“What? You speak Yiddish?” The officer was too beset to be amazed at this bespectacled apparition on a mule. “Good, good, tell these lunatics to stop advancing and get up that hill! Double time! Spread the word!”
But the youngster’s remarkable luck ran out as he rode around bawling this simple order in Yiddish. A deafening shell-burst showered him and his mount with earth and splintered wheat stalks, the mule threw him off and ran, and he landed on a groaning soldier. Rolling off, he became streaked with the other’s blood, which welled from a wound on his leg.
“Pick me up, I want to get out of here,” said the soldier in crisp Hebrew, such as Don Kishote had admired in the Haganah instructors on Cyprus. “If I lean on you, I think I can walk.”
Much shorter than the youngster and very broad-shouldered, the soldier limped along holding on to him for about a hundred yards, through the clamoring jostling recruits. “Wait, I’d better stop the blood if I can.” He tried to tighten a handkerchief around his leg, and toppled over. “Maybe you can do it,” he groaned.
“I think I can.” The youngster tied a crude tourniquet. “How’s that?”
“Better. Let’s keep going. What are you, one of these Cyprus guys?”
“Right, I’m a Cyprus guy.”
“You’re pretty young for that. What’s your name?”
“Joseph.”
“Here you’re Yossi, then.” They stumbled along for a while. “It’s the heat, I guess,” the soldier said in a weakening voice. “I feel terrible, Yossi.” His legs were giving way.
“Then let’s try this.” Don Kishote bent down and lifted him on his back. “Can you hang on?”
“Hey, I’m too heavy for you,” muttered the soldier, wrapping hard-muscled arms and legs around him. The youngster carried him through the trampled field dotted with fallen, groaning, pleading men toward the stretcher bearers, continuously shaking his head to get rid of the flies, sometimes so blinded by them and by perspiration that he almost fell, laboring and gasping more from the heat and flies than from the burden. The soldier on his back hoarsely called, “Stretcher here!” A bearer came on the run. Kishote, or Yossi, took one end of the stretcher, and so they brought the soldier to the field hospital, an open space near Shamir’s headquarters where wounded lay on the ground in bloody moaning rows.
Zev Barak was leaving the scene in the jeep. “Look, Yael, there’s that fool kid who was on the mule. Stop and pick him up.”
She braked alongside Don Kishote and exclaimed, staring at the stretcher he was putting down, “L’Azazel, that’s my brother!” She jumped down and leaned over him. “Benny! Benny, how are you?”
The soldier said in faint annoyed tones, “Yael? What the devil are you doing out here?”
Barak came to the stretcher. “So, Benny, you caught it.” Yael’s brother had once been in a youth unit he had led. “How bad is it?”
“There’s shrapnel in my leg, Zev, but mostly the heat’s got me. I gave all my water to those recruits. They were fainting and crying all around me. Elohim, what a balagan.”
“Let’s put him in the jeep, Kishote. Yael, you sit with Benny and hold him up.”
“Me? Then who drives?”
“I do. Kishote, let’s go.” Together they lifted Benny Luria and placed him in back, with his sister beside him. Barak awkwardly took the wheel, and drove one-handed across the field. “Can you handle a pistol?” he asked the immigrant.
“On Cyprus I practiced.”
“Give him yours,” Barak said over his shoulder to Yael. “And what happened to your helmet, Kishote? It was very becoming.”
“The strap broke and I lost it.”
“Wherever did you get it?”
“A nice old lady in Hulda made me take it. I stopped there for water. She said it was her husband’s, long ago, and I was crazy to go to the battlefield, but if I was going, to wear it.”
“This kid carried me off the field,” Benny said faintly. “His name’s Yossi. He’s b’seder.” Barak was giving them a rough ride through the standing wheat. “Easy, Zev,” Benny moaned.
“We’ll be on the road in a minute.” Barak glanced at Kishote. “You carried him?”
“Till we found a stretcher. I fell on him when the mule threw me off. I’m all covered with his blood.”
“Don’t complain, it’s not your blood,” Benny said, his voice fading away.
“Keep quiet,” said Yael.
