Posted on 05/18/2004 9:24:50 PM PDT by yonif
When things are relatively quiet, they are just three brothers, ages 22, 25 and 28 who meet on weekends at home. But the three are also brothers in arms: Captain “A”, 28, is a pilot in the army attack helicopter squadron; Captain Tal, 25, is an officer in the Givati reconnaissance battalion; Lieutenant Dean, 22, is an officer on the Givati basic training base (“boot camp”).
The three have participated in numerous joint operations in the Gaza Strip, with “A” in the sky and the two brothers fighting terrorists on the ground. But last week, when the Givati brigades lost 13 of their fighters in Rafah and in the Beit Zaidoun neighborhood, is a week the three will not likely soon forget.
Before going out on a mission in the Beit Zaidoun neighborhood, Captain Tal spoke with his brother “A”, who told him he’d be covering him from the air. The two exchanged “good luck’s” and said goodbye. Towards the end of the operation, “A” saw a mushroom cloud rise up from below and understood that something had gone terribly wrong. An APC had been bombed. After a few minutes the report came in: six soldiers were killed. “A” knew his brother was down there.
“A” recalls those difficult moments: “Suddenly I saw the APC blast from above. I wait to hear a familiar voice over the radio, but there’s nothing. You try to continue the operation but you know something has happened and you know your brother is down there. For three hours I didn’t know what had happened to my brother and it was awful”.
Reports of the six casualties also reached Lieutenant Dean, a Givati Company’s second in command. “They told me there are six dead in my brother’s platoon. The images that kept flashing through my head were of my mother and my brother. I couldn’t breathe for about an hour, I really just couldn’t catch my breath. I sat next to my bed and didn’t move. All I kept thinking was, I have to just go out and join the fighting. It all comes from my parents, who taught us to contribute as much as we can”, Dean recounts.
Several hours later, Tal was finally able to call his parents and tell them he is still alive. The incident affected the entire family. “After what happened, I call my mother five times a day just to reassure her”, Dean says.
We don’t tell our parents
“A” told Maariv Online about life for a family of IDF fighters. “Naturally we meet mostly on weekends, and talk about what’s happened to us all week. Everyone tells how things went for them, me up above and them below. In the Air Force, we really respect the fighters on the ground, especially Givati. They are incredible fighters. They’re going to be visiting us at the Air Force base soon”.
How do the parents feel about having to worry over three of their children at the same time? “It’s not a simple matter”, the brothers say. “For the most part, we don’t tell them anything about what we’re doing. And if something happens, we wait until its over before we say anything. Our parents are very supportive, and educated us to be what we are today”.
Ping.
I think this would be a good thing for the Army- have zoomies and Rotor Heads meet the snuffies on the ground, and vice versa. Give the (well, one or two) young bucks a chance to ride front seat in an apache, let the ossifer types play with the different infantry weapons, mabye go through MOUT training...seems like a good thing for inter-branch & inter-"caste" bridge building.
Well, as far as the Army goes, this happens in some cases, although informally. The Apache ride is generally a no go simply because of the technicalities involved with flying the airframe and legally, it takes an act of God, almost, even for a GO to get a nickel ride in one. Besides, most apache pilots are Warrants who are prior enlisted, many of them were grunts or cut their teeth in other comat arms MOSs. They know the deal. The aviation RLOs are the ones who need to hump a ruck, takedown a building, sleep in the rain, crawl through the mud, etc...to get an appreciation. The Army no longer makes Aviation branched commissioned oficers from other combat arms branches. We still get a few well rounded prior enlisted officers via OCS and prior service that go USMA or ROTC, but they are the exception and not the rule, unfortunately.
comat=combat
Yonif I got question do they have their version of Sullivan law that was based on war death of Suvillan brothers
I just asking here
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