The vehicle promptly sped us off through the red, iron gates of our base and into no mans land. The journey on the armoured cars was always thrilling. Moving through the huge checkpoints on the main road, deserted by the time we left, to driving through the small Palestinian villages with their square houses and minarets and empty streets. The vehicle steadily moved faster and faster as I listened to the squawks coming from the radio conveying orders between officers and team leaders from many different units, all of whom to be operating within the same city, all of whom with different targets in mind and all of us travelling together in convoy.
Looking out the rear window I saw at least five cars behind us, one of whom carried half my team the others carrying soldiers from the sayeret towards their targets for the evening. Soon we came to the outskirts of Nablus, past the last checkpoint before entering into the city, and then we were in. The place was deserted as usual and the car sped on. Passed the graffitied shutters on shops, past the posters of suicide bombers, past the garbage that littered the streets. Vehicles began to break away from the convoy towards their targets, we continued on until we reached our own drop off point.
I kicked the heavy, metal doors at the rear of the vehicle open and joined Ofir and the rest of the team outside a rather nice looking apartment block. We were in the suburbs where the apartments were luxurious and the streets wide. After checking that everyone was out of the cars and in position we moved ten meters away from the vehicles and took cover behind a low wall. Ofir dismissed the vehicles and we waited in our positions. I slowly swept the area with my scope, checking that there was no movement on any of the rooftops, that there were no enemy fighters waiting for us to move from cover in order to exact revenge for our trespass into their domain. There was no movement and I tapped Ofir to indicate that all was well. He rose and we all followed. Big Tom and the Bull took point alongside Ofir and the three of them moved forward as one. The rest of us followed in single file.
The city was silent as we moved through its deserted streets. At every corner Ofir would stop and carefully peer around to make sure there was no one waiting with a Kalashnikov to take a couple of pot shots at us and die a martyr’s death. There was no one and we continued to move. The air was stifling, that same smell that seemed to permeate throughout the whole of the West Bank of spices and shit. The streets began to narrow and the houses became more and more crowded together the closer we came to our target.
The building chosen for our ambush was a giant, derelict factory, sitting on the edge of the Kasbah. From within the factory walls the snipers would have an excellent view of the surrounding area especially of the many alleyways leading into and out of the Kasbah itself. Since this was where it was known that the terrorists lived and acted from it was hoped that when they came out to play we would be able to knock off a couple of them.
On the final approach we noticed a building opposite the factory with its lights on, blatantly breaking curfew. People were roaming in and out and the hairs on my back stood on end. If they saw us the mission would have failed before it had even begun. We hid around a corner and one by one crossed over the road in front of us, carefully making sure that we were not spotted by the civilians. The building was a Red Crescent ambulance station. It was impossible to know if they had seen us but there had been no shouts or suspicious movement indicating that they had seen something untoward, we would just have to proceed as planned and hope that everything was okay.
We arrived at the entrance to the factory. Masking it was a temporary wall constructed from sheet metal. There was a corrugated iron door in the centre of it, as Ofir opened the door I winced as a loud screeching sound came from the movement of the tin on the semi paved ground. With the door opened Ofir together with Big Tom and the Bull moved in, the rest of us stayed by the opening covering their rear while they made sure that the immediate area was safe. After a couple of moments Big Tom arrived back with a swarthy Arab man dressed in his pyjamas, he had plastic hand cuffs and a blindfold on too. Big Tom leaned down to me “Night watchman” he said in my ear. I took the man aside and handed him to Peanut to look after. I then ushered the others in before me and screeched the tin door shut behind us.
“Watch him well” Ofir said to Peanut, “He had a razor in his hand when we found him and he was ready to use it.” Inwardly I scoffed at the comment as I looked at my own rifle and grenades. Once past the outer metal wall we found ourselves in a building site with the huge hulk of the factory looming above us. The building stood at ten stories high and was not in the process of being renovated. All that was left was the skeleton of the structure, there were no doors or windows there wasn’t even any flooring save for the hard, cold cement that was waiting to be covered by linoleum or whatever it is that builders put down to mask the ugliness of their work. There were no walls to the outside, which meant no protection from the wind that howled all around us and nothing to stop anyone from seeing us if we crept too close to the edge, nothing to stop us from falling off either.
