It was morning. After my brief nap on the asphalt we returned to the base where we had waited for a week to go in. We were still on maximum alert so our first priority was to check and prepare all our equipment. We cleaned our guns, refilled our magazines, and replaced all other supplies depleted during the war.

Then we went to the showers. Nice, hot, fresh, steaming showers. It was even more wonderful than the asphalt. But there was a problem. Gaza was dirty. Very, very dirty. And not all of the houses we stayed in were Hamas mansions. I was covered with fleas and possibly lice. To me there was only one reasonable solution. I shaved all my hair.

Finally all equipment was more or less prepared and I was clean. They gave us our cell phones back and I checked my voice mail.

Cocoa Puff, the girl that had been shaking in the bomb shelter, had left me eleven messages, almost crying in each one. I was really surprised. We weren't dating in the slightest, and I did not expect that kind of response...

After listening to all the messages I began calling my friends. I was exhausted but I tried carrying on a conversation.

They asked me how it was.

"Well..." I answered. "It was a war."

I didn't have anything to say. I honestly hadn't really thought about it. I had been in an automatic mode governed by instinct for so long I hadn't actually thought about anything; really I began thinking about it. I began to remember.

Did I really just survive all that? Did I really just do all that?

Eventually I got off the phone and found a bed. It was such a sweet sleep.

The next morning I was awakened by my lieutenant. The previous day I had tried to make a deal with him to go home early. He told me he would have an answer for me in the morning. He woke me up with his answer.

"Yes, Yared. Go home."

I made a few touch-ups to my equipment. Then I switched to my dress uniform, grabbed my bag, and made my way home. I climbed onto the bus. Sitting on the bus it occurred to me that my kippah was missing. It had been borrowed for morning prayer and I had never gotten it back. I reached into my pocket, hoping to find my spare. It wasn't there, but I smiled at what I found.

It was my purple bandana.

Well, I needed something on my head. So I put the bandana back on my head. For a brief moment it felt like the whole world was laughing at me. There I was, back in the real world, with a purple bandana tied pirate-style on my head. But then I realized that I just didn't really care. I had just fought a war, and won.

As far as I was concerned the world could laugh at me all they wanted.

On the bus I thought about the blog. Using my internet phone I looked up the site, curious to see if anything was going on with it.

I was in shock.

For one entry alone there were over 62 comments. I couldn't believe it. I hadn't even done anything yet. Had that many people actually been reading my rambling and actually commented on it? I hoped that as many other soldiers as possible had also read the comments. I hoped that they also saw how many people prayed for us and supported us.

It was evening and I arrived at my kibbutz, still wearing the bandana. I saw my friend that had given it to me. But now she was wearing a nice, dark green bandana.

"What? Wait a minute! You mean to tell me that I have been running all over the Gaza Strip with this wimpy, purple bandana on my head, and this whole time you have been sitting here with a dark green one?!"

She laughed and offered to trade.

"No," I replied thoughtfully. "The wimpy, purple one is actually starting to grow on me."

And then I saw Cocoa Puff. She came over to my apartment and immediately went into my cupboard, digging through my supply of alcohol and chocolate. We opened a bottle of red wine and she helped herself to my precious supply of Reese's Peanut Cups that I had imported from the US. (They are really hard to find here in Israel.) We sat on my bed and talked about the war for a while.

Later I hopped on a bus to Jerusalem to meet up with my friends for a coffee in the city center. It was so good and yet so strange to see them all again. Some of them had even gotten married in the time that I was gone. I had wanted to attend the wedding but obviously had been unable.

I sat in the warm coffee shop and drank a gigantic, delicious iced mocha. Then my friends suddenly broke out into song and presented me with a small chocolate cake complete with a single candle on top.

"Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday..."

The war had started on December 27th, my birthday. I had forgotten. My friends hadn't.

I smiled with contentment at my friends, my little cake, my iced mocha. For one night, if only one night, I could forget about guns, hand-grenades, war, killing, and terrorists. For at least one night I could enjoy myself as a twenty-four year old.

Yes, it was good to be alive.

I wish I could end the story there but unfortunately I cannot. Hamas has already violated the cease-fire many times. My apartment is located near a large air force base. From where I am typing the final chapter of my blog I can see the F-15s rise into the sky. The bottoms of the jets are heavily loaded with bombs and missiles. I am watching them kick on the afterburners and scream towards Gaza. In a few hours I will check the news and read about the air strikes as well as the rockets, missiles, and mortars landing on Israeli cities from Hamas. I am almost waiting for Captain America to call me on my cell phone and cancel my vacation.

This is the end of The Front Line Blog... for now. Perhaps one day in the near future I will be forced to write a sequel. But sequels are never as good as the original.

