The evening star was a gem in the sunset, the air was growing cooler and the breeze fresher, and in the purple twilight the memorial was a dark small hump due west, where the horizon was still streaked orange. The battalion commander, Raful Eitan, a small leathery moshavnik who could smile charmingly or be coldly cruel, rounded up and mustered his troops; a good drop, only a dozen light injuries among four hundred jumpers. Raful marched the three companies westward on a vague road like a camel track across the chilly silent desert. Not a living creature or growing thing in sight. Of Egyptians, no sign. Four hundred marching men, looking like a lost patrol in the empty expanse of sand and rock under a vast dark bowl of sky.
At the memorial, by the last fading light and brightening starlight, they quickly laid out their defense perimeter, digging themselves in, setting up blocking positions and ambushes along the camel track, and activating the air guidance beams. As the soldiers were eating field rations, welcome black shapes came droning in under the stars, and down floated clusters of parachutes bringing jeeps, mortars, ammunition, guns, food, water, and medicine to paratrooper cheers. The aircraft sounds died off in the night, and the battalion was marooned in the wilderness, a small lightly armed parachute force, meat for any armored attack.
***
“Ben Gurion has a high fever.”
Clean-shaven and bright of eye, Moshe Dayan strode next morning in the small hours into Pasternak’s inner office in the command headquarters, housed in a decrepit hut on the old British air base outside Ramle. There were newly dug command bunkers on the base too, but Sam Pasternak did not intend to use those holes. So far the Egyptian air force had not stirred, and if it did, he said, he would stay where he was and count on Egyptian marksmanship for his safety.
“The Old Man’s been under a great strain,” said Pasternak.
“All the same he’s plenty alert, and he wants to know what’s happening.”
Pasternak wearily gestured at the transparency over the big wall map of Sinai. A large red circle designated the paratroops far out at Mitla, and two stubby black arrows at the Egyptian border, north and center, showed infantry incursions that could be pulled back fast. Dayan asked, rapping his knuckle at the Mitla marking, “Has Arik Sharon moved yet to join them?”
“He signalled half an hour ago, ‘I’m going.’ He hadn’t received half the six-wheelers we promised him, so he commandeered every civilian bus and automobile he could lay hands on.”
“That’s Arik. Now you track down those six-wheelers, Sam, and order them to rendezvous with him!”
“I’ve done that. Meantime he’s rolling.” Pasternak pressed a buzzer on his intercom. “Yael, bring me that despatch from Raful…. First word from Mitla, Moshe, and it’s disturbing. His signal equipment was knocked out by the drop, and just came on again—”
Despatch board in hand, hair flying, Yael hurried in. Dayan glanced at the top sheet and initialled it. “So, a couple of Egyptian patrol jeeps came upon Raful in the dark, and got away. So what? They won’t know what to make of it. Neither will Cairo. Not until there’s air reconnaissance—Yael, you need sleep.”
She was slumped against the map, red-eyed and yawning. “Sam needs sleep. Coffee, Dode Moshe?”
Dayan shook his head.
“I’ll have more,” said Pasternak, and she went out.
“After I talk to B.G., I’m flying south,” Dayan said.
“Where in the south?”
“Where they’re fighting.”
“Moshe, you’re needed here.”
“I need to see the soldiers, and it’s good for them to see me. The campaign is all laid out. Stay in touch, let me know of anything I have to act on.” Dayan was peering at a time chart on the wall, displaying the projected day-by-day actions of the next two weeks in four vertical columns—Israel, France, Britain, and the United Nations. “You’re very optimistic about the UN, aren’t you? No decisive vote for ten days? Cut it in half.”
“Why, Moshe? Everything depends on the Americans. The Russians will scream and threaten, but do you suppose Eisenhower will throw over his allies? He’ll cry, ‘Shame, shame,’ yes. Hard action, no.”
Dayan vigorously shook his head. “That fellow Dulles will throw over England and France, all right. We’re in a race against that old nag, if in fact this happens today.” His stiff finger pointed at two entries in the French and British columns: Ultimatum. “Otherwise we’re doing KADESH alone. Which is okay, too. Let’s have a look in the war room.”