We followed Ofir as he moved through the building site, attempting to locate the best way in to the structure. We moved past the portacabin where only moments before the night watchman had been settling in for another boring night in front of his black and white television and another cup of coffee. Past the cabin we came to an opening leading directly to a stairwell. It was cramped and dark inside, we moved slowly and I angled my weapon up to meet any potential threat. The stairs wound their way inexorably upward but in the gloom it was impossible to see. There could have been a thousand fighters waiting for us around any of the corners but we wouldn’t have seen them. Every two sets of staircases would be an open area which would one day be an exit to that particular level. Each time I got to one I attempted to sweep the level with my weapon but there was not enough light for my scope to amplify and I just saw a green gloom instead of a black gloom.
The place smelt of dust and urine, a grenade dropped into the stairwell from above would have wiped us out. I began going through scenarios in my head, what would I do if someone opened fire on us from above, what would I do if Ofir was killed. These scenarios inevitably turned into daydreams as we continued to climb, I saw twenty terrorist coming at me from nowhere and I killed them all, I watched in horror as my friends were killed and reacted as shots were fired, all the while moving inexorably onward and upward.
We reached the tenth floor. Ofir moved forward with Big Tom and the Bull while the rest of us waited in the stairwell. Once we got the all clear the rest of us proceeded forward to Ofir’s position. On the way Big Tom began waving his arms at me, he looked like he was about to have a heart attack so I stopped and gave him a look that said “What is your problem?” He pointed and I followed his outstretched arm and then finger all the way down to my boots, which were place rather precariously on the edge of a hole in the ground leading directly to another hole in the ground in the floor beneath. I looked up at him with a grin and shrugged to conceal my own panic at the near miss. I backed off and circled around the hole, which was in fact a chasm about twenty meters wide. I wondered what else was waiting for me in the dark.
Ofir had found a position for the snipers to use and called them over, he also called over the observers who began to prepare their maps and equipment. The rest of us took up positions to cover the rear, essentially we set ourselves up so that our weapons were facing the direction we had just come from. I began to shiver. From the exertion that it took to arrive in our destination I had been sweating, now lying prone with the wind howling around me I began to shiver on the hard concrete ground. I jealously turned my head to eye up the snipers and observers, for at least they had something to keep them occupied! All I could do was lie on the ground and contemplate how cold I was.
I turned my head towards Peanut who was guarding our prisoner. He was shaking too. I watched as Peanut collected various rags that were littered around the area and threw them on top of our shackled, blindfolded night watchman and I asked myself if this was really the same person who so delighted in firing gas at people and fighting. I called him over and asked him if he would jobs with me so that I could walk around and warm up. He agreed and I rose and moved over to the prisoner. I looked him up and down; he was still shivering, as in fact was I. “You took the wrong job” I thought to myself and figured that after a night like this he would not take it again. I listened as the observers were continually directing the snipers towards different parts of the city and, although we could hear a great deal of gunfire it was clear that none of it was very close to us. Another waste of time I thought to myself.
During these boring missions you try to stay alert, remind yourself that however boring it is everything can change in an instant. It only takes one slip of concentration for a terrorist to arrive and kill everyone. This technique doesn’t work, truly there is no defence against being cold, tired and bored and you just have to try to cope with it as best as you can. Again I stare into the gloom around me. I can barely make out the stairwell that we came in through. Dust is everywhere in the half finished building and the sounds made b us are the only ones that I can detect. I begin to imagine a group of terrorists bursting through the stairwell. Kalashnikov’s in hand, looking for Jewish blood. One by one they hit my friends until only I am left. I open fire and take down first one and then another and then another until there is only their leader left. We are both out of ammunition and the fighting moves to hand to hand combat. We wrestle in a fight that feels like it has been going on forever. Eventually I gain the upper hand, pull out my knife and plunge it into his throat. Immediately he stops struggling and his hands move to his neck. He attempts to speak but fails, I watch as he struggles, seemingly attempting to push away death himself only to discover, too late that it is impossible. I watch with a satisfied smile as the light that is life fades from his eyes and he is dead.
