The Class (50 page)

with their weapons.

Nasser had massed a hundred thousand men armed with Soviet equipment, as well as a thousand tanks, in the Sinai Peninsula on israel's southern border.

War was inevitable. The only question was whether Israel could survive it.

Since 1956, Egypt and Israel had been separated by small token units of the United Nations Emergency Force, scattered along the frontier. Nasser ordered the UNEF units out of his way. When they withdrew, nothing but sand stood between the two countries.

The King of Jordan put his own army under the Egyptian high command and contingents arrived from other Arab countries.

Israel was now confronted by over a quarter of a million troops, two thousand tanks, and seven hundred aircraft. The country was menaced on three borders. Its fourth frontier was the sea. And that was where the Arabs intended to drive them. With the odds so heavily stacked against them and all the nations of the world preaching restraint but doing nothing to enforce it, they were totally on their own.

Jason Gilbert's platoon of the 54th Paratroop Battalion

had been mobilized for over a week, camping in an olive grove near Tel Shahar. - --

On the order of Battalion Command, they did endless stretcher training to practice the rapid evacuation of the

wounded. This was hardly an encouraging exercise. Nor was the fact that so many of his men had portable radios and could keep abreast of the worsening situation. The British and American Embassies advised their staffs to leave Israel.

As darkness fell each evening, Jason would try to lift the morale of his soldiers. But as the days drew on and the tension mounted, he was less and less convincing. Especially since he himself knew so little of what was happening. Finally, on the evening of June 4, he received a

communiqué: Prepare to move men tonwrrow at 0600. It did not say where. -

When he told this to his platoon, they were actually heartened. At last they would be doing something other than waiting to be bombed out of existence.

"Try and get some sleep, guys," Jason said. "We're going to have a job to do tomorrow."

As the men disbanded and started toward their sleeping

bags, a young reservist in a skullcap approached Jason and, withdrawing a small blue leather book from his breast pocket,

asked politely, "Saba, would it be all right if I prayed instead of sleeping?"

"Okay, Baruch," Jason said. "Maybe God is listening tonight. But what prayers can you say the night- before-before an attack?"

"The Psalms are always appropriate, saba. You know, 'Out

of the depths I cried unto Thee, Thou answered me with great deliverance.'"

"Yeah," Jason smiled wanly, "just be sure you- ask for a three-pronged deliverance."

The young soldier nodded and walked off to a quiet corner where he would not disturb his sleeping comrades, And began to chant the Psalms very softly. Over and over.

Jason lay down in his sleeping bag and wondered if he would ever see his wife and son again.

At dawn on Monday, -June 5, the buses arrived. They were

the same rickety vehicles- on which some of these men rode to work in Tel Aviv. Today they were taking them down toward the Sinai. To an air base deep in the Negev where a fleet of Sikorsky helicopters was waiting.

- As they left the buses, the soldiers glanced nervously toward the sky, instinctively sensing that hostilities had begun. And, being so close to the border, fearing an attack by the Egyptian Air Force.

Jason was in the midst of reassembling his men and

dividing them into groups of eight for each chopper,- when a senior officer called him over for a moment. He came sprinting back, his face beaming. - -

"I've got a pretty interesting announcement, guys," he

called out. "It appears that at 0745 hours this morning, our planes undertook a preemptive strike against enemy airfields. There is no longer such a thing as the Egyptian Air Force.

The skies belong to Israel. Now it's up to us to take the ground."

Before the men could cheer, a young soldier raised his

hand. It was Baruch. Pointing to his little prayer book, he shouted exultantly, "You see, saba, God was listening!" There were no agnostics in the Israeli Army that morning.

"Okay," Jason said, "here's our agenda. We're all moving out. The tanks, the infantry, everybody. We're going right across the Canal to visit the pyramids. There's only one little job we have to do first. The Egyptians are really dug in at

Um Katef-the front door of Sinai. The tanks can't get close enough, so it's our job to clear them the hell out. Now-there's not enough room for everybody, so I'll take volunteers."

Every hand shot up. And even when he had picked his troops, extra men pushed themselves onto the helicopters. As soon as it was fully dark, they began to land in the dunes north of the Egyptian stronghold. The choppers went

back and forth ferrying troops like businessmen in a subway rush-hour. The last few landings were under heavy fire from the fortress.

By prearrangement, the men split into an attack force and a cover group. Jason led his soldiers toward the Egyptian guns, firing rifles, Uzis, and bazookas as they advanced. Suddenly one of their own rockets hit an ammunition

convoy. It exploded, causing devastation on both sides. By

the light of the flaming tower, Jason counted five motionless bodies and dozens of wounded comrades. He ordered his men to stop their advance and wait for the stretchers to come up. Then they performed in earnest the exercises they had done so many times in practice.

At last he picked up his gun and went back to the inhuman job of killing. For the sake of peace.

By the end of the first day the threat of annihilation no longer existed. For the Jordanian and Syrian air forces - had suffered the same fate as the Egyptian. The Southern Command was on its way toward the Suez Canal almost unimpeded.

