The new air force chief, General Peled, stands at Dado’s elbow, a short dapper aviator with a keen aspect and the obligatory pencil mustache; a test pilot, a combat hero, and unlike most pilots an intellectual with an engineering degree. Golda shifts a questioning glance to him. “It’s being straightened out, Madame Prime Minister.” Peled’s speech is brisk and clipped, as in an RAF movie. “Motti Hod is landing there now as my deputy. The chain of command will be respected.”
Golda sits down and takes a cigarette pack from her capacious white purse. “Dado, I must talk to the people today. I’m working on the speech, and I want to give the truth as far as I can, without aiding our enemies or depressing our soldiers and their families. So tell me — what’s actually happening? What can we expect today? How is the war going, in your judgment?”
Passing from map to map with a pointer, General Elazar gives her as frank and full a picture as he can, dark but far from hopeless. “The truth is, Madame Prime Minister, it’s not the enemy attacks that trouble me most right now, it’s the unreliable reports. That’s inevitable, the war’s just starting.”
“Can we rescue those boys in the Bar-Lev Line?”
“We’ll try. I’ll soon ask the war cabinet’s permission to counterattack in Sinai tomorrow. Arik Sharon and Bren Adan will be arriving down there in force today, so we’ll have better than six hundred tanks in the area. That’s a lot of strength.”
“But if the air force is busy in the north, that counterattack will have no air support.”
Glances pass among the generals crowding the room. “By then, Prime Minister, the picture may be different in the north.”
“Also, won’t the missiles make air support at the Canal too costly?”
Dado looks at General Peled, who says, “We have a plan to take out those missiles, Prime Minister. We’ve been diverted to the Golan, but we’ll do it.”
When she and Barak are returning to her office, she says to him, “So, Mr. Alarmist, you heard all that. How bad d’you judge it is on the Golan?”
“Madame Prime Minister, the one sure fact about war is the fog it raises. It’s very difficult up there now, that’s clear. Catastrophic? Not that bad yet. Not from Dado’s summary.”
She chain-lights a cigarette, smokes in silence, then shoots a question at him. “Then who can I send up there to have a look?”
A shock. Moshe Dayan is there now, and he is her military brain. This gnarled old woman is in the crisis of her life, she thinks in black and white, and her weakness is military ignorance. For or against us? Good or bad news? Winning or losing? B.G. at least studied strategy; Eshkol built the army and was an underground fighter. If she is losing confidence in Dayan’s judgment, in a war not yet one day old, that is a very bad turn. Before he can reply she goes on. “Maybe Dado should go. But then again he has the whole war to attend to, and things change by the hour. So he has to sit in that hole, like a spider in the middle of a web, waiting for vibrations. I don’t envy him. He looks bad.”
“He’s a strong guy, Madame Prime Minister. He’ll pace himself.”
“I’m thinking of sending Bar-Lev. What do you say?”
Haim Bar-Lev! Ex-Ramatkhal, advocate of the crumbled line, retired general, now Minister of Trade and Industry. Not Barak’s first choice, but a simon-pure Mapai Party man, and by Golda’s political standards, “one of ours.”
“There would be complications. He’s a civilian.”
“So is the Minister of Defense, no? See to it, Zev.”
“Yes, Madame Prime Minister.”
It has been a hard night in the Sinai, too, for the one regular armor division of less than two hundred tanks trying to hold back the enemy surge across the entire hundred-mile Canal front. From some bypassed and surrounded maozim have come desperate appeals for rescue; from others, bold bloody breakouts at night through their Egyptian besiegers, twenty and more soldiers clustering on a single tank.
Strung out for many miles on narrow Sinai roads are the reserve divisions of Adan and Sharon, two immense convoys far apart, some four hundred tanks in all with their long support trains, crawling to the rescue all night in rolling fogs of diesel fumes and dust at about twelve miles an hour; the best speed they can make through the rocky passes and steep sand dunes, what with the traffic jams and breakdowns of all manner of vehicles, from giant transporters to old sedans. Don Kishote has been cruising back and forth along his convoy in a signal jeep, keeping track of stalled units by wireless network, urging on the laggards, getting cripples dragged aside for repairs, and clearing bottlenecks. On a hot sunny morning the great convoy at last rolls into Tasa, Sharon’s central sector command base several miles east of the Canal; worn down and with many stragglers, but an intact fighting force. Over the tumult of the traffic, the thump and grunt of big guns are sounding from the west, though in the sunlight the flashes cannot be seen.