As they raced back toward Tel Aviv, Barak questioned Don Kishote about his family and its journeyings. He had one brother, he said, out there somewhere on the Latrun battleground. His mother had died of pneumonia in a refugee camp in Italy. His father had been a dentist in Poland, and was hoping to do dentistry here, but he couldn’t speak Hebrew and would have to learn.
“Where’d you get your Hebrew, Yossi?” Yael spoke up from the back.
“My mother was a religious Zionist. Papa was more of a socialist. Mama sent us to Hebrew-speaking religious schools.”
“Are you really religious?” inquired Yael.
“A lot more than my brother Leopold. Leo says God died in Poland.”
After a silence Yael said, “I think Benny’s passed out.”
The jeep rocked and jolted, and Benny hoarsely exclaimed, “I haven’t passed out, Yael, you idiot, I just closed my eyes. The leg hurts.”
“Nothing to do, anyhow,” said Barak, speeding up, “but get him to the hospital.” He glanced back at them, and Benny gestured at him to go on, go on!
Seen side by side, Yael and Benny Luria might almost be twins, Barak thought; same strong jaw and squarish countenance, though Yael’s softer face was girlishly seductive. In fact they were but a year apart, and in force of character not too different, except that she was all wiles and whims, and Benny was straight, no tricks, very earnest. Once at the youth unit’s campfire, when the talk turned to what the boys wanted to become, Benny Luria had said, “Chief of Staff of the Jewish army.” The others had laughed, but not Benny.
They deposited him at an army hospital, and Yael drove Barak to the new Ramat Gan headquarters. He inquired as he got out, “So, Kishote, do you want to go back to Haifa now?”
“My father isn’t expecting me back. I told him I’d try to get into Leopold’s unit.”
With a wink at Yael, Barak said, “And you’re eighteen.”
“Going on eighteen.”
“Take him to the recruiting office,” Barak said to Yael, “and get him a uniform. That is, if they can fit him,” he added, looking the long bony figure up and down.
“Then what?” asked Yael.
“Then bring him to the Red House. We can use another runner.”
Yael said sarcastically as they drove on, “Eighteen! How old are you, Yossi?”
“How old are you?” returned Kishote, pushing his glasses up on his nose with a forefinger, and giving her an impudent adolescent glad eye. Yael shrugged and let it pass. A Polish dentist’s son, maybe sixteen, not worth even a brush-off. If Zev Barak wanted this kid as a runner, fine! He had helped her brother under fire. He was b’seder.
2
“Colonel Stone”
The air in Colonel Yadin’s little office was grayish with pipe smoke. He broke into Barak’s report when he had hardly begun. “Zev, what are you saying? We knew the Arab Legion had reenforced Latrun. Why didn’t Shlomo?”
“That I have to track down! He says he never got our signal. Yigal, the balagan was unbelievable. A frontal attack in broad daylight in a hamsin—”
“Broad daylight? Mah pitom? They were supposed to jump off in the dark, and storm the fortress at dawn. That was the whole concept!”
“Everything went wrong. I don’t know where to begin. Raw recruits trying to advance uphill into the sun, I tell you, across open fields, against heavy artillery—”
“What about those recruits? Did they run away?”
“They went marching right into the fire.”
“They did?” A wan smile made the chief operati
ons officer fleetingly look his twenty-nine years, instead of a harried forty or more.
“I saw it myself. They didn’t know any better. They’d have tried to climb the heights if Shlomo hadn’t called off the attack. That was the right thing to do. The only thing.”
“I concur!” Yadin vigorously nodded, relighting his pipe with flaring puffs. “So! Ben Gurion was right about those immigrants, at least.”
“They were splendid. We failed them, Yigal. There’ll be far more casualties from thirst and sunstroke than from enemy action. It was a disgrace. We’re not an army yet. Communications were disastrous…”
As Barak went on, Colonel Yadin smoked in grim sad silence, sinking lower in his chair. “I argued against this operation, as you well know,” he remarked at last. “It was unrealistic, suicidal, and I said so, but Ben Gurion ordered Latrun taken, at all cost. Well, we’re paying the cost, and we haven’t got Latrun.” He glanced at his watch. “You’ll have to repeat all that at the staff conference. Tell it straight, and make it short. You’ve met Mickey Marcus?”
