The Soldier I Could Have Saved

Thirty-three years ago an Israeli soldier was killed during the War of Attrition in Fort Kantara on the Suez Canal. The soldier’s name was Kobi; he was 19. I think about Kobi every day, and sometimes I don’t sleep at night. Thirty-three years have passed, and I still live with it like it happened recently.

Do you think I am insane? Disturbed? Suffering from post-war trauma?

I don’t know, I was never treated by a doctor for it.

During the war I was a staff sergeant at Fort Kantara. I was there for more than a year. I saw young Israeli soldiers come and go. In Hebrew we called them “cannon meat.” They came to us from boot camp, 18 years old. Wanting to see the blue water of the Suez Canal, they raised their heads above the sandbags and were killed instantly by Russian snipers. The next day they were sent back home in caskets. Just like that, within seconds, they were alive and suddenly gone. We told you not to raise your heads. You didn’t listen to us. By then it was too late.

But this is not what happened to Kobi. Kobi could have been saved, but something else happened. A short time after Kobi arrived at Fort Kantara, a new officer joined us — Lt. Moti. Moti came directly from officers school, with a lot of energy, and let us feel that he was the new boss of the place. We didn’t make a big deal of it at first. He seemed to be a nice guy from from a good family. He was from the town of Hadera, wanted to go up the ranks fast and acted a little like an oyber chuchem (smart ass).

Time passed, and except for a few disputes Moti got along with most of us, including myself — until the horrible day came. It was Kobi’s shift to watch the Egyptians on the other side of the canal from the observation post. Moti and I were in the war room below. The phone from Kobi’s post rang.

“The Egyptians are looking at me with binoculars and aiming a bazooka at me,” Kobi said.

“Get off your post right now,” I yelled to him. I knew what was going to happen, and a gush of fear went though me.

Moti yelled, “Stay there and keep looking. Do not get off your post.”

I yelled again, “Get off right now, let’s go, now, now, now. There is no time.”

Moti yelled, “If you get off, you are going straight go jail.”

I yelled, “Kobi, please come down. Moti doesn’t know what’s happening here, I’ve been there before. Do me and yourself a favor, come down now.”

Moti kept going: “If you come down now, you will be in trouble for the rest of your service, I am the officer in charge, do not listen to Yoram.”

It was too late. The bazooka from the other side was launched. Kobi was dead. Another 19-year-old kid was gone. Moti and I looked at each other for five solid minutes and did not say a word. We froze. Afterward I told Moti, “You will pay for this someday.”

I went to the post and collected what was left from this cute kid from Ashkelon who wanted to be a doctor.

The newspaper wrote that Kobi was killed by heavy Egyptian artillery. His grandfather was killed in the Warsaw Ghetto. His parents were Holocaust survivors. His uncle was killed in the Israeli War of Independence in 1948.

Kobi’s parents didn’t know the truth of how he died. Maybe it’s better that way.

Moti completed his service in the army after three years. He did not want to be a big shot in the army anymore. He attended the Technion. I saw him a few times in Haifa. We never talked about what happened. It was more like “Hi” and “Bye.”

Thirty-three years have passed since then. Even today I say to myself “Why didn’t I go to his post and drag him down?”

I could have called him today in Israel and say “Doctor, how are ya? How’s the family? Remember that day on the Suez Canal? Wow, what a mess. You almost got killed. Luckily you got off the post.”

I heard that the Israeli Department of Defense decided to give the soldiers who served during the War of Attrition a new medal of courage.

Suddenly, just like that, they want to give a medal to the “cannon meat?”

We served there from 1967 to 1973, and every day 20 to 40 soldiers, just kids, were killed. My medal will arrive at my last address in Israel — Kiryat Tivon. Maybe I should ask Jojo, the mail carrier, to forward it to Moti’s family in Ashkelon.

Yoram Samuel lives in Los Angeles.