by Herman Wouk
So it is that Ehud Elad beats him into Sheikh Zweid. The Pattons are parked far and wide at the railroad crossing, and the crews are already out of their machines, breathing fresh air after hours of choking on engine fumes and gun smoke. Some are asleep on the tanks or on the sand, others eating from cans or cooking over sooty little fires. Egyptians are still being flushed out of trenches and from under tanks and trucks, unresisting and stunned as though the Israelis have dropped on them from the skies. Sand-covered from his boots to his unhelmeted hair, goggles up on his forehead, Gorodish sits in his jeep studying a map. “What! Eleven undamaged Stalin-3s? Kol ha’kavod, Kishote. Let the Russians help carry our arms budget! You went through the junction like a storm.”
“I took some bad losses.”
Gorodish nods. “I’m about to call for those reports.”
The senior officers of both battalions, some bloodied and bandaged, gather at his jeep. Ehud and Kishote fall on each other’s necks, and hug and kiss. “By God, you’re a mess,” says Kishote.
“S’ritot [scratches],” says Ehud through a bandage, with a wry distorted grin on his badly cut mouth. One hand is caked with black blood, and fresh red blood oozes through the crude dressing.
As one by one they tell Gorodish their losses in dead and wounded, and in destroyed tanks, his face falls and his mood darkens. “Well, it’s been a tough fight so far. We’re making good progress. I’m satisfied. I’ll now report to Tallik. Wait.” He plods to the signal half-track, and in a few minutes returns looking exultant, almost radiant. “Now listen,” he says to the officers, leaping into his jeep like a boy and standing up. “There’s news. Aleph, the air force has in fact won the greatest victory in history. That’s straight from Tallik and Tel Aviv. The Egyptian air force no longer exists!”
The officers whoop with joy. They have been picking up fragmentary reports about the air strike, but all they knew was that air support, part of all their war games, has not yet been forthcoming. They have slogged this far entirely on their own. Gorodish goes on, “The Syrians, Jordanians, and Iraqis have all opened fire on us, and our pilots are now taking care of their airfields. By nightfall there will be only one air force in the Middle East—ours! We’ll finish this campaign under a powerful air umbrella.” He raises a cautionary hand at their happy exclamations. “It’ll be hard fighting all the same, but we’ll go faster and farther with fewer losses. Now then! More good news. Raful’s paratroopers are behind us, mopping up Rafah junction. He expects to report it secure very soon.”
“That’s news we need right now,” says Ehud Elad, “more than any other!”
“Next give ear to this! Tal says that what we’ve done so far, breaking through to Sheikh Zweid in five hours, absolutely matches the air strike for valor. It’s a historic tank march. The High Command has called off an attack on El Arish by sea and parachute drop. Unnecessary! Motta Gur’s paratroop brigade is being moved from our front to Central Command, and the honor of capturing El Arish goes to the Seventh Brigade alone.”
The officers glance at each other with kindling pride and excitement.
“That’s the news. I’m the proudest brigade commander in this army. Prepare your units to take to the road at 1430 hours!”
He spreads his map on the jeep hood and is talking with Kishote and Elad about the attack plan for the Jeradi Pass when his signal sergeant approaches. General Tal is calling. Gorodish strides off.
“I’ll go in first, Yossi,” Ehud says. “The Pattons are faster. A column of American Pattons roaring into Jeradi will deliver the devil of a shock. Even if the defenders pull themselves together, you can still hammer through with your Centurions.”
“What you mean is,” Kishote retorts, “you want to take the brunt of any resistance that’s alerted and waiting at the entrance. Nothing doing, Ehud. If Gorodish agrees, what we’ll do—”
“Here he comes.”
Gorodish suddenly is his old self, all crusty business. “Things have changed. Raful is asking Tal for help. He’s run into very strong resistance at Rafah junction, and he can’t secure it without reenforcement. In fact, he’s fighting desperately to save his brigade.” Gorodish’s dour look at them says the rest. Rafah junction in enemy hands at nightfall means the Seventh Brigade will be cut off without fuel and bullets, helpless prey for Egyptian armor forces, some close by.
