The Glory (64 page)

“By your life, Natke,” Kishote interrupts him, “it’s Hannibal, that’s what it is.”

Nir blinks at him. “Hannibal? With the elephants? Why Hannibal?”

Military history of ancient times is Don Kishote’s hobby, and the great battles are at his fingertips. Crouching at the map,
he describes how Hannibal ambushed and annihilated a Roman army in 217
B.C
., at the Battle of Lake Trasimene. “Its a classic, Natke, and Bren’s concept here is pretty much the same. The key is the
lake. In Italy it was Trasimene, here it’s Great Bitter Lake. An impassable water obstacle traps your enemy when you hit him
head-on and from the flanks. He has no room to maneuver, and he’s in a killing ground.”

From a slumping bald colonel, a dubious grumble. “217
B.C
., eh? Quite a while ago.”

“Bren didn’t mention Hannibal,” remarks the other colonel.

“No, and maybe he never heard of that lake or that battle,” exclaims Natke, “but we’ve got the code name for the plan, gentlemen,
it’s ‘Hannibal.’ I’ll tell Bren. Thanks, Yossi, that’s really interesting.”

“It’ll never happen,” says the bald colonel. “The Egyptians aren’t that stupid, to march a brigade into such a trap.”

“We’ll see,” says Natke. “They could be as stupid as the Romans.”

On the flat summit of the high dune Sharon has meantime joined the top brass. Around a large tactical map Bar-Lev reclines
on an elbow, smoking a cigar, Adan sits cross-legged, and Dayan and Pasternak squat on their knees. It occurs to Sam Pasternak,
as Sharon approaches with heavy swinging tread, tousled white-blond hair showing above the bloody bandage, that if the crossing
succeeds, Sharon and his bandage may become a trademark of the war, as the Six-Day War’s symbol was Dayan and his eye patch.
Sharon kneels to peer at the map. Nobody speaks a word to him until Dayan at last says, “Shalom, Arik.”

“Shalom, Minister.”

Very long silence, then Bar-Lev utters his first words, slowly and tonelessly. “The distance between what you promised to
do and what you have done is very great.”

Sharon’s reply is composed. “How so?”

“What can I say? No enemy collapse. No secure bridgehead. No secure supply corridor. And no bridges.”

“I don’t agree with that judgment. We are across and winning.”

Bren Adan, his rugged features set in stern lines, jumps to his feet as a helicopter buzzes far to the east. “There comes
Dado now.” He goes off to greet the Ramatkhal, and the others walk about and stretch, talking in low tones.

When the meeting begins Kishote squats by Sharon. The noonday desert sun is scorching, and orderlies bring cold orangeade
while Dado passes around the aerial photographs, which clearly show large Egyptian reserve forces forming up, and advance
units on the move toward the bridgehead. Sharon plunges to talk first, vehemently pressing for immediate attack, and Dado
listens without comment. Half his force is already over in Africa, Sharon argues, so it makes sense for him to ferry the rest
across at once, and smash north to Ismailia or south to Suez; objective, to panic the enemy into pulling his armor back into
Egypt, which may trigger a general collapse.

General Adan coldly objects. The original plan calls for
him
to cross while Sharon seizes and holds the bridgehead on both banks. Why change? The photographs only confirm the urgent
need for Sharon to secure the bridgehead before anyone sallies out on the offensive. After almost an hour of abrasive talk
— which to Sam Pasternak is obviously all about who will lead the assault into Egypt — Bar-Lev proposes a compromise: a brigade
each of Sharon’s and Adan’s should start the breakout together.

Now Dado takes charge. His bloodshot eyes are puffed half-shut, the heavy brows contracted in dogged resolve. His deeply lined
face is gray from the days of unrelieved tension, sleeplessness, and polluted underground air. Among these desert-bronzed
officers his pallor is almost pathetic, yet he speaks with all his accustomed clarity and authority. No compromise with the
original plan. It is all right. Once the bridgehead is secure, Adan will cross. After that Sharon will bring over the rest
of his forces, and the two divisions will exploit north and south to force a decision. “The only real question that’s open,”
says Dado, “is whether to resume crossing at once with pontoon rafts and crocodiles, as Arik suggests, or wait until the roller
bridge arrives, or at least until one pontoon bridge is up, before we commit major forces.” He looks around at the others.

“Wait,” says Bar-Lev.

“Wait,” says Adan.

Dado glances to Dayan, who waves a hand to pass the question. “Sam, what do you think?” Dado says to Pasternak, who sits beside
Dayan on the sand.

