“This guy’s an Arab, huh? What did he do?”
“He killed my father.”
Benny stared. “I see. Yeah, sure. Degania it is.”
Herschel gripped Benny’s arm. “Remember what I’ve told you. Now that the British are gone, the airfields are open and planes will be flying to transport arms. I can arrange for you to go to Europe if you’d like, Benny. You’ve no obligation to remain here.”
Before Benny could reply Ben-Gurion’s gavel rapped, signaling the start of the ceremony. It was four o’clock.
“Think about what I’ve said,” Herschel whispered. “We must leave shortly.”
The ceremony was in Hebrew, of course. To Benny the language was so much coughing and duck-quacks, but he felt his emotions stir in response to Ben-Gurion’s majestic tones and the fervor in the upturned faces of his audience. Now and again Herschel, visibly moved, would lean toward him to whisper a translated phrase.
The whole thing took a little more than half an hour. Then Herschel was grabbing his elbow, bidding him rise with the rest of the assembly as Ben-Gurion’s gavel sounded a second time.
Cheers erupted in the meeting hall. Weeping, Herschel embraced him. “Benny, it’s done. The state of Israel has come into existence.”
Radio transmitters carried the news of the ceremony to all parts of the infant nation and celebrations lined the streets of Tel Aviv. It reminded Benny, walking back to the quarters he and Herschel were sharing, of Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
How he longed for New York, for home. Benny was walking alone. Herschel wanted to celebrate with some of the people at the ceremony, so Benny had excused himself in order to let Hersch enjoy the moment with his old friends.
Everywhere he looked people were laughing or crying or linking hands to dance a joyous hora as if this were a goddamned wedding or something. He knew there were corners of Israel where the people were too busy fighting and bleeding to do much celebrating, and very soon the whole country was going to be in the same mess.
The Jews were outmanned and outgunned. The Syrians held the high ground in Galilee; Egyptian armored divisions were probably even now churning through the sands of the Negev; and the elite English-led five-thousand-man Arab Legion from Transjordan, was poised to storm Jerusalem.
The Jews had no artillery beyond a few handmade mortars and virtually no fighter aircraft. Until they received both, and shipments of small arms and ammo to supplement what Herschel’s factories were churning out, the best the Jews could hope to do was to dig in and survive.
There would be women fighting in this war, and children. Herschel had shown him a classroom where the teacher was busy instructing the students on how to make Molotov cocktails. He could just see those kids pitching their little gasoline bombs at Egyptian tanks. He wondered how many of them would blow themselves up too.
Talk about long odds—if Benny had known the where-abouts of a bookie, and if he’d had any money, he would have put every dime on the opposing team.
As he paused on a street corner a girl in khaki shorts and a cotton blouse threw her arms about his neck, kissed him on the lips, said something in that damned Old Testament language and skipped away.
Benny watched her go, admiring her legs, although otherwise she wasn’t his type. He preferred them with a future.
He dug the news clipping out of his pocket to look at it for what was possibly the hundredth time. It had come from none other but The New York Times.
Back in April the British cut off all mail and telegraph service to Palestine, and regular deliveries of anything, let alone periodicals, had not yet resumed. Herschel sensed how homesick Benny was, however, and had gotten him the rather dated but still complete copy of the Times from a pilot newly arrived from the States. Benny read the old paper from cover to cover and found the news item buried in the paper’s second section. “Reputed Mobster Arraigned,” the headline read. Stefano de Fazio, it seemed, had been arrested for racketeering, extortion and income tax evasion.
The paper was a month old when he got it. It meant that likely Benny was off the hook and could go home if that was what he chose to do.
He was through with Dolores, of course, and he doubted she’d let him get close to the kids, but he could be back on top in no time—if he returned, and why shouldn’t he?
Okay, it would mean taking a powder on Herschel right when he could use some backup, going up against that guy who’d iced his old man. And it would mean deserting those kids, some no older than his own boys, who were filling bottles with gasoline and shoving in wicks torn from rags.
