled his father's old olivewood snuff box from his left breast pocket and tapped its lid firmly with two thin fingers. He opened the box and took a pinch, rolling the finely ground tobacco briefly between his thumb and forefinger before inhaling lightly. The sweet aroma filled his nose, and he dissolved into a violent fit of sneezing. He wasn't a fan of snuff, but it was all he was allowed during the fast.
He'd barely recovered his composure when he saw the commander approaching. There would be a briefing in the mess hall in fifteen minutes. Stretching his long legs, he stood up and went inside to wash up. He welcomed the distraction.
* * * * *
Crouched in a scrubby juniper bush, Yossi ate for the first time in over 48 hours. It was an unimpressive spread: canned beef and tuna, crackers, pickles and olives. After the unintentional extension of his Yom Kippur fast and a long trek through the desert, however, it tasted like heaven.
Only minutes into the briefing, the commander's talk had been interrupted by loud explosions. Artillery shells had torn through the air, part of a military action they'd all thought impossible. The inexperienced reservists had panicked, diving for cover. The commander had sent him to the observation tower to see what was happening while he took the rest of the troops to the bunker.
Up in the tower, Yossi had rubbed his eyes in disbelief. The detonating projectiles weren't the worst of it; hundreds of Egyptian troops were advancing across the canal. A flotilla of rubber boats sailed over waters that had been calm less than an hour before, loaded down with men dead set on breaching the Bar-Levi Line.
By the time he'd made it back to the bunker, two members of his company had already been killed by shrapnel. Still, everyone had been certain that the air force would quash the Egyptian war efforts in no time. They'd rejoiced at the ear-splitting roar of the first planes flying overhead, only to reel in horror moments later as they watched the aircraft being gunned down. No reinforcements had come; no one had expected any to be needed and none were available on such short notice.
The impossible had happened. The Egyptians were staging an all-out attack. And from the looks of things, they were winning.
Only a third of the soldiers from his base were here with him in the desert now. Terrified and bedraggled, they prayed, some for the first time in years. One of the men had managed to escape with his tallit, and they took turns using the prayer shawl, each offering his own words to the heavens. When the tallit was passed to him, Yossi entreated God to allow him to see his wife and babies again.
As if in answer to his supplication, the sand beneath him began to vibrate with the thundering approach of a tank. The prayer shawl clutched around his slender shoulders, Yossi almost ran toward the sound, then hesitated. A member of the armored corps would be able to tell an Israeli tank from an Egyptian one simply by listening to the sound of its treads. He himself was only a reservist, far more learned in Torah than in the ways of war.
We barely made it out of Milano alive, and we've got no more food, he thought. We're ill-prepared and won't last much longer out here. And if the enemy's tanks have already advanced this far, there's a good chance we won't be rescued in time anyway.
His feet made the decision for him, and Yossi tore up the hill in the direction of the tank. He crested the ridge, waving the borrowed tallit like a white flag. Squinting toward the horizon, he began his prayers anew.
Please God, let it be one of ours.
[This story is a fictional account of the beginning of the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Although there were signs that the Egyptians were planning an attack, the Israeli government did not believe the Egyptian army had the resources to engage them. Their overconfidence coupled with the observance of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, left them woefully unprepared when the Egyptians quite literally brought out their big guns. If you are interested, here are two of the resources I used in researching this story. There really was a soldier named Yossi stationed at Milano strongpoint that day, and the prayer shawl really was instrumental in his rescue. However, I've taken quite a few artistic liberties with the other details of his story.]
He rocked the stiff military-issue chair backward onto its rear legs and heaved a mighty sigh. The sound echoed in the stillness of the desert. The sun hung languidly in the bleached sky, glinting across the rippling waters of the canal and unconcerned with Yossi's plight.
After spending Pesach on duty, he'd looked forward to a quiet Rosh Hashanah at home with Yael and their two little ones. When he had been called to serve at the Milano strongpoint instead, he'd written a letter of complaint to the Minister of Defense. Surprisingly, the man with the eye patch had responded, releasing all of the 68th Battalion from service except for a skeleton crew. Perhaps Yossi had not been the only one to protest the deployment.
