For with these judgments which the Minister of Defense is laying on the line, either the Ramatkhal has to order precipitate retreats in Sinai and on the Golan, which will trumpet to the Arabs and the whole world that Israel is falling back, on the second day of war, to a last-ditch fight for its very existence; or if Golda does not accept Dayan’s view, and the army then stands its ground and in the end wins out, the credibility of the one-eyed military genius will be destroyed, his aura gone, his image shattered.
When Dayan finishes, David Elazar’s face is calm, his tone professional, as he responds that he fully agrees a fallback in Sinai is an urgent matter to consider. He has already ordered Gorodish to work on this. The question of where to draw the line remains open. Meantime, holding the forward positions will preserve the various options of counterattack tomorrow, if Adan and Sharon can deploy in time. The Egyptians themselves might try to attack, for instance, and smash themselves against these powerful tank forces. As for the Golan, the latest reports suggest that the situation has somewhat stabilized and —
At this point a message is brought in for Dayan, a summons from Golda. “Come with me, Dado,” he says.
“There’s much for me to do here, Minister, on tomorrow’s operations.”
“I understand.” Dayan walks out.
At once the atmosphere changes. Officers start pelting Dado with reactions and suggestions, ranging from agreement with Dayan’s doomsday view to assertive optimism that Arab weakness and Israeli strength will soon surface and reverse the picture.
“I’m for Arik’s plan,” speaks up one venerable ex-Ramatkhal. “He’s right, Dado! Cross the Canal tomorrow with the force you’ve got there. Throw the enemy off balance and into disarray. The Soviet doctrine they’ve been taught allows no improvisation. Our strength is in just that! In movement, in daring, in doing the unexpected.”
Murmurs of agreement.
Dado nods. “I’ve considered it, and as a rule I’m all for the bold immediate gamble. You know that. But those two divisions are all I have between the Canal and Tel Aviv. That gamble I won’t take.”
“Arik would say,” the elder returns, “that you’re being absurd. That the Egyptian objective isn’t Tel Aviv, but a big political victory; the capture of a limited chunk of Sinai under their missile umbrella, and then a Soviet-sponsored cease-fire.”
“Possibly, but once the road is open to Tel Aviv, as it hasn’t been since 1949, it might look rather inviting to the Egyptian Chief of Staff. No?”
Murmurs of agreement.
21
We’ll Break Their Bones
The folds in Golda’s face deepen and the skin goes livid as Dayan gives his report to the inner cabinet. She is close to paralysis by bewilderment, Zev Barak senses, and also by fear, insofar as fear can break through that iron will. She keeps looking to General Allon and to Galili, her old bone-tough socialist cohort, the two advisers on whom she most relies: Allon for his army savvy, the other for his political horse sense. She sees no comfort in their faces, nor do they interrupt Dayan. But when he says that if the Arabs offer a cease-fire in place right now he would accept, Galili passes both hands through his graying hair, scribbles on a scrap of paper, and passes it to Barak:
Get Dado here at once.
The ministers are sharply cross-examining Dayan when Barak returns from making the call. How can he consider retreating to the mountain passes, Allon demands, giving up without a fight advance bases that are the keys to the Sinai Peninsula, built with the finest technology at vast cost? Galili just as bitterly challenges the notion of abandoning the oil fields at Ras Sudar and Abu Rodeis, which in themselves have repaid the cost of the Six-Day War, made Israel energy-independent, and gone a long way to balancing the budget. Golda sits smoking with abrupt gestures, sucking hard on the cigarettes and stubbing out just the cork tips.
Dayan fights back coolly. He is being pragmatic, he claims. The successful surprise has overturned all Israel’s security estimates and doctrines. The initiative, Zahal’s customary edge, is gone. The Canal line is gone. The remaining boys in the moazim will have to fight their way out at night, with perhaps some help from a few tanks, though the Sagger wire-guided missiles are proving to be deadly tank killers. The Arabs can draw on endless resources of manpower and Soviet arms, while Israel may literally, and soon, come to the end of fighting men and weaponry, feeding them into the meat grinder of frontline battle. The only hope is to retreat, dig in on the mountains, and make a desperate effort at once to get more planes, tanks, and arms from America, and even from Europe, to carry on the fight.
