Thrills and chills of two 75-year-olds.

The Mediterranean sparkled beneath us, as David banked the old C-47 Skytrain toward the southeast. The hum of the twin Pratt & Whitney engines was a steady comfort, though the cabin vibrated like a living thing. I’d finally caved to his week-long pestering. He convinced me to come along on a medical aid mission to Darfur in Sudan, a place shredded by civil war and bleeding from terrorist raids spilling over from neighboring countries, with or without the help and knowledge of the Sudanese government. How could I say no to an old friend of my age, a retired Israeli Air Force pilot with a gleam in his eyes and a 75-year-old plane he treated like a third son?

David kept his C-47, the military version of the commercial DC-3 Dakota, on an abandoned British WW2-era airbase in Cyprus. Several collectors of vintage airplanes from the USA, UK, Netherlands, Italy, Greece, and Israel were members of the “Flying Oldies Flight Club”. They kept planes like a Spitfire, Mustang, Grumman, Zero, Heinkel, and more, in perfect flying condition.

David’s two sons, Avi, an aeronautics engineer, and Yoni, CSO of a medical devices company, helped their dad maintain the plane in perfect condition. The boys were also licensed pilots. I was the humble one of the four, only licensed to fly small single-engine planes. The Skytrain was a relic with a purpose. Fitted with two extra fuel tanks, it could stretch its range to 3000 kilometers, though it meant cutting the cargo capacity to just under 2000 kilos.

David was approached by his cousin, Nadav, a trauma surgeon, to help get medical aid to Darfur for which there was so much need. Nadav’s critical care team was operating in a UNHCR refugee camp in Darfur with a team of six medical professionals. They were terribly understaffed and undersupplied. The undertaking was very ambitious, and, I must say, risky and dangerous.

David and his two sons would fly the Skytrain from Cyprus to an Israeli Air Force base, where they would pick me up, as well as three IsraAID volunteers, two physicians, Dr. Miriam and Dr. Lev, two nurses, Tali and Rina, plus 2000 kilos of medical supplies, tents, and generators. With the four of us, we were 11 altogether. From Israel we’d fly to Al-Fashir airport in southeast Sudan. Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the IDF had arranged with Egypt and Sudan that we could overfly their countries with the US-registered Skytrain. The Zam-Zam refugee camp was located 20 kilometers to the south of Al-Fashir.

The descent into Al-Fashir was a nightmare. Crosswinds howled across the runway, kicking up clouds of red dust that swallowed the horizon. David wrestled the controls, his knuckles white, while I braced myself in the co-pilot seat. “Hold on!” he barked as the plane lurched. We hit the ground hard, way too hard. A sickening crunch reverberated through the fuselage as the landing gear buckled on the left side. The C-47 slewed violently, skidding off the runway before grinding to a stop in a plume of grit and curses.

“Everyone okay?” David shouted, unbuckling himself. Avi and Yoni were already scrambling to check the damage, while all of us stumbled out of our seats, shaken, a bit bruised, but overall unharmed. Outside, the left landing gear was a mangled mess, twisted struts glinting in the harsh sun. “We’re not flying out of here anytime soon,” Yoni muttered, wiping sweat from his brow.

Before we could dwell on it, two battered jeeps and a truck roared up, UNHCR markings faded on their sides. A wiry Sudanese driver leapt out, gesturing urgently. “Zam-Zam, quick! No time!” We loaded the supplies onto the truck and piled into the jeeps, the C-47 left stranded like a wounded bird. A wad of US dollar bills to an officer of the Sudanese Army hopefully secured the plane from being plundered.

The 20-kilometer drive south was a bone-rattling gauntlet. The road, if you could call it that, was a rutted track through scrub and sand. Then, halfway there, chaos erupted. A pickup truck screeched out from behind a dune, machine-gun fire, stitching the ground ahead of us. “Ambush!” David yelled, ducking as bullets pinged off the jeep’s frame. Terrorists, likely from one of the border factions, had us pinned. Our driver swerved wildly, tires kicking up dust, while Avi and Yoni returned fire with pistols they’d stashed under their seats. David was looking for the Uzi he had smuggled along but couldn’t find it in the chaos. One of the IsraAID guys, a bulky judoka, took out his Uzi with a big smile. My heart hammered as I clutched a medical bag, useless against lead. I felt for my pistol in case I’d have to join in.

