Battalion 890, under Yitzhik Mordechai, were in trouble. “Go. Find them. Help get them out.” I knew Yitzhik personally, from his years in the paratroopers’ elite Battalion 890. I knew the man who was now in overall command of the paratroopers even better: Uzi Yairi, who was in charge of Sayeret Matkal during my final years of reserve duty at Hebrew University. Helicoptered into the Sinai just hours earlier, the paratroopers had been sent to the Chinese Farm shortly before midnight. As I would soon learn, they had no more idea than I did about what they were about to face. They were told they were going in simply to clear out bands of “tank-hunters”. They weren ’t told of repeated attempts by some of Arik’s top tank, paratroop and reconnaissance units to take the farm over the previous 36 hours — attacks which had not only failed, but had cost dozens of tanks and hundreds of men. Without artillery, armor or air support, they immediately came under rifle, machine-gun, mortar and heavy artillery fire. Our job was to get them out. Ordering my men to get ready for our first combat mission of the war, I found myself face-to-face with a distraught and determined friend from military intelligence. Yishai Izhar had arrived at Bren’s headquarters the day before. When he saw me, he’d asked to join my battalion. He was a brilliant electronics engineer and was about to assume command of the technology unit in military intelligence. I told him we already had our complement of tank crews, and I knew he’d never had any armored training. So I found him a place in one of our APCs. But before joining military intelligence, he’d been a company commander in Battalion 890. Hearing that we were going to rescue his old unit, he insisted on joining me on the lead tank. I tried several times to refuse, but he said I had no moral authority to stash him in an APC when we were going in to rescue his friends and comrades. Aware that each wasted minute might cost more of the paratroopers’ lives