Transcript Yitzhak Moore R. 72 Latrun TRT: 30:18:05
Moore: Shlomo Shamir was the commander of the brigade, actually commander of the
operation. He wrote a book which was called To Jerusalem at all Costs. This comes
from the order he got from the Chief of Staff of the Israel army which said “on the 24th of
May from Yadin.” Yadin, who was second in command of the Chief of Staff which said,
“You have to fulfill the order tonight at any price, at any cost.” This is the heading of the
book. This is a very detailed book, sorry you can’t read Hebrew but here are all the
details, all the units, all the personnel, all the operations, detail fully described here in this
book. Now, the order was to free Jerusalem because Jerusalem was cut off for a number
of months already. We only got supplies through to Jerusalem by putting through
convoys which most of them are actually shot up on the way to Jerusalem. You can see
still, the holes (?) of the tracks of the armored cars which were following the convoys.
So, very little supplies came up to Jerusalem in the course of the last few months. So it
was a desperate situation because the Arabs were pressing they had a regular army from
Jordan came up to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was under bombardment and under siege.
Convoys couldn’t get through anymore. So this was the order, you have to go and free
Jerusalem at all costs.
Interviewer: So that explains all of the parts of the battle of the organization and using
new immigrants…
Moore: Whatever it was on any cost, you see it was a very logical because Jerusalem
had at that time about 100,000 Jews and they were cut off. If we wouldn’t have
succeeded, they would have been annihilated. They had no chance of survival because
any unit, any settlement that was captured, most of the people were killed.
Interviewer: Between the two battles you gave me the description of Beit Jees and Beit
Susin and had mentioned to Shamir and had started discussing the possibility of a road.
At the same time, preparations were being made for a second attack. Tell me about that.
Moore: I can’t tell you all the details. On the second attack, I participated; actually the
engineering unit participated by sending a group of demolition group to blow up the
entrance to the Police Station at Latrun, in the fort.
Interviewer: Right. Say that again, that whole sentence. Just ‘cause I think that is an
important sentence and I think you stumbled a little. Just say it again…what you were
responsible for.
Moore: A company belonging actually to the battalion of Haim Laskov was sent out to
capture the fort of Latrun, the police station of Latrun. It was their task. The other group
had to take other villages. This group was sent to take the police station, which was a fort,
by the way. It was built by the British as a fort. I was ordered to send out a section of
my soldiers to demolish the entrance to blow up the entrance. The company sent out, we
managed to get out of the police station. The held the police station for several hours but
the reinforcements didn’t come up.
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Interviewer: Yitzhak I’ve heard from people who were in the half- tracks, in the
armored cars, in the police stations…I’ve heard from people who were in the police
station that part of the…as the battle was happening they broke through the gate, on the
perimeter of the police fort, of the police station and that nobody can explain why,
nobody knows why but the explosion to blow open the inside gate never happened and
for that reason they weren’t actually able to penetrate into the fort itself. Were you ever
able to know why?
Moore: As far as I remember, they penetrated into the fort; they held the fort for several
hours. They were supposed to move on to capture other villages further in up the
mountain. But they were supposed to be relieved by a different battalion who never came
up. In the mean time, the Jordanians or the Arabs came made a counter-attack, took back
the fort. Some of the soldiers that were in there were killed. Some of them were taken
prisoner and were taken to and they became prisoners of war. I lost in this operation
three soldiers.
Interviewer: An additional three.
Moore: An additional three. It’s all registered. It’s all…
Interviewer: Now after this battle…
Moore: This battle actually…while this battle went on I was already deeply involved in
making the road. Because after I presented the possibility of the road and after we took
Beit Susin, I went out with Shlomo Shamir and we reconnoitered together. We found a
way of laying a road which will bypass Latrun. Instead of going through Latrun we
could bypass it further to the south. Since Ben Gurion came every night, as far as I
remember every night he came to our headquarters to see how the battle was going on.
