by Herman Wouk
“I’ll get you more water.”
“Where? How? The water cart is gone! It won’t be back until the evening! You lunatic, that was for washing, for cooking, for everything!”
“Go on home. Tell Grandpa that the boy from Katowice is bringing the water.” He stood there dripping, grinning, muddy, holding the empty pail, and she was inclined to pound him with her fists, but what good would that do? “Shayna, if I don’t bring you water,” he reassured the dumbstruck girl, “may I drop dead.”
“Amen!” She ran off.
Her grandfather and mother were amazed by her story. “That boy Yossi is crazy,” said the mother, a gaunt woman in her forties, wearing the prescribed pious wig, and the prescribed pious kerchief over the wig. “You’ll never see him again, and you’ve lost our pail.”
Reb Shmuel sat by the table, reviewing the Torah portion as he did every morning. “If he’s so crazy, how did he get out of the Old City without Shayna? Is he an angel? He flies?”
“He didn’t smell like an angel,” said Shayna.
“You don’t know how an angel smells,” rapped her annoyed mother.
“I know an angel doesn’t smell like a mule’s… that,” said Shayna. The Yiddish euphemism brought frowns on both faces.
“Well, there’s no water to make tea or breakfast,” said the mother, “so say your prayers, do your lessons, and watch your mouth.”
Before long, there came a knock at the door of the closed tailor shop. Shayna rushed to open it and there stood Don Kishote, still damp all over, with two dripping pails of water.
“You again?” The girl tried to cover her relief with a sharp tone. “Well, come on in then.”
Kishote was ready with a white lie about where he had gotten the water and the second pail—actually from the secret truck depot, where there was a special supply for the drivers and loaders—but Reb Shmuel invited him to breakfast with a smile and no questions. Shayna served them tea and coarse potato cake, then joined her mother in doing washing.
Kishote made a hit with the old tailor in three simple ways. He knew what the Torah portion of the week was, he put on his ragged army cap to make a blessing, and he spoke the correct benediction for a cake made of potatoes, not grain flour. The old man rewarded him by expounding subtly on the Torah text, and he listened with serious attention, nodding from time to time. It was a while before Reb Shmuel noticed that he had stopped nodding, and that his heedful look was fixed and glassy. Kishote was in fact fast asleep, sitting up with a rigid smile, his eyes wide open.
***
Long before daybreak, Barak knew that the second Latrun assault had also failed. He was with Marcus, observing the battle from a hill close to the fire zone—too close, he thought—and for a while victory seemed to be within grasp. The armored battalion succeeded in storming the fortress, and the flaming combat inside Latrun was lighting up the sky. Mickey Marcus, in high excitement over the gallant advance of the armor, was swigging brandy from a canteen as he paced, offering drinks to the other officers, and hanging on every new word from the battlefield. But then two of the busses bringing the infantry into the battle caught fire, whether from mines or artillery hits, and all the busses turned back; and not long after came the decisive blow. Barak talked to Colonel Shamir by field telephone, and had to relay the bad news to Marcus.
“Sir, Shlomo Shamir has finally raised the commander of the Givati battalion.”
“Yes, yes, well? How’s that attack in the rear going?”
“They ran into heavy resistance. They were taking unacceptable losses and couldn’t advance. They’re withdrawing.”
Marcus said nothing for long moments, while nearby the guns inside Latrun volleyed and flared. He spoke in a changed voice. “What now, Haim?” Lieutenant Colonel Haim Laskov, the commander of armor, was conducting his battle from this vantage point.
“It’ll be daylight in an hour, sir,” said Haim. “Without infantry support I’ve got to pull my armor out of Latrun, or I’ll lose it. I must ask Colonel Shamir to give that order. The attack hasn’t succeeded. You agree, sir?”
Marcus looked to Barak, who nodded. Haim Laskov was perhaps the best professional officer in the army, and there was no countermanding him. After a pause, with a strange sarcastic smile, the American also nodded, and dropped down on the grass. “For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground,” he said, “and tell sad stories of the death of kings…” Barak had heard Marcus quote scraps of poetry before, mostly martial or comic verses. The lugubrious words and tone were new.
