The Lion's Gate: On the Front Lines of the Six Day War

by Steven Pressfield

  What has happened, though I will not know this for another six days, is that my brother’s half-track has been hit by a 122-millimeter shell from a Stalin tank. He is up front in the lead vehicle of a force of forty half-tracks. The Stalins are hidden in orange groves. Thirty-six paratroopers are killed and sixty wounded in this action, the single worst casualty evacuation emergency in IDF history.

  My brother has been killed instantly. My pilot, Reuven Levy, arriving to evacuate the wounded, has been ordered by an officer on-site to tell me nothing about Nechemiah’s death.

  I am Israel’s primary helicopter squadron commander.

  I am needed.

  Danny Matt commands the 80th Paratroop Brigade, part of General Sharon’s division:

  Our division is a hundred kilometers south of General Tal’s. Tal’s forces have been in action since this morning; ours are preparing urgently to attack tonight. We will go against the Egyptian 2nd Infantry Division—80 guns, 90 tanks, 16,000 men.

  Where are my helicopters? Cheetah Cohen’s squadron of Sikorsky S-58s is slated to carry my paratroopers into the fight tonight.

  Where are they?

  My paratroopers are brought up to the assembly area in civilian buses. Their boots have not yet touched the ground and already we’re in a crisis.

  The landing zone we have planned to use tonight has become untenable. Bad luck: A formation of Egyptian tanks has shifted position and now occupies an adjacent sector.

  I will not wait for General Sharon to provide an alternative plan.

  I will draw up my own now.

  Sharon and I go back to 1953 and earlier. We know each other so well we speak in a kind of code. He is, in my opinion, the greatest field commander the IDF has ever produced or ever will produce. What he performs this night at Um Katef and Abu Agheila will be called “a masterpiece of war.”

  My family is from Poland. In World War I, my father served in the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He got out to Palestine in the 1930s. He lost his father and brothers, seventy family members, in the death camps.

  Before the Six Day War, I was asked by a journalist if I thought Israel would win. I said yes. The reporter asked why. “Because if we lose, what our enemies will do to us will make Auschwitz look like a summer resort.”

  When I grew up, if you had finished elementary school, you were considered an educated person. Tenth grade meant highly educated. If you had graduated from high school, you were an intellectual.

  In our generation, you began to make your way at fourteen. You joined the Haganah or the Palmach or the Lehi. You carried messages or smuggled pistols and explosives. The Haganah sent me to serve in the British Army, the Jewish Brigade, in World War II. I have fought in every war of Israel from 1946 to 1982. In my body are over a meter of surgical stitches from wounds suffered in combat.

  This night, June 5, 1967, my men and I will undertake an operation that no force, including the Americans in Vietnam, has ever attempted: the insertion of a paratroop brigade by helicopter, in darkness, behind enemy lines.

  Yael Dayan is also with General Sharon’s division on the Egyptian border:

  When Sharon speaks to the paratroopers, his voice alters. These are his boys. He knows the first name of almost every man. He himself still wears the red boots of the airborne units, though he now commands an armored division.

  The advance to the border has paused while buses bring up the infantry and the paratroopers. The column extends back for miles. I donate a cigarette to a sergeant, who asks me if there is any rivalry between Sharon and my father. What can I tell him? They are the two commanders who beyond all others have shaped the doctrine and fighting spirit of the Israel Defense Forces. But there can be no competition between them. Arik and my father are almost a generation apart. When Sharon was a major, Dayan was chief of staff. What they share as military professionals and as men (and what unites them with virtually every officer in the army) is an idea of the land.

  When for thousands of years the Jewish people were separated from this land, they yearned for it. Their prayers invoked it. The land dwelt within them, in dreams and songs and in a hunger so deep that no words existed to convey it. Their rabbis and scholars prepared the people emotionally and morally to return to this land, but when the nation had achieved this repatriation in fact, the reality was for many too much to take in. They preferred the dream. Even our anthem, “Hatikva”—The Hope—sings not of realities achieved but of visions hoped for in the future.