He was very involved in this problem of, this matter of freeing Jerusalem. He knew that
this is a desperate situation. He came up every night and he was and he had the reports
about how it was going on. Probably when he was given the information that we had a
chance of making a bypass, a road, bypassing Latrun, he gave his blessing. From that
moment on I was given free hand to go ahead and do whatever can be done to make the
road. So I started collecting equipment. I went up to the engineering headquarters and I
asked for equipment, for compressors, for a bulldozer, for explosives, mining equipment.
I was given a bulldozer, actually the only bulldozer that was in the Israeli Army in those
days. I was given some…we were sent up to Haifa, I went up with one of the officers in
the brigade headquarters who was a contractor in Haifa and he remembered a place where
you could find drilling equipment for demolitions. He knew we would have to make
demolitions for breaking up some of the roads. The army didn’t have equipment and in
those days there was no army and there was no equipment. He remembered that in Haifa
there is a certain place where he had seen a British army compressor parked in the street.
I knew there was also compressors from the British Army because we had them in our
unit in the British Army. We went up one night to Haifa and we found this compressor
parked in the street. I went with a driver and this officer. He was Deputy Chief of
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Administration of the brigade. We took with us a jelly (?) kind of gas of petrol. We
filled up the tank of this compressor that was parked in the street and then we simply
drove off with it at night. We went up to the dump of this officer, Baruch Katzman, and
from his dump we took drilling bits because we had the compressor we didn’t have any
bits. So we took from his dump drilling bits. We drove away at night to Latrun to start
working. We got the bulldozer and we started doing some more work, more than just
handiwork because otherwise we only had shovels and picks and we couldn’t do very
much. Soon as we had to do some more heavy work we needed a bulldozer and we
needed demolitions. At this stage actually I was more involved with the road than with
anything else. I didn’t follow very much. I came to meetings headquarters meetings and
so on but what I was interested in was in those days was how to get patrolling to
safeguard the working group because we were more or less in no man’s land. So I had to,
in order to be able to have our soldiers do the work we had to have some reinforcement to
make to do the guard work actually at a certain distance. We progressed quite well with
the work. We got almost to the edge of where the end of the ridge was where we had to
go down to the valley because we were on high ground and we had to go down to the
valley what is called the Valley of Ayalon, where Joshua fought. And there we needed
more demolitions. I was sent a group of Kurdish Jewish demolition workers from
Jerusalem who came and joined us at a certain stage because they were experts in drilling
and demolition work. So we started blowing up the rocks. At this stage, I believe that
the Arabs took notice that something is happening at the other side of the line and they
started shutting the area because in the first few days I don’t believe they realized we are
making a road but when we started making demolitions, blowing up rocks, they got the
idea that we are actually doing some engineering work there and they started shutting the
area. So we had to stop from time to time. In the meantime, I believe there was a
setback because a certain position was taken by the Arabs, by a group of Arabs and they
had to be dislocated again from this position which was in the area that we were working.
Anyway, we carried on with the laying of the road because this became actually the main
objective of the whole battle. They still had, I believe two battles during those days but I
wasn’t very much involved with it because I was involved with the road. What happened
is we were working around the clock. We were working I believe for ten days. My
soldiers didn’t sleep really except for a nap outside. We used to get the food brought up
from Hulda, Hulda, where the headquarters was. We used to bring up some food from
Hulda. The boys used to sleep mostly out in the field. They didn’t even have time to
take a break.
Interviewer: Were you also feeling the pressure of the ceasefire that was about to
happen so you knew that you had to…
Moore: We knew that there was had negotiations concerning the ceasefire but in the last
two or three days before the ceasefire, I started feeling the pressure because we started
getting very, very, frequent visitors from headquarters. All sorts of high rank officers
who came up to see how it was getting on because suddenly everyone was interested in
the road. The road wasn’t the objective of the battle; the road was a byproduct of the
battle of Latrun.
