Danny Pearl turned pale when I wanted to borrow the diary for two days, roof three. He asked me to leave a wedding ring at his home in Moshav Mazor, perhaps a valuable watch, and even then he was not quiet, calming down only when I agreed to make do with the copy he had on the computer.
Since the beginning of October 1973, for 50 years, Lt. Col. (res.) Pearl has been carrying the diary with him everywhere. Anyone who walked by the 2nd Crawler of Company D in the Shaked Patrol, Unit 424, knew that he could write as he pleased in a diary, and if anyone wants to know what war looks like in real time - it is a fascinating and authentic document written with pen, marker and the blood of fighters.
"In the early days of the war, we were at the Tessa base in Sinai, and there was shelling," he recalls. "We went into a bunker that was also a kitchen and I saw a menu book thrown away. I took and wrote '732' on it, the license number of the caterpillar, added 'belongs to Danny Pearl, Cyclamen Street, Givat Nesher,' so that if something happens to me, they will at least know where to return it. It was wrapped in plastic wrap and diesel fuel, and I said in the company, 'Whoever wants to, let him write in his free time.'" Suddenly, he seems to have trouble holding back tears when he says, "For me, this is the pillar of fire."
"As far as I'm concerned, it's the pillar of fire." Pages from the diary written by the fighters, photo: Arik Sultan
A few weeks ago, Pearl gathered four of his fellow trackers: Yishai Erel, who was a medic and a soldier on the team; Yehuda Moshkovitz, a classmate who was called straight from his leave of absence when the war broke out; Desi Folkman, who joined the armored vehicle after his vehicle was hit; and Zvi Gilat, then a young soldier who had not yet known the smell of battle. "I was a private, a year and two months in the army," Gilat says. "I arrived at the base in Tessa at 12 noon, started wearing a belt, and at two the war broke out. They said, 'You're on Pearl's team.' I didn't know almost anyone there."
"It's 14 p.m., we're at the entrance to Wadi Jidi after a rich tour of artifacts. Pearl sees planes attacking the bunkers on the mountain, including ours. Disperse!! We get excited and direct the mages, hiding under a tarpaulin-height bush. We are ordered to move to the junction, where we are looking for the war" Pearl, (00.06.10)
"How did it all begin?" asked Pearl, 71, to give an introduction when we met at Folkman's house. "I was a platoon commander at the time, a 21-year-old lieutenant, and Company Commander Eli Sagi asked on Thursday, 'Go tomorrow to Nation Thinking,' which was the bunker of the Southern Command, the eyes of the state. He said I'd meet the security officer, and the next day we'd scan nearby Wadi Jidi. We arrive on Friday at um Hashiva, just before Yom Kippur begins, a place that is supposed to control every Egyptian movement. An officer opened the gate, explained where we would spend the night and offered to give me a tour. A dog wasn't there, and you should understand - we are on the eve of the war.
"The next day we went on a tour of Izzy. We discovered a cave with sacks of hashish, some weapons. We were bummed out. We sat for a few minutes to rest, and at about two o'clock, in the valley, two planes, one after the other, emerged and bombed um Hishva opposite.
"What's happening - Yom Kippur today? Is it even a MiG? They returned for another sortie. I shouted to the guys, 'We ate it,' because we left our personal belongings in the bunker. We realized it was real.
"There was no connection, terrible chaos. When we got up to the junction, we already met armored vehicles that had come from the canal with wounded and dead. We pumped fuel from the drones and prepared gozniks to land evacuation helicopters, and in the morning we drove to Tessa to join the company."
"A piece of history". Top left - Gilat and next to him Geiger z"l; Bottom, second from right - Erel and to left Moshkovitz, photo: Danny Pearl
Erel, 70, a high-tech man and in recent years a playwright, has not forgotten the outbreak of fighting. "Before the war, Major General Avraham (Albert) Mandler (who was killed in the war) spoke to us, and I, Corporal Mourine, got up and asked, 'What will happen if the Egyptians cross the Canal?' because we were patrolling and saw traffic on the other side. Mendler replied: 'No problem. There is an armored battalion close by, and we all know that there are special means as well.' It burned into me. Since then, I've learned to doubt."