In exchange for a leave during Sukkot, he had volunteered to remain at his post. At 2 and 4 years old, Meir and Avital weren't really old enough to appreciate the High Holy Days anyway. A chance to go on a weeklong holiday with his family later was well worth missing them now.
Milano was a ghost town, as neglected as the rest of the Bar-Lev Line. The Line had been built to guard against an Egyptian invasion, but it had been years since anyone truly believed such an attack would come. Half of the strongpoints that comprised the line had been shut down, and the remaining forts had fallen into disrepair. Duty here was as an exercise in futility. Reserve units, mostly students and men well past their prime, manned the stations, bringing books and games and anticipating no action.
Today was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Yossi had expected the solitude of the nearly-abandoned base to be meditative, an opportunity for reflection. Instead, he felt oddly disconcerted. Worshiping with a congregation of sand and rocks and accompanied by the only the whistling wind, it was easy to imagine that God had already passed judgment and found him lacking.
And the real hell of it all is that I can't even have a damn cigarette.
Sighing again, he pulled his father's old olivewood snuff box from his left breast pocket and tapped its lid firmly with two thin fingers. He opened the box and took a pinch, rolling the finely ground tobacco briefly between his thumb and forefinger before inhaling lightly. The sweet aroma filled his nose, and he dissolved into a violent fit of sneezing. He wasn't a fan of snuff, but it was all he was allowed during the fast.
He'd barely recovered his composure when he saw the commander approaching. There would be a briefing in the mess hall in fifteen minutes. Stretching his long legs, he stood up and went inside to wash up. He welcomed the distraction.
Crouched in a scrubby juniper bush, Yossi ate for the first time in over 48 hours. It was an unimpressive spread: canned beef and tuna, crackers, pickles and olives. After the unintentional extension of his Yom Kippur fast and a long trek through the desert, however, it tasted like heaven.
Only minutes into the briefing, the commander's talk had been interrupted by loud explosions. Artillery shells had torn through the air, part of a military action they'd all thought impossible. The inexperienced reservists had panicked, diving for cover. The commander had sent him to the observation tower to see what was happening while he took the rest of the troops to the bunker.
Up in the tower, Yossi had rubbed his eyes in disbelief. The detonating projectiles weren't the worst of it; hundreds of Egyptian troops were advancing across the canal. A flotilla of rubber boats sailed over waters that had been calm less than an hour before, loaded down with men dead set on breaching the Bar-Levi Line.
By the time he'd made it back to the bunker, two members of his company had already been killed by shrapnel. Still, everyone had been certain that the air force would quash the Egyptian war efforts in no time. They'd rejoiced at the ear-splitting roar of the first planes flying overhead, only to reel in horror moments later as they watched the aircraft being gunned down. No reinforcements had come; no one had expected any to be needed and none were available on such short notice.
The impossible had happened. The Egyptians were staging an all-out attack. And from the looks of things, they were winning.
Only a third of the soldiers from his base were here with him in the desert now. Terrified and bedraggled, they prayed, some for the first time in years. One of the men had managed to escape with his tallit, and they took turns using the prayer shawl, each offering his own words to the heavens. When the tallit was passed to him, Yossi entreated God to allow him to see his wife and babies again.
As if in answer to his supplication, the sand beneath him began to vibrate with the thundering approach of a tank. The prayer shawl clutched around his slender shoulders, Yossi almost ran toward the sound, then hesitated. A member of the armored corps would be able to tell an Israeli tank from an Egyptian one simply by listening to the sound of its treads. He himself was only a reservist, far more learned in Torah than in the ways of war.
We barely made it out of Milano alive, and we've got no more food, he thought. We're ill-prepared and won't last much longer out here. And if the enemy's tanks have already advanced this far, there's a good chance we won't be rescued in time anyway.
His feet made the decision for him, and Yossi tore up the hill in the direction of the tank. He crested the ridge, waving the borrowed tallit like a white flag. Squinting toward the horizon, he began his prayers anew.
Please God, let it be one of ours.