Miraculously, we outran them. The attackers’ truck bogged down in the sand, and their shouts faded as we sped toward Zam-Zam. “Too close,” Dr. Miriam gasped, her face pale. We’d survived, but the adrenaline left us all trembling. The UN peacekeepers at the gate of the refugee camp were a grim lot, their blue helmets dented and dusty. “Supplies?” their commander demanded, eyeing our truck. David handed over a manifest. The man smirked and gave a questionable look. “Not enough. You pay, or you stay out.” Nurse Tali, stepped in, and in fluent Swahili, she negotiated the imminent bribe. She had worked a year in Nairobi before. Finally, 100 US dollars in crumpled bills changed hands before they waved us through. Corruption was the grease that kept this place turning.

The Zam-Zam refugee camp was a sprawling sea of misery, its edges blurring into the dusty horizon. Over 100,000 people crammed into this makeshift city of tents and tarps, their lives upended by Sudan’s relentless civil war and the terrorist incursions bleeding across borders. The moment we arrived, the scale of the crisis swallowed us whole. Almost all refugees were women and children, emaciated figures with hollow eyes, their bodies bearing the scars of malnutrition and disease Starving kids clung to mothers too weak to stand, their skeletal frames wrapped in rags. The only men around were severely injured, some with missing limbs or eyes. The scale of suffering hit us like a punch.

We set up a makeshift clinic under a sagging tarp. The air soon thickened with the stench of unwashed bodies and festering wounds. Hepatitis E and cholera had taken root, spreading fast through fetid water and overcrowded conditions. Dr. Lev diagnosed dozens of cases in the first hour, his hands steady but his eyes haunted. “We’re swimming against a tide here,” he muttered. We threw ourselves into the fray, knowing five days wouldn’t be nearly enough.

The 2000 kilos of medical supplies we’d hauled from the Israeli base, antibiotics, bandages, IV fluids and antivirals, were a lifeline, but were dwindling fast. Dr. Lev took charge of triage, his voice steady as he sorted the sickest from the merely suffering. “Cholera here, Hepatitis E there,” he directed, pointing to two roped-off zones where Tali and Rina hustled to hang IV drips from makeshift poles. I assisted Miriam with trauma cases, lacerations from shrapnel, broken limbs from panicked stampedes, and gunshot wounds from the ambush like we’d survived en route. The generators hummed, powering a single flickering bulb and a water purifier that couldn’t keep pace with demand.

The first day, we treated over 400 patients. A mother clutched her toddler, his skin sallow and eyes sunken from dehydration. We got an IV into him just in time, but his whimpers haunted me. An elderly man with Hepatitis E collapsed mid-sentence, his liver failing. We dosed him with antivirals, but his odds were slim. The children were the worst, malnourished to the point of skeletal, their ribs stark against taut skin. We distributed high-calorie rations from our supplies, but fights broke out as desperate hands clawed for more. By day three, cholera cases spiked, the latrines overflowed, and flies swarmed the dying. Rina wept as she cradled a six-year-old girl who slipped away despite our efforts, her tiny body too weak to fight the infection.

Tribal tensions simmered beneath the surface, erupting into chaos that threatened our work. The camp was a patchwork of ethnic groups: Fur, Zaghawa, Masalit, and a smattering of Arab tribes, each nursing grudges from decades of conflict. The Fur and Masalit, non-Arab groups targeted by the Janjaweed and their successors, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), dominated the numbers, but Arab refugees, displaced by the same war, eyed them with suspicion. On day two, a brawl broke out over a water barrel we’d filled. A Fur man accused an Arab refugee of hoarding, and fists flew, then knives. Avi and Yoni waded in, pulling them apart, but not before blood stained the sand. “They blame us for the RSF,” the Arab man spat, nursing a split lip. “We’re not all killers.”

