Upfall

The SS gunned down the three boys just as they broke from the tree line into the open. Roskovsky, running ahead of them, reached a cloud of drifting smoke from the mortar barrage. The top of the ridge, and relative safety, was still 200 meters away. The smoke threw off the aim of the SS troopers shooting at Roskovsky. He got a good fifty meters onto the lower part of the ridge before he was hit. The first bullet struck a ceramic plate in Roskovsky's vest, knocking him down, but not hurting him critically. The big engineer shook off the blow, and set off again, bounding another twenty meters before an MG 42 round hit him in the back of the leg. He fell again, unable to rise, but continued to crawl forward. Roskovsky knew he had little hope of survival, but he wanted to get as far from the Germans as possible before he died, so that they could not retrieve his body or equipment.

The smoke began to to clear and Roskovsky heard armored vehicles advancing on the roads to his right and left. Behind him the SS troopers continued to shoot toward the ridge, but they could not advance beyond the woodline, as fire from Jewish bunkers targeted them through the thinning smoke. Roskovsky heard the distinctive popping of Roi's Negev, as 5.56mm rounds snapped over his head. Ahead, Roskovsky heard Yatom's voice through the din, telling him to keep moving. Roskovsky looked for the bunker through the thinning smoke and struggled forward several more meters, pulling on grass, weeds and saplings to drag his useless leg along. He caught sight of Yatom’s bunker off to his left, and looked toward it hopefully, when when a long burst of fire from an MG 42 hit him several more times, hammering his body into the blood soaked ground. Roskovsky lifted his head one last time, fifty meters from the first of the Jewish bunkers, before another burst of fire penetrated his helmet and drove him into the sodden earth—dead now, but out of the Germans's reach.

From the top of the ridge Yatom had watched Roskovsky‘s struggle as a ghostly image in his thermal binoculars. The German smoke barrage had temporarily blinded the Jewish positions, but the thermal scope easily cut through the gray-white clouds. Yatom directed Roi's Negev at the SS who were tracking Roskovsky through the murk. Many Germans, not realizing that the smoke offered them no cover from the deadly machinegun, were killed as they attempted to follow the Israeli engineer up the hill. Yatom could do nothing more as watched Roskovsky struggle amidst the drifting smoke, only fifty meters away. Roi, seeing the same thing, dropped his Negev and started crawl from the bunker in order to drag the engineer back, Yatom restrained him.

"It's our duty!" shouted the young sergeant as Yatom gripped Roi's webbing.

"No" said Yatom simply. The Israeli ethos of always going after the dead and wounded had cost the lives of too many men. Yatom believed it had become something of a fetish. He wasn't going to lose Roi to a hopeless act of valor that would not improve their tactical situation in the slightest.

"Pick up your weapon" ordered Yatom. Roi shrank back and retrieved his Negev, then poured the rest of the belt toward the advancing Germans, knocking two more men down and driving the rest back.

Evaluating his situation from the command bunker next to the emotional Roi, Yatom realized that his tactical situation had deteriorated. Yatom's intelligence was bad. He did not know how many armored vehicles his men faced, or how many Roskovsky had managed to damage or destroy. Yatom reckoned that Roskovsky had expended all his EFPs before he'd died, but Yatom could only guess the damage inflicted on the enemy. He'd seen a secondary explosion on the Lubin road, and smoke from a burning vehicle on the forester’s track. However encouraging the smoke and explosions were, the reality emerging from the enemy held woods promised disaster. On Yatom's left a turretless assault gun and two half-tracks loaded with German infantry and engineers debouched from the Lubin road, emerging from the smoke screen and heading toward the main ridge. He recognized the Stug III assault gun from old World War II films, but was uncertain of its capabilities and weaknesses. On his right another assault gun and three half-tracks rolled down the forester's track aiming for Mofaz's position. All the while, the Germans continued to pound the ridgeline with mortars, joined by direct fire from the Stug IIIs. Behind the barrage, German infantry were emerged from the woods far flanks, obviously intent on fully enveloping the Jewish position.