“Moshe, what fight?” Golda breaks a long silence in a harsh voice. “Are we going to throw the Egyptians back to the other side of the Canal?”
“No, Madame Prime Minister, not now.”
Dado comes in, his heavy brows beetling, his square jaw set. “Madame Prime Minister,” he says at once, “we are still in a down, but I can report that on the Golan the Syrians have been driven back out of the Nafekh command camp. Also, the air force has destroyed a large number of Syrian missile batteries, and also several Egyptian bridges across the Canal in the south.”
Her grave expression lightens. “So, there’s some good news. Now, you’ve already heard the proposals of the Minister of Defense?”
“Yes.”
“What do you say to them?”
“They are realistic and wise. They must be seriously considered, along with other options.”
“Let us hear the options.”
He begins to lay out Arik Sharon’s crossing plan, but before long Allon interrupts him. “Forget Arik’s brainstorms, what else?”
“Gorodish has a plan for a limited counterattack tomorrow. Phase one, attack the lodgments on the flanks and throw those Egyptians back across the Canal.” Golda’s drawn face lights up as Dado describes that action in some detail. “Phase two, if he succeeds, send an advance force across captured bridges, and exploit the success to sow maximum panic and confusion in the main army over in Egypt.”
“He’s dreaming,” snaps Dayan. “I discussed the plan with him thoroughly just a few hours ago. It bears no resemblance to the military realities on the ground.”
“Agreed,” says Dado. “The crossing is not yet in the cards. However, his scheme of a flank assault along the Canal from north to south by Bren Adan — with Sharon in reserve — might just catch the enemy lodgments by surprise and roll them up. That would be a start toward counterattack.”
Golda looks to Allon and Galili. They are silent, thinking hard. Zev Barak admires the way Dado is handling this. After Dayan’s cataclysmic fallback plan, and Sharon’s radical attack proposal, Gorodish’s operation as he is modifying it seems the sound compromise. Barak has not credited David Elazar with the adroitness he is now displaying, in putting off Dayan’s pleas for a major retreat.
“Well, it’s not my view that three options exist,” says Dayan. “Gonen’s plan, even scaled back, risks unendurable losses, and in our situation the Arik plan is madness.”
“Prime Minister, I will fly to Southern headquarters tonight,” says Dado, “and thrash out Gonen’s operation with him. The war rolls on. We must do something, and one way or another a decision must be made by tonight. I’ll probe the facts before I approve preparations for a limited attack. I won’t signal a final go-ahead till the morning, depending on the situation.”
Golda glances to Dayan, who barely nods his head. She stubs out a last cigarette with a sweep of her hand. “We’ll see each other in the full cabinet in fifteen minutes.” She gets to her feet, and the ministers stand up as she trudges to the door of her inner office. Dado, Allon, and Galili go out. Barak starts to follow the Prime Minister as usual after a meeting, but Dayan stops him with a tap on his arm, enters her office instead, and closes the door.
Barak is glad of a moment to catch his breath. Despite his pallor and tension, Moshe Dayan is looking more like himself again. The ministerial suit and tie are gone. In his improvised field garb
he is every inch the super-Ramatkhal, guardian of Israel’s security, with Dado as sub-Ramatkhal, a sort of deputy, entitled to state alternate views to the boss’s judgment. But in this disagreement of deputy and boss there is a final arbiter, Golda. That is why Dayan is in there.
The door opens. Out strides Dayan, the good eye sparkling, and with a rare warm smile at Barak, he darts a thumb at the door and leaves. Barak finds Golda Meir hunched over the desk, head in hands. He can see only gray hair between knobby brown fingers. She does not look up at the sound of the door closing. “Madame Prime Minister?” he says softly.
She raises her head. Barak thinks this woman incapable of tears, and she is not crying now, but her bloodshot eyes are filmy and moist. She lights a cigarette with unsteady hands. “He came in to resign.”