  This is not my father’s way. It is not Sharon’s. Nor are they unique in this regard. For their two generations, and mine as well, the land is here, now; it is ours and always has been. Beside the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem lies a melon field in which Sharon nearly bled to death in 1948, shot through the hip by a Jordanian gunner. From those slopes can be seen the Ayalon Valley

  Sun, stand still over Gibeon,

  Moon, stop over Ayalon Valley

  where Joshua defeated the Amorites 3,500 years ago. In Sharon’s mind this victory happened yesterday. He is fighting the same battle today. No interval of centuries separates the tanks of the Egyptians, who would grind our nation to dust, from the war chariots of the Pharaohs, from whom the children of Israel escaped, over this same wilderness through which our armored columns advance this noon, east to west instead of west to east.

  My father has spearpoints and pottery shards from the era of Joshua, dug from those very battlegrounds. Yesterday I drove forward with the jeeps of the Reconnaissance Company to the site of Kadesh Barnea. Upon those slopes the Hebrew tribes encamped in their flight across the wilderness of Zin. From here Moses sent spies into the land of Canaan. Here the Edomite king refused Moses’s request for passage. Here the god of the Israelites ordained the southern border of the lands he pledged to the children of Abraham. And here He told Moses that he would not be permitted to enter the Promised Land.

  Because ye have believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.

  I am not religious. Neither is Sharon. My father has never even had a bar mitzvah. But he and Sharon have stepped straight from that era of patriarchal scripture, as have Gavish and Tal and Yoffe, and thousands of others in this army.

  They are farmers and warriors. Not children of the book but of the plow and the sword. War has called them from their families and from the land. But to the land they will return with joy. When my father dies, we will not bury him beneath some monument or national tomb, but at home on the hill above Nahalal, which is a small village even today, where he grew and learned to read and ride and shoot.

  32.

  CASUALTIES OF WAR

  The first casualty reports have come in from the Gaza Strip. Do I read them? What commander does not? On a list of twenty names, I will know ten.

  Moshe Dayan, minister of defense, directs the conduct of the war.

  One name in particular breaks my heart.

  Nechemiah Cohen, killed in the first hour attacking dug-in Stalin tanks somewhere between Kerem Shalom and Rafiah Junction.

  Nechemiah is the most decorated soldier in the Israeli Army. Only twenty-four years old, he had been temporarily transferred from the elite Sayeret Matkal and given command of a company in Raful Eitan’s 35th Paratroop Brigade to prepare him to lead larger formations when “the Unit” expands to battalion or possibly brigade size. Nechemiah’s brother Uri is a much decorated armor officer. The eldest of the family, Cheetah, is the best helicopter commander in Israel.

  A second, happier report follows. This is the tally of enemy planes destroyed in the first two waves of air attacks.

  Eleven Egyptian bases have been hit in the first strike. IAF squadrons have destroyed 198 enemy aircraft, 9 in aerial combat, the remainder on the ground. Six airfields were put out of action, sixteen radar stations destroyed. Our loss
es: eight planes, five pilots killed, two captured, three injured.

  Our second wave has destroyed 107 more Egyptian planes at fourteen fields. Before noon Israeli warplanes will have wiped out 286 of Egypt’s 420 combat aircraft and put out of commission thirteen airfields and twenty-three radar and antiaircraft sites. By day’s end, the toll of enemy aircraft destroyed—including planes from Jordan, Syria, and Iraq—will reach 402.

  The weight of one great stone, but only one, has rolled off my heart.

  I am handed now the casualty reports from the 7th Armored Brigade’s fight at Rafiah Junction. I have to scan the sheet twice to be certain I have read it right, so devastating are the totals.

  The proverb says that the only truly happy men are wounded men. This is nonsense. The wounded are the most miserable of men.

  I was shot in the face, the night of June 8, 1941, in Lebanon north of the Litani River. Our ten-man party was the forward element of an Australian division advancing against the Vichy French. The main body had been held up and could not reach us to bring aid. We had to hold out all night on our own.

