Every indexed document

flew to Perpignan in southeastern France. There were

at least legally. I had no passport. I didn’t own a suit or a tie. But

in the Pyrenees along the Spanish border. I’d never been

Merglen proposed a series of exchanges. The

Avraham even insisted on our wearing French-style berets in

I led a sayeret team on a live-fire raid in a

we hosted a visit to the unit by Colonel Albert Merglen

either as commander of the main force or the

there was a demand for us to do the same in other parts of the

he realized I’d had no experience of a real cross-border mission.

I asked him about it. He told me that he’d been relying on

even with the delay in crossing the river?

just as I had in the days before we set off

when we joined Avraham and the rest of the sayeret in a formal

through errors or omissions I had made. I made that point

I felt not so much triumph as relief. I didn’t kid

General Tzur and our other military and intelligence

awkward kibbutz teenager at APC boot camp in the Negev; through my

in recognition of “a mission which contributed to the

the very future of the sayeret as an operational