“I’ll have that drink now, thank you, sir,” said Lieutenant Colonel Laskov. He tilted the canteen to his mouth, took a good pull, and passed it back to Marcus.
***
Hulda kibbutzniks were eating breakfast that morning as usual in the dining hall, with much clatter of tin plates and cutlery. Most of the maps and signal gear of Marcus’s improvised headquarters had been cleared away. In a corner by a wall map Marcus paced, dictating to Barak, phrase by bitter phrase, a battle summary. Colonel Shamir and Haim Laskov sat drinking coffee, glancing at each other as the account of the defeat took shape. Marcus was getting the facts right but the blame wrong, Barak thought. The battle had unfolded more or less as he had feared. A steep risk with inadequate forces had not paid off and that was that. Any blame lay with the political decision to attack.
“Conclusion!” Marcus barked. His eyes were bloodshot, his voice hoarse. He had long since emptied the canteen, but was quite sober. “I was there, start to finish. Observed the battle. Can sum up simply. Plan—good! Artillery—good! Armor—excellent! Infantry—” he paused, then growled, “disgraceful!”
“That’s too strong,” said Laskov.
“I don’t think so. I think it’s charitable.”
“We don’t have all the facts, sir,” said Shamir. “An inquiry is certainly called for, but—”
“Damned right, and there will be an inquiry, starting today. We have plenty of facts already. The reserves turned back because a few busses caught fire. Givati turned back because they had two killed. The battalion commander reported this himself! Two!”
“In both cases, sir, companies mostly of green recruits,” put in Barak, “trying to storm heights under heavy fire. Not an outstanding performance, true, but—”
“That’s my report,” said Marcus. “Now let’s all get some sleep. Then we figure out how we try again. The Old Man wants Latrun, and I’ll deliver Latrun to him, but next time it will be a new plan, and my own plan, A to Z!”
***
Later in the week, in the dead of night, Marcus was walking with Barak in a swirl of stone dust to inspect a bottleneck of the bypass. Here mules and porters were laboring down and up the slopes of a wide rift, for the road engineers had ruled that trucks could not traverse the dip, and had ordered a straight cut through a granite outcropping. Dozens of stonecutters, all that could be found in Israel, were hammering and clanking away. Blasting was forbidden, so this and other stretches of the mountain bypass were being hewed by hand, as in ancient times. Beyond the ridge gunfire once again arched, boomed, and flared, for the early probes of the third Latrun attack were on.
“By God, tell these guys I’m proud of them!” exclaimed Marcus. “I want to shake hands with every man.”
Marcus went among the stonecutters, shaking hands, slapping backs, examining the tools, sparking excited talk in several languages—Hebrew, Yiddish, Italian, Polish, German, Russian, Arabic, and some babble quite alien to Barak. Marcus spoke English, letting Barak translate, and the very sound of it seemed to exhilarate these Jews from all over. Here was the fabled friend, the Jewish general who had left safe America to risk his neck, create the wonderful road, and free Jerusalem! Marcus’s good cheer was invigorating workmen all along the road.
But riding back to Tel Aviv, Marcus sank into silent gloom, which Barak could well understand. There was no heart in the general staff for still another thrust at Latrun. The demoralized and broken Seventh Brigade was
now merely guarding the bypass and carrying flour; and a veteran brigade had been pulled out of the northern front to try yet again to take the fortress. Only Ben Gurion could have forced the staff to risk leaving the north unguarded against Syrian assault, and even that brigade was attenuated and battered, its muster filled up with raw recruits as the Givati battalion had been; and Givati had failed in the second attack because its best fighters had fallen battling the Egyptians, and the new troops had panicked. In plain truth the army was nearing the end of its rope.
“I’m in a bind, Zev,” Marcus spoke up. “On the basis of what we’ve seen of the bypass, I can’t tell the Old Man to call off this next attack. Those road men are working their hearts out, but the road just won’t do the job, it can’t take truck convoys.”
