First, there was silence.

Only the muted give of brush under the weight of their packs. The elite engineering corps of the IDF slid down the steep incline, boots failing for purchase, gravity taking the rest. The white of their night vision scopes bled through the rain and the black, flattening the Litani River into a pale line below.

Mortars from a hundred Hezbollah positions. Fast enough that the air buckled before the sound reached them.

One dead and twenty-seven injured.

Nothing above them but the storm. 

Nothing but their cries as the wounded treated the wounded under fire, their blood finding the river and flowing west.

I should have been there.

By the time my half-empty flight from LAX landed at Ben Gurion, my unit was pulling out of Lebanon.........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)