The next day, a Zaghawa woman refused treatment from Miriam, shrieking that a Masalit doctor had poisoned her brother years ago. “Your tribe can’t be trusted!” she screamed, shoving past me to drag her feverish son away. We lost precious time calming her, convincing her the IV wasn’t laced with death. Later, a Fur elder cornered David, demanding we prioritize his people because “the Masalit got aid last time.” David, ever the diplomat, promised fairness, but the elder’s glare lingered. These weren’t just patients, they were survivors of ethnic purges, their mistrust as deep as their wounds. By day four, our antibiotics ran dry, and we resorted to saline washes for infections, knowing it was futile for many.

Despite the chaos, we made a dent. Over five days, we treated more than 2000 patients, stitched wounds, rehydrated the dehydrated, and curbed the spread of disease where we could. The water purifier, jury-rigged by Avi, churned out enough clean water to slow cholera’s march, though Hepatitis E still claimed lives. The generators kept our lights on, a beacon in the endless night, until fuel ran low on day five. We left behind tents for shelter and a cache of bandages, but it felt like spitting into a fire. The refugees’ gratitude mingled with despair as we packed up. A Masalit woman pressed a tattered scarf into my hands, whispering thanks through tears, while a Fur boy watched silently, his mother’s body in rigor mortis next to him.

Trapped in Zam-Zam by insurgents blocking the northern road, we’d fled west to Abéché in Chad, 300 kilometers away, abandoning the truck and cramming into our two jeeps. Abéché offered a brief respite. A Red Cross outpost patched our exhaustion with food and a few hours’ sleep. But the C-47 waited in Al-Fashir, and David wouldn’t abandon his plane. Anyway, there was no other way to get out of here. A local mechanic with a pickup agreed to guide us back for a steep fee, swearing the route was clear. We should’ve known better.

The return journey began at dawn, the jeeps rattling over cracked earth, the mechanic’s pickup trailing behind. Two hours in, near the Sudan-Chad border, dust clouds bloomed on the horizon. “Trouble,” David muttered, gripping the wheel. A dozen armed men, RSF, by their mismatched uniforms, swarmed from behind dunes, AK-47s blazing. Bullets punched through the lead jeep’s hood. Avi swerved, shouting for us to duck. The mechanic’s pickup fishtailed and flipped, its driver sprawling lifeless in the sand. My heart jackhammered as I fumbled a pistol from under the seat, firing blindly out the window.

They closed in, a Toyota pickup with a mounted machine gun raking our flank. Rina screamed as glass shattered, a shard slicing her cheek. Lev yanked her down, blood streaking his hands. “We’re pinned!” Yoni yelled, returning fire from the second jeep. The RSF were relentless, shouting in Arabic, likely demanding surrender or death. One lobbed a grenade. It exploded short, showering us with dirt. I thought of Zam-Zam, the refugees we’d fought for. Would it end here, 200 kilometers from safety?

Then, salvation roared in. A Sudanese Army company with two dozen soldiers in battered trucks thundered from the east, their machine guns spitting lead. The RSF faltered as bullets tore through their ranks. An officer barked orders, and they scattered, melting back into the dunes. The army captain, a grizzled man with a scarred jaw, waved us forward. “Move, now!” he shouted over the gunfire’s echo. They’d been tracking the insurgents, he said later, and our ambush was their chance to strike.

We didn’t argue. The jeeps limped to Al-Fashir, escorted by the soldiers, their trucks flanking us like battered guardians. At the airport, the C-47 stood intact, its crumpled landing gear a minor wound compared to what we’d endured. Yoni and Avi repaired it while the army kept watch. Without asking, I automatically slid three 50-dollar notes into the hands of the captain. No thanks, just a wide grin. Struts swapped, bolts tightened, we were ready. We fueled up, all of us nursing blisters and bruised spirits.

