Israel Journal: June, 1967

by Dayan, Yaël

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  Israel Journal

  June, 1967

  Yaël Dayan

  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO GENERAL ARIK SHARON,

  THE DIVISION COMMANDER. TO KUTI MOTKE YAAKOV AND URI,

  ITS SENIOR OFFICERS. TO THE OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS

  OF THE DIVISION—THOSE ALIVE

  AND THOSE WHO DIED ENABLING ITS VICTORY

  The division suffered 240 casualties. Of those 58 dead.

  The Week Before

  First and foremost there was the loess, a yellowish-gray loam dust raised like a screen to separate all that was from all that was to be. The station wagon pulled up at the check post. I took my small bag and waited for the cloud of dust to recede. When it did, I faced my new home. It was Saturday morning, May 27, and all that was “north” had been hurriedly left behind—Paris, Rome, Athens—the cable home, the BEA flight to Lydda, my unit, empty Tel-Aviv, the road to Beer-Sheba, the road south, then west toward the Egyptian frontier; and now Shivta, division headquarters. Camouflaged vehicles merged into the hill slopes and my sandaled feet sank deep and comfortably in the powdery soil. Small yellow signs indicated directions and I found my way to the war room. The contrast between the word “war room” and its contents reminded me of everything our army stood for: barbed wire, a military policeman, three trucks supporting a tent. I was let in after a short discussion. A pretty blonde called Zipi offered me a cup of coffee. The helicopter pilot, Zeev, was lounging on a camp bed and a small transistor offered us the Hit Parade. Large wooden frames held colorful maps, the communication system was located on the left, and on one of the trucks a few officers were discussing defense plans, the last news bulletin, transportation problems, and the like. For the first few minutes the talk was utterly strange to me. Army jargon, abbreviations, initials, numbers, unfamiliar names, long-forgotten terms. Officers were all addressed by their first names, each had a revolver and a water bottle attached to his belt; they wore high boots and their faces were already tanned and covered with a thick layer of dust which during the weeks that followed seemed to become a part of everyone’s face.

  The operations officer, Asher, unrolled the map. We were in Shivta, an archaeological site, facing the remains of the desert city of the Nabatteans. Surrounding the headquarters were our unit’s tents. We were responsible at that point for the section of the Egyptian frontier from Gabel Keren in the north to Wadi Lotz in the south. This was an area of hills and dunes, surrounding and safeguarding the Abu-Ageila-Nitzama-Beer-Sheba road, a road which our Intelligence had informed us was to be used as a central approach line by the Egyptian forces for entrance into the Negev. “By advancing along this road,” Asher said, “they will be in a position to isolate the lower Negev and join with the Jordanian forces from the Mount Hebron area.” Large square letters were drawn in black pencil on the map: Phase A Defense. The border was marked in green, straight and definite, with a multitude of blue and red marks to indicate the different units. Behind these marks were people. Under cover of code numbers hid vehicles and arms. The tip of the stick, now drawing imaginary lines, suggested the enormous machine, motivated by the undebatable need to survive, which had been mobilized a few days earlier and was now being held there between the green line and our yellow reality, ready to meet a threat or to present one.

  “Why talk so much?” Asher said. “Let’s go and see them.” It was midday. The sun in its zenith was drying the few scattered gray desert shrubs, drying the skin, drying the drops of sweat, enervating the will power. I changed my sandals for boots and got myself a water bottle and an army writing pad. My official assignment was “correspondent for the military spokesman,” which meant that I would be attached to the division throughout the period of mobilization. I was to send to the correspondents’ pool daily reports which were to be distributed for publication in the various newspapers in Israel and abroad. For the time being this was my work, but there was no question in my mind that in case of war I would be first a soldier, an officer, able and willing to fulfill other duties. Equipped with a wide-brimmed khaki hat, I joined Asher on the jeep and we were on our way.

