Personal recollection of a fog‑bound helicopter extraction and post‑operation meeting with Yitzhak Rabin

work. The fog now enveloped us completely. I brought the team to a stop. I stayed with the cart while the other four outlined a landing area with kerosene flares in the hope that the pilot would see us. It was another five minutes when we heard the thump of chopper blades. Though we couldn’t see more than a few feet, I suddenly saw the outline of the landing gear and then the underbelly. But the helicopter did not seem in control. It was drifting towards where I was standing with the cart. It was just seconds away from hitting me when its nose wrenched upward. It landed with a judder a dozen yards away. Later, I learned the navigator had realized the craft was drifting and, just before impact, shouted a warning to the pilot. We piled in, secured the cart and took off. Within a minute, the murky blanket of fog was below us. As we swooped back into Israel, I could see the first pink of sunrise. By the time we touched down at Tel Nof air force base, southeast of Tel Aviv, the command post in the Negev was receiving the first intercepts. A few days later, one of the sayeret soldiers gave me a first-hand insight into the mood in the command post in the final stages of the operation. Avsha Horan’s role had been to act as security guard for the top brass in Mount Keren. He occasionally took a peek inside. He described to me the atmosphere when I radioed my “milk is coming” message: solemn faces, hushed conversations between Avraham and Meir Amit. And off to the side, the recently elevated chief-of-staff, Rabin, chain-smoking and biting his nails. Finally, the audible sighs of relief when the pilot radioed in with his final message from the chopper: “Out of the fog. Heading home.” With the rest of the team, I was invited to see Yitzhak Rabin ten days later. We were being given a further tzalash. This was the first time I'd met him since leaving officers’ school two years earlier, when, with a few terse words, the then-deputy chief of staff congratulated me and several other cadets who graduated with top honors. I had felt a bit overwhelmed in his presence. Now, I was struck by how shy he seemed. He greeted each of us with a tentative handshake, and seemed uncomfortable in making eye contact. Yet once he began asking me about the Sinai operation itself, it was as if he was transformed. He was hungry for every detail, anxious to know the way we’d had 80 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_027928