by Dayan, Yaël
It was my first encounter with an enemy post. Although we were warned of mines we climbed down. Every object held a special significance. Later we got used to the thrown kit bags, the vehicles, the burning tanks, the details of equipment, but there and then we treated them like children discovering a new world. Motke, who was a few kilometers ahead of us on the road, came over with a few captured guns and items and we touched them with awe. He unfolded a gas mask. I had never seen one before and only then the possibility of needing one dawned on me. Every Egyptian soldier had a gas mask and I looked at it wondering what they told about us. Soldiers walked around with cocked guns entering the few tents and making sure no enemy soldier was left around and we drove down in the jeep toward our Shermans who held the front line waiting for nightfall and occupying the enemy artillery from Um-Katef. At twelve-thirty four light airplanes appeared as air support—our “Fuga” training jets. With a sense of pride and comradeship we watched them diving north of Um-Katef. By then we knew that the Egyptian air force had been destroyed and neutralized in the early hours of the morning, and anything that had to do with air force was followed with looks of gratitude.
We didn’t have to watch the sky wondering “Whose were they?” we didn’t have to worry about the villages and towns in the rear—the sky of the Middle East was almost entirely ours. On the western slopes of Tarat-Um-Basis we stopped. An armored troop carrier was parked alongside the road. Dov entered it and came back with some papers and notes which must have constituted the payroll of a battalion. I entered a field tent which must have been used as a listening radio station—dirt, flies, a bowl of rice, dirty clothes. Dov gave me a packet of cigarettes “Belmont,” my first Egyptian cigarette; “Hope they are not poisoned,” someone said. We forgot about lunch that day and drove on in Arik’s track to see the burning T-34 near the road. The sight of destruction somewhat bothered me. It all seemed so simple. True, Natke’s battalion was hurt and had to retreat, but they were somewhere north of us and out of sight. Right here was the road, the deserted outpost, our own soldiers examining Russian machine guns and trying to start the vehicles; chewing hard rations, biscuits. Artillery fire heard from the west didn’t seem to be directed at anybody in particular and the black asphalt stretching toward our Nitzana was already crowded with incoming vehicles carrying ammunition, gasoline, and supplies.
A giant yellow bulldozer of the engineering unit was fixing the road—filling a large hole formed by explosives when the enemy retreated, and shortly after one o’clock Arik ordered the infantry and Kuti to join us from Nitzana. One of the problems had to do with a lack of suitable transport for infantry. The infantry was to move in busses—a solution that was far from satisfactory—along the asphalt road, as far as possible, and walk the last twelve kilometers until nightfall to set up for the night attack.
The sun was inclined west now, and visibility toward the enemy was poor. The sight east was breathtaking. The road looked like a highway on a holiday. Bumper to bumper, vehicles moved safely with the caravan of busses—in their original colors of blue and turquois, original signs of “Egged-Tours”—carrying the infantry brigade. The danger was obvious; they were fully exposed and blocked in. The advantage—they arrived rested and fresh to the farthest starting point. I looked at some of our tanks and soldiers. The war had started that morning but their looks had changed completely. The tanks were painted with slogans—“Express to Cairo,” “Nitzana-Suez,” “To Egypt with love,” and improvised flags were hoisted to the tops of the antenna poles. The shaved, childish faces of yesterday gained a new sparkle. It was a winning army after its first contact, not yet in its supreme test but with all the confidence in the future. Talks about “a long and costly war” weren’t heard, they knew the night battle would be decisive, they knew they had to win it, and they knew that it would crack the core of the Egyptian defense in the Sinai. Natke announced shortly after three that he was ready for a second try on his target, now with a support force which joined him, and twenty-five minutes later the outpost was in his hands. Itzik in a helicopter indicated the mines for them, six tanks managed to get into the outpost, and several T-34’s were destroyed in tank-to-tank battle. The battalion refueled and moved on to form a blockade on the northern approach to Um-Katef. The radio was feeding us news of other fronts. We heard of air attacks by the Syrian air force on Natanya and Megiddo, and the early afternoon news described the shelling of several sections of Jerusalem. The busses with their load of an infantry brigade arrived, and a few minutes later the brigade was ready to go. Arik returned from talking to them, his face lit with enthusiasm—“What a sight!” he said. “These youngsters marching as if on the annual march to Jerusalem. A long column of soldiers, there isn’t anything they cannot achieve!” The forces were dispersed now to their pre-battle positions and with sunset we, too, moved to one of the hills west of Um-Katef to await nightfall and the order to strike. “H” hour was fixed for 2200, and while the forces were forming up in a ring which was dead ground to the enemy I had plenty of time to gather information concerning the battle confronting us.