“What!” The thunderstruck reaction bursts from him.
“That’s right. He said, ‘Without your confidence I can’t go on. I’m offering my resignation.’ ” Golda straightens up in her chair. “Can you imagine?” Her voice grows stronger. “Can you picture the effect on our people? On the world? On the Arabs? The great Moshe Dayan resigning after one day of war? The next thing to a white flag! Yes or no, Zev?”
“It’s absolutely unthinkable, Madame Prime Minister.”
“Just so. I refused to accept. I did my best to cheer him up. I assured him that of course I believed in him, I took his warnings to heart, he must go to the full cabinet with his views, he was the greatest general and military mind we had, the greatest maybe in the world. There was nobody who could possibly replace him. I guess he heard what he wanted to hear, because he retracted.”
“Madame Prime Minister, you worked wonders. He came out a changed man.”
“You think he did? Then that’s that. So, now I go to the full cabinet, and I’ll have to sit through all that again.” As she pushes herself up with both arms on the desk, she manages a fatigued mournful grin at him. “You’re no longer my Mr. Alarmist. You’ve been relieved.”
At one in the morning of October 8, the third day of the war, returning from a meeting with Gorodish, Sharon glances up at a red streak crossing the starry sky and growls to Kishote, “Frog missiles still coming, eh?”
“They haven’t stopped, sir.”
“Well, now at least I know Gorodish’s plan, as Dado has modified it. We’re to sit here and do nothing while Bren Adan attacks north to south. I could make a more idiotic plan, but it would be a strain.”
They are standing outside the command bunker at Tasa. Off to the west, the thumping and flashes of heavy artillery go on and on like a distant thunder-and-lightning storm. “Those poor lads in the moazim, no respite. Well, no help for it. Orders group in half an hour, Kishote. All officers, battalion commanders and up.”
A map-festooned tent, stretching between two trucks and illuminated by jeep headlights, is the field war room. Sharon’s manner at the maps shows no trace of anger or doubt. He is brisk, clear, and soldierly, laying out Gorodish’s plan for the weary young officers, who in a few hours may have to lead their men to fight and perhaps die by it.
“We face two enemy lodgments north and south of the Great Bitter Lake,” he says, rapping the map with a pointer. “The Second Army to the north, the Third Army to the south. General Adan will attack the Second from the north, driving southward toward us. We’ll be his reserve, containing any enemy counterthrusts here in the center. When he has completed his mission — which should be by midmorning — we’ll run south to smash the Third Army and exploit the breakthroughs. This day can be the turn of the war, the saving of our homeland. If it’s a go, and we win this day’s fight, we’ll also save those boys in the moazim. So be strong and of good courage. General Nitzan, take over.” He lumbers off to sleep in a command car.
On his feet to explain sector assignments and logistics, Kishote hopes he is being coherent. The maps and faces swim before his burning eyes. With the responsibility for ten thousand men plus their vehicles, now lined up along the desert ridge or on the Artillery Road below, he has been too keyed up for two days and nights to nap, too busy making notes, thinking ahead, handling foul-ups and crises. Now he is done in. Meeting over, he gives night orders to his operations officer, stumbles to his command APC and is asleep as he falls on the bunk.
Heralded by a great plume of dust rising in the morning sun, Bren Adan’s division comes in sight about nine o’clock rolling southward. Even the Sinai’s high dunes and great rocky ridges cannot dwarf the grandeur of the miles-long columns of machines. For Kishote it is a scene out of his favorite Walter Scott, regiments of steel-clad Crusaders advancing to fight the paynim. He says this to Sharon.
“Agreed. It’s just as well war is so terrible,” says Arik Sharon, peering through binoculars, “or we would become too fond of it.” He turns to Kishote, his hair tousled by the wind. They stand on a high ridge overlooking the slope of the desert to the Canal six miles away, where dust clouds show that the enemy is also on the move. “Do you know who said that?”
“Napoleon, sir?” Negative smiling headshake. “Caesar? General Patton?”
“Close! General Robert E. Lee. Have you studied Lee’s campaigns?”