We were exhausted. The whole night had been consumed by our assault from the beach. Now it was daylight. We were stationed in one of the houses we had attacked and conquered. Although the house was relatively large it simply was not large enough for all the soldiers inside to sleep comfortably. My attempts to doze off a little between watches were unsuccessful. I went into a little girl's bedroom trying to find a comfortable place to nap. The whole house had been all but destroyed. Shards of glass and pieces of plaster littered the floor. I examined the lines of bullet holes scattered throughout the walls. Then I noticed an enormous, orange, stuffed rabbit, almost like a giant Care-Bear with long ears, sitting on a large shelf.

"Hey, Shaft! Look, you monster! You killed it!"

Sure enough, the giant rabbit was riddled with bullet holes from his MAG 7.62 mm machine gun. The stuffing had been tossed about the room. The rabbit hunched over, its eyes cold and lifeless.

War is an ugly thing.

There was another doll on the shelf. This doll was unharmed, but its head was positioned against the wall exactly between two bullet holes.

While marveling at the good fortune bestowed upon this toy, Captain America called me and Axel to the top floor. We had enemy contacts. Four Hamas terrorists attempted an assault from a nearby house. We set up defensive positions and prepared for a counterstrike.

I set up my M4 with Trigicon scope in a window, functioning as a relatively short-range sniper. I scanned the doors and windows with my finger on the trigger. Meanwhile the tanks surrounded the three or four-story building they occupied. Likewise a demolitions crew moved in. They no longer needed me to snipe them. We were going to blow up the entire house.

I sat back and watched, covering the approach of the demolitions team. Numerous tanks sat in the streets and alleys, with the cannons aimed at the house. The demolitions crew placed charges on the corners of the house.

The demolitions crew set off the explosives in conjunction with a massive salvo from at least half a dozen tanks. In a matter of seconds there was very little left of the house or terrorists.

To my surprise we continued pushing forward, but now in broad daylight. We usually prefer to operate at night. Our platoon moved from house to house, mansion to mansion, checking for terrorists and weapons.

We entered another Hamas house. This one was by far the most affluent that I had seen. It had marble floors, impressive white pillars, and gold plating in the bathroom. We entered the house shooting and lobbing grenades. As I entered I surveyed the damage to the marble pillars and expensive statuettes. To my surprise in the living room was an aquarium full of exotic fish. The fish tank was unscratched despite the excessive damage all around it. One of the soldiers even fed the fish before we left.

Searching the house I entered another little girl's room. Judging by the photos of her as well as the size of her clothes she couldn't have been more than seven years old. In her room we found the ultra-violent computer game, Grand Theft Auto, a collection of Steven Segal movies, as well as a collection of sharp barber-style razors.

Who gives their seven year-old daughter these kinds of movies and video games, and what's up with the razors? I have yet to figure that out.

I moved to the roof of a neighboring house to cover the approach of Platoon 8. I surveyed the view. In the distance I saw a large mosque toppled over and destroyed. I remembered hearing about it a few days previously. Hamas had used the mosque to store massive quantities of weapons and had booby trapped the thing to the point of making any entry suicidal. We placed charges on the mosque to take out the weapons. But there were so many munitions inside that the entire mosque collapsed on itself. It was now reduced to a pile of rubble with the gigantic dome rolled off to the side.

We continued to advance. I went up ahead, shooting out locks and kicking in doors. Evening drew near and we entered a new mansion and prepared for nightfall.

It was about 10 pm and suddenly we began hearing rumors from the medics and doctors. They began making preparations to evacuate the house. There were rumors of a cease-fire. I didn't believe it. Even if there would be a cease-fire it would take time to implement it and finalize the deal and the removal of Israeli forces would be not be a simple process.

I was wrong. At midnight we received orders to prepare for a full and immediate withdrawal. We were to move out in two hours, at 2 am. And we would be walking the entire distance from the edge of Gaza City to the Israeli border, and then to the nearby IDF military base where it had all began.

The attitudes and responses to the cease-fire were varied. Some of us just wanted to go home, and didn't care what that meant for the overall picture. Some of us were disappointed, disagreeing with the cease-fire and finding it a weak decision. I sat in a corner of the Hamas mansion. I asked Smirnoff for a cigarette. I don't smoke, and it had been one of my first cigarettes in a year. It seemed like an appropriate time, but it didn't really help. I was upset. I was very upset. I am not a politician, and it is not my purpose to delve into politics here. But it seemed like failure. We were winning. Hamas was unable to stand before us. Before me. I watched terrorists flee from me in horror. Those that didn't soon became carcasses in my path. I felt unstoppable. We were in a position to destroy fifteen years of terrorist development and weapon smuggling. In my opinion we would have been able to get Gilad Shalit back with no negotiation.

We were in the position to SMASH Hamas. To wipe a murderous terrorist organization off the face of the earth. And now we were being told to stop. To pack it all up and go home.

It is a severe violation of my over-inflated ego to admit it but I will.

I actually cried.