It was cooler now, and washing my face enabled me to forget I hadn’t slept the night before. Being the only woman around created a natural difficulty when I was in need of a lavatory, and I walked in the dark feeling fully exposed against the whiteness of the soil. I put on a pullover and had something to eat, Rachamim made tea which we distributed, and Arik, still glued to the radio and checking over and over with the scattered forces, never forgot to thank me and add a couple of sentences. This time he said, “We are facing quite a battle, perhaps the most complicated one the army has ever fought.” I sought Dov. He drew a map on a piece of paper for me illustrating the positions confronting us. All I could see in the dark were illuminating bombs which brightened the sky and were nervously sent up by the enemy from the moment darkness set in. Their artillery shelled aimlessly, and I was amazed how fast one’s ears get accustomed to the sound. Dov drew a few lines on the paper. “It is a typical Russian defense system,” he said, “composed of three straight lines, the outer one, the main, and a rear. The outposts cover an area of fourteen to fifteen kilometers. Their purpose is observation, warning, artillery observation, and delaying. Ideally, they could hold up the attack on the main defended locality for at least twelve hours, the advantage gained. In the case H hour is during the day, the main attack has to be postponed to nighttime when air support has to be given up and the armor efficiency is low. If H hour is for the night, the attacking force will find itself engaged in the main battle during daylight and then the attacker is exposed to all the guns and rifles and tanks.” These outposts were now behind us and the risk of losing air support and visibility was calculated and accepted. Dov drew three long lines on the paper, crossing the road. “This is Um-Katef.* The lines are the long ditches, three of them resting confidently on the impassable dunes on the left flank and on high ground on the right flank. But there is no such thing as impassable ground. In front of them and among them are mines, and well protected in them is the infantry—a brigade, I figure. This is a powerful human and physical block on the road.” I tried to imagine them. Soldiers sitting in the ditches awaiting us. Do they make coffee in empty tins? Do they listen to Cairo radio bragging victories? Do they sing or chat or sleep? Our infantry brigade was walking now. Their job was to clear these canals marked on the piece of paper. Kuti was leading them. I felt the arrowhead in my pocket.
“Behind them is the artillery,” Dov continued. “Between five and seven battalions. They constitute the long stretched arm able to hit far beyond the locality.” I didn’t have to wonder what they were up to. I could hear and see their action. Yaakov, the commander, had six battalions under command, including heavy mortars, field-gun battalions, heavy 160-mm. mortars, and medium guns. Only parts of his units were self-propelled and he was in position early enough for ranging properly; but he didn’t have range enough to hit the enemy artillery although he advanced his guns as close as possib
le to the defended locality. So somebody had to go quickly and knock out the guns, not giving them a chance to halt our attack and to disperse their fire plan, and force them to engage us at unexpected directions. This task was given to Danny’s paratroopers force. They would land behind the enemy lines and attack the guns from the rear. The third element in the Um-Katef defense system was the mobile dynamic one, the tanks. As known later—there were 90 of them, and if the infantry fire was local and pinned down to the trenches, and the artillery long ranged, the tanks constituted an active, swiftly moving fist able to hit in and around the locality, come to the aid of a threatened part of the locality, closing up a gap, stopping a penetration. Facing them were our tanks and armored infantry, Natke waiting on the northern approach to come in from the rear, and a Sherman battalion directly in front of the defense lines coming in from the east, on the main road. Their mission was to meet the enemy tanks as soon as possible and destroy them.