The command bunker underneath the sprawling racketing depot is narrow, gloomy, and quiet except for the staff conversation and sporadic bursts of loudspeaker jargon. Someone is saying as Yossi comes down the stairs, “Yes, and what will the Labor Party do now about all those posters and billboards, ‘The Bar-Lev Line Is Ours’?” Barks of derisive laughter. The politics go on, he thinks, even within sound of the guns. Down in this hole there is loyalty only to Arik Sharon, verging on adoration. It has now and then seemed to Don Kishote that Israel is not a serious place, a parody of a country, but the day after the Yom Kippur attack he is not amused. “Where is Arik?”
“He’s lying down.” The operations officer gestures at a tacked-up wall map of the Sinai, under a transparency thick with colored military symbols, arrows, and code names. “We were having an orders group, and he fell asleep standing up.”
The talk continues about the grim fiasco at the Bar-Lev Line. The trapped boys, reservists who replaced the regular troops for the Yom Kippur holiday, are still begging or screaming for help. Several strongpoints have gone silent, probably fallen. During the night tank platoons audaciously charging to the rescue were mowed down by Egyptian tank-killer guns and the fearsome new Sagger wire-guided missiles; and Sagger teams are now emplaced right on the Bar-Lev rampart. These advanced Soviet rocket weapons are fired with a wire attached, along which an observer sends signals directing the shell from launcher to impact. The accuracy is frightening. Spent wires crisscross the sands this morning amid burned-out and blasted tank hulls, and Sharon is infuriated, the officers tell Yossi, by this futile frittering away of tanks. He intends to gather every available tank in Sinai for one quick mighty smash across the Canal tomorrow, the third day of war, to save the boys and turn the war around.
Kishote is at a narrow desk glancing through despatches, when Arik Sharon strides in, his face damp from a wash, his manner rested and alert. “Ah, so you’re here at last, Yossi,” Sharon says. “I don’t know yet how I can talk the General Staff and Gorodish into crossing the Canal tomorrow, but it must be done. The Egyptians are dancing with victory. They’ve never beaten the Jews before. Their tails are up. They’ve got the momentum now and they’re very very dangerous. They need a swift hard shock. Tomorrow! Bren Adan and I can do it. Are you very tired?”
“Sir, I’m at your command.”
“That’s my Kishote. Number one, run right down to Point Yukon, or wherever that roller bridge is by now, and see what shape it’s actually in. I can’t get a straight report out of anyone.”
“I’ll leave now.”
“B’seder. By the time you’re back I’ll have an operational plan for the crossing, with a detailed map. You’ll take it to Gorodish, not me. He loves you. You’ll report how he responds, and then my fight with him starts.”
The sun is blazing by the time Yossi’s signal jeep, with Sarak and Shimon at the voice transmitters and receivers, reaches an outpost in the desert where he comes upon the famous roller bridge, which he has not seen since the summer demonstration. It lies broken apart in several gigantic sections on the white sand, and helmeted soldiers ar
e fussing at it. Nearby in a tent camp more soldiers move about, and smoke rises from a field kitchen.
“What to all the devils is this?” Kishote asks a bespectacled lieutenant with hands jammed in a parka, watching a snorting bulldozer tug at a bridge section.
“Balagan, sir.”
Seeing Dzecki Barkowe on top of a nearby roller section, banging with a wrench, Kishote shouts, “Dzecki! Come down here!” He turns on the lieutenant. “We cross the Canal tomorrow. Will this bridge be ready?”
“I’m only a supply officer, sir.”
His face masked by grease and sand, Dzecki climbs down and salutes. “What’s happened to this bridge?” Yossi demands.
Dzecki explains that Amos Pasternak’s battalion went to the Golan with the tanks trained for towing the monster. Another company was assigned to practice towing the bridge, and on the first try they pulled it all apart. Then they were ordered to forget the bridge and return to the Canal to fight. Somebody, Dzecki didn’t know who, sent the bulldozer, which just arrived.
“Can the bridge be towed by bulldozers?” inquires Kishote.
“Oh, no, sir. Coordination by tank network signals is vital.”
“Then why the bulldozer?”
“En lee musag.” (Universal Israeli reply; roughly, “Haven’t the foggiest.”)
