The Hope

  “Dayan’s been known to change his mind.”

  “Well!” Cunningham clinks down his coffee cup. “I’d better get going. Do I work through you?”

  “Those are Sam’s instructions.” Barak is tired enough to add, “I’m a sufficiently inconspicuous nobody.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “Chris, what will the Russians do?”

  “Ah. Rude awakening!” Cunningham’s voice takes on a ring. “They figured they had a bloodless Middle East political victory in the bag. As long as the Arabs claim success and you keep winning and clamming up, you’re in good shape. Even when the truth comes out the Russians can’t turn on a dime. You have a couple of days, I estimate. But the Soviet howls, pressures, and threats will come, and they’ll be very ugly.”

  “Will they intervene?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Chris, Sam told me to emphasize again that Israel’s war aim is a cease-fire, with no proviso for return to previous lines. That proviso last time cost us our victory.”

  “That aim is exactly what the Soviet Union will snarl and breathe fire to deny you.”

  “Any time you have to go back, Zev, I’m ready,” says Emily, looking in, clad in a dark raincoat. “If you’re interested, it’s pouring.”

  “Right now. Thanks, Em.”

  The driveway gravel rattles as Emily takes off with a jackrabbit start. She glances at him in the wan watery dawn light. “You look beat. No sleep?”

  “Not much. And you look like a woman in a movie.”

  “Oh? Which film?”

  “Any one of those World War II romances, darling. Pretty lady, black raincoat, slouch hat, turned-up collar, rain—”

  “Your mind’s on war, all right.”

  “That’s the truth.”

  “I suppose Nakhama and the girls won’t be coming to see the horses.”

  “Was that on for today?”

  “I’m afraid so. Your wife is hard to say no to.”

  Barak utters an amused, “Hmph! No fooling.” Then after a moment: “I don’t know why they shouldn’t go. I’m not leaving or anything. Here I am and here I stay. Putting in longer hours to shuffle papers, that’ll be my war.”

  “You wish you were over there.”

  “You can understand that.”

  She puts a wet hand on his. “Well, you once said I really had nothing to do with your coming here. Oh, my love, how that got me down!”

  “I didn’t realize—”

  “No, no, now I’m glad you said it. I don’t want any guilty part of this burden you carry.”

  Rare candor surfaces through his weariness as he kisses her rainy hand. “Ah, Queenie, Queenie, why does anybody do anything? A hundred vectors go into a decision. When I took on this duty I wasn’t wholly unaware that you were here. Can we leave it at that? Anyway, those were my orders.”

  Her hand grips his, then goes back to the wheel. After driving in silence for a while, slowing as they encounter early traffic, she asks, “Are we through?”

  “What?” He is genuinely startled. “Say that again.”

  “You know what I said. Already you’re remote, and getting more so by the minute.” Emily glances at him with wide glistening eyes. She looks entrancing in her careless rain gear. “And listen, sweetie, I’m not fishing for reassurance. You’re not to complicate your mind with me any longer, that’s all. I can disappear with the sunrise, like the ghosts on Bald Mountain, and bless you, thank you, and love you forever. You have to fight a war. Here or there, no difference. Count me out whenever you will.”

  Cunningham brain! Nakhama herself cannot read him better. He has never been sure why he so loves this eccentric schoolmistress, but that is part of it. “Okay, you’re counted out.”

  “Oh, you brute!”

  “Okay, you’re back in.”

  “Oh, you kid! However, my dearest, I mean exactly what I just said.”

  “I know you do, Queenie.”

  “Zev, are you worried about your son?”

  Barak shrugs, pursing his lips. “He’s on patrol in the Red Sea, transferred there from Haifa to relieve command of a gunboat. I doubt the Egyptian craft down there will venture out. Still, we all worry about our sons and daughters. As our parents worried about us.”

  “This will sound icky,” she says, “but I swear there’s a glory about your country.”

  “My country’s an unspeakable mess, believe me, Em. Look, avoid the Chain Bridge, the Key Bridge is better this early.”

  Outside the embassy, Twenty-second Street is now totally blocked with television vans and press cars. The rain has let up. A new large flag, bright blue and white, flaps over the reporters and technicians crowding the entrance. “Let me off here,” says Barak at the corner of Florida, glancing up the hill, “or you’ll get stuck.”

