The trenches are full of every kind of soldier - radio operators, medics, mechanics, mortar crews. They call to us to join them. We laugh at them. We are used to the whistle of shells and stay by our vehicles. We throw ourselves on the ground as soon as we hear the whistle of an approaching shell. This is a kind of sport for us.
One after another the shells are exploding around us. Directly in front of us a wooden hut is hit and collapses. We are enveloped in the typical smell of battle: a mixture of the smoke from powder, corpses, burning trees, and dead animals. A wounded soldier runs past us. His left arm is covered in blood. He is holding it with his right hand, his eyes staring. He runs mutely to the collection point. Time for us to jump into the trench.
* * *
"Jeep crew out!"
David Shani, the deputy battalion commander, and Aryeh Segal, the company commander of the resupply unit, are standing by the jeeps. A heavy machine gun and ammunition have to be taken to Ibdis immediately. The supply troops pack the vehicles so full that we can hardly move.
As soon as we are out of the gate, the dust from the shell impacts starts to swirl around us. The position at Ibdis is not very far, some-thing like two kilometers. But the earth is shaking from the impact of the shells.
"Faster!" we shout at Ovadia. The jeeps race along, bump over ditches, and try to confuse the artillery with a crazy zigzag path. We arrive at the low, bare hill. There are some trenches there. Gray fig-ures are sitting there - the company that captured the position of the Egyptian battalion HQ at dawn, and the men of the armored car platoon of our company.
We unload the heavy weapon and the ammunition. Nobody pays us any attention. They are all looking toward Beit Affa. There, a scene is developing like a Hollywood movie. Eighteen tanks are driving slowly, in a broad front, straight toward us. Behind them are running rows and rows of infantry. It looks like a large scale maneuver.
Somewhere our artillery begins to thunder. We see the shrapnel shells exploding in the air, but the rows of soldiers run on. We estimate their distance as about six hundred meters. All our machine guns bark at the same time. The theories of aimed bursts and