We were to take part in a large scale coordinated operation to take Tul-Karem.  My company and I were to come from the east, await the force that was to come from the north.  We trsined for it for a month. Everything seemed  in order.  We set out at dawn on May 14^th, l948.

      The operation was aborted. We didn’t get the order in time, so we went on through the fields towards the east. As usual, and as drilled the commander leads, after giving the traditional direction “follow me”  In Hebrew , which “Acharai” which became the symbol of this whole generation of commanders of the War of Independence.  

      A scream “the Commander is hit” sounded.  Big noise. I lost consciousness.  Later I was told by my second-in-command, that I raised my head, probably saw the  ashen, frightened faces around me assessed the situation, and gave a shout “freeze”.  With his help, I got on my feet shouted “go back, follow your own footsteps”.  The whole company turned around, each retracing his own steps, and we got safely out of the minefield. When we reached the main road, ambulances were already awaiting us. According to him, only after I saw they were all safe, did I let myself pass out.  I don’t remember any of it.  All I remember is a serene peace surrounding me and my blooded body.  Fortunately they were mistaken in assessing my condition, and took me to the “ Sharon

       Hospital” in Petah-Tikva, allotted for the lightly wounded.  I was unconscious and unaware of what was happening around me.  The initiative was now in the hands of the most devoted medical staff.  The hospital was full with soldiers and civilians.  Assessing my condition again, this staff realized that they got a lost case.  They treated it as their greatest challenge.  My life was saved.  

      I was young, fit and healthy.  When I opened my eyes I found myself in a white bed.  Looking slowly around I discovered another wounded soldier from a different unit.  Everything was so strange.  I didn’t recognize anybody or anything.  Felt incruciating pains in my right shoulder. Moved my head, looked at it, and found it swathed in dressing and casted.  Few hours later I started recognizing the faces of the doctors, of the nurses.  The long treatment had started.  My body withstood it.  Till that evening when I was taken to the bathroom, and the surgery nurse, with her soft, quick, fingers started unwrapping the bandages, while I was in the bath-tub – in order to ease the pain a little – as the bandages came off with the skin under them.  It seemed to me that the unwrapping of the bandages was the worse kind of torture.  I shouted and protested, pleading to be left alone.  The nurse, who came from Germany with many years of experience in the operating room, and probably had witnessed such incidents and was immune to their sight, could not stand the pains of the inflicted young body, and when I was carried fainting out of the bath she sat down covering her face in silence.  

      The next week my body started functioning, overcoming the infections developed in the upper part of the body and the leg, which was crushed, did not develop a gangrene and was saved.  

The third week witnessed the visit of one of the senior doctors.  He came in, to have a man to man talk.  He served in the Russian Army for many years, so he told me, and felt it was up to him to reveal the fact of the amputation of my right hand.  He was blunt and to the point. Explained why they put the upper part of the arm in a cast to hide the amputation from me. Health reasons.  The body and soul cannot withstand such traumas at the same time. So they waited until the body healed a little, before they revealed the truth.  He was finished.  Did not show any signs of excitement.  It seemed to him that the young 21 years old commander was accepting the news as a soldier should.  

      The difficulty started at night.  The right hand fingers did not consent to be separated from the body, they hurt, and made me need to flex them.  The pains in the legs started later, causing me to fear that they are next to be amputated.  On towards morning,  I started to experience the blurred visions of going out to battle.  The orders I gave.  What mistakes had I made. Until today I am not quite sure of what had really happened, and what was the fruit of the nightmares I had that night.  I fell asleep only at dawn, completely tired out.  The Chief Surgeon who came to visit in the morning, did not wake me up.  He didn’t check the wounds.  He only saw my wet face, and realized that his work was finished, what had happened, had happened, now it was up to me and the strength of my spirit to finish off the healing process.  

      When my friends from the Company and the Battalion came to visit the next day, I asked them for a pen, some paper, my small civilian car allotted to me as a Company Commander to be put in the yard.  I also asked my second-in-command to bring all my personal gear, my revolver, and some handgranades.  I practiced writing with my left hand the whole next week.  

      On the fourth week I got the permission of the Chief Surgeon to use the crutches to get down to the small green car.  My second-in-command was waiting. We drove to the hills surrounding Rosh-Haayin to train my left hand in throwing grenades and using the revolver.  My Second, who was a practical man, offered some unimaginative objections, even suggested my taking up banking, where a talented man like me can also excel, and the damage will only be financial, when what it was doing can damage lives.  This training took two weeks. A month after I was admitted, I exited the hospital, driving my own car with my left hand, with an adamant decision that I was never coming back to the hospital – at least not while conscious.  I drove down to my village. And for the first time since the war started I felt relieved. At last I too joined the ranks of the casualties, and can now look straight into the eyes of the bereaved  mothers and fathers - the parents of my fallen men.  

     Years later my mother confessed that in her daily prayers she thanked God twice during this War.  Once when my father came back safely from guard duty at the front, and the second when she was notified that her son was wounded, and how.  In her prayers she probably praised God for bringing her son back to her, and that she no longer had to walk in the village avoiding eyes, and that now her son will not go back to the war.  

She was mistaken.