I shake my head, the stairwell is still there in the gloom, and no one is coming. My chance to be a hero will have to wait for another day perhaps. Ofir receives a call over the radio and instructs the snipers and observers to pack up their equipment. It is time to pull out, six hours have passed since we loaded up into the vehicles. Quietly everyone packs away their gear. Once this process is complete Big Tom does a last sweep for anything that may have been forgotten, there is nothing. Ofir together with Big Tom and The Bull proceed back into the dark towards the never ending stairwell. I follow with the others about thirty seconds after them.
On my way down the steps I begin to dream again, perhaps some enemy assembled in ambush while we were in the building, perhaps they are waiting for us. An image of masked men shooting at us appears in my mind, they are waiting for us down below and kill Ofir, Bull and Big Tom in their opening volley. I am shaken from my reverie by Ofir, we have reached the ground and are being told over the radio that the vehicles are waiting for us just outside the sheet metal gate. Ofir pulls it aside and we enter into the vehicles, relieved that it is over for another night and disappointed at the apparent pointlessness of the mission. No shots fired, no enemy spotted. This is the nature of the beast that is guerrilla conflict, ninety nine per cent waiting one per cent action. This is what your war films and books never tell you. Not much ever really happens in this kind of warfare and when it does you will rarely catch a glimpse of your enemy, he will throw a grenade or plant a bomb and then he will be gone. So if this story was not interesting enough for you, with no one killing or being killed. No explosions or screams then spare a thought for the soldiers who expected that perhaps it was them who would be fighting, who were ready, mentally and physically prepared. Men who had steeled themselves for contact and were both hoping it would happen and praying that it would not and perhaps you will be able to imagine how we felt that night.
Looking out the rear window I saw at least five cars behind us, one of whom carried half my team the others carrying soldiers from the sayeret towards their targets for the evening. Soon we came to the outskirts of Nablus, past the last checkpoint before entering into the city, and then we were in. The place was deserted as usual and the car sped on. Passed the graffitied shutters on shops, past the posters of suicide bombers, past the garbage that littered the streets. Vehicles began to break away from the convoy towards their targets, we continued on until we reached our own drop off point.
I kicked the heavy, metal doors at the rear of the vehicle open and joined Ofir and the rest of the team outside a rather nice looking apartment block. We were in the suburbs where the apartments were luxurious and the streets wide. After checking that everyone was out of the cars and in position we moved ten meters away from the vehicles and took cover behind a low wall. Ofir dismissed the vehicles and we waited in our positions. I slowly swept the area with my scope, checking that there was no movement on any of the rooftops, that there were no enemy fighters waiting for us to move from cover in order to exact revenge for our trespass into their domain. There was no movement and I tapped Ofir to indicate that all was well. He rose and we all followed. Big Tom and the Bull took point alongside Ofir and the three of them moved forward as one. The rest of us followed in single file.
The city was silent as we moved through its deserted streets. At every corner Ofir would stop and carefully peer around to make sure there was no one waiting with a Kalashnikov to take a couple of pot shots at us and die a martyr’s death. There was no one and we continued to move. The air was stifling, that same smell that seemed to permeate throughout the whole of the West Bank of spices and shit. The streets began to narrow and the houses became more and more crowded together the closer we came to our target.