Kids against tanks—holy shit.
Maybe he would stick around, but just for a little while. As a kid he’d built up his own reputation leading a gang that defended against the roving Italian and Irish gangs who liked to bust Jewish heads.
That’s what was going on here, Benny thought. Irish gangs or Hitler or these damned Arabs—what they all had in common was a desire to bust up Jews. He’d missed that scrape with Hitler, as Becky had once reminded him.
Getting killed in a war is a sucker’s move, he told himself. Then he thought about the ceremony he’d just attended and how a tough guy like Herschel broke down to tears. He thought about this pipsqueak nation’s chosen colors, blue and white. It was a nice flag, and it’d be a shame to let a bunch of camel drivers trample it into the mud before it had a chance to wave.
He crumpled up the newspaper clipping but hesitated to toss it away. What’s the point in being a hero? he asked himself a final time. Where’s the percentage?
There was none, but he knew that he was going to stick around anyway. Besides, being a war hero would likely impress Becky.
This time he did try to toss away the crumpled clipping, but it stuck to his sweaty fingers. It sure was hot.
Chapter 66
Czechoslovakia
Danny watched anxiously, his hands jammed into his pockets, biting his lower lip to keep from yelling out dumb advice that would only distract the ground crew. Slowly, gently, the dismantled fuselage of the Messerschmitt was lifted with a block and tackle and gingerly swung into the cavernous hold of the cargo plane. That was his fighter they were loading, and as soon as they were finished packing the wings, guns and ammo, he would board the big C-54 to return to Israel.
His training at the Czech fighter base had been an adventure more out of Alice in Wonderland than Tailspin Tommy—including last night’s surprise ending.
He left Israel—Palestine then—with several other volunteers. He spent a restless night at the hotel that was to be his home during his training, and the next morning they took a bus to the fighter base. They were issued overalls embroidered with swastikas and introduced to their instructors, former RAF pilots. To Danny that just added to the madness. The British who were not leading the Arabs of Transjordan against the Jews of Israel were training Jews wearing swastikas to shoot down Egyptians flying British-supplied Spitfires.
The Messerschmitt was unlike anything Danny had ever flown. The big Daimler-Benz engine was powerful and smooth. Danny had his plane nudging three-fifty at full throttle. The Messerschmitt had a nice tight turning radius. Unfortunately, his baby also had some severe drawbacks. It took real muscle to control her. After a flight his arms felt like rubber and his thigh ached from riding the rudder bar. Visibility was horrible, and in a dogfight the first guy to see his opponent usually ended up the winner.
There were other problems. It was the devil to handle on the ground due to its narrow-track landing gear. Taxiing was a symphony of rumbling engine and squealing brakes as Danny struggled not to dip a gull wing onto the grass. It had no artificial horizon and no cockpit armor to protect the pilot, who sat smack on top of the fuel tank. It carried only two machine guns, mounted on top of the engine cowling, as opposed to the Spitfire’s eight. It was true that the ME-109 was also armed with a cannon in each wing, but their rate of fire was very slow, considering that on average a pilot had an enemy plane in his sights for only
two seconds. Besides, cannon needed cannon shells and, as Danny knew, Herschel was busy churning out machine gun bullets, not cannon shells. Israel-bound cargo planes would airlift in shells as well as spare parts for the ten Messerschmitts that formed the core of the new nation’s air force, but Danny knew those cannon were going to be empty more often than not.
Toward the end of his training Danny grew fond of the Messerschmitt. It wouldn’t have been his first choice, but when he thought about it, he had to admit that the Nazis hadn’t done so badly with it, so he figured the Jews could do okay as well. Anyway, any fighter at all was better than a Piper Cub with a hand-held submachine gun thrust out the side window, which was what his side had been using against the Spitfires.
