The story of Corporal Yehuda Worzdesheim is one of tenacity and loyalty to his fellow soldiers under fire
A twenty year old IDF paratrooper from Baltimore suffered a serious bullet wound to his hand, refused to be evacuated and stayed to fight on with his company in some of the bloodiest combat during the war in Lebanon. Reporter Arik Weiss wrote his story in the Israeli daily Maariv.
A young IDF paratrooper from the U.S. city of Baltimore is one of the heroes of the war against Hezbollah. The story of Corporal Yehuda Worzdesheim is one of tenacity and loyalty to his fellow soldiers under fire.
Yehuda’s remarkable story began in August 2004. When most eighteen year old American kids were preparing to be college freshmen, he said good bye to his parents and flew off to Israel. His intention was to be a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces and he didn’t waste any time.
Four months later he had joined the IDF, volunteering for the Paratroopers, no less. His first grueling mission was to learn Hebrew; he was sent on an intensive language course. Then it was into very tough basic training of the paratroopers which he passed with flying colors.
He was assigned to the elite Battalion 101.When asked why he had left the U.S. to come to Israel, Yehuda didn’t quite understand the question. He replied: ‘The pioneers who came to Israel over a hundred years ago didn’t know what they’d find. It was the same for me; I just felt it was something I wanted to do’. But did he like what he found? ‘Naturally it was difficult to adapt to a new culture and language.
My basic training in the paratroopers was also very tough. Aside from the physical difficulty I also thought it would be hard mentally because I was on my own without a family. But I found terrific guys in the paratroopers. Every time we went on leave one of them would invite me to go home with him to his family. That made it a lot easier’.When the war began, Yehuda’s battalion was one of the first to cross into Lebanon to take on Hezbollah.
He got a new kind of wake-up call on the first morning when a Katyusha rockets slammed into a wall nearby. It was then he realized he was in a war. Their first objective was to storm the Hezbollah stronghold at Marun Aras where the fighting lasted three days. On July 24th his company was ordered to reinforce Golani infantrymen who were battling at another Hezbollah fortress at Bint Jbail. It was here that Yehuda says he engaged in real face-to-face combat with Hezbollah: ‘There was gunfire there I had never dreamed of.
Shooting from everywhere, shells exploding all over the place, it was crazy. But we knocked out eighteen Hezbollah commandos’. Several days later a rocket crashed into the building where Yehuda’s company was stationed. He recalls: ‘In a second all my training took over; I stopped thinking became a real soldier. I jumped outside where a fire-fight was raging. They were shooting and launching rockets from all possible directions.
I ducked for cover back into the building and saw many of my comrades were being hit by bullets and shrapnel. I tried peeking out a window to target terrorists but the fierce gunfire made it impossible. I yelled to our guy with the heavy- machine gun to start spraying Hezbollah so that I could also get off some rounds. When he did I crawled back to the window only to find my hand was wet. In the excitement I thought it was only sweat but later I saw it was soaked in blood’.
Yehuda was taken to a make-shift medical room for the wounded in the building. The doctor looked at his hand and said: ‘Yehuda, the war’s over for you’. Yehuda had other ideas. After the doctor bandaged his hand, Yehuda told the doctor: ‘There’s no way I’m staying here with the wounded and let the ‘Hevre’, my guys go on fighting without me’. He ran back to his commander who said: ‘It’s alright with me if you can keep on fighting’. He then crawled back to his firing position at the window and started looking for terrorists. ‘I spotted two and took them down one after another within seconds’.
The paratroopers managed to clear out the area and drive back Hezbollah. When the evacuation of the wounded began Yehuda refused to leave. He fought on with his company for another three days before they were returned to Israel. Yehuda recalled: ‘So it hurt a little, but in war there are things you simply must do. It’s not pleasant but someone has to do the job’. When he finally did make it to a hospital, the doctor there was not so philosophical: ‘Yehuda you’re an idiot. Didn’t you realize you could have lost your hand if infection set in’.
The doctor was not the only one to ‘chastise’ him. His commander later told him: ‘Yehuda you may be an idiot, but you’re one Hell of a soldier!’ It was only back in hospital that Yehuda could start contemplating what he’d been through in Lebanon: ‘It really starts getting to you. The friends you lost or about the family of the Arab you killed. Even if he was the enemy, he was still a human being’. Back in Baltimore, Yehuda’s parents were worried sick. The war was on, their son was serving in the paratroopers and no word from him.
‘During my first telephone call, my mother couldn’t stop crying. It took me a while to calm her down – but she finally understood I was alive and okay’. Does Yehuda miss home in Baltimore? He replied: ‘I think Israel is now my home more than America – that’s despite all the confusion and the war’.