The lines on the paper grew vivid as Arik and Yaakov were talking to the various commanders. When Dov said “heavy mortars” I could hear the never-tired voices of their men. When he described our armor, I heard Sason announcing he was shelled at but not in range; and at 19.00 with the last light, we could see the helicopters transporting the paratroopers to their assembly zone. Arik’s voice changed some when he talked to Danny the parachutists’ commander. He had been the commander of the paratroopers before, still wore a red beret, and they were his boys. He knew them all by first name and they were his men, and somehow he gave me the feeling he was talking to a brother in whose hands he entrusted a hard job. It was all clear now: the ditches, the artillery, and the 90 tanks awaiting us; and our plan—approaching from flank and rear unexpected, from the front along the road and enabling the infantry to clear the canals.
“What a difference from the Sinai campaign,” an officer who fought here in 1956 said. “This time it is a real blow, all forces combined.” Instead of testing and touching and going in drops, avoiding risks and softening up, this time Arik decided to concentrate the strike. Risk everything, perhaps, but stand the good chance of gaining everything as well. The idea was to attack from all directions, splitting the defense effort of the locality and occupying its three different forces at the same time, preventing them from supporting each other. On a different scale, this was the approach of the whole army in all fronts. For many days now I heard the terms “direct” and “indirect” approach. Ours was the indirect. The stronger hold was Kseime, and we were attacking Abu-Ageila-Um-Katef, supposing rightly that Kseime would fall as a result—either by trying to send support which would fall in the hands of our ambush or by retreating and deserting. The enemy defense plan and system were meant to force us into a “direct approach” of frontal attack by mining all flanks and relying on the geographical difficulties presented by the dunes in the north and the cliff in the south. We risked the armor in order to imply an indirect, unexpected approach and sent the tanks and the paratroopers from the dunes to the rear. As a direct approach would imply air support and visibility, we decided to go ahead with neither. What mattered in our calculation was not the amount of forces needed theoretically to take Um-Katef and open the main road in central Sinai, but the accumulative effect of a simultaneous attack from all directions at the same time. The fact that we were inferior in quantity was never a consideration.
The sky continued to be lit occasionally. H hour was near now, and the forces were waiting for the green light. The famous “silence before the battle” was evident in the hearts rather than in the air. Kuti told me later that “these were the difficult hours,” lying on the sand and awaiting the order to go. Time to think, time to fear, time to wonder. “This is the hour of fear,” he said, “never while in action, but just the moments preceding it.” More tea, a walk to the edge of the hill. There was a windbreaker as it grew cooler, news broadcasts announcing continuous shelling on suburbs of Jerusalem, a sense of isolation, gratitude to the radio which, miraculously to me, tied us all together in coded chains of faith and strength.
We were told not to light a fire and had to improvise a cold meal. Toward ten o’clock I could sense an added nervousness. Commanders asked more often whether there were any changes. Arik was told there would be no air support, and the decision whether to wait until daybreak for support or launch the attack at night was left to him. He knew his people. He knew his enemy and the area, and his mind was made up swiftly. He was going ahead. H hour was postponed somewhat but just after 22.30 he gave Yaakov the order to open artillery fire. The battle had begun.
MONDAY NIGHT, JUNE 5–6
“Let everything tremble,” Arik ordered. “Tremble it will,” Yaakov answered. He ordered his artillery group—all types of guns—to open fire, and the area did tremble. For twenty minutes, aided by projectors and aiming at targets, 6,000 shells fell on Um-Katef. The transceiver was busy. “Battery 2 to commander—two direct hits.” “Well done, give them some more,” corrections, occasional change of range, the sky lit as in a fun fair, and Arik rubbing his hands. “Such a barrage I’ve never seen.” The two half-tracks were parked near each other and the commanders could talk, not using the net. Voices hoarse by now, Yaakov was reporting to Arik, who instructed all our other forces to prepare for the move once the artillery softening fire was over.
