TWO IAF PILOTS: GUY GOLAN AND RAVIV BRIMMER

Gadi Bossin

Two IAF Pilots: Guy Golan and Raviv Brimmer

© 2015, Gadi Bossin

[email protected]

Gadi Bossin

P.O. Box 20

Kiryat Bialik, Israel

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TWO IAF PILOTS: GUY GOLAN AND RAVIV BRIMMER

April 22, 2015

Memorial Day in Israel

Yesterday evening, Erev Yom Ha-Zikaron, the eve of Israel’s Memorial Day 2015, a friend of mine lit a virtual candle in memory of his older brother who was killed during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He posted the virtual candle on Facebook along with a personal remembrance.

I found the site. It has all the names and photos of the fallen in Israel’s wars.

I searched for two young men in particular.

Both were Israel Air Force pilots. Both perished in the line of duty at age 26. I knew them both as 12-year-old boys.

One was the son of a friend of mine, a man with a big heart I met during my 1965-66 volunteer year on Kibbutz Maayan Baruch.

The other was a pupil of mine when I taught English in the elementary and junior high school grades at the Kibbutz Ayelet Hashachar school.

I found their memorial pages and posted their photos, some information about them and a few comments of mine on my Facebook page.

I began to wonder if they knew each other and then when I read their life stories on the memorial site I saw that Raviv was inducted into the IDF at the end of October 1979, a month after Guy had died. But I did learn that if Guy had lived and continued in the career path he had chosen, he could easily have been Raviv’s commanding officer.

Both Guy and Raviv were born kibbutznikim and both grew up and were educated in Upper Galilee at the high school at Kfar Blum.

Both have been etched in my memory all these many years. Two extraordinary 12-year-old boys.

And now, forever, two 26-year-old pilots.

יהי זכרם ברוך.