“Can you talk about it?” She put the food before him.
“Why not? It’s no secret.” He talked as he ate. “The Egyptians are sitting on truce lines which almost seal off the Negev. We must shoot open a wide enough corridor so that the Negev remains linked to Israel, and there’s no way to build a Burma Road, it’s mostly all flat open sand.”
“So, another long hard battle?” she said with affected casualness.
“Hard, possibly. Long, no. We fight at the end of a dog leash, and—”
“A dog leash?” Nakhama sat down with a cup of coffee. “What are you talking about, a dog leash?”
“I mean as long as the Arabs advance, the Security Council adjourns or dawdles. The minute we turn the tide and start to win—YANK, a cease-fire resolution! Ever since Dayan panicked Lydda and Ramle, the British have been calling for another cease-fire. The Americans tend to go along with them, so it’ll pass any day. We have to do the job before the yank on the leash comes.”
Nakhama shook her head. “Such a bitter way to look at it!”
“The bitter truth, motek.”
“Abba, why you dress?” Noah appeared in pajamas, rubbing an eye. His baby talk was becoming clearer by the week. “No go away.”
“I have to, son.”
“Why?”
“I have to make sure that you won’t have to fight when you grow up.”
“I strong,” said Noah. “I fight Arabs.”
The parents looked at each other over his head. They had never talked to him about Arabs or war. Nakhama said in her rusty French, “It’s the kindergarten.”
Barak shrugged. “It’s in the air.”
She took the boy inside, and returned to dish up the rest of Zev’s breakfast. “So, tell me something about America, at least. What about California? Is it really so beautiful? And you were in Hollywood! Exciting, was it?”
“I liked Washington,” Zev said.
11
A Gentile Trade
In the so-called Ten-Day War between the two truces, the Jews made notable gains. The enemy was more or less cleared out of the north, the front with Jordan was quieted; and they won some connective central territory, which made the narrow jigsaw country more viable. On the other hand, two more attacks on Latrun failed, and in the south the cease-fire left large Egyptian forces inside Israel, at one point still only twenty miles from Tel Aviv. A corridor into the Negev was open, but barely. The Egyptian command refused to discuss a genuine armistice, content to sit on the cease-fire lines for long dreary months of stalemate, with sporadic clashes and casualties far more costly to the small Yishuv than to populous Egypt.
But late in December the forces of General Yigal Allon, now commanding the southern front, stunned the world by thrusting westward deep into Sinai, then wheeling north toward the Mediterranean, to compel an armistice by cutting off the whole Egyptian army still camped inside what had been Mandate Palestine. Once threatened themselves with being pushed into the sea, the Jews had turned the tables and were now thundering toward the sea, the invaded becoming invaders! Result, a frantic UN demand for their instant withdrawal from Egyptian soil, and a menacing British ultimatum to back it up, conveyed by the American ambassador in Tel Aviv. As Allon neared the outskirts of El Arish, the seacoast capital of the Sinai and the key to the enemy’s withdrawal route, the Egyptian government and army were—so experts were saying—on the verge of collapse; and at that point Ben Gurion yielded to the British warning and ordered Allon to pull back.
General Allon flew to meet with the Prime Minister, and pleaded in vain to get the order reversed. Trying to preserve his victory meantime, he sent forces to seize the main junction of Rafah, farther up the coast, on the Palestine-Sinai border. The UN’s withdrawal demand did not apply there, he argued, and the Egyptian forces might still be bagged by this cutoff and compelled to surrender. But under Allon’s threat to Rafah, the Egyptians all at once gave in and for the first time offered a genuine armistice. With the original aim of Allon’s attack thus achieved, Ben Gurion accepted the offer forthwith.
Raging, despairing, Yigal Allon decided to send an emissary to Ben Gurion to plead yet again for one more swift blow at Rafah, to end the war in a way that would force a lasting peace.
***
“I told him!” said Allon as he stood with Zev Barak at a Sinai map hung in his headquarters tent and a sandstorm rattled on the canvas. “I told him that this withdrawal from El Arish would be a disaster for unborn generations to mourn! He wouldn’t listen. Zev, for God’s sake convince him that if we don’t take Rafah and bottle up their whole army, we condemn ourselves and our sons to twenty more years of war. If we do it, Egypt may sit down and talk real peace. Not otherwise!”
