Mitla Pass (32 page)

I remained in this ridiculous position, even though every square inch of my body began to ache. Ben Asher was going to see how long I could take it.

It was no longer a game. I could feel the veins in my neck bulging and sweat erupted all over my body. I felt myself swooning, on the verge of passing out.

“You’re a real pain in the ass, Zadok,” he said. “All right, you dumb son of a bitch, get off your head. You can stay.”

Shlomo grabbed me as a rousing cheer went up from the men. Ben Asher whipped around and snarled everyone into instant silence, then cracked the meagerest of smiles.

The business of war interrupted in the form of a half-dozen mortar shells landing on our perimeter. God, if there’s anything I really hate, it’s mortars. They’re on you before you have a chance to react and their blast can leave you reeling, punchy, and half dead.

Ben Asher was at the field phone to the forward observation post, and in a minute our own mortars and recoilless rifles responded. The Egyptian shelling stopped. Ben Asher ordered the Recon platoon to move forward and take the position away from the Egyptians.

Fortunately, it was a typical Arab hit-and-run attack. Coffeehouse fighters. They abandoned the position and fled into the Pass without further ado. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t try to sneak back under cover of darkness and give us a miserable night.

After the Recon platoon secured the position, Ben Asher decided to move into it with more men and use it as our own forward post. A heavy machine-gun and rifle squad deployed and dug in. We were, in effect, inching up to the Pass against our orders.

The major was concerned about nightfall. The Pass was over fourteen miles long. On the other side of Mitla, beyond our reach, the Egyptians could cross the Canal by rubber raft and put God knew how many troops into the Pass.

I watched through a pair of field glasses as the phone line was being run to the new observation post. Mitla Pass was beginning to take on a weird fascination. The warrior’s blood said, “Go in and take the son of a bitch.” But that was tempered by common sense. It had to be a death trap in there.

“God help us if we ever have to go in and try to take it,” Shlomo said.

I agreed.

It was only nine in the morning. In the distance, we could hear activity. Whose planes were they? Was it the Israelis going after the Egyptian convoy on the other side of the Pass? Or were the Egyptians taking to the air en masse to challenge us from the other side of the Canal? Maybe, just maybe, it was the British and French coming in to neutralize the Egyptian air bases.

Shlomo and I found our crevice.

“Great show you put on,” he said.

“Ben Asher’s really pissed at me.”

“Naw, he loves you. He’s always had this trouble with smiling.”

A sudden jolt of pain sent me into little spasms. I unlaced my boot. The whole leg was beginning to turn purple ... and blue ... and a pale yellow ... right down to the sole of my foot. Having won my skirmish with the major, I couldn’t quit now, but I was wondering if I could bear up under the pain.

“Do you think you can talk Dr. Schwartz into seeing me? I might need another shot. Just a little one.”

The doc came over and probed. “Hmmmmmm, getting nice and mushy,” he said. “That was quite an exhibition you put on for Major Ben Asher,” he continued. “Do something like that again and you have an excellent chance of going into shock.”

The probe was painful.

“Stay off the leg, absolutely,” the doctor ordered.

“How about another of those delicious morphine shots?”

“Don’t start enjoying them too much,” he warned.

For the first time in my life, I was really happy when someone stuck a needle in my ass. “Thanks, Doctor,” I said.

And away we go! I lay back, shaded my eyes, and watched the mean desert sun grow higher and hotter. Our shade was minimal ... water situation good. I helped myself to some wet rags for the back of my neck.

... Come on, baby, put me out of my misery, let’s get that Sinai glow ... all distant horizons are filled with sounds of airplanes ... theirs ... ours ... who knows? ... So anyhow, I kissed my mom goodbye and headed back to the Coast after a furlough. ... Mom, I’m going to be fine ... aren’t you proud of your gyrene?

... Oh, Mom ... I wish I could tell you ... you’re not to worry about that telegram from the Marines ... I wasn’t really wounded all that badly, just caught a little shrapnel in the shoulder ... it’s going to be okay. ... Wish I could tell you that we’re safe now, in New Zealand. ... You see, Mom, it still hurts me when I remember opening that door and you in bed with that guy ... like, who the hell was he?

