“Shot at going in and out.”
“In the countryside?”
“No. In the town.”
“That’s to be expected,” Reich hurled back. Ilana gasped. Gottesmann had not told her he had been fired at by the Arabs. He rarely spoke of his war experiences. Reich noticed the gasp and looked at Ilana. “What’s the place look like?” he snapped.
Gottesmann took one of Ilana’s steep-sided bowls and inverted it on the table. “Looks like this,” he explained in bad Hebrew. “This flat part on top, the Crusader ruins, held by Arabs. From here they dominate everything. Now imagine the sides divided into six segments—a pie. The Arabs hold five. We hold one … this little one. At this upper corner of our segment there’s a rugged stone house which the British have turned over to the Arabs, and here there’s a police station which we’re afraid the British will give them, too.” Glumly the eight Jews studied the impossible situation: only one section held by their people, and it dominated by the Crusader ruins, by the stone house and by the police station.
Then Gottesmann placed a tall book in back of the bowl. Jamming his fist on top of the book he said, “And back here, commanding everything, is the big new fortress built by the British. The Arabs are already moving in.”
Impatiently Teddy Reich reached out with his one arm and swept everything aside. Book and bowl swept across the table, and the impregnable fortress, the stone house and the concrete police station were gone. “How many people are involved?” he barked.
“We have a definite count—1,214 Jews against about 13,400 Arabs. That’s 11.1 of the enemy to one of us.”
“Standard,” Reich grunted. “Will the Jews fight?”
“Two hundred and sixty might … if we can get them some guns.”
“How many have guns now?”
“One hundred and forty.”
“Better than I thought,” Reich cried. “Allon says Safad must be taken. We’ll move in that platoon hiding north of town.”
“Can a platoon do the trick?” Gottesmann asked.
“Simple,” Reich said, not looking up as he jotted notes. “Safad must be taken. To do it we can spare one platoon.” There was silence, then he added, “Gottesmann, if you left now, could you get to that platoon in the hills before dawn?”
“There’s no moon. If we push, we can make it.”
“Start now,” Reich directed as he continued his note-taking. “Tell them they must fight their way into Safad tomorrow night.”
“Very good,” was the reply, in German. If he had any emotional reaction to the difficult assignment he had just been handed, he showed nothing.
“You need any of my men?” Reich asked.
“I’ll take Ilana,” Gottesmann replied. Then he studied the four tough Ashkenazim, but decided against them. “And for our guide, Bagdadi.”
No one in the room spoke. Ilana, standing near the table, made no move.
Teddy Reich looked up from his writing, turned to inspect Ilana and Bagdadi, then nodded, after which he rose, kicked open a door and went into the bedroom, where he threw himself on the unmade bed and said, “While you’re gone we’ll use this as headquarters.” Before Gottesmann and his wife were out of the house he was asleep.
It was customary for members of the Palmach to carry, when engaged in military operations, loads of at least forty kilos each, but in view of the unusual difficulty to be encountered on this trip to Safad, Gottesmann gave himself and Bagdadi only thirty kilos each, sixty-six pounds, while Ilana volunteered to carry forty-four pounds. Normally a hike from Kfar Kerem to Safad could be handled with comfort by the well-trained Jews of the Palmach—an abbreviation for the Plugat Machatz, “striking force,” organized in 1941 to resist the threatened German invasion—for the roads were pleasant, the uphill climb invigorating and the distance only twenty-two miles; but tonight the three soldiers could not use the roads, for they were patrolled by armed Arabs who had killed several Jews attempting night missions. It was Gottesmann’s plan to start due west from Kfar Kerem, then to head north to the eastern flanks of the Horns of Hittim, cross the flat lands west of the lake and finally to penetrate the mountains on which Safad stood. It was an uphill trip of twenty-seven miles. The chances for success were not good, since four main roads had to be crossed. The countryside leading to them was rugged, and all had to be completed before four-thirty, when daylight would begin to break. If the travelers were caught in sunlight, the waiting Arabs could pick them off one by one, as they had the thirty-five Jews trapped in sunlight at Hebron.