I thought about Cocoa Puff, my friend shaking in the bomb shelter. I thought about Sgt. Obama and his family trying to live in Ashkelon, even after a missile had landed on their block. I thought about the lieutenant with shrapnel in his brain, lying half-conscious in a hospital with his newly-wed wife sitting in a chair next to him. I thought about my apartment, and wondered if it was even still there. I thought about all the people I had killed. I thought about all the people that had been trying to kill me.

Had it all been for nothing?

It felt like failure. It felt like betrayal.

No one else in the platoon reacted as strongly as I did. Those of us with a little broader perspective were also unhappy, including Axel, Shaft, and the officers. Captain America and Sgt. Obama both pulled me aside later. They gave me a speech consisting of patronizing baloney. Yeah, yeah. We hit Hamas hard and all that. The final score card was tallied up with over 900 Hamas terrorists dead and roughly 150 civilian casualties. Less than ten Israeli soldiers had been killed, and most of them had died from friendly-fire. That meant we had a kill ratio of 100:1. But I wasn't stupid. I knew we had hit them hard but it would only be a matter of time before they would start firing missiles and rockets again. I expected a month or two of calm. (It turns out that they waited even less time than that, seriously violating the cease-fire repeatedly within a few mere weeks.)

I tossed the cigarette away and we began marching the 8 km back to the border.

We followed a route on the beach, where the water met the sand. Several times a freak wave danced on the shore and filled my red boots with salt water. The entire army marched silently in double-file. It was surreal, listening to the waves crash in the darkness. I hoped that the D9 bulldozers had successfully cleared all the mines.

Walking along I spotted an odd shape in the water just past the breaking waves. I peered at it through my Li-Or night vision scope.

It was a dead body.

I had heard a rumor about a certain special forces mission that took place on the beach. (For security reasons I did not write about it.) I wondered to myself if the corpse had been from that operation.

We moved on. Just before the border we took a brief break. I leaned back against my equipment and sat on the sand. The entire war I had been saving a single can of Coca-Cola for the end as a celebratory treat. I had actually jerry-rigged one of my magazine pouches to hold the cola can and protect it from puncture. This was hardly the way I had wanted the war to end, but I guessed it was over anyway. I sat next to Sgt. Obama. He heard the unmistakable "hiss and pop" of a can of Coca-Cola being opened.

"No way..." he whispered. I took the first sip, smiled with satisfaction, and passed it to him. The single can of Coca-Cola made its way down the line through the platoon. It was worth its weight in gold.

Nothin' like the real thing.

We crossed the border and re-entered friendly territory. The press was there and numerous "jobnik" girls taking photos. Most of the guys in the platoon tried to make it look good for the camera. I ignored them and kept walking. I still felt like we had failed, given up, and saw no point in celebration.

Finally we arrived at a large parking lot just outside of the base where it had all began. For the first time in over two weeks I was able to take off my combat vest and body armor. I felt so light. I also realized that I was in desperate need of a chiropractor. I took off my helmet. I was still wearing the purple bandana.

"Hey, Yared," a friend of mine called from a different company in the paratroopers. "What's up with the bandana?"

I examined the bandana. The nice messages were still there, semi-blurred from mud and sweat. I thought about all my friends back home.

"It's a long story..." I responded quietly. I was tired of explaining it.

I looked about the parking lot. All of my friends were there. We were all coming back. It was so good to see the faces of them all. Some were better, some were worse. All were tired and dirty.

I saw a group of religious soldiers pray. It was their first morning prayers back on friendly soil, without the danger of being bombed.

I saw The Glowing. He somehow had gotten hold of a cell phone and called his parents back in the States. They hadn't heard anything about him or from him the entire war. I found out later that they first found out that he was in Gaza because of this blog.

We listened to a speech from the head colonel, commander of the entire Paratrooper Brigade. I am sure that it was timely and inspiring, but I honestly have no memory of what he said. I was too tired to pay attention. I hadn't slept in days, and had been fighting and marching for the past two nights.

I returned to the area where we had left our equipment. I lay down on the hard asphalt in the warm, early morning sun. I had never felt anything so wonderfully relaxing. I immediately passed out, waiting for the army buses to take us back to our main base.

Tonight we actually carried out the previously mentioned mission to improve our position just outside of Gaza City.

We set up the Retik (heavy fire assistance) once again in a tall apartment building. Most of the platoons were to lead the assault from the beach. We advanced along the shore and kept our heads down, ducking behind a relatively high sand embankment. As a sharpshooter I crawled through the sand up to a chunk of concrete rubble and took a position. I fired at a nearby group of houses, scanning for enemy contacts in the windows and doorways. The mission was basically a beach-head version of the attack on Day 11.

Unlike Day 11, however, we advanced farther into Gaza itself and prepared for a series of day-time operations.