“Would that be ‘Colonel Stone’?”
“That’s him.”
“Not yet.”
“You will now. Come along.”
“Why the code name?”
“The British might make trouble with the Americans about a West Pointer advising our Prime Minister.”
In the long low war room, much larger than the one in the old Red House, dishevelled officers sat or stood about the conference table, and large fans whirled the humid air. A muscular balding man in khaki shorts and a short-sleeved shirt was lecturing in English, rapping with a pointer at a large military map on the wall and pausing as a young officer translated. Ben Gurion, coughing and looking feverish, slumped at the head of the table. Seeing Barak, he called, “One moment, Mickey.” The speaker paused. “Nu, Zev, let’s hear what’s happening at Latrun, and talk English for Colonel Stone.”
At Barak’s report of the fiasco, the Prime Minister’s lips tightened in the old stubborn scowl. Marcus leaned against the map with thick brown arms folded, his aspect calm and intent. The staff officers who understood English took in the story with glum faces. The others doodled or yawned.
“Very well, we will attack again. At once!” Thus Ben Gurion, slamming a heavy fist down on the table. “And this time we will take Latrun.” Silence. Gray tobacco smoke rolling in layers, circulated by the whirring fans. “Mickey, go on with your analysis.”
Marcus took up the pointer, and again faced the array of hard-bitten Israeli veterans about half his age. In those weary faces Barak saw a cynical challenge: What the hell do you know about our situation, you fat old American civilian? Marcus had acquired a heavy desert tan, and some credit in the army, by taking part in Negev raids against the Egyptian lines; his doctrine manuals, however, had been received with snickering. He had come from America to share the Yishuv’s dangers, and that was in his favor, but these men all knew that after graduating from West Point he had gone to law school, and thereafter had served only briefly as a reserve officer in World War II.
“Yes, sir. Tactically, then, Israel is a beachhead like the Normandy landing,” Marcus resumed, “and the Arabs have blundered as the Germans did against Eisenhower. Once the British pulled out, the enemy had you at an overwhelming disadvantage—half-disarmed by the Mandate, attacked from all sides, your supplies interdicted except by sea. That was the key to the war. The enemy should have cut you in half by now at Netanya. The Iraqis had less than ten miles to go when they halted, God knows why. Then they could have rolled up your two ports, Haifa and Jaffa, and strangled you.”
Restlessness was mounting around the table: drumming fingers, shifts in the chairs, skeptical glances among the officers.
“It should have been over in a week, as most foreign military experts were predicting. You’ve proved them wrong. By pulling off a classic perimeter defense on interior lines, you’ve survived. You’ve had hard going, but you’ve held your ports. Supplies are coming in. Your beachhead is confirmed.”
Such big-power military talk obviously captivated Ben Gurion, who was listening with bright hectic eyes. But to these officers, Barak realized, particularly the Palmakhniks, who had been battling Arab marauders for years in night fighting amid rocks and sand dunes, it could only be a lot of hot air. Also, calling Israel a beachhead implied that Zionism was an invasion of Arab soil, not a return to the Promised Land. A total American Jew, this guy, however well-meaning.
There was a bright side even to today’s setback at Latrun, Marcus went on. The attack had drawn away much strength of King Abdullah’s Arab Legion from the siege of Jerusalem, and perhaps prevented the Legion from helping the Iraqis drive to the sea. Battles that looked like defeats could bring ultimate victory. “In the next battle for Latrun,” his voice cheerily rose, “you’ll take it, and you’ll lift the siege of Jerusalem!” With this he laid aside the pointer and sat down.
Ben Gurion harshly coughed, blew his nose, wiped his eyes. “Exactly so. Thank you, Mickey.” He switched to rapid Hebrew. “Gentlemen, an imposed cease-fire is in the air at the UN. When it comes, Jerusalem must not be cut off. The road to Jerusalem must be open, and our convoys must be moving freely. Otherwise the UN will award Jerusalem to King Abdullah of Transjordan by right of conquest. That whole preposterous scheme for ‘internationalizing’ Jerusalem will be dropped, forgotten.” He paused and glared around the room. “Absolutely inevitable, and that is King Abdullah’s whole war aim. He knows, as I know, that without Jerusalem the Jewish State will have no heart, and won’t live.”