Though Israel was fighting a war on three fronts, it did

not have three armies. Its single fighting force had to fire to the north as well as to the south. Thus, as soon as the exhausted 54th Paratroop Battalion had cleared the way for the capture of the Sinai, they drove northward where the battle for the Golan Heights was raging.

And all the while they were traveling, a fierce hand-to-hand battle was under way for the ultimate prize-Jerusalem. -

When they reached the Golan on Wednesday morning they were greeted by news that paratroops had recaptured the Old City. And were at the holiest of Jewish shrines-the Temple Wall. Meanwhile, Jason's battalion captured the Syrian position east of Dar Bashiya. The big guns that had for years been pounding the northern kibbutzim were finally silenced.

Six days after it started, the war was over. And the face

of Israel had changed. In the south it had the entire Sinai

-Desert as a protective buffer. It controlled all the territory to the east down to the River Jordan, giving it a defensible frontier. And in the north, Israelis were now on the Golan Heights, threatening Syria instead of vice versa. It was a success in every way but one. It did not bring peace.

On September 1, the Arab Summit Conference at Khartoum passed th-ree resolutions: no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no peace with Israel.

Jason Gilbert, rocking his son in his arms, remarked to

his wife, "They could have added no rest for Israel, either."

-

Even as he spoke, the shellshocked and defeated Arabs were planning a new kind of war against their - enemy. A campaign of terror and sabotage. They created the PLO, whose stated

aim was the "national liberation" of the people who had never been a nation.

No measures seemed to prevent these new terrorists from entering Israeli territory. They could slip across the Jordan River, hide in caves, do their mischief, and either return or travel north and vanish across the Lebanese border. At first the Israeli Army tried the retaliatory raids that had proven moderately effective before the war. Now they were of no avail.

They sealed off the Jordan with a fence of minefields.

They even raked the paths so that early-morning patrols could tell if anyone had passed through during the night. But like the hydra serpent of Greek mythology, every time one head was cut off, the invaders seemed to grow two more.

To deal with this problem the best commandos of every unit were recruited for a supreme counterterrorist force known as Sayaret Matkal, the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit.

Jason was determined to be part of this group. He drove to headquarters prepared to fight the same "you're too old" battle he had fought five years earlier.

But when he met the interviewing officer he realized it

was not necessary. For it was none other than Zvi Doron, whom he had so persuasively "convinced" in the

paratrooprecruitment shack. This time the two men laughed for a few

minutes until Zvi voiced his single qualm about Jason's desire to join.

"Listen, saba, I know you can do this job physically. But you're a father and a husband now. And this is not really the kind of job that makes for happy marriages. To begin with, you'll be away a lot. For another thing, you won't be able to talk to your wife about any of our operations. Believe me, I saw enough divorces in para reconnaissance."

"Look," Jason answered, "I'm not in Israel to pick oranges. I stayed here to do a job. And as long as I can

still be useful, I'll run any risk that's necessary. Now will you take me?"-

"Only if you promise to talk it over with your wife."

"That's a deal."

Eva understood him too well even to argue. She knew she

had married a man with fire in his soul. And in a sense, it was that fire which warmed their marriage. She would not stand in his way. She merely extracted from him the futile promise that he wouldn't take any unnecessary chances.

After all, he was a family man with a wife and son. And a second child due in four months.

G

eorge Keller could, almost have been working in the Museum of Modern Art. Every morning for the past four years, since Labor Day 1963 to be precise, he had been going to 30

Rockefeller Plaza, in New York City, passing various security

procedures and ultimately taking an elevator to the

fifty-sixth floor. There he would enter portals marked simply

"Room 5600."

On the way to his luxurious office, he would walk down corridors lined with Renoirs, Picassos, Cézannes, and van Goghs. Not to mention equally priceless statuary. For he was in the midst of one of the finest private art collections in the world.

It was at this rarefied height that Governor Nelson Rockefeller and his brothers had their base of operations, each

maintaining a wing devoted to his various interests, patronage, philanthropy, politics, and combinations thereof. On Henry Kissinger's recommendation, George had been hired to join the staff writing memoranda on international affairs for the governor. As Henry put it, "You would be laying the groundwork for the foreign policy of the Rockefeller presidency."

If he had any doubts about leaving Harvard, they were dispelled by the knowledge that scarcely a year out of graduate school he was already earning the equivalent of a full professor's salary.

He had not lacked for attractive offers. With each summer he spent helping to organize the Harvard International

Seminar, his responsibilities had grown in proportion to his rise in Kissinger's esteem. By the time he received his Ph.D. in government, he was the co-editor of Confluence, the seminar's flagship publication.

Henry was fiercely loyal to his protégés and never hesitated to include George in the strategy for his own

advancement. This was not out of uncritical affection. George was clearly an asset, for both his academic brilliance and

his innate feeling for diplomacy. It was, if not an alliance of equals, at least a genuine partnership.

Naturally Harvard had wanted George to 'stay on. The department chairman even called in Kissinger to discuss how they could persuade the young scholar to remain in the academic ranks. His adviser countered that George was a strong-willed man.

"I sense his aspirations lie in Washington and not in Cambridge," Henry offered. "But I will do my best." - Kissinger did not exert undue pressure on George to