Kishote ruefully contemplates the dismembered bridge. The bulldozer is dragging a section with snorts, squeals, and clankings, amid confused shouts by soldiers running here and there. “How is it,” he asks Dzecki, “that you didn’t go north with your battalion?”
“Sir, Major Pasternak left a small party of us to guard the bridge.”
“Who’s in charge here, and where is he?”
“The new chief engineer is around somewhere, sir. Maybe in the latrine. He just got here and he has the runs bad.”
“What’s to be done, Dzecki?”
“It’s not nearly as tough as it looks, sir, to put it back together. If ten tanks get here today, the bridge can still go tomorrow. The main thing is getting the signals straight among the tanks. That’s what went wrong. It’s a network control problem. They all must pull at once. It’s crucial.”
Yoram Sarak and Shimon Shimon are both dead asleep in Kishote’s jeep, with headphones on their ears. “Come with me, Dzecki. … Wake up, you!” He prods Shimon Shimon. “You’re staying here. This is Master Sergeant Dzecki Barkowe. He’ll explain.” To Dzecki he says, “Ever heard of Shimon Shimon?”
“The ceramicist?” Dzecki’s grimace conveys eloquent dislike. “I’ve heard of him.”
“By my life!” exclaims Shimon Shimon, yawning. “Yoram, it’s the kid who gave Daphna the Rolex, the goofy American. Ma nishma, Dzecki?”
“Ten tanks will come here this afternoon, Shimon,” says Kishote, “to tow this thing. Dzecki here knows the drill. The signal arrangements are crucial. You will take charge and arrange them.”
“When do I rejoin you, sir?”
“When this bridge is across the Canal.”
Yoram Sarak peers at the huge scattered sections. “This is a bridge? It looks like a train wreck. Is this the thing that won the Israel Prize?”
“Shimon is your man, Dzecki,” says Kishote. “Tell your chief that he not only makes menorahs, he’s a master of circuitry and networks.”
“Keep your head down, Yoram,” calls Shimon, standing by the broken bridge as the jeep heads back to Tasa. There Kishote picks up Sharon’s plan and map, and drives at top speed on the military road through the desert to Southern Command advance headquarters at Umm Hashiba, on a high bluff near the Gidi Pass, forty miles from the Canal. Knowing Gorodish well, he expects to find him shouting at somebody about something while staff officers scurry frantically about. The sedate calm in the expansive HQ puzzles him until he comes on Moshe Dayan in Gorodish’s inner office. They are drinking coffee and seem pleased to see him.
“So, Arik wants to cross the Canal tomorrow.” Gorodish’s tone borders on sarcasm. “Fine idea. You brought a map?” Yossi pulls it from the briefcase and unfolds it over a larger map on the desk. Gorodish puts on thick black glasses to glance at it, and shakes his head. “There are no Egyptian bridges in that area. How will he get across?”
“The roller bridge.”
“It’s in pieces, and don’t tell me it can be repaired by tomorrow! It’s a big nonsense, that Tallik patent, that Israel Prize contraption. I’ll cross on captured Egyptian bridges when I’m good and ready. It’s the only way now.”
“Remember, they’re pontoon bridges, Shmulik,” says Dayan. “One artillery hit can finish a bridge.”
“That’s what engineers are for, Minister, to repair them.”
Arik Sharon has sent Yossi to soften up Gorodish, knowing that, insofar as the prickly OC Southern Command allows himself to like anyone junior to him, he likes Don Kishote. But the presence of Dayan queers the game at the start. Brusquely Gorodish hands Arik’s map back to Yossi, and resumes describing to Dayan his own attack plan for the morrow. It is a strangely unreal scheme, Kishote thinks, like a sand-table war game, complicated and overambitious. To Dayan’s questions Gorodish responds airily, shifting his eyes to Kishote now and then, and calling in staff officers to explain details of logistics and intelligence.
“Well, I’m just a minister,” Dayan says at last, getting to his feet, “all this is up to the Ramatkhal.”
“My plan will work, Minister, I promise you,” says Gorodish. “I’ve talked to Dado about it, we’re in constant touch.”
“Kishote, walk out with me,” says Dayan. He speaks no more until they are at the helicopter. He looks very pale, and his good eye bulges white. “By my life, I wanted Shaika Gavish in this post,” he exclaims. “What a fashla! When war came, the DOVECOTE deployment we drilled and drilled was never executed. Those reservists were out there in the forts without tank support, with no warning, on holiday routine —”
“What about Arik’s plan, Minister?”
