I don't know how many funerals I have attended in my life: at least fifty,
probably in excess of one hundred. But I have never attended a funeral like
there was today, a military funeral.
Actually, that's not quite true. Sometime in October 1973, I and my group
on Kibbutz Bet Ha'emek attended the funeral of a pilot who had been shot
down during the war. I remember that I attended the funeral but I don't
remember anything else about it.
There were hundreds of people at today's funeral, almost half of whom were
in uniform. We heard how Lieutenant Sahar Tal was at home on Saturday
morning before he received an urgent phone call to report for duty at
Ashkelon immediately. We heard how his father and brother drove him to the
meeting point and how he checked later on that they had arrived back home
safely. We heard that Sahar was a model officer: shy and humble, but well
liked, both by the ranks above him and by those he commanded.
Whilst the army funeral ceremony is somewhat different to the kibbutz
version, there are several points of similarity. Even so, I think that we
could adopt the final prayer that was sung with great feeling, instead of
the same prayer simply read aloud. Then of course there is the three gun
salute.
In a terrible sense of irony, an air raid siren (from nearby Bet Shemesh)
rang out while we were waiting for the funeral to begin. We were directed to
spread out in the cemetery and lie down with our hands over our heads. A
moment later there was a loud boom as the rocket landed somewhere close;
after a few minutes we were allowed up. A soldier who had laid down near me
helped me get up.
This day in history:
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| 293 | Cooking for Geeks | Cooking, Food science | |
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