  How long it takes us to gather the component parts of our memory—the problems, self-appraisals, the self-analysis, our little daily dilemmas, petty quests for comfort. And how quickly they all can disappear. We were driving fast along the road heading west, toward the green line on the map, and with each mile I shed another layer. Not a process of pensive days and dream-filled nights but a short jeep drive, the hair already uncombable, face burning, muscles adjusting to the hard seat and the bumpy road, hat fighting the wind, sunglasses fighting the reflected glare from the dunes. Between Shivta and the armored brigade camp, London was dumped; Paris was lost from there to Ktziot; Pucci and Trigère were forgotten with the first grease marks on my khaki trousers, my car with the sight of heavy bulldozers blocking the road, while Rome and Athens disappeared among the rocky hills of Nitzana as we approached Beerotaim, headquarters of the battalion which was “sitting on the border.”

  Beerotaim, situated on the summit of a hill, is a spot of green grass and a few wooden huts. All that was behind, stretching east—the dunes, the craters, the Dead Sea, and the valley halved by the Jordanian frontier—was ours. All that was ahead and west—more dunes, chalk hills, the Sinai Desert to the Canal—was theirs; here, near Beerotaim, the asphalt road ended for us like an exclamation mark crossing the border to the other side. We were offered lunch in the battalion’s dining room, cooked food, in spite of it being Saturday, by special permission of the chief rabbi. The battalion commander took me to see his men. And one needed a guide to discern them. Never before had Israeli units been so well fortified, entrenched, camouflaged, and hidden; the terrain, untouched for thousands of years, had opened thousands of jaws to engulf and hide a whole division. Tanks, artillery, supply trucks, busses, ambulances, soldiers, were all dug in and covered; only antennae here and there betrayed a headquarters, and clouds of moving dust suggested the movements of vehicles. The hills, usually of eternal purity, looked slightly scarred where white spots of fresh loess indicated recent digging. Under the overhead shelters, in the bunkers and the trenches, was our army: facing east, tuned in to the radio, in a state of readiness, and wondering what the next moment might bring.

  “Someone said it would take bulldozers to pull them out of the trenches now,” the commander commented. We climbed into another jeep and rode to “Little Sabcha,” our foremost defense position in the area. To meet the soldiers we had to walk from trench to trench. They were all reservists. Men in their thirties mostly, all family men. The usual exchange of smiles, the banal questions: Where are you from? Ashdod (a new port town populated mostly by new immigrants). What do you do as a civilian? I am a plumber. Children? Four. How many years in Israel? Five. Origin? North Africa. How long have you been here? One week. Was drafted last Friday, had no time to take anything. Not worried about the family, we write postcards. It was hard work, but now we are just waiting. Name? Karta, Sammy, Cohen, Sebag, Raziel. Plumbers, clerks, farmers, porters, a shoemaker, a tailor, a bank manager. North Africa, Yemen, Hungary, Poland, Tel-Aviv. Three children and supporting old parents. Widower, five children—two in the army. Dark with curly sideburns, blue-eyed and blond, a redhead, a bearded Yemenite, pink skinned and badly sunburned. French accent, Arab words mixed with Hebrew, central European pronunciation, Sabra slang. Saturday afternoon in the “Little Sabcha.”

  This was my first encounter with the soldiers. They all wanted an answer to What will happen? They jo
ked and humored me, a few prayed at sunset, some wrote cards home. Through my binoculars I could see the enemy. A group of Egyptian soldiers were silhouetted on the “Big Sabcha” facing us. They, too, were well fortified. They were watching us. Their barrels reflected the setting sun and they, too, were waiting. Between the two “Sabchas” rested the desert, a road, cracked soil hiding mines and the repeated question: What will happen next?

  “Are they good soldiers?” I asked Bari, the commander.

  “Some are. They will make an unbeatable defense line; as for attack, they have never been tested. I suppose I can count on 40 per cent. For the rest, I wouldn’t like to say.”

  I left them with a sense of pride rather than security. Do they love this stretch of desert the way we were brought up to? And how brave would they prove to be compared with the fewer regulars?

