memories.
Relik, her husband, Nahumi’s deputy, took over and told his own story: “At the end of the last briefing, Major General Raful got up and said to us, ‘The fate of the Jewish nation is in your hands.’ Then I remembered my grandfather.”
“My name is Israel,” explained Relik. “My parents named me after my grandfather. My first daughter’s name is Rachel, after my father’s sister. Both Israel and Rachel died in Stutthof, a Nazi concentration camp in northern Germany. They were taken there from the Vilna Ghetto, in Lithuania.”
I thought, Good God, where are they going with this?
True, I was expecting some odd stuff to come out here, but nothing like this. I had never imagined that a tall, bright guy such as Relik might think when hearing Raful loading on him the fate of the whole Jewish nation such grandiose things as I might not return from this mission, but at least I won’t die the way my relatives did.
But he went on. “This was the first time in my life,” Relik revealed, “that my dead relatives came to me before a mission.” And then, a split second before the atmosphere turned morbid, he added mockingly, “After that, I didn’t worry anymore about fuel consumption. All I needed was to get there; no need for fuel to return.”
Laughter broke out and filled the room, breaking the tense silence that had reigned until then. Fighter pilots usually don’t talk like that. But although I didn’t have any such thoughts, I still keep to this very day a handwritten note another high-ranking officer sent me: “You won’t need fuel to get back.”
EVENING CAME, AND THE LIGHT coming through the large windows faded. Ali got up and switched on our many lamps, and the atmosphere in the room brightened considerably. Now it was my turn to tell my story. And first I had to explain for the thousandth time why I, the base commander, went on the mission to Tammuz. In most military organizations, colonels and general officers do not go on such missions. Colonels and generals are supposed to manage things from the rear, to sit in front of screens and give orders, not to pick up rifles and go with the enlisted men to the battlefield.
Why, indeed, had I gone?
I admit there was my fighter pilot nemesis—that “black demon” that Ali always accused me of having. It was there as always, urging me to go, see, and do. But this time that demon was not the whole story. There was an angel of my better nature. I was moved by a feeling of responsibility.
David Ivry thought otherwise. He ordered me not to fly the mission, but then the chief of staff, Raful, gave me a hearing. We were sitting in his car. It was very early in the morning, and we were waiting for the pouring rain to slacken so I could allow the amateur pilot general to take off in his plane to Tel Aviv. Those 1981 winter days made it a regular ceremony between us. I would get up very early and go out to see if the weather would be a problem for his level of experience, and at times I halted his takeoff right on the runway. He complained but always complied, and I believed he relished the drama. This time the rain was really heavy, so I got in his car and we had few minutes of privacy till a hole opened in the overcast.
We talked about the forthcoming operation. When I told Raful that Ivry wouldn’t let me go to Baghdad and requested his help, he cut me off rudely.
“Spector, you’re trying to become General Popsky again? Forget it. This is not your own private mission.”
I pointed to his left hand, where he was missing two fingers. I said, “Everything is personal, Raful.”
He was stunned, then got it.
“Hah!”
I HAVE TO EXPLAIN THAT. In this conversation I relied on something that had happened a few years before, when I was chief of operations of the air force. The deputy chief of staff, Rafael Eitan, Raful, asked me to his office. When I entered he was sitting there alone, writing. When he noticed me at the door he looked up and demanded without any preamble, “Give me a proposal on what to do about the plague of accidents in the IDF.”
This is how Raful was, right at you straight and simple.
“Right now?”
“Right now.” Raful didn’t like to wait for reports.
Well, prevention of training accidents was an issue I was interested in. I was very proud of the fact that after four years of commanding fighter squadrons, in two wars, I had lost not a single man. I began elaborating on this, but Raful waved me off. He was a peasant, an artisan. He did carpentry at home, and on weekends he sawed planks and made furniture. He needed something physical.
On his desk among the papers lay a fancy dagger. I bent forward, took the dagger, and stuck it forcefully into the top of the desk. Raful looked at me and then at his wounded desk, and then at me again, his black carpenter’s brows rising in amazement.
“If you really want to stop accidents right away,” I told him, “whenever you are told about an accident, stab your hand or thigh with this dagger. You’ll see that this will get the desired effect very quickly.” I got up to leave.
I stopped in the doorway. He was looking at me. I added, “Accidents continue to happen because the commanders see them as fender benders. Nothing will change until they hurt you personally.”
He grinned at me and waved his hand in dismissal.
Not long after, I heard that Raful had injured himself in his carpentry shop. I came to his office to see. Again the deputy chief of the IDF sat alone in his room, writing, his bandaged left hand resting on the paper as a weight. He gave me a look that said, “Well?”
I pointed at the bandage and he said, “I got careless with the big saw and cut off two fingers. An accident. It happens.”
“And what happened afterward?” I asked.
“Ah, nothing.” He grinned. “I threw the fingers to the dog.” Raful was not very softhearted, even with himself.
I couldn’t keep from laughing. He already wanted to get back to his papers.
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
“Quite a bit,” he admitted. “From now on I’ll be more careful.”
“As I said, it is all personal.”
AS I HAD EXPECTED, RAFUL approved my request to fly the Tammuz mission.
To nail it down, so he wouldn’t backtrack when Ivry complained, I equipped him with a parable. “When you are the division commander and two of your regiments go to fight,” I asked him, “where should you be?” Raful was a real fighter and excellent field commander.
“What a question!” he barked at me. There was no way he could answer differently. The rain was letting up, and he was getting restless. Getting out of his car, he summed up. “Well,” he said, “so you’ll be flight leader.”
“No.”
“What?” he almost roared at me. “Now, Spector, I really don’t know what you want!”
I had no intention of taking command of the operation, although Raful was amazed at and perhaps disappointed by my decision. I explained that I wanted to fly the tail of the formation. I chose to fly as number six or seven of the eight.
“But why?”
I told him. I knew that my strength was not in flying the F-16, for as a base commander I couldn’t train enough in it. For sure my two squadron commanders, Raz and Nahumi, were better in the F-16 than I was. The meaning of my flying had nothing to do with leading the mission. Deep in my heart I was expecting the unforeseen, and believed that maturity and plenty of experience were called for. I could imagine so many uncertainties, bad weather on the way in or over the target. MiGs might suddenly show up. One of us might fall by the wayside for technical or other reasons. I was sure hard decisions were in the offing. There were many possible things that could happen to eight fighters a thousand kilometers away from home, crossing three enemy countries.
I was sure something unexpected would happen, and there and then, Raz would need someone like me at his side. Just a word, even a nod might suffice. Oh, how I had needed such a person once above the clouds over Damascus.
Ironically, the attack on Tammuz went like silk, nothing went wrong, and nothing was needed from me.