“Not yet. It will soon.”
“Irrelevant. As of now it’s still a mule track, and the assault has to go in the next forty-eight hours, if at all. That’s the bind. I’m not thrilled at sending more Jewish boys to storm Latrun, but I’m a soldier and I’m going to do it.”
The walls of Marcus’s inner office were covered with war maps, except for pictures of Herzl and Ben Gurion. He sat down at his desk under Herzl, handed Barak the operation order for the third attack, and glanced through piled despatches and letters. The hollows under his eyes, accentuated by the harsh fluorescent light, were deep and black. Never a spic-and-span sort, he needed a shave, and though his fringe of hair was brownish the three-day growth on his face was all gray. He drooped lower in his chair as he skimmed papers, shaking his head, tightening his lips, and yawning. Neither man had yet slept that night.
Barak’s arm and shoulder ached, and he hung the crooked cast over the chair back while he read Marcus’s operation order. Here was work of a staff man par excellence, like the manuals Marcus had written for the army at Ben Gurion’s request. The mimeographed papers brought back British army days. Here were detailed maps of each sector, annexes for logistics, transport, and intelligence, a meticulous order of battle. L’Azazel, what an effort! Only, the document was a fantasy. The array of forces, formidable on paper, was in fact a list of eroded and broken units, some so far below complement as to be little more than memories. Available supplies would fall far short of the logistics annex. The attack plan—a frontal assault yet again, but this time a deception, while the main surprise punch came from the brigades around Jerusalem—was professionally conceived, but the fresh manpower to bring it off was not there. So Barak gloomily estimated.
“Not much cheer in this stuff.” Marcus passed him despatches from several units assigned to the operation, reporting difficulties, delays, breakdowns, and shortages. One commander recommended postponement; another, a different plan to relieve Jerusalem, using the forces now in place. “No stomach for the fight, Zev, that’s what they’re all really telling me. As though Latrun is my idea,” said Marcus, with a frustrated gesture. He pulled open a desk drawer, produced a bottle and two glasses, and grinned. “Firewater?”
“Why not?”
“How are you on World War I poetry, Zev?”
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England.
“Rupert Brooke—heard that one often enough in North Africa,” said Barak moodily, “over fresh graves.”
Marcus poured himself a full glass, drank deep, and recited the poem to the last word in a tired voice, moisture glistening in his eyes. “‘…In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.’”
“It’s beautiful,” said Barak.
“There’s another poem that’s been running through my mind for days.”
I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade….
He was looking straight into Barak’s eyes, his expression somber and drawn. “Ever heard it?”
Barak reluctantly sipped brandy, feeling something like pity for the first Jewish general in two thousand years. How to lift the spirits of this beset outsider, this well-meaning fish out of water, burdened by David Ben Gurion with a thankless command and a hopeless mission?
“Sir, may I say something?”
“Go ahead.” Marcus refilled his own glass and drank.
“These Latrun attacks have thrown the Legion way off balance. Otherwise they’d surely have sallied out to kill the road workers and blow up the bypass.”
“Well, that’s probably true.”
“It’s a fact, sir. You’ve prevented that. By now they must know what we’re up to. They’ve even planted mines to try to stop us, but they haven’t been able to. What’s more, the Legion hasn’t moved to capture Jerusalem. Their golden chance is running out unused, because they’re split between Jerusalem and Latrun.”
Wanly smiling, Marcus took a long drink. “Okay, Zev, you’re trying to cheer me up. It’s appreciated. I could just get on an airplane and go home, you know. My wife thinks this isn’t my fight. I told you that. I’m sending more and more kids to get killed at Latrun for one reason. I think the Old Man is a wise tough old bastard, probably a great man, and I’m a Jew, so I’m carrying out his orders.” He resumed reciting.
When spring comes back with rustling shade,
And apple blossoms fill the air.