  When darkness took over, war seemed remote. The desert died its nightly death; there were no lights to be seen. There would be ambushes and a few patrols to make sure the green line was not crossed; an occasional breeze brought with it a song sung by a waiting soldier. The songs and the words, the maps and the plans implied few worries perhaps, but there was great tension, and with nightfall came the sadness of the isolated and the loneliness of the exposed. Shivta, on our return, meant home now—the familiar dark tents, the endless chatter of the radio sets. Rachamim the cook was brewing hot tea for the general and there was the comforting silhouette of his trailer, always open, always inviting. General Sharon invited me in for a briefing. I was suspicious of Arik Sharon in the way I am suspicious of all men who have become legends in their own lives, including my father. Having won my battle the day before, when my demand to go south was finally granted, I had suggested I join Arik’s headquarters. I had been motivated by a desire to verify or disprove to myself the qualities attributed to him. When I climbed the ladder to the trailer, he met me with a charming smile and stood up to shake my hand and introduce to me two officers attending him. A handsome face, smiling eyes, straight nose, a body perhaps too heavy but comfortably so in battle uniform, dark khakis. There was a paratrooper’s red beret within hand’s reach. In spite of his looks and comparative youth, his hair was silvery, wavy, hiding a high forehead.

  The trailer, which was later to become a symbol when it reappeared after four days in battle in the middle of the Sinai, was as impersonal and as simple as possible. Two wooden benches were used as beds at night. There was a large table which was used in turns for eating and working, a small cupboard stuffed with papers and small supplies, a water container with a tap, soap, mirror, and towel. Arik’s personal belongings fitted into a rucksack smaller than mine, and three blankets were folded under a windbreaker. “I am glad you are with us,” he said, and added that I should feel free to ask for whatever help or information I might need. I asked him if there was anything he would like me to concentrate on during the days to come, and he suggested that I visit the auxiliary forces, usually little mentioned and deserving much—the engineers’ battalion which did the bulk of the fortification job, the supply service battalion, whose job was to make the long wait as comfortable as possible, and the field hospital. We talked of other things. He wanted to know about the fighting in Vietnam which I had covered a couple of months earlier, about the Far East in general, and, reflecting the obsession of his own thoughts rather than seeking an answer: Are we on the eve of war? We all wished we had the answer, we all feared the answer, but the uncertainty was worse.

  I had a sleeping bag and was given the front seat of a station wagon as my first night’s accommodation. The alternative, which I chose the following night, was a trench in the sand. Being rather small, I curled up and stuck my feet out of the window. Trying to ignore the desert chill and the snores of the sleeper in the back seat, I fell asleep.

  I awoke at four. The light was already strong but mercifully the heat had not yet returned. The camp’s morning commotion was like a memory of eleven years back pushing its way to the surface. Sleepy faces peeping out of sleeping bags hoping to discover it was still night, the shaking and folding of blankets, stretching of arms, a platoon marching toward the road, a log fire heating water in a kettle, men shaving in cars’ side mirrors. I put on my boots—the only item I had taken off for the night—and washed my face and teeth in my canteen water—deliciously cool now. A square canvas structure marked “girl soldiers” served as lavatory. Breakfast comprised a hard-boiled egg, bread, a tomato, and sweet, tepid tea. I gave up combing my hair and decided to braid it. The dust that clung hopelessly to skin and clothes did not really feel like dirt, but I envied the men who were enjoying field showers along the road, waving to one another, naked or wrapped in towels, a strange sight in the middle of nowhere.