“I’m not entirely in the picture down here, sir,” Pasternak replies.

“I’d like your view, all the same.”

“Then, I say,
im kvar az kvar
[if we go, we go]! Those photographs show the Egyptians still off balance but starting to react to the crossing. Let’s send
everything over now, by any and all means.”

Dado peers around, polling staff officers and deputies and getting varying views, until he comes to Don Kishote. “So, Yossi?
Let’s hear from you.”

Kishote hesitates, glances at the poker-faced Sharon, then around the senior circle. General Bren Adan is regarding him fixedly
and skeptically.

“Sir, yesterday General Pasternak would certainly have been right, but the situation has changed, hasn’t it? The surprise
has been blown” — he leaves unspoken
by Madame Prime Minister
, but their faces show they understand and agree — “and today the Egyptians are alerted. We’re being heavily shelled at Deversoir,
and we can see big movement in the lodgments. If they try an attack on this side today, we’ll crush them as we did on Saturday,
providing we still have the forces here. But if they engage us on the other side, we’ll need assured fuel and ammunition resupply
over there. Therefore the factors —”

“Plain language, Kishote,” Bar-Lev cuts in. “Go or wait?”

Pasternak is watching Sharon, who shows no tension or concern in the momentary pause. In such Zahal discussions juniors are
allowed to speak up with candor, though the yes-men play it safe. Don Kishote is not one of those, yet the stakes here are
very high.

“Wait.”

Pasternak’s are not the only eyebrows raised at Yossi’s temerity.

The talk continues round and round until Natke Nir comes hobbling up to Bren Adan and speaks in low rapid tones. “Well, there
it is,” Adan says to the others. “Scouts report a tank brigade from the south heading along the lake toward my sector.” He
turns to Dado. “With your permission, sir, I should attend to this.”

“Go ahead, Bren, the meeting is over,” says Dado. “We wait for a bridge. Good luck.”

Natke Nir stumps by Kishote, and punches his shoulder. “Hannibal,” he says and goes off, his eyes agleam.

Pasternak comes to Kishote and mutters, “You had your nerve.”

“Dado asked me, so I spoke my mind.”

“Kol ha’kavod. Yael keeps calling, to find out how you are.”

“Yes, I managed to talk to her once. She had to stop Aryeh from lying about his age and enlisting. Amos’s influence. Hero
worship.”

“Father worship,” says Pasternak.

“Is Amos okay?”

“Still fighting.”

“Good.”

In the seven-mile drive back to Deversoir across sunbaked wastes, Sharon says not a word to Kishote. Dayan rides with them
in the command car, also silent. At the Yard there is a lull in the shelling, but the stump of pontoon rafts has not progressed
far. A shell-hit damaged it, the chief engineering officer explains, killing two of his men, but it will be ready by four
o’clock. Dayan walks out among the machines, talking to the amazed and awed crews.

“There’s Dayan at his best,” Sharon says to Kishote. “Seeing for himself, sensing the mood of the men, reading the battle
on the field. Not like those map room generals.”

The words are innocuous, but Don Kishote hears a new distance in Sharon’s tone.

“Sir, I’ve never forgotten the lesson I learned in the last war, at the Jeradi Pass.” Sharon’s response is a bleak quizzical
look. “Just smashing ahead isn’t always the answer, sir, is it? If the enemy has the forces to close up behind you, you can
lose all your men in a big disaster.”

“But you didn’t, at the Jeradi Pass.”

“I was lucky.”

“Doesn’t luck count in war? You learned exactly the wrong lesson in the Jeradi Pass.” Sharon’s voice and expression harden.
“You reached El Arish the first day. I took Abu Agheila the first night. With their two anchors in the north gone, the Egyptians
panicked and collapsed all over Sinai. Right or wrong?”

“That’s what happened, sir.”

“Yes, and we could have won this war by crossing in force two days ago.
Attack, and the logistics follow, Yossi, because they must
. But Gorodish has lost us a day and a half, and now Dado’s written off the edge of surprise we’ve still got. It’ll be a bloody
long slog to victory. Not very sound, your opinion, and not very collegial.” Sharon pauses, regarding his deputy with a stony
eye. “I’ll be taking my headquarters over to Africa now. Moshe Dayan is coming with me. You will remain in Sinai, get Tallik’s
bridge at all cost to the Canal, and keep this yard functioning no matter what, until a ceasefire comes. Understood?”

