This story takes us back to Israel’s early days. It was 1953. The IDF had recently concluded the War of Independence. The navy was beginning to build a force that would defend the maritime border over the coming years.

The first fleet of battleships, “the Great Flotilla,” had only just been established. The commanding officer was Shlomo Erel, who would one day go on to become the admiral of the navy. Until that time he had been on a British ship that sank after it was hit by a German torpedo, served as a captain in the British fleet and had commanded several vessels in the Israeli navy. Shlomo Erel remembers that the flotilla personnel were not yet fully trained as a combat squadron. “We had a mixed group of young, untrained sailors, officers from here and from there, and we were sorely lacking any operational experience.”

Erel decided that large-scale exercises were essential. He asked for and received permission from then-Admiral Mordechai “Moka” Limon to conduct a month-long combat exercise in the Aegean Sea. Limon gave Erel a budget of $1,500 for the drill.

And thus, one morning, the flotilla set sail for the island of Rhodes. The first vessel to set out was the one that would serve as the fleet’s supply and equipment station. The flotilla’s vessels continued from Rhodes to the island of Leros to the north, and then to a four-week-long training exercise all over the Aegean Sea.

Sudden calls for help

The soldiers practiced entering and exiting marinas, bays and ports. They practiced combat and seamanship. The flotilla’s vessels sailed through various ports where the combat sailors practiced a little politics and diplomacy as ambassadors of the newly established State of Israel. So passed four weeks of training, and soon it was time to sail home.

But just before they were supposed to head back, Erel decided to stop at the bay of the southern Peloponnese for ship maintenance and a paint job before returning to the Haifa port. He recalls that this bay, which was nicknamed “the Bay of Paint,” was north of the island of Antikythera. The atmosphere was one of post-training. Everyone was fantasizing about sleeping in their own beds at home.

But suddenly, everything changed. As the ships rode at anchor in the bay, the radio operators received an SOS. They quickly learned that there had been a series of deadly earthquakes in the region, measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale. The earthquakes affected all of Greece west of the Korinthos Canal, the islands of Cephalonia and Zante (Zakynthos), and the small island of Ithaca.

Emergency broadcasts and distress signals flooded the ships’ radios. The calls were broadcast from several locations: the three islands at the epicener — Cephalonia, Zante and Ithaca – and even from Athens, the Greek capital. The signals were received simultaneously by three fleets that were in the area: the American 6th Fleet, a group of British destroyers and patrol boats and the first flotilla of the Israel Navy, whose combat sailors had dropped anchor for a few hours of fun in the so-called “Bay of Paint” before heading back home.

The flotilla’s commanding officer summoned the respective ship commanders for a quick meeting, while simultaneously sending a message to Radio Athens and the navy’s headquarters in Israel. He provided a preliminary report of the incident to the naval headquarters and asked permission to provide assistance. The naval headquarters replied immediately: “Go in and provide assistance.” There was no response from Radio Athens.

‘It felt like the ships were sinking’

The affected islands were situated some 250 to 300 nautical miles from the bay. The trip would take 15 hours, and the ships set sail immediately. “When we approached the area,” Erel recalls, “near the island of Zante, we passed the large U.S. Navy vessel, the Salem. The Americans had said that they would anchor and provide assistance there.” It was agreed that the Israeli flotilla would proceed toward Cephalonia because the damage was greater and the number of casualties was much higher there. The American vessel, because of its size, could not go into Cephalonia.

The flotilla pressed on, headed for Cephalonia. As it approached, the sailors saw a British destroyer, the HMS Daring, drop anchor a good distance away from the shore because of its size. The Israeli ships tried to enter the bay, closer to the capital city of Argostoli along the coast. That is when explosions were heard on deck. They feared that the lower parts had become submerged and that the ships were about to sink, but the noise turned out to be aftershocks of the massive quake.

As the sounds of the undersea explosions continued, the commander of the flotilla decided to anchor in Argostoli. A single ship sailed into the bay while the two others waited outside.

At the same time, enormous masses of earth began to fall into the water with powerful force. The summit of Mount Ainos, some 1,600 meters above sea level, looked as though it had been sliced in two. Smoke could be seen rising from wide cracks in it. Fires broke out and flames could be seen all over the island. From the ships, it looked as though the streets were filled with smoke.