No comment from the somber faces around the table. After a pause, Zev Barak summoned up nerve and raised a hand. “Prime Minister, has Shmulik reported to you about the bypass road?”
“You mean, about the three soldiers who sneaked through the woods past Latrun? Yes, he has. What about them?”
“Sir, they got from Jerusalem all the way to Hulda via a route in the wilds, hidden from Latrun by a high ridge.”
“Yes, yes, but what kind of route?” Ben Gurion snorted. “A cowpath? A footpath?”
“They went by jeep, Prime Minister.”
“So what? So would the Arabs stand by and let us grade and pave a new Jerusalem road bypassing Latrun? Maybe lend us some bulldozers and steamrollers? Hah? Don’t talk out of turn, Wolfgang, and don’t talk nonsense.”
Marcus asked what this abrasive exchange was about. As Barak translated, Ben Gurion drooped in his seat, said he was feeling very ill, and turned the chair over to Colonel Yadin. “When the meeting adjourns,” he added to Barak, a shade more cordially, “come and see me, Wolfgang. I’m going home.”
“Yes, Prime Minister.”
“But first, I have an announcement. Colonel Stone will be especially interested.” Ben Gurion sat up and coughed hard, looking around sternly at the staff. “The Jerusalem front, gentlemen, needs an urgent consolidation of all forces. No more discussion. No more arguments. A new united command, a new commander. The Provisional Government has decided that this will be Colonel Stone, and he will have the new rank of aluf.” He turned to Marcus, faintly smiling. “That is Hebrew for a duke or a general, Mickey. You’ll be the first general of a Jewish army since Bar Kochba! You will of course receive a written appointment.”
Marcus responded with brisk dignity. “Prime Minister, I accept. I shall serve to the best of my ability.” Clearly he had been primed for this all along. “Gentlemen, at 2000 hours we will meet again here, to confer on my plan for the next Latrun attack.”
Ben Gurion rose, whereupon all got to their feet, and he went out with Marcus, leaving the general staff looking at each other thunderstruck.
***
When the staff meeting ended, Barak came out and told his waiting driver, “We go to Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion’s apartment.”
“Yes, sir.”
Tel Aviv was having a sunny steamy afternoon. War or no war, people sat under café awnings in the torrid heat, drinking tea, eating ice crea
m, and arguing. Sweaty shoppers bustled in and out of stores, and vendors sold cigarettes and newspapers to customers lined up in the glaring sun. How would Tel Aviv handle the news when it came out, Barak wondered, that the first general of a Jewish army since Roman times was an American lawyer?
He was still digesting the surprise. The style was pure Ben Gurion; sudden sharp blow of an axe at a tangled political knot. In Jerusalem, even under the deluge of Arab shelling, the armed commands of several Zionist parties were squandering lives and ammunition at cross-purposes. The two major commands were the army itself, formerly the Haganah, based on Ben Gurion’s labor socialists, and its old antagonist, the Irgun force of the Revisionists; besides these there were the elite Palmakh striking force of the radical kibbutzim, and the nationalist splinter, Lehi. If this complete outsider Marcus could merge the squabblers into one fighting force, marvellous! Barak had his doubts, but he could understand why the Old Man was doing it. None of these factions would accept an overall commander from among themselves, and appointing “Colonel Stone” at least finessed all the rifts.
Ben Gurion had gotten into bed and was thumbing through despatches, resting on large pillows. His wife, in a faded housedress, was feeling his flushed forehead. Colonel Marcus sat in a rocking chair by the bed, looking through papers and scrawling in a pocket notebook. Spread higgledy-piggledy on the coverlet were maps, file folders, and mimeographed reports.
“You have to eat something,” Paula Ben Gurion was insisting. Her dark hair was pulled back in a severe bun, she was short and squat like her husband, and her rugged face was as determined as his.
“All right. Let it be eggs. Zev, what news from Deganya, and what about those French heavy guns? Have they been unloaded?” The Old Man was very hoarse.
“How do you want your eggs?” inquired Paula.
“It doesn’t matter. Fried. Those guns must go straight to the Seventh Brigade.”