The Drifters (31 page)

It was daylight when they reached the border and halted, which seemed a ridiculous thing to do, for obviously the tanks had already penetrated deep into Egyptian territory, but final orders were missing, so they waited, and soon they saw a stream of planes overhead and at first took them to be Egyptian. ‘Hit the ditch!’ the officers yelled, but before Yigal could leave the communications truck, someone else shouted, ‘Israelis! Israelis!’ and the men cheered.

They waited at the border for about two hours, during which they heard nothing and saw nothing, but at eight in the morning a motorcyclist roared up with instructions that would turn them loose, and for the second time Yigal had a taste of what war could be, for the messenger was a girl—about twenty, very broad shoulders—and somehow she seemed more a human being than the men, and when she wheeled in the dust and sped back toward Beersheba, Yigal found himself shouting, ‘Good luck!’ It was as if she were going into battle, not he.

‘On to Cairo!’ someone yelled, and everyone took up the cry. The motley convoy swung into action and at maximum speed crossed the border and entered that vast desolation in which God had once handed down to the children of Israel His commandments on tablets of stone.

From the speed at which the convoy traveled, Yigal supposed they were trying to reach Cairo by nightfall, with no expectation of encountering hostile Egyptians, for throttles were jammed to the floorboards and no account was taken of bumps or dangers in the road. They had penetrated about forty miles before the war became a reality; ahead of them, flaming fitfully like a dying torch,
stood a burned-out Egyptian tank. The men cheered as they sped past, and Yigal was surprised to note that no one even so much as fired a shot at the tank.

But by mid-afternoon the situation changed considerably. For one thing, the terrain was much rougher. For another, an Egyptian aircraft appeared in a wild and futile strafing attempt. ‘That pilot must be drunk,’ one of Yigal’s companions said. ‘I could fly a plane better than that, and I’ve never been in one.’

‘Look! He wasn’t drunk. He was scared.’ Another soldier pointed to the horizon where two swift Israeli jets appeared from the other side of low mountains. With hideous speed they swept through the sky and closed upon the bewildered Egyptian. It wasn’t a fight, merely a shooting exercise, with first one, then the other Israeli plane running at the doomed Egyptian, who dodged and twisted before exploding in the air. Yigal and the men cheered.

It was about dusk, at the close of an unimpeded dash across the Sinai, when the column approached the western mountains and located a cleft named on the maps Qarash Pass. At a signal the trucks halted and the soldiers dismounted to look at the terrain ahead. Like all men, they experienced the delusion which mountains create: ‘If we could just get to the top of that ridge, we could see all the way to the Suez.’ Attainment of the ridge became an end in itself.

The Sabra gathered his lieutenants about him and said, ‘Common sense says there’s got to be Egyptian tanks hidden away in there.’ His subordinates nodded. ‘But I think we ought to push through.’ Again his assistants agreed. He hesitated, walked slowly from one group of men to the next, looking into their faces. In civilian life he was an insurance adjuster, but as an army man he had fought in the Sinai in 1956 and he knew that Israel’s principal weapon was mobility backed up by the courage of her men.

‘We go,’ he said quietly. No one cried, ‘On to Cairo.’ For them it was into a nest of dark hills on which the sun would set just as they reached the deepest point.

‘We go,’ the subordinates said, and they all returned to their vehicles and left the flatlands behind them.

When they were well into the narrow defile, where retreat was impossible, Egyptians opened fire from three sides and unlimbered six tanks that had been hidden among
the rocks, thus escaping the probing eyes of the Israeli air force. A frightened Israeli lieutenant rushed up to Yigal and shouted, ‘Send a message. We’re surrounded.’

Before Yigal could operate his radio, an Egyptian shell roared through the truck, destroying most of his equipment and ripping off the head of the lieutenant. Yigal’s first action in the battle of the Sinai was to push away the gaping torso, whose open neck was spewing blood over what was left of the radio.