We continued moving forward and I tripped on an invisible wire. My initial thought was that it was fishing line attached to a booby trap. Sgt. Obama explained, however, that it was fiber-optic from all the rockets and missiles that the gunship helicopters had been launching. After the missile is fired there is a yarn-like ball of fiber-optic wiring inside the missile casing that unravels. This wire enables the pilot of the chopper to guide missile mid-air before impact. This wiring can sometimes extend for several kilometers. The helicopters had shot so many missiles that all of Gaza was covered with strong, thin, copper wire. Every night someone tripped and fell flat on their face from one of these wires.

As we were advancing Danny-Boy suddenly disappeared from view.

"Axel! Axel!" My Canadian friend heard a voice hiss at him seemingly from nowhere. "Don't just stand there! Help me!"

It was then that Axel saw the head and arm of Danny-Boy protruding from a hole in the ground. He had fallen into the entrance of a Hamas tunnel. Axel ran over to him and helped him out. He then reported the tunnel to the officers.

One of the greatest threats to Israel from the Gaza Strip is their massive and complex network of tunnels. These tunnels are used for weapons smuggling and storage. Even more frightening, however, is their usage to kidnap and/or kill soldiers. I heard the following account from a tank officer I know:

The tank officer, "Bob," was sitting in the cockpit of his Merkava tank with one of his crewmen, "Joe." They scanned the area for threats with thermal vision.

"Hey, Joe, do you see that on the thermal screen? There's something coming out of the ground over there."

"Yeah, Bob, I think it's a gopher or something."

"No... I don't think so. But... what is it?"

"Wait a minute, Joe, do you see that!"

Bob and Joe watched the thermal viewing screen. Just 50 meters in front of them a shovel popped out of a small hole in the ground. A human hand soon followed, groping the entrance of the tunnel and attempting to widen it.

Bob quickly and quietly waltzed over to the small hole. He tossed a hand grenade inside and ran.

And that was the end of a squad of Hamas terrorists. The tank officer and his crew inspected the site. They found a newly dug tunnel connected to the preexisting underground passage system. It was apparent that this Hamas team had the intention of kidnapping the tank crew just like Gilad Shalit. Unfortunately for them they made a mistake with the digging and surfaced just in front of the tank and their intended targets.

As Bugs Bunny would have said, they shouldn't have taken that left turn at Albuquerque.

It was near dawn and we had entered even further into Gaza. I was already exhausted from a night of combat and no sleep. But there was more to come...

We had already conquered Jabaleah and were in sight of what I believed to be Gaza University. We had arrived at the border of Gaza City itself. We left the six-story apartment building and set up briefly in one of the large mansions we had conquered a few days previously. The mansion had likewise been turned into an IDF field hospital for our battalion.

If anybody benefited from the war in Gaza it was definitely their animals. After all the abandonment, bombardment, as well as troop movements (without always closing the doors and gates behind us) practically all Palestinian livestock roamed happily and freely. It was a sight to behold, beautiful Arabian stallions munching contentedly on grass next to Israeli tanks. Cows waddled by and herds of sheep danced down the alleys.

Night fell and we prepared to move. Once again, however, the mission was postponed. Again, I am unsure of the reason. They don't tell me such things. But they did tell one thing...

Delilah and her suicide bomber squad were back.

I went on a midnight patrol with Sgt. Obama to secure the perimeter. We were playing cat and mouse with suicide bombers. We moved swiftly and silently from point to point, keeping a constant eye watching through night vision gun scopes and goggles. We searched for an hour and found nothing. We returned to the residence.

About an hour later Comrade heard a scuffling just outside the front door of the house and saw a black figure dart past the window. He was on watch at the time at a window about a meter away from the door. He improved his position and called out to the figure.

"Mi zeh?!" he shouted first in Hebrew, to be sure that he didn't shoot one of our own soldiers. Just the night before the reservists had accidentally opened fire on the colonel's entourage and wounded several soldiers due to poor communication and a lack of precaution.

There was no answer.

Comrade leveled his gun and continued scanning through the night vision scope, attempting to locate his target.

"Wakif! Wakif!" He called in Arabic with a thick Russian accent. "Wakif," is an Arabic term for "Stop" and the beginning of a phrase we use in the IDF that means "Stop! Surrender and put up your hands!" Any soldier that hears "Wakif" knows he better make sure the other soldier is aware of his true identity because he is probably just seconds away from getting shot.

And then, as if to answer his Arabic command, Comrade heard the unmistakable "B-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-h!" of a large, lost, black sheep.

Delilah never showed. At least, I never saw her. But a few more false alarms like this and she wouldn't even need to bother coming to the house to blow herself up.

We were in Jabaliyah. Our platoon had been split in half. The first class continued searching houses for weapons. I was with the second class and Sgt. Obama with the missiles. We were still stationed in the six story apartment building.