... Mom saw my reflection in the dresser mirror and screamed and threw a towel about herself and slapped me and slammed the door in my face. ... Later she told me she was sorry ... but ... I had come to realize ... you know ... it hurts when you’re a nine-year-old kid. ...

... Something always makes me want to put women down ... like they’re a disease. I go after them, conquer them, then dump them ... but I always do it in a nice way ... with class. ...

... Hey, man! ... Things don’t feel too bad on the old hip ... wow ... floaty, floaty ... wheee ...

Just before the battle, Mother, ...

I am thinking most of you, ...

While upon the field we’re watching, ...

With the enemy in view. ...

Comrades brave are ’round me lying, ...

Filled with thoughts of home and God; ...

For well they know that on the morrow, ...

Some will sleep beneath the sod. ...

Hark! I hear the bugles sounding, ... ’Tis the signal for the fight, ...

Now, may God protect us, Mother, ...

As He ever does the right, ...

Hear the “Battle Cry of Freedom,”...

How it swells upon the air, ...

Oh, yes, we’ll rally ’round the standard, ...

Or we’ll perish nobly there. ...

Farewell, Mother, you may never ...

Press me to your breast again, ...

But, Oh, you’ll not forget me, Mother, ...

If I’m numbered with the slain. ...

IRELAND TO AMERICA

Queenstown, the Port of Cork, Ireland, 1887

T
HE
A
MERICAN CONSUL GENERAL
was waiting at dockside with sealed envelopes as the USS
Quinnebaug
tied up. He was piped aboard and welcomed by the ship’s skipper, Captain Percy Holifield. After exchanging pleasantries and making a dinner engagement ashore, Captain Holifield repaired to his cabin and opened the envelopes, one by one.

The contents of the first caused his face to widen into a vast, satisfied grin. Here was his long-delayed promotion to the rank of Commodore and an assignment to a new post, one he had coveted for years.

He allowed himself a glass of port wine, stood before the mirror, and toasted, after a long period of self-indulgent admiration, “To Commodore Percy Poindexter Holifield, the next superintendent of the United States Naval Academy.”

Returning to his desk, he studied the balance of his communications. After a week’s layover for necessary repairs in Cork, the
Quinnebaug
was to proceed with all deliberate speed to Portsmouth, England. There she would join an international flotilla of naval vessels, as America’s representative at Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee.

Thereafter, he would be relieved of his command and was to return forthwith to the United States, to the Academy.

The
Quinnebaug,
a sail-and-screw corvette of nineteen hundred tons, with a complement of two hundred officers and crew, was part of a two-ship squadron that constituted the European Station. For three years Percy Holifield had sailed her on a round of endless ports of call to “show the flag.” Her route had taken her to such unlikely places as Samos, Zante, Villefranche, and Latakia and the steamy route down the west coast of Africa to the likes of Monrovia, Junk River, and Libreville. A graveyard of a career had just been redeemed.

He scrawled his signature on an order for shore leave. The Irish members of his crew, who constituted almost half of his men, would receive five days’ liberty, while the others would make do with three days ashore.

Holifield ran down a list of what would be needed to spiff up his ship, to make certain she would proudly represent America, and wrote out detailed repair and maintenance orders.

He went to his sea chest and dug down to the bottom, where he had carefully stowed a bolt of blue Navy cloth, several rolls of gold braid, and packets of buttons. From these he would have crafted a new commodore’s uniform.

There was endless socializing with the ships’ captains of the various European navies. Despite America’s great strides in naval warfare during the Civil War, the Europeans continued to look with disdain at the Yankees, particularly at their spartan uniforms. Well, he’d make them eat their epaulets, by thunder!

Having attended to his ship and men, he ordered a carriage and made for Cork with his bolt and buttons and braid and a number of photographs of the commodore’s uniform. The carriage stopped at Callaghan and O’Brien, the city’s finest men’s haberdasher on the Grand Parade, Cork’s main shopping thoroughfare.