But Gottesmann had picked Bagdadi as his third man for good reasons. The plump Iraqi was both skilled as a scout and valiant as a fighter. He knew the terrain well and had an animal sense of where an enemy might be attempting to spring a trap. Starting at a dogtrot, he quickly had his team heading away from the Sea of Galilee. Ilana, lugging a rifle and much ammunition, found no difficulty in keeping pace with the men, and whenever Gottesmann caught sight of her, head back, mouth tightly closed, he felt a rush of love for this exceptional girl who in normal times would have been at the university.
With deft maneuvers Bagdadi got his people across the first two roads leading into Tiberias from the west, then launched the hard climb up toward the Horns of Hittim, and as the sturdy trio reached the old Crusader battleground they could see below the sleeping city of Tiberias, which other Jews would try to capture within the next few days. When Gottesmann remarked on this, Ilana whispered, “May God give them victory,” but Gottesmann had already dismissed Tiberias and was thinking, as he ran, of the historic battle at Hittim which had determined so much history in this part of the world. It’s possible for a nation to make one wrong guess and lose its existence, he reflected. Is this attempt on Safad such a mistake? Bagdadi, apparently unbothered by history, pressed on, and the ancient battlefield was left behind as they headed north.
“Slow!” Bagdadi whispered, and the three Jews froze against the spring earth while a British scouting truck moved down the third of the main roads, its searchlight flashing aimlessly across the fields. Bagdadi kept everyone flat, and Gottesmann realized how much he appreciated the involuntary rest. When the light drifted harmlessly above them he noticed that Ilana had closed her eyes and was breathing deeply, but as soon as the truck passed, Bagdadi whispered, “We’re behind schedule,” and when they rose Gottesmann had to smile as his wife automatically brushed the sand from her khaki blouse and short khaki dress.
They now began a steady dogtrot along a fairly level course which carried them toward the hills but kept them well west of the main Tiberias–Safad road along the lake. These were the hours after midnight, and by pressing steadily Bagdadi recovered some of the time lost earlier, so that when they approached the stern hills on which Safad perched they knew that they had at least a chance of getting to the Palmach village before the sun came up. But now the going became brutal, for Safad lay nearly thirty-five hundred feet higher than Kfar Kerem, and they had to make their way through rocky fields, tempting though the nearby roadway was, but no one protested, for all could feel the still-sleeping sun almost pushing on their backs. When it rose it must not catch them in some gully.
They were now in the heart of Arab country, with small villages on every side, and Bagdadi was proving his skill in leading his team as far as possible from likely Arab marksmen. He halted the march and whispered, “From here to the last road will be difficult. Crossing it will be worse. Then we have a very steep climb. If we run into Arabs, what?”
“No firing,” Gottesmann warned. “Absolutely no firing.” He gave this order more to Bagdadi than to Ilana, for he knew her to be extremely cool under such conditions.
“No firing,” Ilana repeated, knowing what worried her husband.
“No firing,” Bagdadi promised as he started toward the road with swift head-down strides. It was difficult and painful work.
They passed one Arab village, then another, hearing only the dogs barking at the night. They came in sight of the road but held back, for i
t looked unusually ominous, as if snipers might be waiting, and as the three huddled in the darkness they saw something that was both exhilarating and frustrating. Above them, so close that it looked as if it could almost be touched, lay Safad, the lights of its Arab quarter brilliant in the night air. Each Jew wanted more than anything else to climb directly to the inviting town, to the critical focus of their movement, but each knew that he must duck and dodge for several more hours, must cross the dangerous road and then work his way silently into the safe hills north of the town where the Palmach waited. It was as difficult as turning away from the gates of a brightly lit dance when one was young.
“We go!” Bagdadi whispered, and they cut quickly across the exposed road and disappeared into the brown hills on the northern side, where Bagdadi kept his team running up the steep incline that would lead them eventually to the hills behind Safad.
It was now three in the morning, the eighth hour of their march, and Ilana was nearing exhaustion, but she took a small drink from a canteen that Bagdadi carried and shifted her rifle … “I’ll take it,” Gottesmann offered, but she grabbed it fiercely, bent forward and continued up the hill.
“Keep together,” Bagdadi warned. “Arab villages all around.” And for an hour, till his watch showed four, he maintained his killing pace. Even Gottesmann was finding it difficult to stay up with the astonishing Iraqi, but to fall behind would be fatal, and they pressed forward as behind them the first gray light of dawn began to break.