At the center of the wide room lined with operational charts, female soldiers at a broad table map were pushing here and there markers symbolizing Egyptian and Israeli brigades or battalions, and moving pins that showed front lines. Young officers at desks or at the charts, many wearing earphones on long wires, were tracking events in a busy hum of talk punctuated by telephone rings and much barking into receivers. Pasternak and Dayan walked around the room, querying the officers and encountering from one after another, responses such as, “There’s no reply”… “We can’t get through”… “The signal was garbled”… “I’m only guessing….”
When Yael handed Pasternak coffee, he put the cup to his mouth without thanking or looking at her. “The fact is, Moshe,” Pasternak growled, “communications are terrible. Bad equipment, insufficient training.”
“All the more reason for me to go to the front.” Dayan swept an arm at the animated staff room. “As for the picture that’s forming, so far so good. I want a plane standing by at 0430 hours.”
“It will be there.”
Dayan left. Yael approached Pasternak with a meat sandwich on a paper plate. He said shortly, “I’m not hungry.”
“You don’t know whether you’re hungry or not.” She spoke in low familiar tones. “You don’t know what you’re doing. It’s a wonder you’re standing up. You haven’t slept in forty hours, do you realize that?”
“You’re keeping score?”
“I’ve made up the cot in the underground room.”
“It smells like a grave. I’m not going down in that hole.”
“Yes, you are. Moshe said to me, ‘Take care of Sam, he’s doing a wonderful job, he’s irreplaceable.’ That’s what he said, word for word.”
“All right.” Pasternak took the sandwich. “I’ll eat.”
“You’ll sleep,” said Yael in a bossy half-whisper, “right now. I’ll wake you in an hour—or sooner if anything important comes through.”
“Well, then check on those six-wheelers that were supposed to join Sharon, you hear? And tell Uri to warn the officer in charge that if they don’t rendezvous with Sharon, he can start preparing for his court-martial.”
In the bunker, instead of getting under the coarse blanket on the cot, Pasternak lay down with an army coat over him, and pulled a string to turn off the naked light bulb overhead. Yael came down the steps with a flashlight, and ignoring his grumbles took off his boots. “It does smell like a grave,” she said. “Nice and peaceful. The Rehovot six-wheelers will meet Arik, in fact they’ll get to the rendezvous first.”
“What did you buy at the Galeries Lafayette?” he muttered, half-asleep.
“Huh?” Half-asleep herself, Yael took a moment to grasp the question. “Oh? You mean in Paris?” It all seemed to have happened months ago.
“Where then? In the Mitla Pass?”
“Well, if you really want to know, some oo-la-la French underwear.”
“Ah! So? That’s something to look forward to.” He tried to fondle her as she wrapped the coat more closely around him, and she struck his hand away.
“Oh, you think so? You can just go on looking forward.”
“You’re keeping up that nonsense?”
Yael had not been sleeping with Pasternak for a couple of months, as her dissatisfaction with her status had become acute. Such a freeze had happened before, it had melted in a return of passion, and now it was on again.
“No, I’ve put a stop to all nonsense, once for all. Never mind that stuff, Sa
m, rest.”
***
She found her brother Benny in Sam’s office, wearing a fleece-lined cap, rakishly tilted, World War II movie style. Unlike most officers in the command hut he looked rested and cheerful. “Here’s the report Dode Moshe wanted, on my mission,” he said.
“Moshe’s come and gone. The story we heard about you is pretty wild, Benny.”
“Well, you read it and see.”
She slid out from the envelope a flimsy sheet of air force stationery, filled with single-spaced typing.
October 29, 1956
Interim Action Report—Urgent
Subject: Failure of Equipment.
1. My group was assigned the mission of interfering with enemy communications, to prevent reports of the parachute drop at Mitla by cutting overhead telephone wires in Sinai. Four Mustangs were specially equipped for this task with weighted hooked cables to wrench wires from poles.
2. The mission was flown on schedule. However the hooked cables were torn from the planes by the wires, or were lost en route to the objective. Equipment proved too flimsy for the purpose.
3. Therefore it was decided to attempt severing the wires by means of our wings and propellers. This was done, and the mission was accomplished. All assigned lines were cut.