"There was complacency," reinforces Gilat, 69, a former journalist who now works in education. "I was in strongholds before the war. I remember night ambushes when Egyptians were sitting on the other side, and a few hours later, when they were bored, an Egyptian soldier would shout what he would do to Golda and someone on our side would give it back. In the strongholds, we walked around in our underwear, and whoever was at the observation post did not aim his binoculars at the ditch but at the road, to see if a commander came to the inspection."
"Everyone is happy, cheerful, they finally gave us something to do after the guard we had done for the previous days. Shells started falling and the guys lowered their heads. The smile is gone, there is hope in my heart, but it's not what I thought. We reached the junction of the compound. Egyptian artillery descends on us. A tank was hit to the right of my caterpillar, Zelda drove to rescue the wounded. Suddenly, a red missile whistled to our left, and a few meters away from us, a bazooka bomb hit the turret." Pearl, (10.10.1973)
"Red missile," Pearl wrote, because no one prepared him for the fact that the missiles, which the Egyptian commandos are aiming at IDF soldiers, are sagars. To this day, he does not free himself from the sight of nylon wires flying over them, wires that guided the missiles on the way to hitting Israeli armor.
"Understand the omission? In the front room, they couldn't say, 'There are sagars, be careful'?" Pearl is still struggling to digest. "At the briefing they said there were wounded in the compound and that they had to be evacuated so that the Egyptian commandos wouldn't take prisoners, but when the missiles passed over us, I already understood that it was bigger than us."
Moshkovitz (72), who was then a kibbutznik from Ein Carmel and now comes from Mishmar HaEmek, interjects: "Think you're driving in an iron square. Pearl then instructed the driver to hit him on the shoulder whether to drive right or left, depending on where the shell had fallen a second earlier. We don't remember fear, because there was an understanding that we had no influence on the course of things. Whether a shell falls on you or not – it's no longer up to us."
Gilat: "During one of the shelling, I lay down under a tank that was in the area, as a hiding place. Suddenly, someone grabbed me by the leg, probably a tankist, and said, 'Please don't leave me.' I told him, 'Don't worry,' and I felt the loneliness of a soldier alone in the inferno." Gilat looks at Pearl and continues: "Not to ingratiate myself with you – I didn't know you before, but I trusted you as a commander. You had a natural leadership that really kept us going. I can't imagine how we would have gotten through the war with an officer we didn't trust."
Pearl thanks for the compliment. Years have passed since the gang appeared in its current composition, and still the war connects them. "In the passages I wrote in the diary, I tried to introduce humor because it's the best antidote to stress, especially when you're between people," says Erel. "I remember heavy shelling, everyone trying to dig into the hard ground. Despite the fear, I come from a home where my mother is a Holocaust survivor, and at that moment I said that this is the defense of the homeland and this is what must be done for the Jewish people."
"The drama of the fall of the 'Vision' post accompanied us on the walkie-talkie, the dying of an outpost. Why didn't we make an attempt to save him? What happens to us? A 'clutch' post also fell, only from an 'outlet' did people manage to evade. We were caught with our pants down, disorganized and unprepared. The veteran guard took the place of the current command... They talk high-and-high about things that are detached from reality at the forefront. Where are the accurate reports of truth that were our domain during the Six-Day War?" Harvest, (12.10.1973)
The signs of war appear at the very beginning of the diary: the losses, helplessness and the shaky trust in the leadership and military leaders. "The first trauma I had were the contact messages about the fall of the 'Hazion' post in the canal," says Moshkovitz. "You sit in the crawler, hear screams and can't get closer, and slowly the voice there gets weaker, and then it's quiet. We were very angry with commanders, especially Gorodish, who was the head of the Southern Command, unlike Arik Sharon, whom we admired. I remember that one day the forces were stuck in a huge traffic jam and Gorodish drove by in a jeep with the command officer and drove off without a helmet. Recruits shouted, 'Gorodish, put on a helmet.' Like what, stop and judge us? A novice mocks the commanding general."