Now Bagdadi’s judgment became crucial. Somewhere ahead lay the village held by the Palmach, but in between stood others filled with waiting Arabs, and to pick an accurate track through the intervening land, to avoid alerting Arab sentries and at the same time to prevent Palmach scouts from firing random shots, required delicate skill. The Iraqi moved slowly, testing the route, until Gottesmann, whose nerves were almost out of control, snapped, “God, man! Move!”
Gently, as if he were rebuking a child, Bagdadi said, “This is the time when we dare not choose wrong,” and like a clever fox smelling out the terrain he picked the only path that would take them between the waiting villages.
But as they reached a spot in the center of the Arab holdings an ugly period came when the sun, weary of night, began reaching for the horizon. It was four-twenty and twilight was about to begin. It was a moment of terror, for each of the three Jews could see the visible shape of the others … far too clearly. Ilana, wanting nothing more than to rest where she was, grew frightened as she saw her husband’s face looming out of the vanishing darkness: it was the face of a man who had driven himself to the edge of endurance, and he stopped running. He could go no more.
“We must go,” Bagdadi warned.
Gottesmann refused to move. He could drive his legs no farther, and he intended staying where he was, within the nest of Arab villages.
“We’ve only fifteen minutes!” Bagdadi pleaded.
Gottesmann could not respond. He saw a depression among some rocks and sat down, while the growing dawn formed a silhouette around him.
“Get him up,” Bagdadi pleaded with Ilana. Tired as she was she went to Gottesmann and pulled on his arm, with no success.
The leadership of the venture now rested solely in Bagdadi’s hands, and emotionally he was ill equipped to exercise it, for his life had been spent, it seemed, in following directions laid down by Ashkenazi Jews: as a boy of two, the son of a large Iraqi family living in Hebron, he had watched the unbridled massacres of 1929, when Arabs had swept over that town, slaughtering all Jews in an apocalyptic fury. In the room where he lay hidden under the bed seven of his family had had their throats cut and their bodies mutilated, and although he was mercifully spared from remembering precisely what had happened, he did vaguely recall pools of blood across which he had crawled when the screaming ceased and Ashkenazi Jews came to rescue him.
He had grown up an orphan in Tel Aviv, where the superiority of the Ashkenazim went unchallenged, and of the older boys who thrashed him on the city dumps, all had been from the superior group. When he applied for jobs he found that Ashkenazim had them, and the few vacancies in schools went to them, too. In the Palmach he had received orders only from Ashkenazi officers, but now, with death imminent, responsibility for one segment of Israel’s future had passed to him.
Realizing that Gottesmann was determined to commit suicide, Bagdadi pushed Ilana away and with two sharp blows struck the fallen German Jew across the face. “You’ll run!” he said. With one jerk of his powerful arm he dragged Gottesmann to his feet and gave him a shove that started him staggering zigzag across the final half-mile separating them from the Palmach village. Turning to Ilana he barked, “Follow me,” and he twisted his way through the last of the Arab territory.
Gottesmann’s irrational behavior had wasted precious minutes and now sunrise was upon them. A shot rang out from the hills, frightening Ilana but awakening her husband, and in the next minutes his clearing eyes began to see puffs of dust as bullets struck ahead of the running Jews, and he thought: Maybe they’ll keep missing. He was not aware that it was his near-breakdown that had thrown his team into this predicament, and a bullet came close to his head, whining in protest as it missed, and ricocheted among the rocks. His lungs were heavy and his legs grew increasingly difficult to manage. He thought: This must be hell on Ilana. He looked ahead to where she was running and saw something which brought him fully back to reality. Ilana, determined to reach the village, was running as fast as she could, but in a straight line. A series of bullets was beginning to zero-in on her, and in a few more steps she was sure to be hit.
In this brief second of agony Gottesmann remembered a man named Pinsker in the German underground. Effective, cold, he had been a little man who expected to fight Nazis the rest of his life. “So when you’re running you will think yourself a rabbit,” he instructed all his men. “For the rest of your life you’re a rabbit and must run as if you knew that someone was looking down a rifle at you. You cannot imagine how a dodge to the left, a dodge to the right, will upset that man looking down the rifle. Gottesmann!” he had screamed. “You’re a rabbit.”