“Understood, sir.” Kishote understands perfectly. Sharon is sentencing him to share none of the glory and career value of
combat in Africa.

S
o be it! His own view, which he has kept strictly to himself, is that neither Arik nor Dado was the right decision maker for
the crossing into Egypt, but in tandem they have been perfect. The decision called for a warrior burning to charge across
the Canal against all odds, and for a calculating superior to rein him in until the right moment. In this great gamble with
Israel’s fate Sharon might have gone too soon or too far, as he did in the Suez War back in ’56, at the Mitla Pass. On the
other hand Dado, not dragged by Sharon, might not have seized the fleeting moment when it came. God or luck has placed Elazar
and Sharon in the right niches in Jewish history to fight this war. God or luck has put Yossi Nitzan on the wrong side of
the Canal for glory.

So be it.

H
annibal happens.

The Egyptian armored brigade, coming up from the south to close a vise on Deversoir, rolls blindly into gun range of Natke
Nir’s brigade, concealed on its right flank in the high dunes. Nir opens up and blasts it as he closes in, while Bren Adan
sends in other forces north and south of the Egyptians. They are caught under heavy fire front, rear, and flank. Their left
flank is trapped against Great Bitter Lake, and there is no escape. The entire brigade is annihilated, with all its APCs and
supply trains, an enormous smoking mass of ruined war machines spread over many square miles of desert. Only a few tanks escape
to tell the tale of Bren Adan’s obscure victory, which protects Arik Sharon’s celebrated crossing.

“T
o all the devils, where is Adan?
Where is Adan?
” Messages from Arik Sharon in Africa begin blistering the air at Southern Command headquarters that afternoon. “The pontoon
bridge has been up since four o’clock. Why doesn’t he cross?” General Adan at the time is regrouping and reloading his tanks
and APCs, almost depleted of fuel and ammunition by the battle. “
Where
is Adan? The Minister of Defense is standing right beside me and he also wants to know. Why the delay? What to all the devils
is he waiting for?”

Only half-replenished, Adan’s division begins crossing after nightfall. By now the Deversoir Yard is a nightmare of red flame,
choking smoke, shattering explosions; and rows of dead and wounded lie on the sand, under the ghastly light of starshells
drifting in the sky. Natke Nir’s jeep comes rolling into the Yard. “Yossi!” he bellows, holding out his arms. His driver stops
the jeep and Kishote trots up to embrace him. Nir roars over the tumult, “Hannibal went a hundred percent, everything but
elephants. A great battle. It’s our turn now, and why aren’t you over in Africa with Arik?”

“Too much fun still on this side,” shouts Don Kishote, and with a wave Natke Nir goes bouncing off into the smoke and the
flaring crimson gloom.

All night long Don Kishote is too busy to feel deprived of his chance to win glory in Africa. He is well aware that the lifeblood
of battle is logistics, a sort of colorless lifeblood noticeable only if it stops flowing, whereupon the gangrene of nonsupply
can be quickly fatal. His job now is of the highest urgency, and in its shadowy way exalting; to remain quite unnoticed and
inglorious so as to make glory possible for Zahal in Egypt.

By daybreak he feels on top of the job. Traffic is streaming across the rough pontoon bridge, and more traffic that has been
stalled in the Sinai is loosening up and arriving. Three full divisions — twenty-five thousand men, more than three hundred
tanks, a thousand other vehicles — are over in Africa, regrouping or fighting. The pontoon bridge is bumper to bumper, the
ferries are ceaselessly plying back and forth, yet the clamor for resupply is on. Clearly it will be up to the great roller
bridge to solve the shortfall. This it can easily do, for compared to the pontoon makeshift it is a broad highway, and after
a variety of technical snags reported by Yehiel during the night, it is smoothly on its way, due at noon. Meantime the pipeline
is open, the crossing so far is a success, and as the sun rises white, warm, and dazzling over the eastern crags, Don Kishote
can draw breath.

He does something he has been putting off for days. In a corner of the Yard religious soldiers have put up a makeshift sukkah
of ammunition boxes and packing crates, roofed with scrubby desert vegetation. He takes his morning coffee and roll inside
the narrow space to breakfast at a plank over two oil drums. Sukkot is past, today is Rejoicing of the Law, but he makes the
sukkah blessing anyway. The frail booth represents the precariousness of the Jews’ existence, and their ultimate dependence
on God for survival. On this touch-and-go day of Jewish history, what could be more to the point? So he is thinking, while
downing the hot coffee and the army roll with appetite, when his signal officer pokes his head in.