So I sat there on the third floor next to our SPIKE missile launcher, waiting for orders to start letting the missiles fly. There had been a disagreement between myself and Sgt. Obama over the placement of the launcher. Safety guidelines strongly discouraged launching a missile inside a room as small as the bedroom where I was located. The fiery backblast from the missile needs about five meters (18 ft) to spread out or else the shooter (yours truly) will be severely burned. Sgt. Obama swore that the bedroom of 3 meters (10 ft) was big enough. I disagreed, but hoped he was right.

I also argued about the practicality of shooting the missile at all. The ideal range of the missile is about 2-3 km, maybe even a little more. We were having problems with a few random snipers and some RPG teams at a distance of about 800 m to 1 km. I could hit them, but it would be difficult and honestly not worth the price of the missile, especially seeing that we had numerous tanks stationed nearby.

But nobody ever listens to me.

Later I was at the missile launcher and the RPG team returned. They fired another one. This one came much closer to hitting their target. Fortunately they miscalculated the range, and the RPG dropped just short of the apartment building itself. It exploded mere meters away from the building, missing both me on the third floor as well as the 150 propane tanks on the bottom floor. I almost fell from the force of the blast as it made its impact against the walls and windows of the building.

The tanks maintained a consistent bombardment of the city. Shaft and I began to make a game of it. We began placing bets as to the exact minute that the tanks would fire the next shell. The bets consisted of beer, burgers, and shwarma (roast meat, usually lamb, in a pita) that we pledged to buy for each other. At first I was losing, but then recovered after a double-or-nothing bet. By the time the tanks were done I owed both Shaft and Axel a burger and they owed me three beers. If we all survived it sounded like it would be a nice "guys-night-out" after the war.

Because I was functioning with Sgt. Obama as the lead missile specialist I was temporarily replaced by "Comrade," a Russian-Israeli immigrant as the lead sharpshooter. He continued with Captain America clearing out various building and searching for weapons.

He found a Beretta 9 mm.

But then he turned it in.

I was really upset. The one time I was temporarily replaced as lead sharpshooter he found a $1,500.00 handgun and just got rid of it. Obviously it was prohibited to acquire such things for oneself, but now it will probably just be locked away forever in an obscure gun warehouse and never see the light of day again.

Oh well.

I was also on a personal mission to find myself a pair of shoes. At the beginning of the operation my boots had been badly torn and damaged just from all the foot travel. I was beginning to have a serious problem with water and sand getting in my boots during marches or in the middle of combat, which obviously isn't a good thing. In every house we cleared I searched for a pair of boots of some kind. We stumbled upon a large supply of Hamas military-style uniforms complete with combat boots, but they were all too small. So my next hope was that the following Hamas operatives we killed would have large feet. Fortunately, however, there was no need and our logistics finally got me my new IDF boots after over a week of requesting.

During the entire operation all electricity in Gaza had been cut. In the apartment building we had found a small radio and jerry-rigged a military battery to it. For the first time in almost two weeks we could listen to the news. We still couldn't turn the lights on, however, for fear of snipers and RPG teams. So we sat in the darkness, next to a glowstick, and listened to voices from the outside world. After the news we switched channels to a popular Israeli radio station. We started taking shifts at the missile and lookout points, enabling the other soldiers to rest. I lay down on a mattress on the floor in the faint light of a single red glowstick...

I drifted off to sleep for a few priceless hours.

Now we made our push forward. Our ultimate target was the city of Jabaleah, just outside Gaza City itself.

The assault was massive. We moved past a group of depots and warehouses. We then began to clear out a tall, six or seven story apartment building. We wanted the Retik, or heavy fire crew, of the Maslul (on-the-job training) Platoon to set up on the higher levels and cover our advance with their .50 caliber machine guns and their automatic grenade launchers.

Platoon 6 and Platoon 8 were in the front, as usual. I worked with my partner, Sgt. Baruch Obama, with Axel and Shaft backing me up from behind.

It was amazing to watch. One thing in particular that I remember was the tracer rounds. The heavy machine guns have a red tracer round every so many bullets so the gunner knows how many rounds he has shot and how many he has left. The red tracers look like lasers, and when the Retik starts firing multiple machine guns at once it is like something from a science fiction movie.

I was surprised when we entered the neighborhood. I had thought the Hamas houses before were affluent. But this was ridiculous. In all of my urban warfare training I had prepared for cheap, cinder block housing and shacks. These houses weren't merely mansions. They were palaces. I had trained to move from dumpsters to piles of debris. In reality I was ducking from one enormous Greek-style pillar to the next, and then charging through a beautiful rose garden. One of them even had a swimming pool in his back yard! The interior was even more elaborate, with marble floors, chandeliers, and even gold paneling in the bathrooms. I had seen few houses in Los Angeles or Orange County, California, that could be compared to these estates. And I was in the middle of the Gaza Strip! If you ever wondered where all that humanitarian funding went, now you know. Half of it went to missiles and AK-47's. The other half, apparently, went to fund the ever-so-essential interior decoration of the "suffering" Hamas Palestinians.