As night fell, the trapped Israelis had fourteen useless vehicles, two mounted guns and one hundred and twenty men. They were surrounded by six tanks, a large number of emplaced guns and more than six hundred enemy soldiers. Continuing salvos killed off about thirty of the Israelis before any damage had been done to the Egyptians. At midnight the Sabra gathered his officers under a truck, trying to decide what to do. Yigal heard them talking gravely about alternatives, and he sensed that they anticipated a disaster. The Sabra left the conclave and came to him, asking how soon the radio would be working, and Yigal said, ‘The big one, never. The smaller one, pretty soon,’ and the Sabra said, ‘You told me you could provide radio communication,’ and Yigal said, ‘Look at the equipment,’ and the major snapped, ‘Well, get it working.’

About three in the morning, with the Egyptians still shooting into the stalled trucks, Yigal had the receiving elements of his radio in shape, and the officers gathered to hear reports on world-wide news programs and thus learned of the mighty victory that Israel had won that day. They could scarcely believe what they heard: six hundred aircraft destroyed; tank units poised to attack the Suez; great battles at Jerusalem and in Golan Heights; the skies empty of enemy aircraft.

‘My God,’ one of the officers said solemnly. ‘We’re in a position to win.’

‘The other units, not us,’ the Sabra pointed out, and as if to underscore the correctness of this analysis, the Egyptians sent another flurry of shells into the trucks.

‘They don’t know they’ve lost,’ the Sabra said, ‘and when morning comes they’ll chop us up. Our planes will never find those tanks. How’s that goddamned radio?’

Yigal could do nothing with the sending apparatus, but over the receiver there continued to come a constant stream of reports that exhilarated all who heard them. In Jerusalem
the leaders of the government were openly hailing a victory of enormous proportions, with more likely to follow the next day. In the darkness the men cheered, then speculated soberly upon their own ridiculous position: about to be wiped out at the moment of national triumph.

So just before dawn the Sabra assembled his ninety survivors and told them, ‘We’re going to knock off those tanks one by one. We’re going to drive every Egyptian out of this pass. And we’re not going to lose one Israeli doing it.’

They surrendered any hope of miraculous intervention from the outside; if the air force hadn’t sighted the Egyptian tanks yesterday, they wouldn’t see them today, and if the radio could not send messages of location, no help could be expected. ‘We destroy those tanks,’ the Sabra said, and before light broke across the timeless hills the Israelis scattered into eleven assault parties. Yigal and four of his friends from Haifa would remain in the shattered radio truck, trying to establish some kind of contact with the victorious Israeli forces. They would be at the center of the perimeter, but they would not be protected. ‘You stay here and work,’ the Sabra said, and Yigal nodded: ‘I’ll get it fixed … somehow.’

The Sabra asked, ‘How old are you?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘You’re sure you know about radio?’

‘I can fix it.’

‘If you get through, tell them Qarash Pass. Give these coordinates. Six Egyptian tanks dug in behind the hills. But there won’t be six very long.’

It was a morning of heroic action, with the scattered Israeli forces swooping down on first one Egyptian tank, then another, usually with no success, for turrets would turn to confront them from whatever quarter they came. Yigal, watching now and then from the radio truck, saw two of the tanks lumber forward a few yards, unloose incredible bursts of gunfire at unseen attackers, then retreat to their established positions. From time to time one of the tanks would lob shells at the stalled trucks, setting one or another afire, but apparently the Egyptian commanders judged that the trucks were empty, because during long periods there was no shelling.

In frustration Yigal fought to bring some kind of order into his ruined equipment and became oblivious to the
fighting in the valley, but in mid-morning he heard the four men in his truck cheering, and looked up in time to see one of the Egyptian tanks exploding in a fiery ball. A detachment had gotten to it with thermite charges.

But in the excitement of this local victory, one of the men in the truck threw something out, and when this was seen by the Egyptian command they realized that the truck was occupied and deduced that it must be the communications center. They directed their guns to wipe it out, but when the tanks concentrated on this problem they left their flanks unprotected and two more went up in flames.