“I’ll do what I can,” said Barak. He had lost his fight against going, but was still most dubious about leaving his battered battalion to try to change the Old Man’s mind. He agreed with Allon’s strategy but saw the problem. The dog leash was yanking hard.
“I’m counting on you. You’re a favorite of his. I’m not, God knows. Why, now the bastard has gone and dissolved my Palmakh! We’ll thrash all that out after the armistice, but meantime there’s a war to win. We’ve got it won, Zev, if he won’t throw it away!”
The sand was still lightly hissing on the windshield and roof of the command car as Don Kishote drove Barak through a brownish fog to the nearest airstrip. Barak’s mood was low. Of all things, he did not want to be entrapped again, by an encounter with the Old Man, in some kind of distracting staff or political assignment. He loved his commandos, the light armor battalion, he loved the clear air, pure blue sky, and pristine expanses of the Sinai; in a way he even loved the bleak hard-driving General Allon. Wolfgang Berkowitz, he sometimes thought, was finding himself at last as Zev Barak in this protracted stretch of long desert boredom and brief desert fighting. Harried and busy with maintenance, patrolling, and training, as well as the intermittent action, he felt good to the bone.
One experience above all, in the days just before the great thrust into Sinai, had crystallized for him this growing sense of identity and purpose. Allon’s attack plan called for the commandos to capture at the outset a key Egyptian position on the Sinai border. The road that twisted south toward the border had been fortified with enemy strongpoints, and Barak’s light vehicles could not bypass these with an end run on the desert sands, so the mission looked like a hard bloody slog all the way.
But the archaeologist-soldier Yigal Yadin advised General Allon of an ancient Roman road out there under the shifting Negev sands, which might lead straight and fast from Beersheba to Barak’s objective if it was usable. Ordered by Allon to reconnoiter the area, Barak spent an entire day with army engineers inspecting what was left of the road. The surprising decision emerged that with the worst potholes bridged by stout planks, he could actually advance his battalion on this long-forgotten track of uneven antique cobblestones; another sort of “Burma Road,” in fact, built by men dead two thousand years, some of them perhaps Jewish slaves of the Romans.
When a few days later the lightly armored column went rolling out on that rough road in a cold desert dawn, with Barak bouncing along in the lead over Roman-laid stones in an American-made command car, to spearhead the thrust to drive the Egyptians from the Holy Land; when the stars faded, and an edge of white sun rose glittering up over the Sinai crags, Zev Barak was overwhelmed by a rush of mystic elation, a sense of riding a majestic tide of history which only a Jew could know, and only a Jew in the new Jewish army sprung out of the sacred earth. That exaltation lasted all during the grand rumbling rush to El Arish. And when Allon had to halt just as victory seemed sure, and the chance to win a lasting peace—as Allon asserted and Barak truly believed—was going glimmering, his own mind cleared, once for all.
Farewell, Cal Tech! He was an officer of Zahal, the Israel Defense Force. He would give the career his best years, and he would rise as far as he could, wearing the uniform and protecting the Land.
&nb
sp; ***
Ben Gurion received Barak cordially in his office, and listened in silence to his vehement argument, urged with a Sinai map spread on the desk. “Prime Minister, we can always pull out of Rafah, but meantime let’s take it and hold it!” Barak concluded with a pleading gesture of both arms. “Your bargaining position at the peace table will be that much stronger, sir. Yigal is absolutely right about that.”
“Yes, yes, Zev, that was his argument about El Arish, too.” Stooped over, sad-faced, barely past a serious illness, the Prime Minister stared at him with drooping eyes. “He’s young, he’s a brilliant fighter, but he doesn’t yet grasp that what he can do militarily, maybe I can’t do politically.” A slow shake of the head. “The British aren’t bluffing, I assure you, about entering the war. They never thought we’d win, Zev. They thought there would be chaos and the UN would send them back into Palestine. We can’t give them the slightest pretext to intervene now.” He gave Barak a haunted look, such as Zev had never seen on the Old Man’s face before. “It’s the one way we can lose everything, don’t you see? At the last minute, after all our sacrifices, all our dead, we can lose the State!”