The lead vessel completed its preliminary patrol and briefed the other two ships, which also began to head toward anchorage. The combat sailors began preparing to provide assistance. Soldiers and officers disembarked and entered the city, where they discovered terrible destruction. In the surrounding villages, not a single building had been left standing. They met thousands of wounded, including children and elderly people, who were in very critical condition. Many people were missing limbs or had been crushed. There were also pregnant women. All of them needed immediate first aid.

The soldiers quickly discovered that every so often, they were being blinded by dazzling light. It turned out that the people who lived in the nearby mountains had seen the Israeli vessels and were sending out distress signals using shards of broken glass.

The soldiers began unloading anything that could be used in assisting the wounded. They set up a triage station on the port’s main pier. The highest-ranking physician on the flotilla, Dr. Ashkenazi, together with a younger physician, Dr. Seelenfreud, were in charge of treating the wounded. They decided who would receive immediate treatment and who would have to wait, and performed emergency surgeries. Here a fractured pelvis, there a brain injury, a premature labor, broken bones that needed setting and hemorrhages that had to be stopped.

Although the two Israeli physicians tried to set things in order, they were surrounded by countless wounded people, panic and despair. Chaos reigned.

The British seamen also stepped in: A water hose from the British ship provided water to the city that lost its water supply. The British also provided desalination equipment, shelters for shade, food, stretchers and bandages. They lowered small motorboats into the water, using them to explore the surrounding area in order to find victims and bring them to the Israeli physicians for treatment. Later on, a joint Israeli-British rescue command post was set up. It was as though the British rule over Palestine, which had ended only a very short while prior, had been all but forgotten.

The ship-turned-hospital

The small motor boats that set out to locate the wounded had brought many back for first aid treatment. The Israeli vessel K-28, known as the Mivtah, which was under the command of Arie Brosh, was converted into a maritime hospital, a kind of giant ambulance that ferried the wounded to hospitals on the Greek mainland, a day’s sail away.

Each time, about a hundred victims who had received first aid on the island were brought aboard the K-28. They were later taken to the city of Patras, five hours away. The ship would then turn around, go back to Cephalonia for more wounded, bring them to Patras and its hospitals, and return for another round of evacuation. Some 400 critically wounded people were evacuated aboard the Mivtah.

For three full days, the Israeli officers and sailors labored “with endless dedication and immense devotion,” as Shlomo Erel recalls. The Israeli flotilla was the first to set up aid stations on the beach in Cephalonia. Later, they had assistance from the British. By the end, the soldiers had treated thousands. They used up nearly all of their supplies, food, medicine, water and fuel. They gave everything they had to help the people of Cephalonia.

Slowly, more naval vessels began arriving at the disaster zone, bringing food and fresh water, bandages, medicine, blankets and mechanical and engineering equipment to clear away the ruins. American planes dropped additional supplies. Greek navy destroyers began arriving as well, followed by another British warship. The Italian navy also sent supplies, and even New Zealand sent a ship to provide assistance. El Al Airlines sent an airlift of equipment and clothing that had been donated in London to the people of the Greek islands.

Order was gradually restored, but shortly before it did, the king of Greece declared the representatives of the Israeli, British, American and Greek navies “the provisional government of Cephalonia in every way.” According to the Israeli commander, the multinational command group sat around an overturned box near the collection point where the wounded were assembled, and functioned as a government.

Once the situation appeared to be under control, the Israeli flotilla, which had exhausted nearly all its strength and supplies, briefed the newly arrived ship commanders and began preparing a voyage to the port of Piraeus for some rest, regrouping and resupply before returning to Israel.

When they left the bay, all the other fleets blew their foghorns simultaneously to salute the Israeli flotilla, Erel recalls with pride. The king also came to say goodbye and thank the Israeli sailors. When the Israeli ships entered the port of Piraeus, Greek Prime Minister Marshal Alexandros Papagos came to thank the officers and soldiers and ordered that the vessels be loaded with “the best of everything.” Erel recalls that the Greek press, and even newspapers in other countries, reported on the rescue mission on their front pages. From Piraeus, the vessels returned to their home port of Haifa.

Looking back, this spontaneous rescue operation was the basis for the tradition that developed in the IDF of providing immediate assistance wherever natural disasters strike. It all came full circle when a deadly forest fire broke out on the Carmel in 2010. Among the first to provide assistance to Israel were the Greeks.