I have a rendezvous with Death
When spring brings back blue days and fair…
The sadness in his tone and face hurt and scared Barak. He set his glass on the desk, intending to ask permission to leave. Marcus was smiling in the strange sarcastic way he had smiled on the embankment, realizing that the first battle he had launched as commander was a fiasco. He spoke the entire poem, and at the last words,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous…
he lifted his glass to Barak, to Herzl’s picture, and to Ben Gurion’s picture, and he drained it. “Zev, you’re not drinking your firewater.”
“Thanks, Colonel, I’ve had plenty.”
“Probably not a great poem,” said Marcus, “I’m no judge of poetry. But by God, it says what a soldier thinks when he’s low. Now, what about my op order?”
“First of its kind in this army,” said Barak.
Marcus nodded, pleased. “You guys will have to learn. You’ve got a country now, and by God you’ll have to fight for it. Your kids, too. Maybe your grandchildren. After 1776 came 1812, you know. Civil War, World War I, World War II—” He glanced at the gray windows. “Christ, it’s morning, me lad. Let’s get about our business.”
5
The Road Is Ours
Yael Luria came off twelve straight hours of runner duty, fagged out and soaked in sweat, for the June nights in Tel Aviv were becoming very humid and hot. In the bathroom of the women’s barracks, covered with soap from head to foot, she was eking out a shower in the weak warm trickle from failing plumbing when a shout echoed at her, “Yael, telephone. Red House.”
“To all the devils!”
A quick incomplete rinse, a dash to the wall telephone. “Can you be here in fifteen minutes?” inquired Zev Barak.
“What? I just got off duty. I thought you were in Jerusalem.”
“Put on a fresh uniform and look your best.”
“What is this?”
“It’s an order.”
Yael took a bit longer than fifteen minutes, but when she arrived at the Red House she was prettied up as though for a fund-raising poster, and soldiers lounging outside Barak’s office whistled. Zev was on the telephone, amid rough-looking civilians crowded around his desk. Yigal Yadin sat beside him, smoking his pipe. “The truck convoy is ready, Colonel Stone,” Barak was saying. “I’ve got most of the drivers here with me. It can go anytime. Small trucks, twenty-five or so, about seventy tons of supplies.”
A pause. Yael knew that “Colonel Stone” was in headquarters outside Jerusalem, preparing to conduct another Latrun attack, but what had this to do with her?
“Yes, sir, of course there’s a risk. But if
the world press announces tomorrow that there’s a road and the siege has been lifted, we’ll have created a tremendous fact.”
A long pause. Barak shook his head at Colonel Yadin. “I’ll tell him, sir.” He covered the phone. “He’s dubious. If anything happens to those correspondents, he says—a mine, a sniper, an accident, whatever—we’ve blown the secret, created a catastrophe, and probably lost the road.”
“I’ll talk to him…. Mickey? Yigal. Shlomo Shamir’s brigade is out in force, patrolling the bypass. He reports it’s clear. The truce doesn’t take effect for another thirty-six hours, so—no, I’m right, sir, ten A.M. on the eleventh. After the truce the Arabs are bound to assert that it’s not a passable road. The UN truce commission will back them up, of course—that goes without saying—and award the city of Jerusalem to King Abdullah. But we can preempt all that with headlines about a truck convoy that breaks the siege and enters Jerusalem the day before the truce begins. Sir, I recommend that we take this risk.”
A long pause, indistinct telephone sounds. Yadin hung up. “Green light,” he said, and went out.
“It’s on,” Barak said to the drivers, glancing at a wall clock that showed half-past midnight. “Round up the rest of the guys and finish the loading. We go at 0200.” They hurried out, all talking at once. Barak looked Yael up and down. “Had anything to do with foreign correspondents?”
“No.”
“Come along, and be very sweet. Try, anyhow.”
“At your orders, Major.” With the honeyed tones went a burlesque batting of huge eyes.
“Excellent.”
They went outside, and there was Don Kishote sitting at the wheel of Barak’s jeep. He pushed his glasses up on his nose with a forefinger, grinning at her. “Oo-ah! Rita Hayworth!”
She worked the eyes and the sexy voice at him. “Don’t exaggerate, Kishote.”
“How’s your brother Benny?”
“All better. Back on duty.”