The building chosen for our ambush was a giant, derelict factory, sitting on the edge of the Kasbah. From within the factory walls the snipers would have an excellent view of the surrounding area especially of the many alleyways leading into and out of the Kasbah itself. Since this was where it was known that the terrorists lived and acted from it was hoped that when they came out to play we would be able to knock off a couple of them.
On the final approach we noticed a building opposite the factory with its lights on, blatantly breaking curfew. People were roaming in and out and the hairs on my back stood on end. If they saw us the mission would have failed before it had even begun. We hid around a corner and one by one crossed over the road in front of us, carefully making sure that we were not spotted by the civilians. The building was a Red Crescent ambulance station. It was impossible to know if they had seen us but there had been no shouts or suspicious movement indicating that they had seen something untoward, we would just have to proceed as planned and hope that everything was okay.
We arrived at the entrance to the factory. Masking it was a temporary wall constructed from sheet metal. There was a corrugated iron door in the centre of it, as Ofir opened the door I winced as a loud screeching sound came from the movement of the tin on the semi paved ground. With the door opened Ofir together with Big Tom and the Bull moved in, the rest of us stayed by the opening covering their rear while they made sure that the immediate area was safe. After a couple of moments Big Tom arrived back with a swarthy Arab man dressed in his pyjamas, he had plastic hand cuffs and a blindfold on too. Big Tom leaned down to me “Night watchman” he said in my ear. I took the man aside and handed him to Peanut to look after. I then ushered the others in before me and screeched the tin door shut behind us.
“Watch him well” Ofir said to Peanut, “He had a razor in his hand when we found him and he was ready to use it.” Inwardly I scoffed at the comment as I looked at my own rifle and grenades. Once past the outer metal wall we found ourselves in a building site with the huge hulk of the factory looming above us. The building stood at ten stories high and was not in the process of being renovated. All that was left was the skeleton of the structure, there were no doors or windows there wasn’t even any flooring save for the hard, cold cement that was waiting to be covered by linoleum or whatever it is that builders put down to mask the ugliness of their work. There were no walls to the outside, which meant no protection from the wind that howled all around us and nothing to stop anyone from seeing us if we crept too close to the edge, nothing to stop us from falling off either.
We followed Ofir as he moved through the building site, attempting to locate the best way in to the structure. We moved past the portacabin where only moments before the night watchman had been settling in for another boring night in front of his black and white television and another cup of coffee. Past the cabin we came to an opening leading directly to a stairwell. It was cramped and dark inside, we moved slowly and I angled my weapon up to meet any potential threat. The stairs wound their way inexorably upward but in the gloom it was impossible to see. There could have been a thousand fighters waiting for us around any of the corners but we wouldn’t have seen them. Every two sets of staircases would be an open area which would one day be an exit to that particular level. Each time I got to one I attempted to sweep the level with my weapon but there was not enough light for my scope to amplify and I just saw a green gloom instead of a black gloom.
The place smelt of dust and urine, a grenade dropped into the stairwell from above would have wiped us out. I began going through scenarios in my head, what would I do if someone opened fire on us from above, what would I do if Ofir was killed. These scenarios inevitably turned into daydreams as we continued to climb, I saw twenty terrorist coming at me from nowhere and I killed them all, I watched in horror as my friends were killed and reacted as shots were fired, all the while moving inexorably onward and upward.
We reached the tenth floor. Ofir moved forward with Big Tom and the Bull while the rest of us waited in the stairwell. Once we got the all clear the rest of us proceeded forward to Ofir’s position. On the way Big Tom began waving his arms at me, he looked like he was about to have a heart attack so I stopped and gave him a look that said “What is your problem?” He pointed and I followed his outstretched arm and then finger all the way down to my boots, which were place rather precariously on the edge of a hole in the ground leading directly to another hole in the ground in the floor beneath. I looked up at him with a grin and shrugged to conceal my own panic at the near miss. I backed off and circled around the hole, which was in fact a chasm about twenty meters wide. I wondered what else was waiting for me in the dark.
