our backs. But in those days there was also another atmosphere in the army.
When we drove into town, we were the only ones in uniform. We walked through the streets with the sock hats on our heads and felt like kings. In street cafes no one asked us whether we had stripes or oak leaves. We would be asked whether we were at the front or not. Being at the front was the decisive thing, not the indications of rank, which didn’t exist yet. It would never have occurred to anyone that a nice job in the bureaucracy would be more pleasant than lying in a damp tent at the front.
* * *
The days changed: artillery, aircraft, and tanks appeared. The sock hat disappeared. The steel helmet appeared. Perhaps steel protects our heads better than wool. But steel is cold. One helmet is like the next. They lack the individuality that distinguished thousands of sock hats, which were all different.
Of course it was absolutely necessary to replace the sock hat with the steel helmet. But were there not other ways to keep alive the spirit of the sock hat? The spirit of Nachshon, the spirit of this free army - even in a time when steel helmets were necessary?
The course ended on 6 November.
We were sent to the combat headquarters of our battalion, that was then situated in the ruins ofKawkaba. In the road next to the police sta-tion of Iraq Suweidan we met a soldier who was crying bitterly. He told us that barely an hour ago the police station had been taken.
There is no way to describe the feelings that were shared by all the sol-diets of the brigade at that moment. Since May the fort had been a sym-bol of the superiority of the enemy. Wherever you stand in that region, south ofGedera or on the plains of the Negev, this fort is always visible on the horizon. Attack after attack broke on its walls. The best of our brigade died on its barbed wire.
And then something happened which shook us to the core. The population, drunk with victory, forgot the infantry which had made such sacrifices in the battle for this fortress. All credit was given to the tank unit which had taken the fort without losses, after most of the enemy forces had been destroyed by continuous barrages of heavy artillery.