This infuriated the Egyptians and they sent two commando units in to destroy the truck. One of Yigal’s friends shouted, ‘Here they come!’ In one swift glance Yigal saw that no Israeli unit was close enough to interdict the assailants, and that he and his four companions must hold them off during at least the first two assaults. He grabbed a machine gun, with which he was not too familiar, and threw himself under the truck.

The Egyptians were not well led, but they were brave and came forward with resolution. In the brief moment before the fight began Yigal wondered if they had heard over the radio that the war was lost, that they were an enclave without hope—one that must soon be discovered by the Israelis and destroyed. He guessed not, because they began their attack as if they were part of a larger victory.

Yigal and his men drove off the first attack, inflicting enough casualties to make the Egyptians withdraw and call in more supporting fire, but when the tanks disclosed their positions, one or another of the Israeli units swooped down and silenced them. The firing ceased and the Egyptian commandos returned for a second try.

This time they fired low, trying to get their shots underneath the truck, and they succeeded, for in the first salvo they killed the man to Yigal’s left. Instinctively Yigal reached for the dead man’s gun in case his own jammed, and by firing rapidly and with good effect, the four surviving Israelis drove their attackers back.

This gave the Sabra time to double back from his assault on the tanks, and he interposed his well-trained men between the commandos and their escape route. With terrible, crackling efficiency the Israelis picked off every one
of the attackers—killed every man in the unit. Then the Sabra ran to the truck and asked, ‘You all right?’

‘One dead.’

‘Can you fix the radio?’

‘Give me half an hour,’ Yigal said.

‘You got it. We’ll keep you covered,’ and he returned to fighting tanks.

Yigal and his men climbed back into the truck, ignoring the shells that whistled past. With a zeal that he had never before known, Yigal went patiently over each item of his remaining equipment: ‘This is all right. This is good. This is functioning. This is getting current.’ He worked without fear, without anxiety, and finally he decided that if he changed one set of tubes the system would have to work. ‘Signal that we’ve got it fixed,’ he told one of his helpers, but before he could test the gear a cry went up.

‘There goes another tank!’ Yigal stopped long enough to look out the shattered back door and see a fireball exploding more brightly than the morning sun. It was then that he fitted the whole together, tested it, and sent the message that electrified the high command and the people of Israel when they heard it: ‘Qarash Pass. We are surrounded by six enemy tanks and have destroyed four of them.’

When planes finally arrived, wiping out the remnants of the Egyptian position, the battered Israelis gathered at the radio truck to direct the fire of the aircraft, and after the planes had sped eastward to their home base at Beersheba and Haifa, and when it was known that an armored column was sweeping north to bring relief, the tired Sabra sat with his men and said, ‘Learn from this. If you ever command tanks, don’t dig them in to fixed positions. Tanks are nothing unless they’re kept moving. Because if you leave them static, a determined team can destroy them every time.’

When exultation swept Israel, Yigal took no part in the celebration. During the first days he was idolized as ‘the boy radio operator of Qarash,’ but this passed when it was realized that in her time of crisis Israel had produced a thousand heroes.

In the beautiful summer months, when investigation
proved how superior the enemy armament had been and how numerous his army, the miraculous nature of Israel’s escape was appreciated, and people caught themselves whispering to each other, as parades of captured Russian weapons passed through the streets, ‘Thank God, we were so lucky.’

Doris Zmora wrote to her parents in Detroit, with a carbon copy to the Cliftons in Canterbury:

Yigal wasted no time with such thoughts. He found it exhilarating to see the new maps which depicted vastly extended borders—‘About where they should always have been,’ some said. ‘Much too extended,’ the cautious warned—but he found that what the people he knew really wanted was peace. His friends had expected a peace conference by August; by early September it became apparent that peace would not be attained easily … if at all.