I recalled for a brief moment the non-Hamas Palestinians that I had encountered and their simple residences, as well as the mentally handicapped individual "living" in the shed. If only the world really knew…

But there was no time for that now. I was in the middle of a firefight. Hamas attempted to offer a strong resistance. They had already tossed a handgrenade at our Palchod (Forward Rifleman) Company and had moderately wounded a few of their soldiers. I thought for a second about my friend in the Forward Riflemen, "Koala Bear," from Philadelphia and wondered how he was doing and if he was okay.

I continued to scan the windows and doors of the neighboring mansions for terrorists. Axel and I put random, well-placed bullets into the windows while Shaft used his 7.62 mm MAG machine gun and strafed entire floors. We even saw several terrorists in the manor next door. We fired. We were unsure of the outcome.

We did scare most, if not all, of the terrorists out of the mansions and they made a hasty retreat down the street in order to regroup. It was a bad plan. The moment they left the "safety" of the houses the Cobra Gunship helicopters began to mow them down with their nose-mounted Vulcan cannons. Those that survived the choppers fared no better. Our Platoon 7 commenced firing their highly-accurate mortars into the narrow street. The explosions destroyed everything and everyone. It wasn't a pretty scene.

We had effectively set up a trap. The Hamas operatives resisting us had two choices. They could remain in the houses and be shot by me or blown up by our handgrenades and rocket launchers. Or they could attempt to flee and face death from above via helicopters and/or mortars. It was quite a dilemma with no positive outcome.

In that night alone we confirmed over thirty kills.

It was near dawn. We had been advancing and fighting all night. The final step of our mission was to clear out another six story apartment building. We would be spending the next day or two there, setting up both SPIKE missile positions as well as recon posts.

Because we didn't want Hamas initially to discover we were there we went in quietly and without any shooting. Previously we had entered every house with a coordinated pattern of shooting, grenade throwing, and covering fire from other platoons. With this apartment building we entered "dry," as they say in Hebrew. This term means we did not throw any grenades or shoot, but entered slowly, quietly, and cautiously, ready to shoot only if a threat was identified.

We entered the first floor silently and carefully. It was dark, but the room was full of many identical objects. I peered through my night vision scope but still couldn't identify them. I cautiously walked over, hoping that they weren't what I thought they were.

They were.

"Um… Lieutenant," I hissed to Captain America. "Did you see--"

"Yes, I saw them," he responded. "I know."

About half of the bottom floor of this apartment building was covered by over 150 large propane tanks. I know. I counted them. Each propane tank was about twice the size of the propane tanks commonly used for motorhomes in the United States.

It was not a Hamas trap. The landlord of this apartment building was simply an idiot that saw no problem in storing massive quantities of propane in a residential building.

If we had tossed a grenade in that apartment building or even started shooting like we had been doing all night about half of Gaza would have seen and heard us disappear in a gigantic mushroom of fire. Beyond doubt our entire platoon, maybe even the entire company, would have been killed.

I have been asked if I had experienced any miracles during the war. That was it. That was my miracle

We received orders to recommence our mission and to leave the house. So we left. Once again, however, the mission was postponed. We advanced only slightly and moved into a beachside resort house. The house itself was beautiful but rather uncomfortable. It was still under construction and therefore lacked furniture.

A strange feature of this house was pigeons. But not just any pigeons. I have never, ever encountered birds like these. I mean, they were like giant Hamas pigeons from hell. It sounds stupid, I know. But these pigeons were first of all huge. And they weren't afraid of anything. They would waddle up to you and become openly irritated at you for "invading their space." They would actually start pecking at your feet, expressing their annoyance. They wouldn't leave you alone unless you physically shooed them away. Then they would fly around the corner of the building for exactly thirty seconds and then return, twice as many of them as before, and literally start attacking you. I have never seen anything like it in my life. It was so freaky we even made videos of it.

In this house we met up with Platoon 5, the Recon Platoon. I soon found my good friends, "Wee-Man" from South Africa and "The Glowing" from Connecticut, USA. As soldiers always do, we began swapping stories.

Wee-Man and The Glowing related a story involving a true miracle. The Recon Platoon had been advancing to another position. Because they are reconnaissance, they are often, but not always, much farther forward than most other platoons. In this particular case they had moved so far ahead that the tanks had not yet realized their presence. The tanks received the wrong coordinates of a Hamas squad, saw the Recon Platoon, and fired a shell at them. The shell landed in the sand at the feet of a Russian-Israeli commander. The sand, however, apparently had not been dense enough to detonate the shell. It skidded "harmlessly" to a halt about a meter away from him. He stood there, staring in shock at the unexploded tank shell.

Another battalion of the paratroopers wasn't so lucky. Their 1^st lieutenant had led a platoon into a house and conquered it. Similarly the tanks had been unaware of their incursion and had received distorted coordinates of Hamas activity. To make it worse the 1^st lieutenant briefly took off his helmet, presumably to adjust the straps. The tanks put a shell into the house through the window. This shell, however, did explode. He was killed instantaneously.