  I remember my comrades bearing me to safety. They laid me on the ground, seeking to make me comfortable. Of what does a wounded man think? I thought of my young wife, whom I loved more than life, and of my baby daughter. I had lost an eye. Half my face felt as if it had been shot away. Would I live? Would I be a cripple? How would I care for my bride and child? How could I continue to serve my country?

  The wounded soldier understands a thing that others do not. He understands the earth. He has become more intimate with it than with any element in his life. This is how you die, he understands. The earth accepts your blood. A scrap of ground no wider than your hips will hold you.

  My brother Zorik died in a field at Ramat Yohanan, April 14, 1948, seven years after I was shot in Lebanon. His blood drained into a furrow. We could not retrieve his body for three days, so continuous was the fighting.

  The identities of the young men who fell at Rafiah will be known within a few hours. Shall we honor them alongside Zorik and the thousands of others who have fallen defending the Jewish nation in this century? No. To me these soldiers’ names stand as well with those who fought beside Joshua and Gideon, with Saul and Jonathan and David.

  We will weep for them tomorrow.

  Now more immediate business presses upon us.

  I am handed transcripts of broadcasts recorded this morning from Radio Cairo. The first transcript boasts of the destruction of forty Israeli warplanes. An hour later a second report inflates the figure to fifty-two. Then sixty-one. Then seventy-seven.

  I instruct our public information officers to hold back the true totals, which are one-tenth of Nasser’s vaunting tally.

  Let Arab pride and vanity serve our purposes.

  A few minutes into the war, Intelligence intercepts a telephone communication from King Hussein’s chief aide, Colonel Mashour Haditha al-Jazy, informing the king that Israeli armor has crossed the border into Egypt. An hour later orders in code arrive from Egypt’s chief military commander, Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer, instructing General Abdel Moneim Riad, assistant chief of staff of the United Arab Command and the commander on the ground in Jordan, to “open a new front, according to plan.”

  A subsequent call from Nasser will urge King Hussein to attack Israel with all the strength he possesses. “Seize all the territory you can before the Russians and the Americans impose a cease-fire.”

  Against us in Sinai are six Egyptian divisions and two near-division-size task forces: the 20th and the 7th Divisions in the north between Rafiah and El Arish, the 2nd at Abu Agheila/Um Katef, backed by the 3rd between Jebel Libni and Bir Hamma, with the elite 4th Armored Division to their rear at Bir Gafgafa. The 6th Mechanized Division, supported by the 1st Armored Brigade with 100 T-34s and T-54s, is at El Thamad, opposite Kuntilla. Joining it, east of Bir Hassna, is the 9,000-man, 200-tank Shazli Force. This formation was pulled out of Rafiah and moved south in response to the movement of an Israeli “phantom division,” the 29th, made up of mock tanks and dummied-up jeeps. In all, the enemy has in Sinai eighteen infantry brigades, one paratroop brigade, six armored and two mechanized brigades, plus four special forces battalions.

  We need every tank and every gun to deal with these.

  If Jordan enters the war, Israel will be compelled to fight on two fronts. I will have to pull forces from Sinai and send them to defend Jewish Jerusalem and the eastern frontier. Jordan’s forces, as I have noted, include 176 new M48 Patton tanks in two armored brigades, the 40th and the 60th, the latter commanded by King Hussein’s cousin Sherif Zeid Chaker and deployed at the southern end of the Jordan Valley, within immediate range of Jerusalem. Against these, the IDF has only two reserve brigades equipped with ancient Shermans and light AMXs. In addition, Hussein has in and near Jerusalem the crack Imam Ali and King Talal infantry brigades, the elite formations of the Arab Legion.

  Beyond that, Egypt has deployed to Jordan two elite commando battalions, the 33rd and the 53rd, not to mention a mechanized brigade crossing now from Iraq, as well as promised air and ground forces from Syria and Saudi Arabia.

  What does Israel have on the chessboard to throw against these? I see only one piece, a newly formed reserve paratroop brigade, the 55th.

  But this formation is slated to jump tonight at El Arish, to support Tal’s and Gorodish’s advance. We can’t redeploy it. El Arish is critical.

  We have nothing else.

  33.