He spent his days flying and his evenings flirting with bar girls, waitresses and maids. There was one big-busted maid who wore her long red hair in braids and had a wiggly behind that drove Danny crazy, but he didn’t know how to do anything about it. His frantic efforts to communicate with the maid, who spoke no English, put his fellow pilots into hysterics.
As the training period wound down to its final days, Danny mercilessly began to badger his flight instructor, who spoke Czech, to jot down Danny’s obvious desires so that he could pass the note to the luscious redhead. The instructor refused, adding insult to injury by also sternly lecturing Danny against fraternizing with the natives.
Danny seemed to be losing his mind. The redhead dominated his dreams and ruined his concentration during flight time. Czechoslovakia was his chance to lose his virginity; it was the best chance he would ever have, and poor old Danny, the world’s biggest cherry, was going to miss out.
Last night, his final night in Czechoslovakia, desperation had finally overwhelmed bashfulness. He was on his way from his hotel room to the dining room on the main floor when he encountered the maid in the corridor. They exchanged smiles—she’d always seemed to like him—but then that fanny of hers was sashaying away and out of his life.
He looked around wildly and hurried after the maid. He spun her around and he grabbed her wrist to plant her fingers on his swelling groin.
Then Danny smiled in what he’d hoped was a beseeching manner. The redhead giggled, squeezing him tentatively. Then she took his wrist to lead him back to his room.
Beneath her maid’s uniform was a black bra, black panties and a black garter belt to hold up her stockings. The brassiere and panties came off, but through much mime and sign language, which also served to break the ice, Danny was able to persuade her to retain the garter belt and stockings.
She was a redhead all over. As he savored the maid’s ruddy charms, he realized this was something that beat flying.
That was last night. Now Danny yawned and watched as the last of his guns and ammo canisters were packed aboard. Then, as the cargo pilot began to feather his engines, Danny got aboard as well.
He rode in the cargo bay, settling as comfortably as he could against the stacked wings, for the first leg of the flight back to Israel. Pretty soon the drone of the engines lulled him into a sort of half-sleep. He retasted some of last night’s pleasures and then drifted back to his boyhood and the pleasure he took in assembling model airplanes.
His own laughter jolted him awake as he realized that he was now in charge of one of the biggest airplane kits in the world. Soon the Messerschmitt would be put together, and then he would be a combat pilot at last.
Chapter 67
New York
First Danny went to Israel, and now Herschel and Benny were there as well. It was too much. Becky thought she would go insane with worrying.
She desperately tried to occupy herself organizing fund-raisers and making speeches. Her goal was to move a million dollars’ worth of goods a month to Israel. Nothing less would do for those who were risking their lives for Israel.
March saw another attempt by the Pickman family to wrest away control of the store. Once again Phil Cooper stood by Becky.
It still riled Becky that Gertrude Hoffer Pickman excluded her from contributing her assistance to Carl’s museum project. Becky had beaten Gertrude on two fronts. She’d kept control of the store and regained the social acceptance lost since Carl’s death.
It was the beginning of April. To combat loneliness after Herschel’s departure, she began to make an inventory of Carl’s personal papers. She discovered a letter wedged into the back of a file drawer. It was still in its original envelope. Becky wondered whether Carl had misplaced it or hidden it. It was dated 1911. The stationery with the Harvard seal was yellowed and brittle.
It was Carl’s acceptance letter. He’d wanted to be a doctor. It was so like him not to confide to her that his dream had been denied. She’d been his wife and lover, his protege, but she’d never known the truth about him. She thought back to how she felt as a girl, when her own father took her out of school. She and Carl had been more alike than they’d known.
She called Norman Collins and instructed him to deal with the paperwork. It had not taken long to establish a fund bearing Carl Pickman’s name to award scholarships to worthy, financially needy medical students.
On May 17th Becky attended a luncheon during which the main speaker, a newspaper correspondent, lectured on the military situation in the Mideast. The speaker disclosed that the United States was calling for a truce resolution in the Security Council but that Great Britain was stalling, he suspected, in order to give the Arabs a chance to grab territory.
