Feldhandler heard the German bullet snap over his head, the sound mixed with the reports of Israeli rifles. He looked up and saw the German slumped on the ground but grasping for his gun.
Feldhandler set the Galil on automatic and fired a long burst at the prostrate man. The Galil’s bullets slammed into Popel like angels of mercy, putting him out of his misery.
Yatom called over his radio to Feldhandler. “Doctor, are you alright?”
“Yes” stammered Feldhandler. “Thank you.”
“Stay in the ditch and don’t nrove.”
“Acknowledged” said Feldhandler resignedly and with relief. He would gladly let the sarayet carry the fight if that’s what Yatom intended.
Mofaz came on the net. “Commander, what are you doing?” It was as much a demand as a question.
Yatom wasn’t sure. He hadn’t made up his mind until he gave the order to Ilan, and that had been an almost instinctive response. But Yatom hated indecision and his own inability to choose a course had bothered him more that making the decision to join the fight. He couldn’t fully explain himself to Mofaz at the moment, but felt in his gut that he was doing the right thing. “We are in this fight Major” said Yatom. Then Yatom broadcast a message to the rest of the sayeret.
“We are engaged. Enemy is in gray. If he is armed you may fire. Yatom out.”
Mofaz tossed his helmet in disgust. Itzak, Ilan and Roskovsky looked at him curiously—embarrassed for their team leader. Itzak, who had more or less figured out what had happened to thenr, was pleased with Yatom’s decision. Ilan had already taken a shot and killed somebody, and Roskovsky was a disciplined engineer who didn’t like disorder. Mofaz seemed to recognize all this and recovered himself. He scratched his balding head and replaced his helmet, then caught the eye of each man in turn. He nodded his head, as if to acknowledge his mistake. “Okay boys” said Mofaz “we have our orders. Kill the gray guys.”
Inside the stifling and increasingly panicked boxcar Jezek actually felt a growing sense of hope. The explosions and irregular shooting outside could only mean some kind of partisan attack on the train. He looked toward the center of the car where two young men were talking excitedly in Austrian accented German. Like almost all Czech Jews, Jezek was fluent in both Czech and German. He told his wife to stay in the corner and pushed his way over to the youths.
“We have to find a way out!” he said to them in German. “How?”
Jezek looked at the piss stained floor of the boxcar. “These panels—we might be able to pry them off. Does anybody have any tools?”
Almost all the Jews aboard the train carried luggage, in the mistaken belief, encouraged by the Germans that they were off to be resettled in an eastern province of the new Nazi empire. Some were tradesmen who carried their tools.
“My father is a shoemaker!” said one of the boys, perhaps fifteen. He pushed his way to a squat older man, and as Jezek watched, spoke with him urgently. The man resisted, grasping a worn black satchel. Jezek forced his way over.
“Give us your tools!” he demanded of the older man. “We have to get out. Do you want to carry your tools to the grave?”
“Nein!” said the man, still clutching his tool bag. Jezek, who towered over the shoemaker, ripped the satchel from his hands.
“You’ll have your tools back” he said.
Searching through the bag they found hammers, a saw, awls, and screw drivers. Parceling out the tools, Jezek and the youths began to pry away at the old boxcar floorboards. In other cars along the track, desperate men and women were doing the same thing.
Still hidden in the brush near Jezek’s car Shapira’s team awaited additional orders. The distress of the people inside the cars was hard for them to take. They wanted to act. Then Shapira noticed a man in civilian clothes scramble out from Lmder a boxcar halfway down the track. He was followed by another, and yet one more. The trapped Jews were cutting their way out of the cars!
Shapira got on the radio. “Colonel, Shapira here. We don’t see any Germans. Do you have orders?”
“What’s happening?”
“The people are cutting their way out of the cars.”
Yatom paused for a moment. This was the last chance to back out, but it wasn’t his nature. “Acknowledged” said Yatom. “Take your team and clear the far side of the train up to the front passenger car.”
Shapira explained the mission quickly to his three men who had heard the exchange on their own Madonnas anyway. “Follow me!” grunted Shapira, clambering onto the rail embankment.
The team crossed the tracks at a run and pulled up behind the last car on the train. Shapira looked back at his men. Bolander was next to him, followed by his radioman/grenadier Chaim, and the Negev gunner Ro’i.
“On my signal” said Shapira, indicating that they would move around the car, and conduct an assault until they reached the distant locomotive.
At the front of the train, in the passenger car, Sergeant Mueller came away from the window drawn and pale, having watched corporal Getz shot down by a hidden bandit. The remaining five policemen in the car looked at him nervously.
Mueller turned to a policeman on the other side of the car. “Open the door. Look for Gefreiter Beiber. See if he is still there.” Beiber had been stationed on the other side of the train next to Popel.
Hesitantly the policeman did as Mueller ordered. Beiber was lying on his stomach next to the train, alive and uninjured. “Popel is dead!” yelled Beiber excitedly.
“Have you seen any bandits?” asked the policemen at the door.
“No. They are on the other side of the train! The Jews are escaping!”
Hearing the exchange, Mueller looked around, his face flushed.
There was an armed enemy outside, but he and his men were mere policemen. The worst thing they’d experienced was the massacre at Biali. Mueller told himself that he was a rational professional man, and in assessing the situation, decided that a tactical retreat was the best course. He guessed that none of his men would have a problem with that. “Achtung Jungs” he said, trying to convey confidence. “We will make a fighting retreat to the woods on the north side of the train and rally there!”
As he expected, the policemen nodded their heads approvingly.
He had just given them the okay to run away. “Krause!” he said to a policeman standing next to him. “Grab the grenade case” a box with a handle like a small suitcase containing ten stick grenades. “The rest of you grab extra rations. Hurry!”
The policeman frantically grabbed whatever they could and then huddled by the north-side exit door. ”Auf gehts!” yelled Mueller, and the policemen tumbled out the door at a run.
Shapira’s team maneuvered around the end car one after the other, their weapons raised to their shoulders. Far down the track they spotted Mueller’s men piling out of the train and making a run for the woods. Nearer to them Beiber was running away from them toward the rest of the fleeing Germans.
“Fire” said Shapira. The four commandos dropped to their knees and launched a fusillade of bullets at the Germans. Beiber was hit immediately in the back by a long blast from Roi’s Negev. A stray bullet from the machinegun hit also one of the nearby boxcars, penetrated the wood and killed an old woman sitting on the floor—nobody inside or outside noticed. The range was long for Shapira and Chaim, but their fire hit one of the fleeing Germans and drove the other two men to the ground. Bolander sighted them as they crawled along the exposed embankment toward a nearby copse of trees.