  Her kiss is swift and light. “I know you’ll be snowed under, so forget about me for now. I’ll be fine.”

  “Look, Em, my girls can ride your quieter horsies, but keep an eye on them.”

  “I will.”

  He has to shoulder through the media people—tanim, as he thinks of them, jackals—just doing their wretched job. In an Israeli general’s uniform, failing any real news, he is somebody, so they come yapping at him. He shrugs away the microphones, ignores the shouted queries, and darts inside.

  In sheaves of teleprinter strips and despatches, the air triumph appears the more stunning as details mount. A picture is forming of Tal’s attack in the north: advances, setbacks, severe fighting. Barak knows exactly what it is like out there now, at Khan Yunis and Rafah—a mixed-up racket in the earphones, red tracers crisscrossing the sandy wastes, dust clouds, cannon blasts, shell explosions, failing communications, tanks on fire, guys cursing and yelling in agony, blind maneuvering to find the enemy and avoid shooting friends. He yearns with all his soul to be out in that hell.

  “Ah, Zev. Good! The thing is,” says the ambassador, holding a hand to the sore tooth, “we’re getting overloaded here with paperwork. Can Nakhama come and help out?”

  “I’ll call her.” (So much for the Foxdale horsies!)

  She comes in short order, despite the protests of the disappointed girls, and goes to work handling queries and offers of help from Jewish organizations. They are flooding in so fast that the switchboard is becoming swamped. Barak sees little of her as he fields inquiries from congressmen, military attachés, Defense and State Department acquaintances; all wanting to know—however they phrase it—who is really winning, and what the score is.

  He is also tracking the UN debate. The Russian reaction is coming with unforeseen speed and harshness: immediate total condemnation of Israel, a demand for its withdrawal at once to the previous lines, and “reservation of right to take whatever action the situation calls for.” This is diplomatic jargon for the threat to intervene. “Looks like Moscow doesn’t quite believe the Arabs,” Barak remarks to the ambassador at one point.

  “The Russians know them,” says the ambassador.

  All activity comes to a standstill at noon as the embassy personnel jam the TV room to watch a press conference at the State Department. Already India, France, and most of the others are backing the Soviet Union at the UN. A few Latin American countries are talking about a cease-fire in place with no withdrawal provisos. How come? United States instigation? If so, there is hope. Where exactly does President Johnson stand on withdrawal to previous lines? Any hint of a friendly view? Nakhama is beside Zev, taking his hand, as the good-looking young press secretary, McCloskey, comes to the microphone. The first lines of the statement he reads are innocuous pieties about the need for a return to peace and progress in the Middle East. He pauses, looks around at the tense throng in the press room, and gives the next sentence heavy vocal underlining.

  “Let it be clearly understood that in this conflict, the United States will be neutral—in thought, word, and deed.”

  Nakhama’s hand tightens to a fist, her nails digging into Barak’s pal
m. A dismayed murmur goes through the crowded room. Back to John Foster Dulles!

  ***

  The sun is still high as Don Kishote stands on a breezy dune scanning the narrow entrance to the Jeradi Pass. Hours of daylight left to drive through or shoot his way through; he can certainly wait for Ehud yet a while.

  His Centurions are strung out far to the east, out of sight around bends in the high dunes. The advance from Sheikh Zweid, on the serpentine road through sandy wastes along the railroad track, has been peculiarly quiet. Almost, the force might be out on a Negev exercise. What he is viewing now through binoculars, however, is a sight never beheld in the Negev: masses of Egyptian tanks stationed hull down along the slopes on both sides of the tarred road, out of sight except for the long guns bearing on the entrance. Higher on the slopes are traces of net-covered trenches, row on row. What else is up there under the tricky camouflage? By Soviet doctrine mortars, antitank guns, and machine gun emplacements, backed by heavy artillery; this may be a tougher nut to crack than Rafah junction!

  On the other hand, while the enemy’s will to resist was strong at Rafah, at Sheikh Zweid it was obviously disintegrating. The Egyptian armor division back at the junction, still making things hot for Raful, is probably the best enemy force in the north. Is this monstrous silent barrier up ahead in the Jeradi even manned? Defeated troops fleeing Sheikh Zweid down the coast road may well have brought the fear-stricken cry, “The Jews are coming!” That was just how the Egyptians collapsed during KADESH, after putting up a brave fight at first.

