Mitla Pass (31 page)

His temperature shot up so high he became delirious. When the fever failed to break, it was decided to move him to the small Hadassah hospital in Tiberias.

Chills and fever raged for several days. The quinine treatment added to his hallucinations and left his head ringing constantly.

When the malaria subsided, Nathan was so debilitated he was scarcely able to walk. He opened his eyes on the sixth morning to see Misha and Bertha sitting at his bedside. Misha handed him a letter from his father. Nathan set it aside to read later.

“I have come to a decision,” Nathan said weakly. “Namely, I am leaving Kibbutz Hermon. No, no, no, don’t try to talk me out of it.”

Bertha and Misha somehow managed to register dismay.

When they had gone, Nathan sat up and opened the letter from his father.

My son, Nathan,

... it was good to get from you, your last letter, and hear firsthand what a great success you are making in Palestine, particularly after your terrible tragedy with Rosie Gittleman.

I write to you wonderful news, namely, your brother Matthias is going to make aliyah in a few months. Such joy for a father. Two sons in Eretz Israel!

...beyond all expectations, the
shiddachs
have been made for Ida and Sarah, which only goes to prove that sometimes charm is better than beauty. Ida is to marry soon, Modele the baker, whom I’m certain you recall. He’s a bit older, no Greek God, but a good provider and even from peculiar matches can come beautiful children. And Sarah soon afterwards is to go to the
chuppa
with Manny Dinkle, a teamster who works steady.

...but the biggest surprise is Rifka, who we thought was beyond marrying age. Who should she get, no less than the respected widower Rabbi Silverstone.

...your brother, Mordechai, has become one of the most important intellectuals in Vilna and his wife is expecting a second child. We pray, hopefully, for a boy this time.

... as for ourselves, what can I say? A young tree bends, an old tree breaks. We are creaking, but so long as there is such pleasure from the children, we bear up.

My son, my son, I hate to close with bad news, but the pogroms by the Poles are worse than anything the Czar could have dreamed up, worse than 1880. They say a hundred thousand Jews have been slaughtered so far. We are relatively safe here in Wolkowysk, but who knows.

The Ukraine, they say, is even worse than Poland. Over a hundred separate pogroms have taken place. It is not like the Cossacks riding through town and leaving. This is organized. Entire villages are being burned down. They even kill by hand to save bullets and no known torture has been spared. ...

Nathan trudged into the office of Mrs. Cohen of the Zionist Settlement Department, took off his cap, set down his rucksack, and sat opposite her desk.

“Are you absolutely certain about this?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Mrs. Cohen, a portly, motherly woman, shook her head sadly. “My husband and I came to Palestine in the Second Aliyah. I know it’s difficult to believe, but things were much harder in those days.”

“I don’t want from you a talking-to,” Nathan said.

“I’m entitled,” Mrs. Cohen answered. “I put a child into the grave here during the war. She died of malnutrition. My husband was tortured by the Turks for spying for the British. He was crippled and also died of his injuries.”

“So, with such horrible memories, how can you go on living in Palestine?” Nathan asked.

“How can I not go on living here? Can I tell my husband and daughter it was all in vain? From yesterday to today and from today to tomorrow, I see things change. Give us a year or two, Nathan. The Labor Federation is really beginning to change conditions. The Haganah has stopped the Arab outrages cold. And the best news of all is that a large land purchase for the entire Jezreel Valley has gone through. We are going to form at least a dozen new settlements, immediately. I can get you assigned to one of them.”

Nathan shook his head. “No.”

“Where do you intend to go? The pogroms in Russia and Poland are worse than anything Europe has seen since the Middle Ages.”

“America,” he answered.

“Very well. Do you have relatives in America who will pay your passage and vouch for you?”

“Yes.”

She took some forms from her desk and shoved them over to him. Nathan began to cry, softly.

“It’s all right,” she said. “You’re not the only one leaving Palestine.”

“Zionism has failed me,” he wept.

PART THREE

AMERICA! AMERICA!

