“These guys mean business” said Shapira. “We’ve put a lot of fire on them and they are still fighting.”
“I agree” said Mofaz. He raised Yatom on the radio.
“Mofaz here. We are at Shapira’s position—still under fire. Chaim’s hit but we can’t evacuate him.”
“Acknowledged” said Yatom, still with the vehicles about a hundred meters away. “Any suggestions?”
“Yes. Send in Fliegel’s men. We’ll cover them. I don’t want to risk our own.”
Yatom walked over to Ilan and Bolander who were on the right, taking potshots at the Germans without much luck. “They are very well dug in” said Ilan distractedly.
“Their flares and the burning truck fucks our night vision” added Bolander.
“Don’t waste ammo. Where’s Fliegel?”
Bolander pointed further off to his right. Yatom headed to the right flank. Along the way he ran into Roi, Roskovsky, and Rafi, who had settled into their own little fighting group a few meters from the snipers.
“I can knock that position out” offered Rafi, patting his rocket launcher.
“Not yet” said Yatom, who knew that Rafi only had two rockets left. He hated to waste one on a German roadblock. Finally, Yatom reached Fliegel, who lay prone with his men. They seemed to be frozen.
“What’s the matter?” asked Yatom in German. “Why aren’t you shooting?”
“Micha is dead” said Fliegel slowly. Yatom looked down the line and saw a man with a neat bullet wound in his forhead laying a few meters away. Fliegel had tears in his eyes, and his men looked terrified.
Yatom had no time for hand-holding. Yatom grabbed Fliegel’s hand tightly to get his attention and stared into his frightened eyes.
“Listen—we are going to shoot that plaoe up. They already have their heads down. You are going to attack it. Verstehen?”
“I don’t think we can” stammered Fliegel.
Yatom took Fliegel’s chin, rough with a thickening beard, in his other hand He pulled the young Jew toward him so that their faces almost touched. ”Machts nicht” said Yatom loud enough for the rest of the men to hear. “You go there.” Yatom pointed at the German position “or I’ll leave you here. Alone.”
“We can’t do it by ourselves” said Fliegel excitedly.
“We will help you. But you have to attack. Now listen carefully because my German is not so good.”
Yatom told Fliegel what to do, as outgoing and incoming fire rattled around the position. He made Fliegel repeat the orders, then handed the Bears leader several chemlites. Yatom lightly slapped Fliegel on his face and pushed him out of the position. Waiving for his men to come along, Fliegel set off for the German entrenchments, a ragged line of fighters in tow.
Yatom had no idea whether Fliegel’s men would do as he’d ordered or just head for the woods. As Yatom was neither a spiritual sort, nor a gambling man, he simply lay on his belly and watched the unruly column stumble forward.
Down by the roadway, Mofaz had managed to evacuate Chaim back to the trucks, and reassemble the sayeret. The German position appeared damaged but intact. Rafi offered again to blast the cottage with his B-300, but Yatom declined.
“Why not?” asked Mofaz. “You are going to sacrifice those boys to save a rocket?”
“You insisted I send them” Yatom said, annoyed but not surprised by Mofaz’s sudden moral calculus. “Take your team around the left” continued Yatom. “You can support their attack with Bet”
Yatom ordered Shapira to take his team, catch up to Fliegel and support him, but not to lead the attack. Yatom decided to stay near the trucks with Nir, Rafi and Feldhandler, while Ido continued to work on Chaim. Slowly, the shooting died down. Neither side had good targets, and the Germans, Yatom reckoned, hoped that their attackers had fled. Certainly the Germans had been hurt by the sayeret’s fire, even if they men had not yet broken. The Israelis sniped at the Germans but otherwise held their fire as the Bears crept forward, using a bit of defilade Yatom had noticed and ordered Fliegel to use.
Half an hour later the situation had little changed. Yatom feared that the Bears had bolted and that his own men would have to take the position. Then he caught sight of Fliegel waving a chemlite through the gloom, very near to the German held cottage. Shapira called in a moment later, telling Yatom that all the teams were ready and in position.
“Is Fliegel up to pulling this off?” asked Yatom.
“His men are in position” said Shapira, not offering his commander an evaluation he could not possibly make.
“Beseder. Pick your targets and open fire—send Fliegel forward.”
The battlefield erupted again as tracers and grenades arched into the German position. The Israeli advance had put the enemy roadblock in a crossfire, but the Germans had not been idle during the lull either. German machine guns opened up from new positions and a small group of German soldiers suddenly left their trenches and charged at Fliegel’s men, tossing grenades as they came on. The Bears started to bolt, when Shapira, Bolander and Roi fired into the German attackers from hidden positions behind to the Jewish partisans, wiping out the German team. Using Chaim’s Tavor Shapira launched his last two phosphorus grenandes at the German roadblock and ran forward, ordering Fliegel to take his men in.
Hesitatingly, Fliegel led his men forward. One of them had the sense to toss a grenade back at the Germans, and he was imitated by a two others. Supported by fire from Shapira’s team, the Bears reached the entrenchments around the cottage. The Germans manning the position, seeing that they were outflanked, coolly withdrew. A German soldier tossed another grenade, knocking down two of Fliegel’s men.
The Bears went in the building. From there they could shoot into the surviving German soldiers in the entrenchments. Shapira moved up with team Gimmel and urged Fliegel on. Fliegel charged the entrenchments with the rest of his men. Two more Bears were hit by the stubborn Germans. Fliegel and his men dove into the trenches, where they landed atop the bodies of several dead German defenders.
Mofaz and his men lying in cover on the other side of the road identified the attacking Jews through their NVGs, and the Germans still firing at them. Team Bet now carefully picked out German targets amid the wreckage of the position. But the Germans had cleverly moved one machinegun out of the entrenchments and down the road into a new ambush position. This gun now sliced into Mofaz’s group, driving the Major and his men to ground, banging a round offof Itzak’s Kevlar helmet—his second near miss in as many days, and temporarily knocking him out. By the cottage, Roi spotted the German fire, put his infrared laser on the German gun and blasted it out of existence with his Negev.
Shapira and Bolander reached Fliegel, still under cover in the German trench. Realizing that Fliegel and his shocked men were spent, the two commandos, supported by Roi, took the rest of the German position using grenades and Tavors.
The Israelis found fourteen dead Germans in shot-up cottage and the surrounding entrenchments. By their equipment and uniforms it was clear that these men were first-line German infantrymen, a far cry from the camp guards and Ordnungs Polizei that the Israelis had faced thus far. In overcoming the roadblock the sayeret had burned though much of its ammunition, and suffered its first serious casualty. The Bears had suffered two dead and three wounded.
The Israeli commandos collected the German arms and equipment in a state of somber exhaustion while Fliegel’s men sat by in stunned silence. Yatom ordered his men to check the German dead for papers and maps as well. Nir found an officer’s sachel gave it to Yatom. Yatom took the satchel but was too tired to examine it closely, and just slung it onto his shoulder.