“But the Egyptians aren’t observing the armistice, Prime Minister. We’re tracking troop movements, we’re taking artillery fire… why should we stop?”
“You know why. Because we are the Jews.” With a sigh that was almost a groan, Ben Gurion went on in slow heavy words. “And that’s why I won’t order recapture of the Old City, though now I believe we have the strength. We’ve beaten them all, Zev. North, south, east, we’ve driven them out. We’ve won the war. Our State is established. Everywhere I go I face people who have lost a son, a brother, a husband. It’s terrible. Six thousand dead in our little Yishuv! Enough blood for now. Enough dying.”
“Prime Minister, I say this under four eyes,” Zev persisted in a lowered tense tone. “Unless the commander besieging Rafah hears from me by midnight, ‘No go,’ he’ll attack and capture that junction ‘by mistake.’ Then once we’ve secured the position, Allon will reprimand him for misunderstanding orders. Meantime we’ll be there.”
Ben Gurion removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes hard, and stared at the ceiling, the lips of his broad mouth tightened to a line. Barak knew that look well. A spark of interest! “So, how long would it take him?”
“He’ll have it by morning.”
“Where will you be an hour from now?”
“The Parks Hotel. I phoned Nakhama to meet me there.”
A tired wave of a pudgy hand dismissed him. “So go meet Nakhama.”
***
A dozen or so soldiers wearing caps tilted at absurd angles came tramping into the quiet bar lounge at the Parks Hotel in Tel Aviv, singing and waving beer bottles. They swarmed to the bar demanding cognac, slapping each other on the back, laughing, singing, shouting, making swooping hand gestures of aerial combat. One jumped to the small upright piano and banged out an accompaniment as they bawled
Roll me over in the clover,
Roll me over, lay me down, and do it again!
“Our air force,” said Barak to Nakhama. He sat drinking Coca-Cola with her in a booth, and she was laughing at their boisterous antics.
“But they’re speaking English,” she said. “And what’s that song?”
“Never mind, it’s not nice. Sure, English, they’re mostly volunteers from outside. Our own pilots trained abroad, too.” He waved at a big officer with a toothbrush mustache. “Ezer, hello! That’s Ezer Weizman, the tall one. You’ve heard of him, Chaim Weizmann’s nephew. He won his wings in the RAF.”
“Zev! You here?” Weizman approached with a sizable snifter of brandy. “Not in Sinai? And who’s the raving beauty?”
“Meet my wife Nakhama, Ezer, and never mind the raving beauty stuff.”
“Hello, Nakhama, you’re thrown away on this desert rat.” A charming grin, and she smiled back. “Can I borrow him for a moment?”
In a dark corner of the bar Weizman took a deep swallow and said, “Now Zev, listen to me, and listen carefully. Today our squadron got into a battle with British Spitfires, and we shot down five of them.” The aviator’s eyes gleamed savagely. “Five RAF fighters! We saw them crash! All confirmed! And we all came back, every last one of us. Unbelievable? It’s true!” He was gripping Barak’s arm. “It’s historic, isn’t it? Isn’t it sensational?”
“God, yes. Where did this happen? When?”
“Midday. Over Nirim. They were intruding in our airspace, not a doubt of it, and so we shot ’em down!”
“They must have been Egyptians.”
“RAF, I tell you! Four of us served with them in the war, don’t you think we know the markings? …Ha ha, Zev, will you look at that crazy guy! Go to it, Scotty!” Weizman clapped in time to the music. “That’s Scotty Hubbard, born in Glasgow, his family moved to Rhodesia. Great guy, born flier, he got one of the Spitfires!”
The swarthy little aviator was doing a lively Highland fling on the small dance floor, to a Scottish tune thumped on the piano. All at once Nakhama jumped up and joined him, her cloth coat flying but not interfering with the graceful jigging of her pretty limbs. It was a complete surprise to Barak that his Moroccan wife could do a Highland fling. The aviators gathered around the cavorting pair, laughing and clapping, and Weizman hugged him. “Come on, Zev, let’s make a night of it! Nakhama’s a sweetie! What the hell, we’ve got plenty to celebrate! The armistice is on. Let’s have some fun!”