GIDEON

MITLA PASS

October 30, 1956

D DAY PLUS ONE

I
T IS DIFFICULT TO
know when my flight of ecstasy segued into a horrifying awareness. I was buzzing along merrily in my morphine haze when the
zzzz
turned from pleasant to hostile and became louder and louder, then switched to a shrill, ear-splitting scream.

I fought my eyes open at the same instant that angry puffs of earth and stone erupted all about me like little geysers and sharp little bits of stone sprayed into me like hornet stings. Machine-gun bullets!

I caught a glance of Shlomo as he pounced on top of me and covered me with his body. “Don’t move!” he yelled.

No sooner had Shlomo pinned me down than the shooting stopped and the screams tailed off quickly. We were being attacked by low-flying jet aircraft. Shlomo rolled off me.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Where the hell are we?”

Then I began to recall: Lydda Airport ... Val and my daughters taking off in flying boxcars ... the beach ... Natasha ... Grover Vandover ... the slow agonizing flight of the Dakotas into the Sinai ... the parachute jump. The parachute jump! Jesus! Hadn’t I been injured on the landing?

The screaming sounds returned ... louder ... louder ... louder! This time the earth bounced from the impact of bullets as Egyptian MiGs, engines shrieking, flashed over at what seemed touching distance, the noise nearly splitting my skull. Ugly bastards! Shlomo smothered me once more.

“Get off me, you goddam ape,” I shouted at him and lifted my head to catch a glimpse of the plumes of a pair of jets streaking away. I propped myself up on my elbows and watched our guards firing at them futilely.

“Medic! Medic!”

A paratrooper was shot up only a few yards away. He was a damned mess, his entire upper body gushing blood.

“Stay put!” Shlomo ordered. “They’re coming back.”

I watched the MiGs appear over the horizon, a couple of specks, banking, then growing larger and larger as they zeroed in for another pass.

Suddenly the Egyptians pulled out of their dive and zipped skyward. Shlomo had his field glasses on them.

“Yahoo!” he cried. “Yahoo! Yahoo! Gideon! Our boys are after them!”

Another pair of specks tore after the MiGs, which hightailed it for the Canal and safety. Cheering erupted from the ground, and then a massive sigh of relief. Attention turned to the wounded soldier.

During the night, while I was unconscious, the injured had been moved from the exposed open ground into a small wadi to afford us a measure of protection. There wasn’t too much cover anywhere, but it’s amazing how you can burrow into the smallest crack.

The balance of the Lion’s Battalion had made a forced march to the mouth of Mitla Pass, had found some good elevated ground, and were digging in to halt any attempt by the Egyptians to break out and reinforce their troops in the Sinai.

During the night, supplies, artillery, and jeeps had been dropped by parachute. Of the dozen jeeps, nearly all were damaged. A number of tires burst on impact, and other vehicles hit the ground engine first. Working in near-total darkness, so as not to draw fire from inside the Pass, they cannibalized six of the jeeps for spare parts to get the other six into working order.

Dr. Schwartz got the wounded lad quieted down and his bleeding under control. About this time I was reminded of my own pain, which was again becoming considerable as the morphine wore off.

“Let me try this bugger out,” I said.

Shlomo pulled me to my feet very slowly and held my hand for balance. I saw my hip through torn trousers. It looked like a rotten banana and was still swollen to almost the size of a basketball. I gingerly set some weight on the leg, took a step, and fell onto Shlomo, then pulled back from him carefully. I could bear my own weight, but my balance was tentative. I hobbled a few crooked steps, probably looking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Well, at least I could move somewhat on my own.

“How is it?” Shlomo asked.

“Shit city.”

A few more steps, each a bit better, but it was hurting. I sank to the ground. “Afraid you’re going to have to scratch me from the hundred-yard-dash competition,” I said.

“Not so bad,” Shlomo said. “Dr. Schwartz says that in three or four days you should have pretty good movement again, so take it easy.”

“We got anything to eat?”

As Shlomo opened a can of rations, I allowed myself a few mouthfuls of water to rinse out the grit and unpleasantness.

“Take yourself a good drink,” Shlomo said; “the Egyptians left us a full water tanker lorry near the monument.”

I guzzled. Water in the desert! Lord, it was among the greatest of all sensations. However, the rations fought back at me angrily.