A large map had been erected to illustrate the speaker’s talk. Red arrows signified enemy troop positions. There were a lot of red arrows. Someone asked about Galilee and the speaker predicted that it would fall to the Syrians.
Becky sat numb, staring at the map, which made it very clear that Degania was the gate through which the Syrians would have to pass if they wished to seize Galilee.
Chapter 68
Degania
The command meeting took place in the old dining hall late in the afternoon. The kibbutz membership attended; it was, after all, their home that had become the battlefield. The long tables had all been pushed to one side, the worn, backless benches arranged facing the front table, where Moshe Dayan and the leader of the three-hundred-man brigade assigned to protect the Jordan valley pondered their maps and quietly conferred.
For Herschel, sitting with Benny, his mother and old Yol Popovich, it was a long-awaited homecoming. How he had missed the land of his youth. Not even the hastily dug trenches, the barbed wire and the smell of death could mar this reunion. Benny Talkin had been unusually quiet since their arrival a few hours ago. It was as if the living, breathing history of the kibbtuz had instilled in him a sense of place, of history, of home, that the American had been sadly lacking since coming to this new country.
Degania was Israel, Herschel thought as he sat with one arm around his mother’s thin shoulders and his other clasping Yol’s gnarled, thick fingers. It would remain so despite the line of Syrian Renault tanks sitting motionless in the sun like basking black toads. It would remain so despite the neighboring villages that were overrun by the Syrians.
Dayan rapped the table top to bring the meeting to order. The brigade commander who until an hour ago had held the responsibility of protecting the area did not look pleased, and Herschel could understand why. Nobody liked to lose his authority at the last moment, as this poor fellow had when Dayan arrived, bringing along nothing but a platoon of frightened adolescents from the Youth Troops, a couple of rusty bazookas and of course Benny and himself.
Dayan cleared his throat. “From what I’ve been told, your few machine gun nests have served to keep away the Syrian infantry. They must cross the barley fields to get to us, and they will not do so as long as the guns have ammunition.”
“What about those tanks?” the brigade commander demanded: “Machine guns won’t stop tanks.”
Dayan turned his head to glare at the officer. Herschel, as always, was struck by Dayan’s birdlike mannerisms. The Haganah leader was dressed in the wor
n khakis that served as the uniform of the Israel. He and Benny had each been issued a set as well, along with Sten guns and an extra magazine of ammunition apiece. Herschel’s pants were too short and his shirt had given way under his left arm. Becky would have to send them better uniforms. He smiled to himself. He could have daydreamed about her all day, but he pushed her from his mind to concentrate on what Dayan was saying.
“We’ll need weapons far more effective than Molotov cocktails if we’re to hold off the tanks. From what you people have reported and from what I’ve seen, we’re up against a Syrian infantry brigade backed by tanks and armored cars. Deganias A and B must dig in far more effectively if they are to hold out. Things here are not so bad, but Degania B is practically undefended. I’ve also noticed that Bet Yerach, a stone’s throw north of here, is unoccupied.”
“So what?” the brigade commander exploded. “It’s nothing, merely an archaeological mound. I know you haven’t been in combat for years, Moshe, and I am trying to make allowances for your inexperience, but diverting manpower and precious ammunition to protect a mound of dirt from the Syrians is going too far.”
“Commander, it is true that Bet Yerach is not a settlement, but if you look at the map, you’ll see that it commands the road from Zemach, which the enemy has already taken. The Syrians must pass Bet Yerach if they wish to take Degania, the corridor between the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee. If we can entrench ourselves on the mound’s eastern slopes, we can fire on the Syrians as they pass. We will have flanked the enemy.” Dayan shrugged. “I can think of no better way to use what little we have.”
“Little is right,” the commander scoffed. “What we need is artillery to blast those tanks.”
“Ben-Gurion has promised to send us artillery as soon as it can be spared from elsewhere.”
“It’ll be too late then,” the commander shouted in frustration. “I say we should evacuate.”
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