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Interviewer: You said last time in November, the phrase that “the road was born by
circumstances.”
Moore: Circumstances because the battle…ok. It’s right. Circumstances…it wasn’t a
preconceived idea. There was no preconceived idea of having a road laid. The
preconceived idea was to break through to Jerusalem. After the battles failed, fortunately
we discovered that we could lay a road, this became the main objective. This became the
main objective. I started feeling the seriousness of the road when we started getting
visitors from headquarters. Suddenly, officers started getting up, General Marcus,
Colonel Marcus who was actually the top commander of the whole battle around
Jerusalem, you know who he was, he was very much a world visit. He was asking me
everyday how was it going. He used call me “boy” because in those days at least 55
years ago I was a boy still. He used to come up and touch me on the shoulder and say
“ok boy, how is it going on, how you doing?” Unfortunately the last night before the
opening, I believe a day before the opening of the road, he stopped at the site where we
were working. He was going to Jerusalem. He was working several nights he crossed
the lines to join the Harel brigade because he was in charge of Harel brigade and our
brigade. That night, I remember about one o’clock at night he stopped at where I was
standing. He came up to me and says “How’s it going boy, how you getting on?” I says,
“ok, yes Colonel.” He tapped me on the back and says “Ok, go on, go on.” He left; he
was killed the same night. Next day, they brought him in a jeep back to Hulda. Anyway,
I started seeing a lot of generals coming up being very much involved, very much
interested in what is happening, and when we are going to finish, whether we are going to
finish and I had already information that next day is going to be the armistice, ceasefire.
And, we had to hurry up. The last piece of breakthrough was made the last night before
the because we were given to know next morning is going to be United Nations
commission observers to verify that the fact there is a road to Jerusalem.
Interviewer: What’s the significance of that? Explain that to me.
Moore: The significance of it is that Jerusalem isn’t separated from Israel because as
long as you have a road, you have a connection. As long as Latrun was closed to us,
Jerusalem was separated, was isolated because all the settlements around Jerusalem were
already captured. There was all the settlements around Hevron that were already
captured by the Jordanians. Beit Ya’akov, that was a settlement north of Jerusalem that
was already abandoned. So Jerusalem was alone, all alone, completely isolated, nobody
coming in and nobody getting out. So the meaning of having a road was that Jerusalem is
in our hands. Because the conditions of the armistice were that nothing can be changed
from what was the day before the armistice, the ceasefire. You can neither add nor
detract. So we couldn’t, I believe they were not allowed to bring in arms, officially. But
we could bring in supplies. So what happened is the night before…[interruption]…the
day and the night before the ceasefire they started to pile up supplies, next to the road so
that next early next morning, supplies can start rolling to Jerusalem. By whatever means,
it was mules, it was jeeps, it was trucks; the road wasn’t really finished because you
could drive down but it was very difficult to drive up the slope because we didn’t have
time to solidify the structure of the road so there was a lot of gravel and trucks used to dig
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in so we had our bulldozer was standing by that every truck that couldn’t get up was
rolled up by the tractor, by our bulldozer. But anyway, when the United Nations
commission came up next morning they were taken to the site and they were shown that
there was a road and trucks are passing and jeeps are passing. We had a waterline laid, a
water pipe laid so that officially it was recognized that Jerusalem is connected to Israel.
This was actually the saving of Jerusalem because the battle failed, so what saved
Jerusalem? Well, that we had a road. First of all, officially it was recognized that it is in
our hands and secondly, supplies could be sent to Jerusalem because people were starving.
Can you imagine, for several months there was no water, the water supply was cut off
because the pumping stations were in the hands of the Arabs so the water supply was cut
off. Fuel was cut off. Supplies didn’t come in. So how long could you hold out?