“How in the hell can those sons of bitches in your kitchens go out of their way to make anything taste so gruesome? Jesus H. Christ, this is worse than Marine Corps C rations, and nothing is worse than Marine Corps C rations.”

“Kosher,” Shlomo answered, “we’ve got to keep kosher.”

“It’s what makes the Israeli Army so mean, these mother rations.”

Shlomo pacified me with an orange from his knapsack. If you travel with Shlomo, you never go hungry. A cloud of dust rose from the desert floor in the distance, heralding the arrival of a convoy consisting of the six working jeeps. The wounded para was loaded first and was rushed away. The rest of us “walking wounded” piled aboard the other jeeps for a twenty-minute sprint to battalion headquarters, which was situated on a rise halfway between the Parker Monument and Mitla Pass.

Activity now carried an air of urgency as the paras hacked away at the hard-baked soil and rock to dig in before nightfall. Four recoilless rifles and a pair of heavy mortars dropped during the night were now being entrenched and zoning in on the Pass.

A phone line was hooked up between Major Ben Asher at the command post and the forward observation post. Canvas panels were being laid out to indicate a landing strip on a flat stretch of track below.

Only minutes after the panels were staked down, a little Piper Cub glided in like a toy and sputtered to a halt. While the wounded soldier and a medic were being squeezed aboard, the pilot handed a packet of communications to the major. Shlomo and I, who were privy to discussions with the officers, went to the edge of their circle and listened.

The balance of the Para Brigade, which had to cross a hundred and fifty-odd miles of desert track through the middle of the Sinai in order to link up with us, had apparently run into stiff opposition from fortified Egyptian positions. The desert itself was ravaging their vehicles and armor.

The commander of Para 202 Brigade was a semi-legendary figure, Colonel Zechariah. We took some comfort in the conviction that if anyone would break through to us, it would be Zechariah. Yet, with the day only beginning, the hours would be long and filled with tension and, perhaps, battle.

About forty minutes after the first Piper Cub flew off, a second one found its way in, and the two paras with broken legs were boarded. The pilot brought further disconcerting news that an Egyptian column had been spotted on the road from the Canal moving into the opposite entrance of Mitla Pass, some sixteen miles away.

Ben Asher ordered the balance of the walking wounded to assemble and went into a consultation with Dr. Schwartz. As they broke up their meeting, the major came directly toward me.

“You will go back on the next plane, Zadok,” he said to me tersely, his hands on his hips. Why is it that all friggin’ officers have to authoritate with their hands on their hips?

“I’ve come too far for you to do this to me,” I pleaded.

“Either go peacefully, or I’ll have you tied up.”

“Major, hey, old buddy, I’ve come halfway around the world to find this place. I have to stay.”

He glanced at my leg, shook his head, and turned to leave.

I grabbed him instinctively and this drew a crowd. Everyone gawked as Ben Asher took my hands off him. He seemed on the verge of ordering me put under restraint.

“The wounded will be evacuated,” he said. He continued to stare at me and his stare was frightening. The major was a concrete block of a man, who could do away with me with a single backhand blow. I was going dry and I knew he could see me grow pale and faint. He reached down, picked up a rock, and turned and threw it. It landed over a hundred feet away.

“If you are not wounded, you should have no trouble retrieving that stone and bringing it back here inside one minute,” he said and immediately started time by looking at his watch.

“There’s a difference between a wound and an injury,” I pleaded. “Anyone knows that!”

“You have wasted ten seconds,” he said.

“But ... God dammit—I have to stay!”

I don’t know what possessed me, except that I knew I had to do something flamboyant and do it quickly. For some odd reason, I have always been able to stand on my head, even as a little kid. I loved to sucker guys into head-standing contests in the Marines, especially when we had a half case of beer in us. I could also have challenged him to an arm wrestle, but the size of his arm discouraged me.

So I stood on my head. God, let me tell you, I thought my bloody leg would fall off. I was determined to maintain balance, no matter how.

The move caught Ben Asher by surprise. I could see that upside down. His grizzly arms dropped from his hips and he gaped. Suddenly cheers began to break out from the paras. The major looked around at everyone threateningly.