Ofir had found a position for the snipers to use and called them over, he also called over the observers who began to prepare their maps and equipment. The rest of us took up positions to cover the rear, essentially we set ourselves up so that our weapons were facing the direction we had just come from. I began to shiver. From the exertion that it took to arrive in our destination I had been sweating, now lying prone with the wind howling around me I began to shiver on the hard concrete ground. I jealously turned my head to eye up the snipers and observers, for at least they had something to keep them occupied! All I could do was lie on the ground and contemplate how cold I was.
I turned my head towards Peanut who was guarding our prisoner. He was shaking too. I watched as Peanut collected various rags that were littered around the area and threw them on top of our shackled, blindfolded night watchman and I asked myself if this was really the same person who so delighted in firing gas at people and fighting. I called him over and asked him if he would jobs with me so that I could walk around and warm up. He agreed and I rose and moved over to the prisoner. I looked him up and down; he was still shivering, as in fact was I. “You took the wrong job” I thought to myself and figured that after a night like this he would not take it again. I listened as the observers were continually directing the snipers towards different parts of the city and, although we could hear a great deal of gunfire it was clear that none of it was very close to us. Another waste of time I thought to myself.
During these boring missions you try to stay alert, remind yourself that however boring it is everything can change in an instant. It only takes one slip of concentration for a terrorist to arrive and kill everyone. This technique doesn’t work, truly there is no defence against being cold, tired and bored and you just have to try to cope with it as best as you can. Again I stare into the gloom around me. I can barely make out the stairwell that we came in through. Dust is everywhere in the half finished building and the sounds made b us are the only ones that I can detect. I begin to imagine a group of terrorists bursting through the stairwell. Kalashnikov’s in hand, looking for Jewish blood. One by one they hit my friends until only I am left. I open fire and take down first one and then another and then another until there is only their leader left. We are both out of ammunition and the fighting moves to hand to hand combat. We wrestle in a fight that feels like it has been going on forever. Eventually I gain the upper hand, pull out my knife and plunge it into his throat. Immediately he stops struggling and his hands move to his neck. He attempts to speak but fails, I watch as he struggles, seemingly attempting to push away death himself only to discover, too late that it is impossible. I watch with a satisfied smile as the light that is life fades from his eyes and he is dead.
I shake my head, the stairwell is still there in the gloom, and no one is coming. My chance to be a hero will have to wait for another day perhaps. Ofir receives a call over the radio and instructs the snipers and observers to pack up their equipment. It is time to pull out, six hours have passed since we loaded up into the vehicles. Quietly everyone packs away their gear. Once this process is complete Big Tom does a last sweep for anything that may have been forgotten, there is nothing. Ofir together with Big Tom and The Bull proceed back into the dark towards the never ending stairwell. I follow with the others about thirty seconds after them.
On my way down the steps I begin to dream again, perhaps some enemy assembled in ambush while we were in the building, perhaps they are waiting for us. An image of masked men shooting at us appears in my mind, they are waiting for us down below and kill Ofir, Bull and Big Tom in their opening volley. I am shaken from my reverie by Ofir, we have reached the ground and are being told over the radio that the vehicles are waiting for us just outside the sheet metal gate. Ofir pulls it aside and we enter into the vehicles, relieved that it is over for another night and disappointed at the apparent pointlessness of the mission. No shots fired, no enemy spotted. This is the nature of the beast that is guerrilla conflict, ninety nine per cent waiting one per cent action. This is what your war films and books never tell you. Not much ever really happens in this kind of warfare and when it does you will rarely catch a glimpse of your enemy, he will throw a grenade or plant a bomb and then he will be gone. So if this story was not interesting enough for you, with no one killing or being killed. No explosions or screams then spare a thought for the soldiers who expected that perhaps it was them who would be fighting, who were ready, mentally and physically prepared. Men who had steeled themselves for contact and were both hoping it would happen and praying that it would not and perhaps you will be able to imagine how we felt that night.