  Again in the jeep, again westward. On my way to the infantry brigade headquarters I stopped at the engineers’ battalion. Near one of the tents several soldiers were grouped around a guitar player; high up on their machines, listening to the songs, were the bulldozer operators. The bulldozers were huge and yellow, loved and pampered by the operators—“My D-8,” “Super 8,” “D-9,” “D-4”—and nicknamed after women.… The operators’ eyes were red, a result of days and nights of work. “We have changed the view here,” they said, “then changed it back to normal.” They had opened a new road heading south, enabling the fortifications to be built quickly. “And if it happens?” A small group gathered round us. “We’ll open roads, clear minefields, push with our forces.” The guitarist was singing ‘She Loves Me’ and a D-8 was digging a trench for itself. “No time for archaeology,” Amiram said. In the past he would call my father whenever he unearthed something which may have been a tomb or an ancient dwelling. “What part of the fortification is of permanent value?” “Only the trenches in the hills. They were a tough piece of work, but they will last forever. The work in the dunes will be gone with the desert winds in a few weeks, but by then who knows where we’ll be?”

  They showed me pictures of their children, a postcard from some school children, and offered me a piece of home-made cake. They asked, knowing I didn’t have an answer, how long I thought it would last? Not nervously, not even hopefully, but in a dry, disguised tone. “See you back in Tel-Aviv,” I said. “Or in Cairo,” they said.

  Approaching the infantry brigade war room, I saw a familiar face. Blond hair made lighter by the dust, laughing blue eyes, tanned face. I recognized the Tel-Aviv artist I had often met in a Diessengoff café—Hovav. “Have you heard the news?” he asked. My heart stopped beating. It’s happened, I thought. “Five prisoners! On the hill across the road. They just appeared in a jeep, must have lost their way.”

  They had been taken away when I arrived, but the soldiers who had captured them told their story. Three were officers, one a lieutenant colonel. They had driven almost into the fortified area and had been shocked to find themselves surrounded by Israelis. Our soldiers were as amazed, and a moment of indecision followed. Then they were searched and blindfolded, and driven away to the brigade headquarters, where their vehicle, a Russian jeep, was left. The officers were carrying guns, the two soldiers were drivers. “If you don’t react they won’t harm you,” our soldiers heard the lieutenant colonel say. Our own men were bewildered by two facts: The lack of basic knowledge of the area which had enabled enemy officers to make such a stupid mistake as to follow the road once it crossed the border and to drive straight into the trenches offering no resistance. Also, as Uri put it, “You should have seen the difference between the officers and the soldiers. The officers were clean, well groomed, their clothes made of a type of silk”—though here perhaps his imagination was running away with him—“clean handkerchiefs which they offered us when we blindfolded them, so polite and soft. The soldiers looked unshaven, dirty, wearing rags, scared to death.”

  “They haven’t changed,” murmured an officer who had fought in the Sinai Campaign. “The same army, in spite of all this talk of changes and progress.”

  “Their fingernails were manicu
red and they smelt of cologne,” someone else commented.

  Perhaps these young fellows were wrong to refuse to associate cologne with the image of an officer, but they did know that General Arik Sharon and his driver Yoram wore the same battle dress and the same quality boots. They knew also that the infantry brigade commander and the gunner ate the same C-rations in the field, and usually they addressed their officer by his first name. It was with contempt rather than hatred that these young men—they were regular soldiers—spoke about this first encounter with the enemy.

  It also made the enemy’s proximity very real. Suddenly they were people who could make a mistake of a few hundred yards and be in the middle of us; by the same token we could be among them just as fast, as a result of an order. We drove to Beer-Sheba to file the story. Staying there even for a few hours proved unbearable. The city was crowded with soldiers, army cars, journalists. Instead of the silence of the desert, the nerve-racking wait, there was the interminable political chatter. It was with a tremendous sense of relief that I turned to go back that night. On the way we heard Prime Minister Eshkol’s speech to the nation. Other than “embarrassing” I find it difficult to describe. Slow, uncertain, noncommittal, uninspiring, it gave the listeners anything but an answer, even a provisional one, even the courage to continue the wait. I thought of the men in the trenches, listening to the speech—the first official statement in days—while trying to pierce through the darkness around them to spot any movement. Listening to those words, away from home, how could they feel secure, how could they feel that their homes were secure? I believe that this speech was a turning point. From then on the people took over, and pressure of public opinion—although of what range and to what effect we shall never know—to form a wall-to-wall government began to mount.