  The responsibility is his. “No heavy battle, go through only if it looks easy.” Vexing orders, and also in his mind is the last word of Israel Tal: “In war nothing goes according to plan, but always remember the objective!” El Arish lies only ten miles on the far side of this pass. He has already come twenty-five miles or more since the start of RED SHEET. There is no word yet from Ehud Elad that he is returning from Rafah junction. Yossi has in fact heard nothing from him or Gorodish on the command net for over an hour.

  He summons the unit leaders to an orders group, mainly to sense their spirit. Like himself, he sees, they are strangely unwearied, fired up by battle, ready to follow him anywhere. Exalting feeling!

  Decision: GO, all guns blazing.

  The mile-long column begins to move, the tanks tightly buttoned up, gunners in all vehicles standing to their weapons. On his half-track, posted midway in the column, Kishote stands beside the gunner, bracing himself on the gun mount to strain his eyes through the binoculars for signs of enemy activity. Ahead, yellow flashes and echoing deep thunder of his leading Centurions firing right and left as they drive through the entrance. And still no response! Kishote is prepared to halt and retreat if the foe begins to put up a fight, but the column is rolling on and on through the defile unchallenged. An ambush as in the Mitla Pass? A shocked paralyzed enemy? An empty shell of abandoned war machines, the soldiers all melted away into the desert for fear of the approaching Jews?

  As his own half-track speeds past the Egyptian tanks, with the machine gun rattling away to one side and the other, Kishote searches for a trace of life, of movement, of watchful crews biding their time, in those rows of bulky Soviet tanks, weirdly close by. Nothing! Closed turrets, immobile guns, silent engines in these superb T-54s, with a few giant Stalins interspersed. Should he order the Centurions to blow them all up, deny them for good to the enemy? A satisfying harvest of destruction! But that will deny them to the armored corps as well. Israel can get hold of these eminently battle-worthy tanks only by capture. Again, again, again, the objective is El Arish! Other fortified Jeradi positions lie ahead that may be manned and ready to do battle. Kishote makes his decision. Leave all this behind, keep going at full speed and charge clear through the Jeradi Pass to El Arish, no matter what.

  As his last machines are passing the entrance he hears sounds of battle from behind him. Report on his headphones; a rear half-track has been hit, and a Centurion is turning to cover it and rescue the wounded. No stopping now! Onward.

  ***

  In the underground command center in Tel Aviv called the Pit, the planning for a counterattack against Jordan—which has now entered the war by sending tanks across the armistice line—is interrupted by an incredible report from General Tal’s field headquarters. An advance unit of seventeen Centurions led by Lieutenant Colonel Nitzan has reached El Arish! It has begun digging in, and is waiting for the rest of Gorodish’s brigade to catch up. The Ramatkhal is delighted but troubled. How can that be? Is the Jeradi Pass really secured? Isn’t there still trouble as far back as Rafah? Tal seems stretched out all along the coast. The staff assures him that the Rafah situation has eased, Raful’s paratroopers are in control, and Gorodish is now returning to the Jeradi Pass with the Pattons. Rabin wants to believe that Tal is doing miracles, but fears the division may be overextended. El Arish by four o’clock is unbelievable!

  Later the news from Tal in fact turns grim. Gorodish has almost gotten himself killed trying to enter the Jeradi Pass. The Egyptians, fully recovered from the shock of the Centurions’ charge, are blocking the entrance with massive firepower, and have wreaked havoc on Elad’s Pattons. Only a remnant has made it through to join up with Nitzan’s Centurions. The entire advance force at El Arish is now cut off, exposed to counterattack by large armored forces nearby. Gorodish is mounting a desperate night assault to reopen the pass, so the supply echelon can reach those beleaguered tanks in time.

  ***

  In the dark of the morning Kishote hears the deep clank and engine roar of an approaching armor force. He puts the weary crews of the Centurions and Pattons, still pulled in a circle for night defense, on battle alert. By the light of a lurid fire billowing over El Arish, the remaining tanks of the Gorodish brigade come rolling into the circle, decimated, smoke-streaked, and shell-pocked. Yossi runs to Gorodish, sitting bowed in his half-track, and cries, “By God, I’m glad to see you.”

  “Well, here we are.” Gorodish lifts a sandy bristly ravaged face. With an almost deranged glare, he grates, “You know about Ehud Elad?”