Interviewer: So those last few days before the final breakthrough was made, there really
was, it sounds like a real sense of urgency, the clock really was ticking…
Moore: It was ticking, it was ticking and it was…You see we were working already
under pressure and I can tell you only an episode. You see I started out with 28 soldiers;
I lost seven in the course of the battle and the work because the first night I lost three, I
lost three at the police station, and one of the soldiers, I told you the one who came as a
new immigrant, who never saw the country really. We didn’t have any patrol to
safeguard us, because we were with equipment out in no man’s land so the unit that was
supposed to come to safeguard the area didn’t arrive. So I sent out the soldiers on an
observation station ahead of us so they picked him up, the sniper picked him up and
killed him.
Interviewer: Yitzhak…
Moore: The situation was so bad that you see I was left with 28 less seven, that’s 21
soldiers working for ten days nonstop. Almost no sleep, just enough time to eat
something. So one day I came to Shlomo Shamir who was our commander. I told him,
“Shlomo, you must do something to get me some reinforcements because the boys are
falling off their feet, they can’t carry on.” So he told me, “Look here, Yitzhak,” because
our situation was really desperate. You can’t, today you can’t even recollect it, how bad
it was. So he told me “Look here Yitzhak, Ben Gurion was here a night or two ago, we
discussed the matter of reinforcements and help to us. So he said that you know we have
a hundred thousand Jews in Jerusalem and if we have to pay with a few hundred
casualties to save them, it would still make a good deal.” So this is something only a big
leader can say because another person would say never mind it would cost a few hundred
dead, then he is considered either crazy or a murderer. A national leader who is
considering a hundred thousand against a few hundred must make up his mind. He must
carry the responsibility for it. He gave me this answer and I had nothing to say about it, I
just carried on.
Interviewer: Yitzhak, I want to try to understand geographically, the road itself. I know
that there were certain sections of the road that were already there and that could be
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passed by small vehicles and by foot. With the bulldozers and the excavation and the
demolition, that was the section that you and your men helped to create, right…
Moore: There was nothing, there was no road because I don’t believe there was ever any
vehicle up to Beit Jees before we came there. It was probably a donkey lane or
something but there was nothing for vehicles. What we did on the first days because
before we even knew that we are going to have a road because we didn’t really realize in
the beginning that it can really be so in the first few days we were doing handwork. We
went out with shovels and with picks and we started to clear the roadway or make a sort
of a roadway so that vehicles can come up. Because I went up with up with a halftrack,
which is an armored vehicle which is a track vehicle that can go up anywhere but we
started clearing the road and we did it quite well handiwork as far as Beit Jees and
slightly beyond. But after Beit Jees, I’ll show you here there is a little, I will draw you a
better map. I’ll get a little organized… I must find it… you don’t mind if I look…Here is
a map of the area where you can see Latrun, here is Latrun, the monastery, and here
somewhere is the police station which you know you would have seen. This is the road I
was speaking about leading from Masmiya to actually head on Latrun, if you remember,
if you drive in the direction of Latrun you come head on to the monastery. And this is
where the battle was fought. Now, the yellow line here is Beit Jees and here is Beit Susin.
This was the first stage which was quite easy. From here on we started because you see
the topography became more lively. So here was where we started excavating and going
up using mechanical equipment. You see this was where the main road went into
Jerusalem what we did was make a bypass joining here a road which was existing leading
from Beit Shemesh from Hartov leading to Bab al Wad. Bab al Wad is the entrance to
the roadway to Jerusalem if you go up to Jerusalem you see there is a fuel station on the
left hand side, this is called Bab al Wad. “Bab” in Arabic and in Hebrew it’s called,
“Sha’ar Ha’gai,” “the Opening of the Valley”. So what we would try to do is join this
road come out to this road and then not go to Sha’ar Ha’gai but go up the mount, there
was a mountain road bypassing this area where the Arabs going up to Jerusalem, this is
actually the map which we had, this is an old English map, pre-war map.
Interviewer: Was the most difficult part then…
Interview is continued on R. 73.
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