The take-off was smoother than the landing, David easing the C-47 into the sky with a veteran’s touch. We’d dodged bullets, bribed our way through hell, and patched up a sliver of Darfur’s wounds. The IsraAID team, Dr. Miriam, Dr. Lev, Tali, and Rina were slumped in their seats, exhaustion etched into their faces, while David’s sons, Avi and Yoni, monitored the extra fuel tanks. The first leg of our return, 2300 kilometers to the Israeli Air Force base stretched ahead, the Skytrain’s twin engines droning steadily. I settled into the co-pilot seat, the memory of Zam-Zam’s suffering and the RSF ambush still raw. “Smooth sailing from here,” David said, flashing a grin.

We were barely two hours out of Sudanese airspace, cruising at its max ceiling of 8,500 feet over the Red Sea, when trouble found us. A shadow flickered on the horizon, what looked like an old MiG-15, closing fast. “Bogey, three o’clock!” Avi shouted from the cargo bay, peering through a porthole. David craned his neck, squinting against the glare. “No IFF signal. Could be Eritrean, or worse.” The civil war’s chaos had emboldened rogue factions, and an old C-47 with for them an unknown load was a fat target.

The jet, showing no markings, banked hard, revealing a glint of weaponry under its wings. “Missiles!” Yoni yelled, scrambling to the radio. Before we knew it, a streak of smoke lanced from the jet, a heat-seeker, screaming toward us. “Flares!” David barked, slamming a lever. The C-47 shuddered as decoy flares erupted from its underbelly, twin trails of fire spiraling downward. The flares were antique, but they worked. The missile veered, detonating in a fireball off our port wing, the shockwave rattling my teeth. “Hold on!” David roared, yanking the yoke to dive.

The old Skytrain groaned as we plunged 2,000 feet, engines straining. Miriam clutched her seat, mumbling, while Lev shielded Rina, her cheek still bandaged from the Abéché attack. The jet overshot us, its pilot caught off guard, but it looped back, guns blazing. Tracer rounds stitched the sky, punching holes in our starboard wing. Fuel sprayed from a ruptured line, the acrid stink filling the cabin. “We’re leaking!” Avi shouted, wrestling with a manual pump to reroute what he could.

David juked left, then right, weaving the lumbering C-47 like it was a fighter. “75 years old, and both she and I still got the moves,” he grunted, sweat beading on his brow. I scanned the instruments, fuel gauge ticking down, altitude showing 2,500 feet and plummeting. The jet lined up for another pass, but salvation crackled through the radio. “Skytrain, this is IAF Falcon One. We’ve got your six. Climb to 8,000, now!” Two IAF F-16i jets streaked in from the north, afterburners blazing. The MiG hesitated, then peeled off as one of the Vipers locked on, and with a single Sidewinder, shot it down, disappearing in a fireball into the Red Sea.

We leveled out, the Skytrain limping but aloft. “Fuel’s tight,” Yoni reported, “but the extra tanks will get us there.” The F-16i jets escorted us the rest of the way, their sleek forms a stark contrast to our battered relic. When we touched down at the Israeli base, the runway crew at the airbase gaped at the bullet-riddled wing and scorch marks. David clapped me on the shoulder as we disembarked: “Told you it would be worth it,” he said, grinning despite the gray in his beard. I laughed, too tired to argue. The C-47 had carried us through, a stubborn old warhorse with a heart. The IsraAID team and medical staff stumbled out, pale but alive.

We were greeted by the airbase commander, congratulating us. David wondered how the IAF found out so fast that we were in trouble. A technician stepped forward and explained that they had installed a brand-new tracking system connected to a radar separate from the Skytrain’s radar when we were loading the freight at the airbase. The automated system connected to an Israeli satellite, follows and identifies air traffic around the plane and sends an alarm with details to the airbase in case of an imminent danger. That’s why the “Vipers” could respond so fast. They were already airborne on routine patrol over the Red Sea.

I made it back home, exhausted. At 75 I was realizing that I wasn’t in my 20s or 30s any longer. David called me the following morning from Cyprus. “How do you feel, my friend?” he roared with laughter. “We old veterans showed we could still do it!” Was it worth it? Maybe. But next time David would call, I would think twice before picking up.