This idea made sense. Immediately someone volunteered to prepare a letter for all of us to sign, which would demand Hal’s removal. This letter was to be handed to the school commander the next morning. But then Zimmer got up and spoke to the other side, and his words were forceful and well argued.
“Israel is in danger,” he said, “and pilots are needed. Fighter pilots are a rare commodity in particular, and the nation pays a high price for them.” Then he came to the point. “Hal is a pig, no question about that, but what has that to do with the defense of our country? Perhaps Hal may turn out to be the best combat pilot of us all.” Silence fell.
“Who are you to decide to wash out a potential pilot,” Zimmer went on, “and waste a national investment?” We were stunned.
“You’ve overstepped yourselves,” Zimmer summed up his impressive speech. “What’s happening here is like mutiny. There are flight instructors and officers here, and all of them are able and authorized people. They are the ones who determine whom to dismiss and whom to keep. Certainly not you”—he stabbed the audience with his pointed finger—“you spoiled brats!”
Zimmer was a clever and powerful person. He later became a lawyer. None of us could answer his argument. The anti-Hal organization was dismantled. We channeled our frustration in a vicious ditty we performed in one of the school’s parties, called “The Ballad of the Perfect Pilot.”
“My baby shall be the best of pilots,” chants Hal’s mother merrily from the window, hanging his diapers to dry.
“By God, how can you tell that in advance?” the next-door housewife asks, clasping her hands in awe.
“That’s easy,” the proud mother sings, her voice embellishing. “He floated to me through the air.”
“Flew in the air? From where?”
“From Mr. Smith, the neighbor.”
THIS WAS THE FIRST TIME I had to face the question of whether our national situation was so bad that it demanded employment of undesirable elements.
In the coming years, this was a dilemma that kept recrudescing, and sometimes it was my call to determine whether state security justified compromise with pigs. There were always people around who argued that there was no other alternative, that one must use what’s available, and that the security of Israel justifies all means. Some even forwarded the theory that since war is a dirty business, dirty types are better fit for it. In a certain kind of American film you find this theory, too.
I want to testify to something I learned from experience. There is no functional connection between swinishness and effectiveness in war. The myth is false. I have never seen good things coming out of the trash can.
HAL GOT HIS WINGS with the rest of us and became a pilot and an officer, if not a gentleman. But he never justified the expectations or the investment in him. Shortly after a stupid accident, he vanished. I heard he left the country, and there were rumors that he became involved in illegal businesses. Many years later, when his name came up by chance, one of our instructors from back then said, “We were all waiting for you, the cadets, to get rid of him.”
This taught me something about where the buck stops.
THE EARLY 1960S PASSED SLOWLY, and without me noticing, time began accelerating downhill toward the earthquake of June 1967. The dominance of the Super Mystere dwindled, and a new magic fighter landed in Israel. This was the Mirage III, whom we called in our language “Sky.” If the Super Mystere was a plump, black-haired beauty, the Mirage was a blond courtesan, slender and cheeky. My Super Mystere suddenly looked to me a little cumbersome and round, like an overripe woman. She was not fat yet, still attractive, but…
The Mirage brought on delta wings a new epoch in the history of the air force and eventually in my own life, too, but I didn’t know it yet.
IN THE BEGINNING, just a few chosen pilots were sent to France for training on the new fighter. This was such an honor, and a marvelous opportunity to leave our claustrophobic little country and see the greater world outside, that pilots who were not chosen for Mirage training got really mad. They even wrote a blues ballad, and soon angry and disappointed people sang it all around the air force.
“How is it?” asked the poet who wrote that song. “How, by all that’s holy, does it happen that among all of us so fine, Lieutenant Liss will go to France? Huh? For fuck’s sake, why is he the only one to eat croissants?” And Lieutenant Liss was further immortalized like this:
To the Mirage he proudly strides, to fly Mach 2 high in the sky,
Have fun in France, but not until he passes the whorehouse drill…
He walks down Paris streets, and suddenly happens on Brigitte,
To Place Pigalle they go, of course, and she suggests some intercourse.
The crowd roared the chorus “How did it happen?” to an old tune from a Tel Aviv nightclub.
The solo continued to abuse Liss, who apparently crumpled under the sexy star’s lust for the pilots of the IAF. “Says Lieutenant Liss, ‘Oh, yes, indeed, but I am just a Boy Scout kid, and keep your distance, let’s not kiss, I am afraid of syphilis.’”
But then our Mirage boy was gentleman enough not to leave the star in an empty bed for the night. “I have a friend, his name is Nick, he comes along and shows his stick. If you don’t mind, then I shall keep behind the door to take a peep.”
“How did it happen?” roared the crowd, enjoying immensely this abuse of the brown-nosing pilot and his mother.
In admiration, I asked the poet about the wonders of his art. “Writing songs? That’s no big deal,” answered Lieutenant Arnon. “Just put a prick in every other line and you will always have good lyrics.”
THE YEAR WAS 1963. Peace in Israel.
The end of our first five-year enlistment was nearing, and our small group scattered to the winds. Umsh left active service and went to fly transports at El Al. Soon he was mostly abroad, and lost to us. Uri Sheani, the gunnery champ, married Shula and fathered two girls. The young family was sent to Uganda, where Uri taught military flight training. Our mutual affection kept us in contact in spite of the distance, and from time to time I received letters and magnificent black-and-white photographs of exotic African women with exposed breasts.
Yakir, the rooster, went an inch too low. His aircraft hit the surface of the Sea of Galilee when he was demonstrating low flight to a student. I saw the splash and the gray water close over them. Their remains were never recovered. After I got back, I had a long, dreary drive to take Yakir’s just-widowed bride back to her parents in the north.
Zimmer was already a law student at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His protege Hal disappeared into thin air, and nobody missed him. Brutus, my opponent that horrible night over Atlit, went back to his kibbutz and turned into an inventor of agricultural machines.
ZBB got promoted and was selected to fly Mirages at Ramat-David. Soon his special talents stood out there. We didn’t see each other as much. I almost missed his piercing, clever look. And Goldie—he was upward bound, as foreseen by all. While we all toiled to learn to lead formations in the air, he had already finished a term as squadron deputy, and the IAF sent him to college.
All my original friends were gone now, and I found new ones. I got closer to Nissim, the redhead Bulgarian who saw us first on the veranda of the Scorpions. His home in base family housing was always open to me and to the shy soldier-girl who sometimes came to visit me. Nissim’s clever wife, Etty, knew how to listen to us and give advice when needed. Zorik, a commander who became a friend, also used to invite confused youngsters to his home, and his wife, Tali, saw to it that they did not get out hungry. Another close friend was Mossik, a happy-going and crazy flier who loved to wrestle on the lawn and break bones. He brought to the squadron’s parties a stunning brown-eyed girl with honey-colored hair, also named Etty. Soon the likable young couple Ilan and Judy Gonen joined our small fraternity.
AS FOR ME, I WAS on my way out.