4. However this method is hazardous, since aircraft must fly within 4 meters of the ground and possibility exists of wires wrapping around propellers or damaging wings. It is suggested that stronger cable hooks or some more effective cutting device be used.
Benny Luria, Major
Commanding
Yael stared at her brother, who was finishing Pasternak’s half-eaten meat sandwich. “You actually flew this mission?”
“Me and three other guys. Why?”
“Whose raving mad idea was that propeller business? And how could you take such a risk?”
“Well, the fact is, Yael, last month a student pilot on the base flew into some telephone wires by mistake and cut them. He and his plane survived. So we knew it was possible. And it wasn’t so bad. Just a heavy bump and a shaking up. I missed my wires twice before I cut them.”
“Were the planes damaged?”
“Some dents and scrapes. My plane’s propeller was nicked. Mustangs are tough workhorses.”
They were both doing movie acting; the pilot feigning nonchalance, Yael pretending to be indignant. In fact she was bursting with admiration for her brother, and Benny with admiration of himself. Flying into those wires had been a nasty sweat.
Pasternak came in with Zev Barak, who had just arrived all tuckered out and badly needing a shave. “Yael, I couldn’t sleep. Hello, Benny—You know about this guy’s wire-cutting lunacy?” he remarked to Barak.
“I heard something.”
“Sam, why aren’t we attacking the Egyptian airfields, do you know?” Benny brashly inquired. “By dawn they’ll all scramble for sure. They outnumber us four to one. We’re missing the best chance we’ll have.”
“Don’t ask questions that aren’t your business.”
“Whose business is it to fight the Egyptian air force? Anyway, there’s my report.”
Yael said, “Two kids and another on the way, and he does a crazy thing like that.”
“Crazy family,” said Pasternak. The brother and sister went out together, smiling.
When they were out of the room Barak said, “You could have told Benny in general what’s doing.”
“Told him what?” Pasternak snapped. “That an air strike is an outright act of war, and until the British move we have to pretend all this is just a raid? You tell him in general without violating security, if you can! You have my permission.”
Barak was studying the transparency over the wall chart, with markings of the projected advances into Sinai. He moved his finger along the southern axis, which began at Eilat, the southernmost point in Israel, and ran two hundred miles down the eastern Sinai coast to Sharm el Sheikh, the lower tip of the peninsula. “Sharon’s got a tough job, but my brigade’s may be harder. We have poorer vehicles, our troops are older reservists, and it’s no terrain for six-wheelers. We can’t carry enough supplies to take us all the way to Sharm el Sheikh. That’s clear.”
“Those are your problems and Yoffe’s,” said Pasternak. Barak was Colonel Avraham Yoffe’s deputy commander. “Our whole objective in this war is to reopen the Straits of Tiran, no matter what the French and British do, so don’t talk nonsense, just find a way to solve your supply situation.”
“Well, I asked the navy about resupplying us at Dahab. That’s about halfway to Sharm. Unfortunately, the landing craft that could carry the supplies from Eilat are in Haifa.”
“In Haifa? Why in Haifa? Why aren’t they in Eilat, when we’ve had terrorist action and war plans in the south for months?”
“That remains a question. Balagan. Ask the navy.”
“Bring the craft to Eilat overland.”
“I’ve just been looking into that.”
“Well?”
“Actually it’s feasible. They could go by rail from Haifa to Beersheba. There they could be loaded on flatcar trucks and taken to Eilat.”
“Then there’s your answer.”
“No. I took the trouble to check the route. It’s obvious that the craft can’t get past some structures along the way—stations, sheds, warehouses, the usual.”
“Demolish them.”
Barak’s worried face relaxed in a grin. “Really? And who gives permission for such destruction? And who pays?”
“That will be attended to. You do it.”
Yael returned, her face somber, and handed a despatch to Pasternak. “New word from Mitla.”
“Hm!” Pasternak initialled it and showed Barak the message. ARMORED ATTACK ON THIS FORCE AT DAWN ANTICIPATED. URGENTLY REQUEST AIR COVER.
“Rouse the French liaison officer,” Pasternak ordered Yael. “It’s getting warm for your friend Don Kishote.”
“Him? He’ll brush off the shells like dandruff,” said Yael, going out to the war room, which was now in tumult.