“Nieder!” Gottesmann himself now screamed, but to his horror Ilana kept running straight ahead. A bullet kicked dust at her left heel. He felt sick, then realized that he had intuitively used the German command nieder and not the English “take cover!” He panicked. What he wanted was the Hebrew artza! But before he could call again, Bagdadi looked back, instantly sized up the situation, and with a slight flicking of his hand indicated to Ilana what she must do. As soon as she saw his signal she threw herself flat, rolled over three times and resumed running on a new course. The next bullet struck where she would otherwise have been, and the three darting, dodging, twisting Jews escaped the Arabs and approached the village held by the Palmach.
Now it was Bagdadi’s turn to know anxiety, for in the uncertain light the chances were good that some Jewish soldier would begin firing at anything that was moving; so as he ran Bagdadi unfurled a small white flag containing a hand-stitched blue Star of David and began shouting at the top of his voice, “Palmach! Palmach!”
A quick-thinking sentry in the village sized up the situation and launched a barrage of fire at the Arabs along the ridges. The enemy was driven back and the three messengers from Kfar Kerem staggered the last hundred yards without any Arab bullets coming close to them.
When they approached the rude headquarters, gasping and pressing their ribs together, the sun was well up and they cast clear shadows on the earth. Gottesmann freed one hand and grasped Bagdadi by the Iraqi’s wet shoulder. “You know land,” he said, and before he had finished reporting to the local commander Ilana had found a place on the floor and had curled up like a little animal. After an hour’s talk he and Bagdadi lifted her, and without waking her carried her to a real bed. She slept all day.
At dusk on the afternoon of Tuesday, April 13, the Palmach men roused Ilana and her two well-rested companions. In the small village there
was an air of commitment. Teddy Reich’s command to move forward, infiltrate Safad and take over the local defense forces had been so thoroughly discussed, and its difficulties so accurately assessed, that excitement and fear were pretty well spent. Now everyone knew that a platoon of thirty-three men and girls would creep through the countryside at midnight, crawl on its belly for about three miles and try to sneak into the town through Arab patrols. If the maneuver degenerated into a pitched battle, the Palmach were to return fire but to keep moving forward.
The unit was led by MemMem Bar-El, a sinewy young man who wore a beard and prided himself on his somewhat flashy appearance, his sabra birth and the fact that he spoke no language but Hebrew. He was blue-eyed and red-headed, with the controlled instincts of a true fighting man. His title, MemMem, was derived from the Hebrew initials for platoon commander, and for this job he was nearly ideal. His judgments were swift and clearly communicated; in their execution he was usually in the lead. In normal times Bar-El might have been a lady-killer chewing a toothpick; now he was a battle-tested leader, twenty years old.
He was accompanied by a beautiful girl of seventeen, thin, with dark eyes and clear skin. In all respects she was small; her face and body seemed more a child’s than a young woman’s, and she came only to Ilana’s shoulder, but she piled her hair high on her head, like a Frenchwoman, hoping thereby to make herself look taller. She also wore a boxlike soldier’s cap which always seemed about to topple backward, for she kept its visor pointed skyward to steal additional height. She was unlike Ilana in that she dressed with the flair of a girl who enjoyed clothes, but she was obedient to the other rules of the sabra: no lipstick, no rouge, no shaving. She served as Palmach secretary and was known simply as Vered, the Hebrew word for rose. She had joined Bar-El’s unit in the simplest way: she appeared one morning, volunteering to serve in any capacity, and now she lived in whatever quarters the MemMem could find for her. When questioned she insisted, “At the end of the war I shall attend university.” Bit by bit the men pieced together the fact that she had come from the family of some important doctor in Tel Aviv, but her parents did not know where she was and she intended not to tell them until victory had been won. Sometimes the men found her crying, and this embarrassed her, but the improbable thing was that delectable as she was, she had no boy friend and permitted none to touch her; Bar-El served merely as her watchdog. Gottesmann was surprised, therefore, when this frail child slammed shut the folding table-desk used by the Palmach as its headquarters, hefted it easily in her left hand, then reached with her right for a rifle and loaded on her back additional gear until she had the normal thirty-kilo marching load for girls. He felt an impulse to lean down and kiss her as he would a child, and say, “You can put the toys down, Vered,” but she let him know that she intended marching through the wadis to the relief of Safad.