(Note: I have heard an alternate report of this story insisting that the 1^st lieutenant was killed by a Hamas RPG attack. After a brief personal investigation I have determined that the account given by Wee-Man and The Glowing involving friendly tank fire is more accurate.

I also heard a report about an almost successful attempt by Hamas to kidnap one of our soldiers, but was never able to get enough details or verify the validity of this rumor. Any information or comments about either incident are welcome.)

Not all the stories and rumors heard in the army are accurate or truthful. In fact, most of them probably are not. At one point I even heard a claim that one of our best special forces units had located and rescued the previously kidnapped soldier, Gilad Shalit. I immediately discredited this rumor as false, as it obviously was.

They had another story for me. They were making an urban assault when one of the sharpshooters of Platoon 5 spotted a figure in the window of a neighbor house. He called it in. The person was dressed in a civilian sweater, standing near the window, and taking notes on a notepad. It was obvious that he was spying for Hamas against the Israeli advance. The sharpshooter received permission to fire. He misjudged the range, however, and barely missed, hitting just above his head. It turns out that the figure was the soldier of another battalion entirely. While stationed in the Hamas house he had become cold, put on a civilian sweater, taken off his helmet, stood next to the window, and began making notes of… I don't know what. It was not a very smart thing to do. And he almost paid for it with his life.

And so now I will address the question that has been posed to me many times: "Why so much friendly fire?" Basically there are three reasons friendly fire occurs.

First of all, there is something called "The Fog of War." When everything is literally blowing up around you the human body enters a state of shock that makes proper and accurate communication very difficult. The deafening noise doesn't help either. An entire group of people trying to function in this state of shock, noise, and confusion is highly problematic. One of the most important goals of military training is to reduce this shock to a minimum and to teach soldiers to operate automatically and according to instincts. While training helps dramatically it does not totally eliminate the shock factor.

Another problem is a lack of "originality," as it is called in Hebrew, with the differing units and battalions. Within Paratroopers 890, especially the Heavy Weapons & Recon Company, I usually know exactly who is going where and doing what without even thinking about it. You just know from months, even years, of training and experience who is going to do what, where, why, how, etc. We do not, however, necessarily have the same knowledge as to what the tanks, for example, are going to do. Likewise, they do not necessarily know how we move and operate.

And then we must consider that people sometimes just do stupid things, either from shock or some other unknown reason. While stupidity to this level is rare, all it takes is one person not using their brain to take out an entire platoon.

If there was one definite mistake of Operation Cast Lead it was the amount of friendly fire. As aforementioned it is very, very unfortunate that the majority of casualties were from friendly fire rather than Hamas reprisal.

Finally we received our orders. We were to continue farther south to Jabaleah, very close to Gaza City itself.

We prepared to leave that evening. At about 5 pm we started to move. We proceeded for about five minutes, and then we were told to return to that same lousy house. The mission had been postponed. I'm still not sure what the reason was. I know it was partly due to a suicide bomber squad led by a certain Hamas woman. I have bestowed upon her the moniker of "Delilah." Delilah headed a suicide bomber and RPG squad that irritated us throughout the entire operation. They would move, intel and/or recon would spot them, and then they would disappear, most likely entering abandoned houses.

So we returned to the house and waited, keeping a careful eye out for Delilah or one of her crew.

Meanwhile we came up with a new culinary discovery. Being tired of tuna, Shaft, Axel, and I actually requested a few cans of Loof in our next logistic drop. What is Loof? You are simply better off not knowing. But it is basically Kosher corned beef in a can. If there was a Kosher version of Spam, it would be Loof. I am not sure who the man was that brought the curse of Spam upon the non-Jewish world. But someone apparently thought that the Jewish people, especially the Israelis, should not be exempt from this affliction. They made Loof as a Kosher substitute, using Kosher beef instead of pork. Loof is so disgusting that there have actually been efforts and even movements to ban it from the army. Somehow it has managed to survive the negative onslaught, and it is still an important part of IDF field supplies.

I remember one time back in training I got a hold of a few extra cans and mailed them to my friends in the United States. Not being able to read the Hebrew very well they were unsure of what it was. They opened it and decided it was dog food. Their golden retriever loved it.

Anyway we discovered a way to make it palpable. We chopped the Loof first into very small cubes. We mixed it with onions and various spices. We then cooked it on a propane burner with a touch of corn oil and placed it into a roll. It actually wasn't too bad. Either that or we were just that sick of tuna and mini-salami sticks.

We dubbed our new sandwich "The Meaty Axel."

We were officially sick and tired of waiting in that same house. The army and/or politicians needed to make up their minds what they wanted to do.