  THE JIRADI PASS

  The war we are fighting is what the manuals call a “war of movement.” Its principles are the principles of blitzkrieg: Break through the enemy and drive as quickly and as deeply as you can into his rear. Such a thrust may not literally destroy the enemy’s men or armaments, but it will throw his command and communications into chaos.

  Yosi Ben-Hanan is operations officer of the 7th Armored Brigade.

  Our columns have pulled up in Sheikh Zouaid, the next village after Rafiah. Time is 13:20, a little more than five hours since the day started. I am with Gorodish in the command half-track when orders come from division commander Tal:

  Hold the advance, stop where you are.

  The column pulls into a dusty square fronting an abandoned headquarters of the Egyptian 7th Division. Gorodish dismounts and spreads a map on the hood of a jeep. Around him gather his commanders—Ehud Elad of tank Battalion 79, Gabi Amir of Battalion 82, deputy brigade commander Pinko Harel, with Lieutenant Colonel Zvika Lederman, the brigade intelligence officer (who has just flown in from the École de Guerre in Paris, called back for the war), and Ori Orr of the Reconnaissance Company.

  Avigdor Kahalani rumbles up, my wild friend, leading his company in a tank with a cannon that won’t fire. He sends his deputy, Lieutenant Daniel Tzefoni, to find one with a gun that works.

  The problem with rapid blitz-type penetrations is that they leave the advancing forces’ flanks exposed. The bypassed enemy may counterattack. He may cut off the lines of supply. The enemy’s left-behind strongpoints may become pockets of resistance that must be mopped up.

  This is what has happened behind our advance. Paratroop Brigade 35, an elite regular-army formation, has run into unexpectedly strong resistance back in the Gaza Strip. In addition, forces of the Egyptian 20th Division have begun shelling Israeli kibbutzim along the border. General Tal has ordered our brigade to respond.

  Gorodish decides to send all the tanks of Battalion 79. He wants Ori Orr to take a platoon from Recon and lead them.

  “Ori, do you know where you’re going?”

  “I always know where I’m going.”

  Gorodish is aware of how badly the Recon Company has been mauled at Rafiah Junction.

  “Be careful.”

  Menachem Shoval, Recon trooper:

  Where I am, we don’t know anything about Ori and the tanks of Battalion 79 getting sent
back. All we know is we are going forward.

  Our platoon, Eli’s, has been ordered to lead Battalion 82 west through the fortified Jiradi Pass to El Arish.

  7th Armored Brigade commander Colonel Shmuel Gorodish, bareheaded, with Gabi Amir, right, commander of Tank Battalion 82, at Sheikh Zouaid.

  Photo by Yosi Ben-Hanan.

  At the village of Sheikh Zouaid my lieutenant, Shaul Groag, takes a new jeep—his third so far today. The others keep getting blown up.

  We have new men, too. Guys from various shot-up vehicles and support teams have come forward, refusing any role except a fighting one. Our operations sergeant, Benzi Zur, takes over driving for Shaul, with Yoram Abolnik taking my radio seat in back. Our sergeant major, Haim Lavi, whom we call Etzioni, leaves his support post and piles onto the jeep I’ve been moved to. It’s him, me, and David Cameron now.

  Our jeeps follow Eli, heading for the Jiradi Pass.

  Eli Rikovitz, Recon platoon commander:

  We have caught up now with the tanks that passed us at Rafiah Junction. We’re out front again. Time is around 14:00. We’re leading the tanks of Battalion 82 as fast as we can toward El Arish.

  I don’t like the formation our vehicles are in. It’s too exposed. I’m leading in my own jeep, with our whole platoon—three jeeps and a half-track—right behind.

  Lieutenant Eli Rikovitz.

  It’s crazy for all of our defenseless Recon vehicles to be forward of the tanks. The pass we’re approaching is reported to be heavily defended. It’s ten kilometers long and could be a gantlet of fire the whole way.

  I drop back and pull alongside Shaul’s jeep. I tell him and the men in the other vehicles to let the tanks pass and then fall in behind them. I’ll take the lead myself, ahead of the tanks, with my own jeep and Zvika Kornblit’s.