Barak and Pasternak looked at each other. “Long way from that fancy French villa,” said Pasternak.
“Long way to Sharm el Sheikh,” said Barak.
17
Musketeers and Omelettes
Don Kishote lay on his back in a foxhole, looking up at the brilliant desert stars and thinking a tired soldier’s thoughts—flickers of awe at the black endless universe, flickers of longing for Shayna, for her slim body in his arms, flickers of concern about that puzzling last meeting with her, flickers of recollection of the crazy time with Yael in Paris, which made him laugh out loud in the dark. French whore, indeed! That Yael was something, though he wanted no more of her than he had had. A she-leopard! “Something to do once…” Exactly so, Yael!
The Egyptian armored column heading for Mitla Pass had been knocked out by the air force; so far, so good. But after a day of hard labor piling gun emplacements of rock and sand, and of enemy air attacks that had done no damage but broken up the work, he was worn out. The rumored news from elsewhere was all cheering; victories up north, and Sharon’s relief brigade well on the way, capturing or bypassing fortified outposts and due sometime tomorrow. Snugged down for an hour of sleep before going back on watch, well sheltered from a brisk cold wind by high sand heaps ringing the hole, he was drowsing off when prickling nerves roused him. What was that? Faint rumble; on the ground, or in the air? Night attack? He grabbed his gun and jumped out of his hole. All around him shadowy paratroopers were emerging from the earth with their weapons. Then somebody shouted, “Arik!” The cry went up here and there, and he discerned a crawl of black beetles in the starlight, a column miles long under a drifting dust cloud, far off to the northeast.
“Arik! Arik!”
He too joined the yells that greeted the riders on the trucks, busses, tanks, and half-tracks, as they came clanking and roaring in, many with hissing radiators and thumping flat tires. Jubilant paratroopers capered alongside th
em, shouting hurrahs. Soldiers jumped down from the vehicles, bewhiskered, greasy, and sandy, embracing and kissing others just as dirty and unkempt. Amid the reunions none was more joyous than that of Don Kishote and a big pudgy redheaded soldier. They pounded each other’s backs, and tasted grease and dust in breathless kisses on bristly cheeks.
Kishote loved Aharon Stein, this fat not-too-bright kibbutznik, called Jinji for his red hair. Jinji had nearly failed the paratroop course and the platoon leader’s course, and he loved Kishote for helping him pull through both. In background they were unlikely buddies; Kishote a Polish Cyprus immigrant, Jinji a son and grandson of Deganya Aleph pioneers. A total sabra speaking only thick native Hebrew, ignorant alike of the outside world and of the Jewish religion, Jinji knew only simple Zionist socialism as an outlook, and competition with Deganya Aleph peers as a way of life. He had twisted an ankle in a harness jump, and then cracked two ribs on a rock in his first airplane drop. The course commander had advised him to try artillery or armor instead. But he was from Deganya Aleph, he was going to be a paratrooper or die, and he was a paratrooper, though still a platoon leader, while Yossi had advanced to company command.
“What a march! You’ll go down in history,” Yossi exclaimed. “From the Jordan to Mitla in a night and a day!”
“Biggest balagan you ever saw,” said Jinji hoarsely. “We won a couple of good fights, that part was all right, but planning, supply, maintenance, spare parts—nothing! I’m dying for water. Can you spare a drop?” Kishote pressed his canteen on him. “Punctures, breakdowns, engines conking out, I can’t begin to tell you. We were mobilized at such short notice, we got going so fast, that nothing was organized. I changed vehicles four times on the way, and—”
“But you’re here.”
“I’m here, and you’re right, we’ll go down in history! You were under air attack, hey?”
“No problem. Our air cover showed up. When they saw our planes they skedaddled.”
Jinji dug an elbow into Kishote’s side. “Look there.” On the hood of a jeep nearby, Raful Eitan and Arik Sharon had spread a map and were bent over it, conferring by flashlight. Sharon held the wind-whipped map down with a long knife from his hip sheath. A burly blond sabra with a gory repute earned in planning and leading ruthless reprisal actions, Sharon looked as begrimed as any of his men. “What next, do you suppose?” Jinji asked.