Devastating news was delivered to him by Mr. Callaghan himself. “Terribly sorry, Yer Excellency, but there’s absolutely no way such an elaborate furnishing can be done in under a month, and we’re badly backlogged.”

“You understand, of course, that this is for the Queen’s flotilla.”

Callaghan tilted his head, bit his lip, and sighed in sympathy. “Aw, I’d be after lying to you, sir, if you were an Englishman, but I’d not do such a thing to the skipper of an American vessel such as yourself. I have many relatives in America, sir, and I wouldn’t be treating you that way.”

“But Lord, man, look at these rags I’m wearing. They’re all but rotted out from the west coast of Africa.”

“Pity, sir, pity. Hold on just one moment,” Callaghan said and consulted sincerely with his partner, then returned to the disconsolate commodore.

“There is a chance, just a chance, mind you, but there is a Jewish tailor in Queenstown, where your ship is tied up. He specializes in naval uniforms, enlisted men, mainly, but why don’t you give it a go?” and with that he wrote the name and address of one Moses Balaban on a slip of paper.

The commodore drove back to Queenstown and pulled to a halt on the quay, just a few blocks from where the
Quinnebaug
was tied up. Holifield emerged from the carriage before a tiny storefront with the inconspicuous lettering reading
M. BALABAN
—
TAILOR.
His heart sank to see that the shades were drawn. He jiggled the door latch vigorously, then thumped on the window. “I say! Anyone in there?”

“Can I be helping you, Admiral?” a voice behind him said.

He turned and looked at a disreputable personage, whose breath reeked of rum, a man of the lowly type who hung around the wharfs in every port in the world.

“Do you know where the proprietor lives?”

“Try the back of the shop, Yer Worship.”

At that, Percy Holifield banged and shouted again.

“Ah sure, that will do you no good at all. It’s the Sabbath to old Moses, and he won’t be coming out till sunset. He’s a quare sort, a Hebrew, you know.”

The commodore fumed, then gave the informant tuppence, for which he was voraciously thanked. He took out his pocket watch. Two hours until sunset. After another unsuccessful round of door thumping, he drew in a deep breath, clasped his hands behind his back, and paced before the shop with one eye on the sun.

As twilight at last overcame the quay, he knocked again, but this time respectfully. The door opened a crack and there stood Moses Balaban, a slight Jew, mostly likely in his late twenties, with a straggly goatee and wearing a black cuplike cap on his head and a shawl over his shoulders. He could well have been Shylock from
The Merchant of Venice.

“Why are you making all that noise?” he demanded. To Holifield’s surprise, the man spoke with an obvious twinge of an Irish accent. “You desecrated my Sabbath.”

The commodore, not used to being reprimanded, ground his teeth, mumbled beneath his breath, but held back his pride, for he needed this chap, urgently. “Kindly accept my apologies. I am somewhat desperate for a tailor. You are Mr. Balaban?”

The Jew looked him up and down, then opened the door. “Come in,” he said tersely.

The shop was shockingly unkempt, something that would obviously grate upon a naval officer who ran a shipshape vessel. Bolts of cloth were askew without rhyme or reason. Tailor’s dummies were fitted with half-sewn uniforms being made for men at sea to collect when they returned. The shop had a foul, stale aroma, and from the rear the commodore could hear the voices of two young squabbling children.

“Shut up back there,” Moses shouted, “or you’ll get a lump on your noggins.” He turned to Holifield. “Just what is it you want that is so important as to interrupt my prayers?”

“Sir, my ship has been ordered to sail to England to join a celebration in honor of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. My uniforms are threadbare from months at sea. I have, outside in the carriage, cloth and everything else needed, as well as photographs for a new uniform. I am willing to pay a handsome bonus for the job. I do realize that this will be more ornate ...”

Moses held up his hand for silence. “I am Romanian. Have you ever seen all the junk on a Romanian admiral’s uniform? You are an American?”

“I am indeed, sir.”

The tailor looked pensively out of the door to the quay. “I have watched a thousand ships sail to America from here, filled with half-starved Irishmen and -women. This is a port of tears, of misery,” he said as though speaking to himself. “Your name?”