“Well, I go back then,” says Ehud. “The Pattons are faster, it’s that simple.” He glances at the sun. “It’s only five miles. We can go and return, and still attack Jeradi before dark.”
“Not if the junction is too messy,” says Kishote. “I say I go through frontally with the Centurions as soon as I get there. M Brigade should be arriving about then, so—”
Tal’s mechanized M Brigade has been making a wide swing southward so as to reach Jeradi for a surprise flank attack over the dunes.
“No, that’s another change,” says Gorodish. “M Brigade is bogged down out in the dunes low on fuel, and may not reach Jeradi today.”
A silence. Kishote raps the map with a knuckle. “Gorodish, I can get through the Jeradi just with my Centurion crews. You know how they’ve performed. I can reach El Arish this afternoon.”
Gorodish stares at him, the round sandy face a tough mask. “Yossi, you’ll proceed to the Jeradi Pass,” he says, “and there you’ll make a judgment. It’s your responsibility. No all-out battle, do you hear? It’s not necessary anymore and I forbid it. We don’t have to take more losses such as we’ve had so far today. Not with total air superiority! If it looks heavy, wait for us. Understood?”
“Understood.”
The desert shakes and reverberates with the start-up of the Seventh Brigade’s hundreds of machines. Exhaust fumes in clouds once more stain the clear Sinai air.
“You heard him, Kishote,” says Ehud, as they part with a hug. “No battle. If the pass is hot, wait for me. I’ll be back.”
Kishote can feel the warm seepage of Ehud’s blood on the bandaged face. His eyes sting. “All right, Ehud. We’ll go to El Arish together. Flags up!”
The two columns of tanks rumble out of Sheikh Zweid: Ehud backtracking to Rafah junction, Don Kishote advancing to the Jeradi Pass.
38
Death of a Lion
“Zev? Sorry to wake you. Zarkhan! [Phosphorus!]” The ambassador speaks the code word for war in a sleepy croak.
“Zarkhan? Oo-ah!”
“How soon can you be at the embassy?”
“Half an hour.” Empty streets this time of night.
Rising groggily on an elbow as he dons a fresh uniform, Nakhama inquires, “So? Something important?”
“This is it.”
“War? Oh, God, what’s happening over there?”
“I’ll phone you when I know.”
He speeds along River Road and whirls into dark deserted Wisconsin Avenue, where a long string of red lights is turning green. A siren wails behind him, and a revolving red light flashes in his mirror. On seeing Barak’s uniform, the youthful policeman takes a polite tone. “You were doing seventy, sir, on River Road.”
“I’m sorry. Diplomatic emergency.”
The policeman looks for the DPL on the license plate. “Right. Just let me see your license for my records… Israeli, hey? I hear they’re giving you a hard time over there, General.”
“Well, we’re still hoping for peace.”
“No way! Just go all out and kick the shit out of them, sir. Like we ought to be doing in Vietnam right now. Good luck.”
“Thanks, officer.”
The ambassador and a few of his senior staff are gathered around a shortwave set. Genteel BBC voice: “…Radio Damascus reports a quote massive Egyptian victory over the Zionist aggressor in the still raging air battle, with forty-seven Jewish planes already shot down. Unquote. As yet no Egyptian losses are reported. King Hussein has declared that Jordan quote stands shoulder to shoulder with its heroic Egyptian ally, and hails the great air victory over the Zionist aggressor that is still
developing… unquote….”
The ambassador gives Barak an exhausted smile. “Arab bobbeh-mysehs, Zev. We’ve caught them on the ground, destroyed over a hundred planes so far, and we’re missing two. Hard figures. And it’s still going on.”
Barak gasps, “Tremendous, Abe. Staggering. Thank God!”
“Yes, but now the trouble starts. Call Gideon in New York on my private line. The switchboard girl isn’t here yet.” As Barak dials, the ambassador groans, downing two pills, “Of all days, I have root-canal work scheduled today. Well, now I can postpone it. A silver lining.”
Gideon Rafael, the ambassador to the UN, wants from Barak the latest word on the lineup of the opposed forces at the outbreak. “Though we probably won’t be getting down to specifics this morning,” he says. “As long as the Egyptians claim they’re winning, the Soviet Union will of course just insist there’s no reason for the Security Council to meet.”