The bartender came to them. “Major Barak, a call for you.”
It was the Prime Minister’s military aide. Ben Gurion had gone home, feeling very ill. There was no other word.
Silence gave consent. The “mistaken” Rafah capture was on.
***
With Don Kishote at the wheel, the jeep sped to Jerusalem under a starless sky, on a narrow new tarred road. There was no way for Barak to return to the Sinai in time for the Rafah attack; it would be over before he could get there. He was seeing Nakhama for the first time in a long while, and he was eager to snatch a night with her and to see his boy. Holding her hand tightly he said, “So, Nakhama, this is the new Highway of Heroes, eh? When was it finished?”
“Some time ago, ahoovi [my love], but the first time I’ve been on it was in the bus today.”
“Is the Burma Road still being used?”
“For mule traffic, maybe. Anyway, it served its purpose, didn’t it, Zevi? It saved Israel.”
“That’s newspaper talk, darling.”
“Newspaper talk? Why?”
“Well, the road was a great feat, but our soldiers in the field reversed the war, not the road builders. We were fighting heavy battles all that time. If even one of the fronts had broken the Arabs might have overrun and finished us, chick-chack, and the Burma Road would have made no difference.”
“You say that, sir,” Kishote spoke up over his shoulder, “because you didn’t walk knee-deep in mule shit, carrying fifty pounds of flour six kilometers, two and three times in one night. Saving Jerusalem saved Israel.”
“Nobody asked you,” said Barak. “Watch the road.”
As they drove into dark Jerusalem, Kishote asked for permission to stop at Reb Shmuel’s flat, so Barak took the wheel and dropped him off. When he parked the jeep at their apartment house a soldier was waiting outside the entrance.
“Major Barak?”
“Yes.”
“General Dayan wants you to report to Jerusalem Command, highest urgency.”
“L’Azazel!” exclaimed Nakhama. “Inevitable. You won’t even see Noah.”
“I will, motek, no matter what. That’s a promise.”
Jerusalem’s streets were lively with auto and foot traffic despite the cold, probably because of the armistice talk. He was braking the jeep outside Dayan’s headquarters when Ezer Weizman came out, his aspect hangdog, his cap on straight. “You, too?” Weizman greeted him, all gaiety quenched. “When did you get here? He sent for me half an hour ago and I flew up.” br />
“What’s happening?”
“Better hear it from Moshe.”
“Come on, Ezer!”
“Okay.” Weizman looked around at the empty street, and his voice dropped. “B.G.’s in panic. More British bluff, a damn stiff note delivered to his sickbed about those Spitfires. Claims they were unarmed and over Egyptian territory on a photographic mission.”
“Any truth to that?”
“Absolute shit! They mixed it up with us over Nirim. They tried to shoot us out of the sky. We can prove it, they crashed in our territory, what more do you want? There’s the wreckage! The American ambassador can come and see for himself in the morning! But the British are demanding compensation and threatening war again.”
“What did you expect?” said Barak, keeping out of his voice, as well as he could, his own alarm. “That the British Empire wouldn’t react to losing five warplanes to some flying Jews?”
“They can go to hell! I don’t believe the Americans will let them enter the war. Or if they do attack, well, we’ll shoot down more planes! We’ll stop their damn troops, too, at our borders. Leave it to Allon to do that!” He punched Barak on the chest. “And you’ll help him do it!” The aviator jumped into an army car and roared away.
In Dayan’s map-lined office Sam Pasternak was shouting in English on the telephone.
“Ah, there you are, Zev,” said Dayan. “A plane is standing by to take you to Rafah. I’ve already spoken to Allon. On the Prime Minister’s orders, you’re to stop personally all attack preparations, see to an immediate general retreat of all forces from the position, and report compliance directly to him.”
“Why? Why the panic?” Barak expostulated. “Ezer told me about the British note, but still—”
“They’re massing troops at Aqaba. That’s not a threat, it’s a fact. Army intelligence has just issued a war warning.”