For the IDF, leaving no one behind is more than a mission
Army unit responsible for locating missing persons promises to do everything it can to bring lost soldiers back from war
Maj. (res.) Yochai Hershberg squinted his eyes as the blazing Negev sun intruded his line of vision. To his left and right were fellow reserve soldiers. They were roughly 100 meters (330 ft.) from an upended Israeli tank, in what appeared to be the site of an attack. Wearing blue rubber gloves with his green army uniform, he kneeled down to determine what exactly happened. He began by scooping blood on the desert sand into a container that could later be used for forensic testing — only the blood, in this instance, was just ketchup.
Stationed at the Tse’elim army base in southern Israel, the Southern Command’s Eitan Unit prepared in late August for missions they will likely have to undertake in any future military campaign. They may not be involved in combat operations per se, but their purpose is every bit as important for the nation’s psyche as gathering intelligence or conducting reconnaissance behind enemy lines.
Responsible for locating soldiers missing in action, the unit sees their assignment as not only carrying a heavy burden, but upholding a national promise.
“It is one of our commitments to every Israeli who wears the uniform,” Lt. Col. (res.) Shai Udman, unit commander, told The Times of Israel. “Every Israeli serving in the army has to know that if they are sent into a combat situation and something happens to them, we are going to bring them back.”
“If they die serving this country, we promise them that we will return their bodies to their families so they can have a proper burial,” he added. “And we never give up on that.”
At Tse’elim, the soldiers are constantly training for a situation when a soldier’s whereabouts are unknown.
For this particular drill, the commanders replicated a scene where an Israeli tank was attacked with explosives. Mannequin body parts, garbed in IDF uniforms, were scattered around the site, as a team of five began the process of deconstructing the event. The drill specifically created a scenario the unit has previously encountered and which is also likely to happen again, according to Maj. (res.) Doron Herman.
“We first try to determine what happened. Then we look for indicators of whether the soldiers involved are dead or alive, how much blood is left behind, whether there was a significant injury that would require immediate medical treatment that he or she probably did not get,” Herman said. “Things like that.”
The three main objectives for any mission are to ascertain whether a missing soldier is alive, dead and/or abducted.
“We try to figure that out as quickly as possible so that the army can proceed accordingly and that we can notify the families,” Herman said. “If a son or daughter is missing, perhaps we can’t always get them back, but we can find out where they are and what happened to them.”
“We’ve talked to families who have had a loved one missing for some time, and they have said, ‘We would rather know that they are dead than live with the uncertainty that they may be somewhere,’” he continued. “We feel the burden of that mission, of shrinking the window of uncertainty for those families.”
Everyone who serves in the Eitan Unit is a reserve soldier and has a professional life outside the military. Nevertheless, they are always available for duty if conflict erupts and military action is needed, as they all experienced last summer during Operation Protective Edge.
Among those who participated in the emergency practice drill last week was a farmer, a geologist and a lawyer. Generally, they are are older than most reservists. For instance, Hershberg is 45 and Herman is 44. Both insist that having reservists who are older is an important part of the logic for how the unit is structured.
“Age gives you perspective and different judgment from the younger soldiers,” Herman said. “Also, we are not involved in combat, which allows us to evaluate the situation from a calmer and more rational perspective.”
That structure carries with it a historical perspective, as well. Since the unit’s establishment after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the IDF has placed a much higher emphasis on the need for and effectiveness of a missing persons unit.
While there were certainly efforts to find lost soldiers in Israel’s earlier wars — the War of Independence (1948) and the Six-Day War (1967) — there was not a structured unit responsible for the location of soldiers missing in action until the army experienced more than 2,000 soldiers go missing during the 1973 campaign. “This unit was a lesson learned from that war,” Udman said.
On Oct. 6, 1973, a coalition of Arab forces, led by Egypt and Syria, launched a joint surprise attack on Israel during the holiest day for Jews, Yom Kippur, to regain control of the Sinai and Golan Heights, respectively. Though the 24-day war resulted in an Israeli military victory, the fighting inflicted on Israel a significant cost in human lives, with more than 2,500 casualties.
“It was a war that was forced upon us, and it resulted in our awareness of a need for this unit,” Herman said. “Because war is a mess, it is not a surprise that soldiers go missing from time to time. There is the fog of battle, so people can end up in a different place from where they should be.”
Forty-two years after the Yom Kippur War, the Eitan Unit is still searching for the bodies from then, along with the War of Independence, the Six-Day War and the First Lebanon War of 1982. Members of the unit insist that efforts to find soldiers missing from that far back are not always futile. In fact, on September 4, they will have a ceremony for the burial of remains recently found from 1948.
“When we say we never give up on these soldiers,” Herman said. “We really mean it.”
The Times of Israel Community.