“It was quite a sight,” said the paratroopers who were then on their way from the north toward enemy artillery positions. They landed in helicopters from eight-thirty on and met artillery fire along their track. Movement was difficult at night and they needed longer than calculated to reach the road. Assembly time was longer than expected and traffic on the road made it difficult to identify artillery positions by their fire. Arik ordered Yaakov to stop the fire after Kuti told him over the radio that he was ready to move in and that he had enough “softening-up fire.” He waived the ten minutes more of shelling that he was given according to the plan. The effect of artillery shells in the dunes and on concrete, dug-in bunkers is more psychological than real, Kuti was thinking, and he wouldn’t like to give the enemy in the trenches a chance to get accustomed to the bombardment and to wake up from the shock. He thought of his own men round him all crouching like sprinters at the start, impatiently and eagerly waiting for the sound of the shot from the umpire’s pistol. Control of our artillery now, to avoid shelling our own advancing infantry, was switched and given to Kuti. Motke, Danny, and Kuti reported they were closing in “in the shortest possible way.”
The Infantry Attack
My heart was with the infantry. Somehow they were the most exposed and the ones to have to confront the enemy face to face. Shelling our enemy and bombing “it” was one thing—there was a distance and the shells carried their deadly message to map references, to numbered points on a map. The gunners in the tanks were shooting at tank silhouettes, but to the infantrymen the enemy were real people, human beings; they had to “make contact” with the adversary, to look in his eyes, to be stabbed by the look of surprise and the shock and bewilderment and fear and recognition of death when he emptied his submachine gun at a distance of a few yards in the narrow, smelly trench. I know I would never be able to tell what went on in the hearts of my friends there, a mile away from me, waiting for the green light. I say green light, borrowing my images, from terms in our daily experiences at the wheel of the car in front of red traffic lights or from an athletic or sports event. But this isn’t a sports event and we are not on Diessengoff Boulevard.
We were a mile away and just on the precipice of danger. A shell falling a hundred yards from us was just a warning finger that made you shiver for a second and covered you with goose pimples; but they were trapped in the close embrace of death—both of them—our Uzi and their Ali. How does one get up and run into enemy trenches, into the unknown maze of communication ditches, into the warm intimacy of deep, underground shelters, and throw himself against hungry, open-mouthed muzzles of rifles, machine guns, grenades, bazooka, waiting silently for their prey or spil
ling, hosing fire in all directions? I know our men didn’t drink liquor to work up courage. There may be a few words from their section, platoon, and company commanders, but nothing more. There was only the will to fight for one’s own life first and then, maybe, for one’s own family, for the freedom of our nation and state which ceased being an abstract term. Why do I say maybe? Because one doesn’t know until the moment of trial comes. The boys and men I met were no heroes, they were just like me, a bit scared, a bit confident, they argued over little things such as who was digging more and who was running first to get a meal or whose turn it was to clean the machine gun. You may be a very good soldier or commander at fire exercises or maneuvers, but this doesn’t prove a thing, this doesn’t make sure you’ll be brave in battle and become a hero. Will they find the strength to throw behind their backs all their dreams and longings for a good job, plans for a nice vacation, for all the thousand-and-one wishes that are buzzing in a human mind and jump into the threatening jaws of the trenches?
My thoughts stopped suddenly and my questions were answered by Kuti’s voice coming through the radio. “We have reached the tip and are advancing in the trenches to the south. I’m ordering artillery to move their fire. Tell tanks to do the same.” The men in the tanks some 300 to 400 yards away could see the red and green lights that our markers were carrying, running above the trenches. Hours later, when I talked to some of the men, they explained to me all the how’s and why’s: “All the pictures, movies, you may have seen of an attack on a fortified position, on a defense line, show you waves of soldiers running with rifles and sparkling bayonets charging straight on and into the ditch. Some get killed before they reach the line and others are blown up by mines. With us it was different. We left the minefield, about two hundred yards deep and two to three miles wide, for the jackals. Ofer was given the center and most difficult line, Dov’s battalion had the first, and Joseph the third, a mile to the rear. All of us approached the trenches from the north or from the left flank of the enemy. We came there unexpected through theoretically impassable dunes. Ofer’s battalion was moving in company columns.…” They weren’t quite sure they’d find the very beginning and left end of the line and they were careful not to bump on the trenches from the front, head on.