  In a dead voice Kishote replies, “I know he’s been killed. They told me when the Pattons got here, what’s left of them.”

  “Yes, Ehud’s gone. The armored infantry finished the job at Rafah, and they’re mopping up the pass now. Supplies are on their way. So is Tal. Let’s have a look at your defensive positions.” They walk to Yossi’s jeep, and he adds, “What is that big blaze in El Arish, Kishote? Your orders were not to engage!” As he speaks, shells like meteors streak across the stars, and come whistling overhead.

  “There’s your answer, sir. They started bombarding us, so we returned fire, and we must have hit an ammunition dump. Terrific explosions. Maybe the fire spread to a fuel depot, it’s never stopped burning.” They get into the jeep and Kishote whirs the starter.

  Gorodish tensely asks, “How’s your ammunition?”

  “Shells low, so tanks are holding their cannon fire. Machine gun belts are rationed. We’ve been killing infiltrators, but there’s been no general attack.”

  “You’re lucky. Let’s hope the support echelon gets here soon.”

  It is bitter cold. The jeep drives past tankists littering the sand in their sleeping bags, while others scrape and hammer at tracks and engines. Some soldiers sit around little flickering fires. Yossi asks Gorodish what really happened to Ehud; for the Patton crews who came through were in shock and incoherent, and he was too busy preparing the night defenses to find out much. Gorodish still does not know the whole story, but he tells what he knows.

  On encountering fierce fire at Jeradi he sent Ehud on an end run, he says, to hit the flank of the entrance over the dunes, while with another force he would try to storm the position head-on. The dunes were very steep and soft. The Pattons bogged down. The enemy poured fire on them, and Ehud Elad found himself in a killing ground. As always he forged ahead of the others into the barrage, standing up in his turret. So he perished, one moment ca
lling orders to his driver and the battalion, the next falling into the tank, spouting blood and dead. Eighteen of his Pattons ran out of fuel, and lie abandoned in the dunes. His deputy collected their crews and with some surviving tanks pushed on through the pass.

  “So after that I went in with a frontal attack of every tank I had left,” Gorodish says, “which maybe I should have ordered to start with. Anyway, we broke through in force. The armored infantry came in behind us, and they’re still doing hand-to-hand fighting, but the pass is open. The supply echelon has its work cut out, though, to get here. The road is jammed with wrecks all the way back to Rafah. There’s a big traffic jam outside Sheikh Zweid, a lot of wounded, and—”

  “I’m responsible for Ehud’s death.” Kishote breaks in. “I and I alone. I’ll remember that as long as I live.”

  “Stop this jeep.”

  Yossi obeys. Gorodish stares at him. “Explain yourself.”

  In a few words, Yossi tells him about his unresisted passage through the entrance. “I made a judgment as wrong as a judgment could be. Those Egyptians were just momentarily frightened by the sight of us. They did begin to fire at the tail end of my column, and hit a half-track and a tank. By then we were through, so I kept going.”

  “You did the right thing.”

  “No, no. How can you say that? I should have destroyed those tanks while I had the chance. Blasted them to bits.”

  “Well, then, why didn’t you?”

  “I thought they were abandoned and we’d capture them. Also I wanted to get to El Arish, and I wanted to get here first.”

  Gorodish sits silent for long moments. More shell streaks whine across the sky. “Yossi, your advance to El Arish became the spearhead of the campaign. It made the difference, justified all the deaths and wounds, it’s a sensational success. It’ll be remembered, but Tallik and I will get the credit. As for Ehud, he died because we’re at war…. Let’s eat something.”

  General Tal arrives at dawn with his command group. Standing up on his command armored vehicle in a brilliant sunrise, he talks to the senior officers of the Seventh Brigade, and his voice goes hoarse and cracked when he speaks of the dead and the wounded. “The people of Israel are back home on their holy soil, never to be driven out again, because these heroes, your friends, my soldiers, have been willing to bleed and die like the Maccabees, like the troops of David and Joshua. Now they are immortal. We have broken the enemy here in the north. To the south our soldiers are starting to crush the strongpoints of the foe. Our fighter pilots have destroyed the enemy air forces. We won’t have another day like yesterday. We have been through the worst and have won. I salute you, armor men. On to a total victory!”