“Rafael, what will our position be if there is a meeting?”
“Simple enough. The Egyptians have been sending high reconnaissance flights across our borders, that’s indisputable. They’ve been repeatedly warned that we can’t tolerate it, but they claim they’re at war with us, so what they’re doing is kosher. Yet how are we to be sure that the flights are not heavy bombers heading for Tel Aviv? When the pips showed up again on the radar screens this morning, our air force finally was ordered to take all necessary defensive measures.”
Pause. No comment from Barak.
“Clear, Zev?”
“Clear.”
“A good position?”
“Fine, if we win.”
“Well said.” Rafael wryly laughs. “There will be a big to-do about who fired the first shot. That’s what we’ve been hearing from the French, the British, and of course President Johnson—‘Whatever you do, don’t fire the first shot!’”
“It won’t matter in the least,” Barak says briskly. “The overflights aside, Nasser of course fired the first shot when he closed the straits. Blockade’s an act of war under international law. I’ll get on that update, and I’ll send a runner with it on the first shuttle.”
“Excellent. He’ll be met at La Guardia.”
Rubbing his eyes, the ambassador says when Barak hangs up, “The Soviets are the worry, Zev.” Abe Harman is always alert to the bad side of good news. “How can they let the Arabs lose a war that they pushed them into? If it keeps on the way it’s started, it’ll be root-canal work for the Russians.”
“Well, maybe they need it. Anyhow, Abe, en brera.”
“I’ll probably be called to the White House,” the ambassador laments. “With all this codeine in me, I’ll be a golem, a zombie. I’m so happy, Zev, it’s indescribable.” He points at a picture on his desk of his son in uniform. “I just hope he’ll be all right.”
In his lamplit office, where the windows are black dark, Barak scrawls a battle order summary, checking a marked Southern Command map spread on the desk. As he sets it all down his exhilaration ebbs. Have Syria, Jordan, and Iraq jumped on Israel’s back yet? What with the seven-hour time difference and the lag in battlefield reports it will be a while before the picture clears. But the dying and maiming have certainly already begun, with Tal’s armor crunching into the deep Egyptian defense works and the huge array of Russian-made tanks and artillery in the north of Sinai.
Disturbing him yet more is what the ambassador has just said about Russia. This ultimate foe—mighty, glowering, unopposed—can brush aside the Jewish State like a fly, in its grab for the oil and the globe-controlling landmass of the Middle East. The Soviet Union has been trying for years to manipulate the Arabs so as to accomplish this, but now with Nasser running out of control the Kremlin has a full-fledged war on its hands.
Where can it end, once this dazzling flare of air force heroism has died down in slow bloody land fighting? The Americans are bogged in Vietnam, and anyhow are in no way committed to defend Israel. An inconclusive cease-fire like 1956 will throw Israel back to its strip of coast with many boys dead and nothing gained. On the other hand, another rout of Egypt may well force the Soviet Union to intervene, a prospect too black to contemplate—yet will not Russia have to act to save face?
“Why do we have to give it back, Abba? We won the war,” the eleven-year-old Noah protested at the flag-lowering in Sharm el Sheikh. Now he is a naval officer in the Red Sea not far from Sharm el Sheikh, temporarily transferred there and fighting in a new war…
The ambassador’s voice on the intercom: “Zev, Sam Pasternak is calling on the scrambler phone.”
The embassy is abuzz now, happy Israelis rushing here and there with exultant looks, rapid chatter, and much laughter. Behind a double-locked door stencilled in red Hebrew letters NO ADMITTANCE, female coding officers are working under a fluorescent glare.
“Hello, Sam? Zev here. It’s wonderful! Is it continuing?”
The scrambler telephone makes random loud noises and whistles, then clears. “—unbelievable. The war isn’t over, Zev, and yet in a way it is. We’ll win.” Pasternak tells him the latest air strike figures. “The rest is bloody ground fighting, and even bloodier political fighting. That’s why I’m calling. This time we can’t lose in the UN a war we win in the field.”