Folkman recalls: "They gathered us in a kind of dugout and played us over the radio Egyptian soldiers shouting 'water, water,' as if they were dying of thirst and then retreating. We were filled with lies. I was very angry with Dayan, Golda. For all the leadership."
"Great anger at the commanders." From left: Ezer Weizman, David Elazar, Rehavam Zeevi and Ze'ev Livneh, photo: courtesy of the IDF Archives and the Defense Establishment, photo: IDF Spokesperson
"A few hundred meters away, next to a pile of constantly exploding ammunition, a man is running, running non-stop, and shrapnel is chasing him. We collect it. This is Omri, a classmate, a friend. In his eyes I see the fear and the terror, the misunderstanding. He excitedly tells me how he got into the ammunition and how he escaped from it, and he tells me half-heartedly: 'By God, how do I hate war?' Who doesn't?
"Then you go right into the fire, the shells explode a few meters away from us, nothing more, a whistle and a lowering of the head and another whistle.Then Sagi's caterpillar rises in flames, and with it all the good guys, all the beautiful ones in it, who in an instant turned ugly into black and charred, gaping wounds and names. War and fire and you, human being, end up anyway.'By God,' he tells me, 'I hate war.'" Gilat (15.10.1973)
Three days before his death, company commander Eli Sagi also wrote in his diary: "A flock of Phantom planes fly above us at zero altitude. Ben-Shoshan stops the caterpillar and lets them pass. They deserve the right of way. Sagi."
On 15 October, while the force was on its way to break through to the west bank of the Suez Canal, an Egyptian shell hit Sagi's tracker, killing him and the entire crew. "We went in a convoy, he was the first, I was the third, and he got a bomba," Pearl recalls. "That was our signal that night. They kept saying over the radio, 'We're to the left of the fire,' 'to the right of the burning pillar,' that's how they identified your location. Omri Atzmon, who was my sergeant major, was killed in front of my eyes. His brother, Itai, was at the Chinese farm and came looking for him in the morning. He asked if anyone had seen Omri. No one wanted to tell him. I went over, hugged him and said Omri was in the crawler and advised him to go home. Since then, every year, I make sure to visit the Atzmon family."
Company Commander Eli Sagi. He managed to write before he was killed,
Folkman: "There was complete chaos after Sagi's caterpillar was hit. Everyone grabbed a pile of sand, and every vessel that approached we didn't know if it was ours or the Egyptians's. Suddenly, an armored personnel carrier stopped next to me, at first I thought he was Egyptian, and then someone shouted, 'Soldier, what force are you from?' Arik Sharon. I rubbed my eyes and said, '424.' Arik asked, 'Who is the commander?' I replied: 'The company commander was killed, I don't know who is in charge now.' For years I kept it in my heart, because it didn't make sense for me to talk to Sharon in the middle of the fight, until I met a classmate who asked, 'Remember when Arik stopped by us?' Until someone didn't approve, I couldn't believe it."
Gilat smiles and remembers. "Remember how Mickey became a driver during the war?" he asks those present, who indeed could not forget. "We evacuated wounded people from the armor to a field hospital, where the original driver said, 'I'm not coming back with you, my back hurts.' Went into shock. They asked who knew how to drive, and Mickey raised his hand. 20 years after the war, I found him in a moshav near Ashkelon. His leg was in a cast. I asked, 'What happened?' He said: 'Don't ask, I dreamed that we were in a place where Sagi's caterpillar was hit, Pearl asked us to get out of the car and the back door got stuck. I gave a kick to open. Only it was a dream and I kicked the wall.' Mickey, the sanest man, what was he most afraid of in war? That the MPIU will find out that he does not have a driver's license on a tracker."
It was a comic pause at a difficult moment, and then Gilat hurries to return to the harsh reality, which was becoming clearer at the time: "I arrived at shiva at Sagi's house and there was Danny Wolf, a veteran battalion commander, a myth. He told us there, 'You don't understand how the war will affect future generations of the country, because who goes first, the leadership avenue, and now it will be your responsibility.' That's how you put the heavy weight on us."