“No, sir. In armor school we started with World War One, then Guderian, Rommel, and so on.”
“A mistake. Lee was a genius. The art of war doesn’t change, Yossi, just the tools — but where the devil is Bren Adan going? He should be heading far to the west of us, toward the Canal —”
Bursts of loudspeaker chatter from Kishote’s signal jeep. “Message for General Sharon, General,” Yoram Sarak calls to Kishote. “From Southern Command headquarters. ‘Proceed south with your division according to plan.’”
“Proceed south?” Sharon bellows, lunging toward the jeep. “Now? Is Gorodish crazy? What has Adan accomplished so far? We have to hold the center while he carries out his attack. Keep Southern Command on the line. I want to speak to General Gonen.”
In the Pit, after two ghastly days and nights, upbeat reports are at last trickling in from both north and south fronts, so Pasternak declines Dayan’s suggestion that he go home to bathe and rest. Since the war started he has not been out of his uniform or even his shoes, and his head throbs from breathing the stale Pit air, but even Dayan is seesawing to good cheer, advocating a possible quick crossing of the Canal, just a token lodgment in “Africa.” For if the balance tips toward Israel the UN Security Council may well impose a speedy cease-fire, and Israel needs facts on the ground to trade off for an Egyptian withdrawal.
The Ramatkhal is as high as anybody at the apparent turn. His outward calm is unchanged, but he is saying things like, “We’re past the critical point. … The surprise has worn off. … We’re starting to counterattack on both fronts with mobilized reserves, this is more like it.” His mood spreads through the subterranean warren like a dawn breeze. The public above is rife with anxious rumors after Golda’s vague somber speech, so the Pit’s inside knowledge of the counterattacks is all the more cheering. Pasternak joins a mock pool on when the war will end, as he will later wince to recall. His guess is four days.
At the morning cabinet meeting Dado’s optimistic summary delights Zev Barak too, in his newfound respect for the Ramatkhal. Phone calls from the Pit reinforce his report: a breakthrough on the Golan to the Purple Line, an Adan battalion reaching the Canal and capturing a bridge, sixteen Egyptian planes knocked down. Though praising Dado for the swift turnaround, Golda remains impassive. Afterward she tells Barak that Dayan so froze her blood yesterday it will be a long time thawing and circulating again.
On his return to the Pit, Dado encounters pleas that he talk to the press. The favorable news is snowballing. Despite battle confusion, enemy jamming, and distance distortions, signal officers monitoring the command networks keep passing on fragmentary information from both fronts, all almost too good to be true. Long experience in intelligence warns Pasternak that they may be listening for what they want to hear, and he is for putting off the press until
the evening. After all, the battles are still going on. Dado accepts this cautious view, orders a press conference for 6 P.M., and goes off for a tour of the Syrian front.
Yoram Sarak’s bristly face pokes out of the signal vehicle rolling alongside Kishote’s half-track at the rear of the southbound column. “Sir, General Sharon wants you to report to him, highest urgency.”
Shifting to the jeep, Kishote speeds along the clanking column through a curtain of diesel fumes and whirling dust, and comes on Sharon leaning against a Centurion tank, rapidly making notes on a writing pad. “What took you so long, Kishote? Halt the division and turn it around. Bren is in desperate trouble. We must go to his rescue, back to exactly where we were.”
Yossi Nitzan is more or less inured to battlefield shocks, but his mouth literally falls open. The forward elements have been running south for four hours, and the division is strung out for miles along the Lateral Road. A glance at the sun; no way to get back to help Bren before dark. “Unbelievable, hey?” snarls Sharon. “Get them going the other way, I tell you, then I’m sending you to Tel Aviv.” He gestures at a helicopter landed nearby on the sand, its rotor slowly turning. “En brera. We are in extremis here. You can go there and be back by the time we reach Hamadia.”
Kishote issues orders on the brigade network, whereby the rear of the giant metal snake becomes the head, and the thousand machines of the tank division clumsily turn around where they stand; time enough to redeploy, he decides, on the move. Sharon is still scribbling as tanks begin to pass them heading north.