This night, for some strange reason, we were ordered to leave the house for one night only and guard the logistics rendezvous of Battalion 101. I'm still not sure why we were sent. And it was cold. Really, really cold. It reminded me of our first night in Gaza, but not quite as severe.

Being in Gaza with little to no contact of the outside world we really had no idea what was going on in the rest of the world. What we did know is that the world was angry with us. Big shocker there. We did not know, however, that almost the entire country of Israel and especially the Jewish communities outside of Israel were behind us and supported us. Even the more left wing political groups that normally disapprove of military operations in Gaza were in favor. The question in Israel was not so much "Should we?" as it was "How should we?" Or, more specifically, "How much?" and "How far?"

We did hear, however, that Hezbollah fired missiles at northern Israel from Lebanon. We all groaned when we heard this news. I had always been worried about that. The last thing I wanted was a war on two fronts. The paratroopers especially are the most mobile of all the military units. That meant that if we survived Gaza we would be immediately sent to Lebanon, or at least, to the northern border. We later heard that Hezbollah vehemently denied responsibility for the missile attacks and it didn't happen again. They probably saw what we were doing in Gaza and thought twice about bringing the "Zionist War Machine" back into southern Lebanon. I hope so. That was kind of the idea.

We also received news about our mortar platoon, Platoon 7. Hamas had set up two missile positions on the roof of a school and demanded that the classes remain in session. With at least 35 children beneath, Hamas terrorists commenced firing the Russian-made "Grad" missiles towards Ashkelon, Ashdod, and my apartment.

So what do you do in that situation? My friends sat in their APC and aimed their Keshet-system heavy mortars. They had the missile launchers and their crews targeted. They knew that if they pushed that button, they would probably kill dozens of Palestinian children. But they also knew that if they did NOT push that button, there was a good chance that they would kill dozens of our children. So what did they do?

They pushed the button.

The missile crews were immediately destroyed, the missile threat eliminated, and the lives of at least 35 Palestinian children extinguished in a single moment.

It is still considered an "international incident" of great debate to this day.

It brings to mind a quote by Golda Meir, former prime minister of Israel.

"There will be peace in the Middle East when the Arabs love their own children more than they hate ours."

And just for the record I have the following message to say to Hamas or anyone that is upset with IDF military operations:

WE DO NOT ENJOY KILLING CHILDREN. STOP SHOOTING MISSILES FROM SCHOOLS AND HOSPITALS!

It's not a difficult concept.

Are the lives of their children worth bad publicity for the Israeli army? Only they can answer that question.

First and foremost, I want to say that today was a very happy day for me. I finally got my toothbrush! We had been told to place all toothbrushes and similar items that we did not absolutely need for the initial assault into a bag. The bag would then be delivered to us on the morning of the second day after the initial entry.

Yeah, right.

Somewhere along the line our logistics misplaced the bag. So this whole time I had been without any toothbrush or deodorant of any kind. In my mind it was our new, secret weapon against Hamas: eating tuna for a week with no toothbrush in sight! Our breath and body odor alone would kill them. Finally after a week of not being able to brush our teeth logistics sent us all new toothbrushes and toothpaste. I don't know who donated them but I want to truly thank them from the very bottom of my heart. (And for all the other donations, by the way.) I brushed my teeth… twice. I reveled and delighted in the wonderful, minty freshness.

I hope everyone realizes the kind of sacrifices I was making and the hardships I faced for the Jewish people… Just kidding.

We were still in that same house. Waiting. There was some kind of debate amongst the generals as well. Some were in favor of pushing south and proceeding all the way to the edge of Gaza City itself. Others preferred that we exit and then reenter and conquer ****, an area known for weapons storage. (Censored for security). We waited for our orders.

The 1^st lieutenant of the Heavy Weapons & Recon Company, Captain Crunch, informed us of another small assignment. There was another neighborhood that needed to be searched. This neighborhood was abandoned but was not a Hamas neighborhood. It was a Fatah area.

Captain Crunch and Sgt. Obama led the squad, checking the neighborhood for weapons. As the lead sharpshooter if there was a locked door I would shoot it. (It works better in the movies). Even after shooting the lock the door wouldn't always open. In such circumstances Danny-boy would simply blow it down with the "Simon." The "Simon" is a "small" flat-head explosive device attached to the end of the barrel of the M4 rifle. Danny-boy would fire a live round. The force of the bullet would then propel the flat, disk-like explosive against the nearby door. The disk would explode on contact, and ideally blow down the door. It usually worked really well.

We searched numerous small houses. These Fatah members apparently suffered financially for opposing Hamas, and were living in small one room shacks compared to the Hamas mansions. It was a unique feeling walking into a small house and seeing a huge photo of Yasir Arafat framed on the wall. We were in a completely different world. But the strangest thing of all was that after I exited the small house and checked the roof I could see the smokestacks from a factory in nearby Ashkelon.

Home was close, and yet it never felt so far away.