conservation of ammunition are forgotten. The gunner keeps his trigger finger firmly pressed until the cartridge belt is expended. The others reload the belts. We have enough ammunition on the jeeps. The tank shells whistle around our ears. Our position here is uncomfortable. We drive behind the hill so that only our weapons are visible. Our automatic weapons start to bark again.
The tanks approach us to within a hundred meters. There they stop. The infantry behind them lie on the ground and don’t move.
This is the moment for the PIATs. Two tanks are hit by the first two shots. Shlomo Kochmann, an educated young man, a squad leader, dances for joy and rubs his hands together. He has just destroyed a tank with a PIAT, he tells us enthusiastically, and goes straight back to his weapon. The tanks slowly reverse.
* * *
Three jeeps drive back to the base. We stay with our jeep, without any special task-just in case we are needed. After a while it seems sense-less to us to lie by the jeep listening to the sounds of battle. We jump into the trenches, and our comrades update us on events. Joseph Siff, who had driven out with me to fetch the field guns at Beit Daras, was hit this morning by a sniper. Ephraim Makovsky ran to him to get him out, and was himself fatally hit. Moshe Ben-Moshe crawled over to help the two, and was hit by the same sniper.
* * *
Two small aircraft appear and start circling above us. I can make out two white rings on the wings of one of them, with some kind of sym-bol inside that I can’t identify for sure. They seem to me to be stars of David.
"Idiot! Stay on the ground!" Ovadia Rechtmann shouts at me. "They are ours!" I shout back and stand up. At that moment both of the machines dive at our position and four bombs whistle down and explode nearby. I lie on the ground. Damn these symbols - they are so similar ...
* * >f
Ovadia Rechtmann has discovered a special trench - a sort of cave, enclosed on three sides and only open at the top of the fourth side. A few paces away from us the commander, the radio operator, and our friend Jerucham are lying in a rather questionable trench.
Ovadia is hungry. I find a tin of meat and open it with a knife.