the refugee who spent half his life in concentration camps, small, quick, but a slow talker; and me.
The enemy artillery kept firing. "What do you think?" I asked Janek. "Fifty-fifty" he answered in his thick Polish accent. I was more optimistic - if the trucks were not seriously damaged ...
* * *
We are off. There is no boss here. We don’t have to prove ourselves. That’s the way we like it - a few comrades who understand one another and know that we can rely on each other. We travel in a wide detour, for maximum safety. So we will creep up from the south. From this direction we can get to within two hundred meters of the vehicles under cover of the cactus plants. Every few meters we stand before a hedge of cacti, which we break through with the butts of our rifles. And the beautiful knife, a present I was given the day before yesterday, serves well.
The sun is burning down. This time I have brought my helmet with me, and it’s a burden. Our clothes are running with sweat, but we make good progress. Every minute is important, because one of the vehicles could be hit at any moment. But even this short distance takes us more than half an hour.
At last - the end of the wall of cacti. From here the way to the vehi-cles is straight and in full view. For some reason the Egyptian firing has stopped for the moment. We advance in two groups.
Ovadia jumps into the first truck. His first attempt to start it fails. Janek makes some suggestions. Suddenly the engine fires up. I jump on, the truck is moving. I glance at Ovadia. We can both see the prob-lem: should we wait until the second truck is started, or set off as fast as we can toward Be’er Tuvia and then come back? At any moment the enemy fire can restart. We know that we are being watched through two pairs of binoculars: those of our commander and his Egyptian counterpart. We decide to drive straight off.
Four stay behind. As we drive off, we can see that the other truck is not moving. We will have to bring a recovery vehicle from Be’er Tuvia. We drive fast. The tires are flat, the doors full of holes. So what?
A jeep comes toward us from the direction of Be’er Tuvia. Only one man in it, with a beret on his head. "Hey, you, where are you heading?" I ask him. Maybe he could get to Be’er Tuvia quicker