“What about Syria and Jordan?”
“So far, just artillery exchanges. Eshkol has sent word to Hussein through General Odd Bull that if he stays out we won’t touch him. In Sinai the tank battle so far is vicious, but—” The telephone lapses into high-pitched, whining babble.
“Sam? Sam? Hello?”
After a few seconds the voice comes through again. “—Chris Cunningham. Call him now. Wake him up. It’s vital. Here’s what to tell him. Are you writing?”
“I’m writing.”
Barak scribbles Pasternak’s disclosures and instructions. “All this, Zev, is direct from Eshkol and Dayan,” Pasternak concludes.
“I’ll do my best, Sam.”
“That I know. I’m terrifically glad you’re there to handle this.”
“I’m not. I’d give an arm to be back home.”
“You’re more useful where you are. Give Chris my best.” Over six thousand miles and through scrambling and unscrambling, Pasternak manages to sound arch. “And to that daughter, too, if she’s there.”
She is. It is Emily who answers the telephone, wide awake in this black morning hour. Barak dashes out, finds his car blocked by a television network van, and hails a passing cab.
***
No fancy negligee this time; a brown housecoat with a dull flower pattern. “Here’s Zev, Father!”
In a maroon bathrobe that hangs in folds on his skeletal frame, Cunningham sits sunken in an armchair beside a crackling shortwave set. “Hello there. Our man in Cairo telephoned a while ago. Emily, let’s have some coffee. Sit down, Zev.”
“Thanks. I bring word from Sam Pasternak. To begin with, some facts.”
“Ach, zo?” Cunningham coldly smiles, turning off the set. “The Arab radios have been putting out all the facts so far. If they’re facts.”
“They’re nonsense. Chris, we’ve won the greatest air victory in history.” Chris Cunningham straightens in his chair and seems to grow a foot, as Barak goes on. “In less than three hours, our air force has destroyed three hundred Egyptian planes on the ground! They never got into the air. Total successful surprise.”
“Your losses?”
“Minimal. Three or four planes.”
“And the other Arab air forces? Syria, Jordan, Iraq?”
“As of ten A.M. over there they hadn’t stirred. Maybe the Egyptian ‘facts’ are lulling them, but our present hard intelligence is that they’re preparing to attack our air bases about noon today. At all events my government’s intent is not to cross any border but Egypt’s, unless the others move first.”
Chris Cunningham nods and nods. He leans to Barak, his prominent eyes magnified by the thick lenses of his eyeglasses. “What does Sam want?”
“T
o get a message from Eshkol to your President this morning. ‘Please urge King Hussein to stay out, and convey in return a pledge from Israel not to attack him. A pledge to the United States government, as well as to him.’”
“That’s a tough one.”
“Sam knows that. My government has already signalled this to Hussein through General Bull, the UN man on the spot. This would be the U.S. signing on as a guarantor, because we make the commitment directly to you.”
“I’ll take it up the line. It’s all I can do. What’s the situation in Sinai?”
“Let me show you.”
The two men drink coffee, standing at a broad map of the Middle East hung on a wall. “Our tanks ran into heavy fire all along here.” Barak’s finger traces Tal’s hook around through the Gaza Strip to attack the Rafah junction from an unexpected direction. “We may be achieving overall strategic surprise. Our big thrust is up here, but we’ve staged an elaborate deception down south, and the Egyptians seem to have bit. That’s where they’ve put their main forces.”
He feels decidedly queer, spilling battlefield secrets of fateful sensitivity to Christian Cunningham. His connection with this enigmatic gentile does not extend back nearly a quarter of a century, as Pasternak’s does, to clandestine cooperation against the Germans. But Sam’s instructions are unequivocal: “Total disclosure, Zev, to give Chris credibility with his government. Trust his judgment and discretion. We’ll be forced to communicate often via back channels. Cunningham’s our safest contact, and he’s a friend.”
“Is the plan to drive to the Canal?”
“The plan is to destroy the Egyptian army in Sinai. Dayan thinks it would be suicidal to go to the Canal, the Egyptians would fight to regain it for a hundred years.”
“It’s not a bad water barrier.”