"There was complacency." An IDF stronghold on the banks of the Canal, photo: courtesy of the IDF Archives and the Defense Establishment
"One thing will not soon be forgotten from me: it is the treatment and treatment Pearl gave to the prisoners we captured this morning. It was also a great feeling to see a human being caring for and helping wounded people and prisoners, even if they were Egyptians. They are willing to sacrifice a million people in a war against us. If only they could see what they look like dead or alive. Pearl sent me to get a stretcher and when I delayed a bit, whistled for me. He gave them water, made sure they sat in the shade and took proper care of them, in my opinion, anyway." Gilat (21.10.1973)
Desi recalled the incident: "Pearl took a truck, sat on the roof and filled it with prisoners. It was a surreal thing." Pearl, of course, did not forget: "It took place in a compound with bunkers. I've always had the three teeth at the top, and if you don't pay attention to them you get hit with the eggs - complacency, routine and burnout. I told the soldiers to deploy in observations, because if we weren't alert, the Egyptians could have slaughtered us during the night. We saw them go out, a big group of 20 guys. We brought in a medic to treat them one by one."
Gilat remembers the passage he wrote vaguely, but adds: "I actually remember a different situation. We were passing somewhere and there was a wounded Egyptian lying begging for water. Danny gave him a drink, but saw the water coming out to wound a hole in his throat because he was completely cut, dying. Danny took his card, looked. It was a soldier from Cairo, a father of a child, but they saw that he would not live any longer. You shot him."
Pearl immediately understood what his friend was talking about. "It wasn't euthanasia. He had a weapon and started moving. Just because of that. I said that even in his situation, a human being can cause us harm."
"We returned last night from Sidon's memorial service at Kibbutz Shoval. It's hard to describe such a feeling when you're standing in front of the grave of someone you've known for three years. It was hard for me to digest that we wouldn't be able to see him among us, but you see reality, and all that's left is a name, a personal number and a grave decorated with flowers. A strong mother trying to overcome crying at the grave. After the memorial service, we moved to the Farm Club, where we met Siddon's parents. Why does such an event have to bring us together? Let's hope we don't have to make more visits like this." Yehuda (20.11.1973)
The ceasefire went into effect on 24 October. The guys said there were no celebrations, and for one of them it was more reminiscent of the soldiers leaving the dugouts at the end of World War I, when they also began to understand what the country had gone through. "I hitchhiked to Petah Tikva, and my mother gladly accepted me," Gilat says. "It turns out that the whole war she was standing on the balcony, and when helicopters came down towards Beilinson Hospital, she prayed that I was on one of them, wounded. Only then did I begin to think about what had happened to the home front. You realize they were in abnormal anxiety, and everyone I knew, the war had a different effect.
"My class in high school, for example, lost many, and every Memorial Day we meet. Two years ago, I arrived early at the home of the hostess, who was a clerk at the base in Baluza. With a siren, she stood up, alert. I asked what it was, and she said that when she heard the siren she always remembered. She was a clerk who received information about what was happening in the armored battalions, knew that her friends were there. You say wow, what did these people go through?"
"Had it not been for the war, we might still have burrowed into Sinai." IDF forces in the canal, photo: (reproduction) Dudu Greenspan
I asked if after 50 years there was a scratch left from the war. "This is the formative event of my life," Gilat is convinced. "It made me understand what's important in life, how friends are treated. Suddenly, at the age of 19, I tell myself that all the great books I've read, everything happens to me too. I went through love, I was with a woman, my friends died. I know everything, now the question - how to continue living?"
Moskowitz chose a different approach. "The war passed by me," he smiles. "I read a lot about her and sometimes wonder how she didn't make an impact. It's like I served three years in a country that lives on wars, so I was there too."
Erel: "I don't wake up at night, but I know how to respect and appreciate people who have experienced it differently. What I took away from the war was questioning the judgment of the leadership. And one more thing, I would like her achievements to be appreciated. After 50 years, it's as if there is cheapness, and it's clear to me that in the end it will also be forgotten. Soon the generation of fighters will disappear, so it is important to document and understand that this was a milestone in the history of the state."