“Yes, yes, he’s been pestering me about that. Arik’s a stallion, but he hasn’t the wherewithal. A Canal crossing that fails will lose the war, will lose everything. The Golan may be lost already.” He strikes Kishote’s shoulder, and painfully smiles. “Just do your job. We’ll get through this. You’re amitz [courageous], Yossi.” There is no higher praise in Zahal than that.
When Yossi walks back into the commander’s office, Gorodish breaks off a howling rebuke to a meek logistics officer and dismisses the man with a rough gesture. “So, what did Dayan say? It’s a great plan, isn’t it, Yossi? It’ll win the war. It’s my plan, my G-3 just put in the details.”
“Well, it’s clear he’s not for Arik’s plan, sir.”
“Oh, that! Sorry, Kishote, your boss is out of his mind. You be sure to tell him that if he tries his old trick of turning off the volume” — an armor force euphemism for ignoring orders — “I’ll have him relieved!”
Dayan’s helicopter whirs down in the Sde Dov airfield, where Sam Pasternak waits beside his car. “What’s the latest from the Golan?” Dayan calls as he jumps out of the aircraft.
“Hard day so far, Minister.” Pasternak keeps his voice low, for several officers are nearby. “Syrian tanks overran division HQ at Nafekh. Raful had to pull his command staff out into the field. Ben Shoham was killed an hour ago.”
“Ah, my God, no!”
“I’m sorry, he’s gone. The Syrian columns in his sector have halted, but we don’t know why. The way seems wide open for them down into the Galilee.”
“The air attacks have stopped them, for the time being,” says Dayan. “I knew they would. We were overextended and unprepared, Sam, on both fronts, and we were taken by surprise. If Golda and the war cabinet will only listen to me, we may yet pull off a miracle. That’s what we’re talking about now, a miracle to save the country.”
Riding back to the Pit, Dayan paints a black picture of the southern front. Bad as things stand, Gorodish is bent on something worse, a plan that will destroy half the meager force
s he has. “It’s a historic calamity that Gorodish is down there, Sam. A fine armor man, Gorodish, but he can’t command a front. I knew that. I told Dado that. He wouldn’t listen. Well, I fought for years to get a withdrawal from Sinai, didn’t I? Remember my speech about ‘jumping into the cold water of negotiation’? I even called for a unilateral pullback, to let the Egyptians operate the Canal and give them a stake in peace. But that’s all in the past. Sam, the Third Temple is falling.”
“Minister, it hasn’t come to that,” says Pasternak, with a terrible chill at heart. This, from Moshe Dayan?
“You’re sitting in the Pit, Sam. I’ve now been to both fronts, I’ve seen the field hospitals full of broken bloody boys. Whole battalions in retreat, with shocked and frightened faces. My Zahal warriors! Our tanks smashed and burned by the dozens, all over the Lexicon Road and the Tapline Road in the south, and the Purple Line in the north. We don’t have much time to save the situation, and the Gorodishes and Dados can’t do it. It’s up to the platoon leaders, the company commanders, the battalion commanders like your Amos. They preserved Israel in 1949, and they can again, but the leadership has to give them a fighting chance.”
The air in the Pit, on this second night of the war, is exceptionally hazy and foul. Pasternak has to elbow a way for Dayan through the backs of generals bunched in Dado’s office. “Gentlemen, the Minister.” They all make room, and the Ramatkhal gets to his feet.
Dayan says, “Dado, I’m about to report to the Prime Minister what I’ve seen so far today on both fronts, and the conclusions I’ve drawn. I’m telling you first, so that if you disagree, you can come with me to make your views known.”
“Please, sir!” Dado politely waves a hand at the wall maps.
Moshe Dayan gives his blunt views to this crowd of army seniors, the military elite of Israel, including several former Ramatkhals and most of the General Staff. As though to an orders group, he delivers an apocalyptic vision with his usual quick-witted incisiveness; and his magic aura of martial authority, built up over a quarter of a century, lends his words fearful force. Pasternak can see consternation taking hold of these poker-faced officers, all Dayan-approved appointees, old acquaintances of his, disciples, even worshippers, as they find themselves facing a choice of calamities: the collapse of Israel, or of Moshe Dayan.