On the same day I brought "Shwok" - that is Zvi Bruk - to the med-ical station. Nobody knows why he is called "Shwok." He got the name during the Maccabi operation.
Shwok is the only one of the veterans who wears the official army headgear. With that he looks as though he belongs to the Foreign Legion. He has a wild mustache and resembles an old Red Indian.
For a long time he was the company runner. Then he got fed up with this duty and applied for a transfer to the jeeps. In that tragic night in Beit Affa, when we lost Aryeh Kotzer and Moshe Wantzover, he was with us. Now it has got him too - a bullet shot his nose off.
* * *
Those are the rocks in the sea - the veterans, the remnants of that unit formed of the youth at the start of the war, that escorted the convoys to Jerusalem, that carried out the Nachshon and Maccabi operations.
We used to be many. Many individualists, who found themselves together in the units. At that time one person was seen almost as a squad, a squad almost as a company, and a company almost as a whole army. At that time also, as Schiller wrote: "In the field, there a man is still worth something/there the heart still has its weight..." Meanwhile the army has changed. Of the many individualists only a few remain. Many have fallen, many wounded, and some others couldn’t take it. What remains are the rocks in the sea. Rather sad rocks, and in the storm of battle, in its thunder and lightning, some of them disappear and leave a gap. They are irreplaceable.
One of the few who joined the "Order of the Veterans" was Jack Schack, a Dutchman with a legendary past. He had fled to England, became a medic in a British commando unit, fell into German captivity, escaped, and traveled through half Europe before joining the Yugoslav partisans. Now he is with us. After a few days I wrote his obituary...
We are walking along, following a telephone cable. The night is unusually dark. Rain clouds cover the sky and hide the stars. Occasionally a lone bullet whistles over our heads. The Egyptians are