Folkman says his life hasn't changed, but the sediment certainly remains. Pearl asks us to skip him, but Gilat insists that whoever commanded them in the war unload what sits on his heart. "It's hard for me," Pearl admits in a choked voice. "During the war I was a nervous spring, I didn't have a dull moment. I didn't think about our lives, but about the lack of control because I saw the conduct of the leaders, the military personnel, the generals – not in the field, but in the war rooms. Kindergarten I wouldn't let them run. It took me to a bad corner. I still cry at night." He wipes away a tear.
"That's the responsibility that sat on my shoulders when you see that your company commander was killed and the guys who were with you are gone." Gilat, whose journalistic senses were awakened, expresses understanding: "I understand what mental courage it takes not to fall apart, and I want to tell you that the fact that you were a spring alert at the time gave me peace."
Pearl: "Until the war, life seemed like a child's laugh, but there it took me somewhere else, and yet I started a family. After all, I could easily fall apart. That's why I'm unpacking today by doing what sits on me – monuments, training soldiers. It's not about sitting with myself and tormenting, because I've already sat, tormented and taken care of."
For a few seconds there is silence, until Gilat speaks. "When you came out of the war, you realized the dimensions, you heard about members of the class who were killed and those who were wounded," he says. "I remember that we went with Zvika Fogel z"l and my father-in-law to visit Ketzleh, who was lying in the hospital. We came in uniform and someone appeared in front of us, saw us with a weapon and said to Zvika, 'Dude, shoot me,' apparently shell-shocked. Fogel, who had a poker face, replied 'later' and we continued. You understand that there are people who have been emotionally hurt, and you haven't seen that before."
Pages from the fighters' diary, photo: Arik Sultan
"Dear Book, it is with great sorrow and grief that we say goodbye to you and also regret that you must take Pearl with you (at last the promotion caught him). So goodbye, and hopefully a new book will come in your place that will bring with him a thoroughbred officer as before. So once again goodbye and a lot of bardak in Company A." Itai (22.12.1973)
Not all half-trackers could attend the meeting. Some live abroad, others go on with their lives, and there is also the late Lt. Col. Uri Geiger, who was taken prisoner in the First Lebanon War and murdered by terrorists in June 1982.
50 years later - these are already older people who have seen a lot in their lives. There are children, grandchildren, there is the future of the country that is now clouding and becoming uncertain. Folkman insisted on being photographed in a Brothers in Arms shirt. He is strong in the fight against judicial reform, and Pearl's requests not to involve politics have not helped.
"We are now in a much more difficult war than the Yom Kippur War," Folkman is convinced. "We went into battle in '73 as a united people, but today we are completely dismantled. I don't know how today a company like ours could function in a situation of division in the center-periphery, right-left, religious-secular. How would a company like ours hold up? We would still shoot each other."
Gilat, sitting across the street, took something different from those days: "The State of Israel was so immodest before '73, and even now I feel the boast. In that war, I felt the smallness of man. I was standing on a hill and didn't know where I was. Today I'm no longer willing to be taken and told where to stand. A human being needs a backbone and knows his place. The State of Israel did not know and it still does not know. When the peace treaty with Egypt was signed, for me it was abnormal happiness. I had the chance to accompany Ezer Weizmann on a trip there when they held an event attended by Boutros Ghali and Mustafa Khalil, who was the prime minister of Egypt. I told myself that it's because of these people that we live."
Erel: "From a historical perspective, had it not been for the war, we might still have been digging into Sinai. Today I see the same blindness in everything that happens in the territories, when we are being led to extremism that can explode on all of us. I don't have a solution, nor do I want to say what could be, but ignoring it is reminiscent of the stupor that existed on the eve of the Yom Kippur War."
At the end of the meeting, Yishai took the old diary in his hands for a moment and said: "I got to tell about it in a meeting with recruits, and at the end soldiers said they cried, because I showed them what a simple soldier is in the middle of the storm. I would be happy if one day my children or grandchildren would do something with it, because it is a piece of history.
"About three years ago, in the middle of COVID-19, I started writing plays. Ask if I wrote before. So I did make presentations and delve into professional things, but really writing – I told you – was only then, in the Yom Kippur War diary."
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