“See the enlisted men’s patch across the way?” says one of our fellows. “The poor bastards are lucky to have shoes.”
“That’s enough,” says Dov. He pulls us out.
Night. The column crawls in low gear, mounting to a plateau along the roughest road I have ever driven upon. We are advancing toward Nakhl in central Sinai. Reports say that Shazli’s force of nine thousand men and two hundred tanks, breaking from El Thamad and Kuntilla, is attempting to flee west. Dov taps Nakhl on the map. “If we get there before the Egyptians, we can cut off their retreat.”
But in minutes a jeep of the Recon Company comes slewing back from the head of the column. Minefield ahead! All vehicles halt in place! Combat engineers are called forward to clear a route.
Dov tries a go-around but our jeep bogs down in a wadi. It’s getting cold. We return to Arik and the command half-tracks. Sharon is on the net. “A jeep just ran onto a mine,” he says. “Two soldiers were killed.” Then over the headset he hears something else.
Sharon’s face changes.
He tugs the headphone from one ear and turns toward Dov and me.
“The Old City of Jerusalem is in our hands.”
Word flies along the length of the column. Dirty, exhausted men pass the report from tank to half-track, from engineers’ bulldozer to ammunition truck. Dov breaks out whiskey and chocolates. Men dismount from vehicles and cluster in knots of three or four. Verses of “Jerusalem of Gold” ascend into the frigid air, sung not in triumph or pride, but offered as a prayer—a prayer that is an answer to so many millions across the centuries. I wrote later, in Israel Journal: June, 1967:
We couldn’t move, but we had wings. The night was cold and the wind brushed us with cutting grains of sand, but there was a warmth of surging feelings and an unseen rainbow in the desert sky.
Daylight brings resupply by air. A helicopter lands with mail and newspapers. “GAZA STRIP IN OUR HANDS,” “RAMALLAH IS OURS,” “WEST BANK CITIES ARE CAPTURED.”
We will hear later of my father’s arrival at the Wailing Wall with Chief of Staff Rabin and the head of Central Command, Uzi Narkiss. Dayan scribbles a few words on a scrap of paper, in accord with tradition, and slips it into a crack between the stones. “What did you wish for?” a reporter asks.
“Peace,” says Moshe Dayan.
That evening in Sinai I hear over the radio—as, I’m sure, do my brothers Assi and Udi in the field with their units, my mother and grandparents, and every Israeli, as well as Jews all over the world—the full text of my father’s statement from the Western Wall:
We have returned to the holiest of our holy places, never to part from it again. To our Arab neighbors, Israel extends the hand of peace, and to peoples of all faiths we guarantee full freedom of worship and of religious rights. We have come, not to conquer the holy places of others, nor to diminish by the slightest measure their religious rights, but to ensure the unity of the city and to live in it with others in harmony.
Next morning, while wolfing a breakfast of biscuits and canned sardines, Sharon sketches the plan for ambushing the Egyptian column retreating toward Nakhl.
Our armor speeds ahead.
The enemy enters the trap.
Within ninety minutes 150 enemy tanks, along with support vehicles in uncountable numbers, have been rendered into scorched and smoldering wrecks.
This is the Valley of Death for the Egyptian Army.
We drive in silence past the mangled hulks. A sorrow verging on rage oppresses Dov. His sympathy lies with the enemy conscripts, the simple fellahin drafted from the delta who have been abandoned by their commanders.
“How come we hold only one or two Egyptian officer prisoners but hundreds of enlisted men?”
Even Arik, the legendary warrior, looks upon the sight with a countenance drained of animation. “It is horrible,” he says. “I hate it.”
Nakhl is the biblical wilderness of Paran. To this site Hagar retired with her son Ishmael, cast out by Abraham. It is, I am certain, the ugliest place on earth.
51.
THE LONGEST NIGHT
Ori Orr is the twenty-eight-year-old commander of the Recon Company of the 7th Armored Brigade:
“Five” is military radio nomenclature for a reconnaissance company. It also means the commander of that company. I am “Five.” “Twenty” is brigade commander Gorodish. “Forty” is division commander Israel Tal.
It’s Thursday, June 8, the fourth day of the war. Just before sunset, Twenty receives a radio transmission from Forty, telling him he has just been informed that the UN is debating a cease-fire resolution. “Twenty, how far are you from the Canal?”
“About thirty kilometers.”
“Get there as fast as you can.”
At once Gorodish puts together a fast, mobile army in miniature—our company from Recon, a half company of tanks, and a small detachment of artillery. He puts me in command.
“Your people are exhausted, Ori. The road to the Canal will be packed with Egyptian vehicles fleeing. Will you be okay?”
“We’ll be fine.”
“Wait,” says Gorodish. He is very brave. “I’ll go with you.”
Gorodish radios Forty, who overrules him. “Twenty, you are staying with your brigade. I trust your Five. Let him go.”
Menachem Shoval, Recon trooper:
We’re on the main road to the Canal. The route is pitch black except for light from burning Egyptian vehicles shot to pieces by our air force and our tanks.
My jeep is sixth in column, behind Ori’s jeep, Eli’s jeep, Amos’s jeep, and two tanks. Trailing us come more tanks. The artillery is last.
Egyptian tanks and trucks are moving on the road with us. We’re all traveling in the same direction. The Egyptians are fleeing for safety toward the Canal. We’re trying to get there so we can claim all of Sinai before the UN shuts us down.
The Egyptians don’t realize that Israelis are among them. They’re as stupefied with fatigue as we are. The road itself is blocked at point after point by smoldering hulks and burned-out wrecks. To drive under these conditions requires every ounce of concentration. We’re weaving in and out and so are the Egyptians.
We’re so tired. We drive like drunks. Twice I have run off the road and only snapped awake when my helmet crashed into the steering wheel as the jeep bellied to a stop in the sand.
In addition, we are mentally blocking out so much trauma: everything that has happened, friends killed, even the massacre of the enemy.
I shout to Eli, asking what time it is. My guess is three or four in the morning.
“Not quite midnight.”
Eli Rikovitz, Recon platoon commander:
On this road we are destroying Egyptian armor in a way that is not in the manual. Our jeeps drive on the road; the Patton tanks find their way along the shoulder and off to the side. When we in the jeeps see an Egyptian tank, we spotlight it with our headlamps and make a sign to our tanks to shoot it.
They do, at unbelievably close range.
When an Egyptian tank blows, none of its compatriots stops to help. Each driver has his head down, grinding for the Canal and safety.
Menachem Shoval, Recon trooper:
Suddenly in front of our jeep an Egyptian soldier appears. He’s in the middle of the road, flagging us down.
His T-54 is bogged in the sand. He thinks we’re Egyptians; he’s waving for help. We spotlight the tank with our headlights and call for one of our Pattons to destroy it. Ori’s jeep speeds up. Ori calls to the Egyptian soldier, signing to him and his crew to save themselves. In case they don’t savvy, he stands and swings in their direction the .30-caliber machine gun that is mounted on the bonnet of his jeep.
The soldier drops his red signal light and bolts into the darkness. The Egyptians cannot believe Israelis are all around them. Our jeep reverses out of harm’s way as one of
our Pattons pulls up so close to the T-54 that the commander has to duck down into his hatch in case the enemy tank explodes. Point-blank the cannon blows the Egyptian’s tracks and front rollers to scrap.
No need to destroy the whole tank. Our wrecking crews will salvage it tomorrow.
Ori Orr, Recon Company commander:
To work this kind of havoc is not fun. It makes the heart heavy. There is great fear, always, even within the fatigue. Any one of these enemy soldiers can open fire from the dark. We have seen how easily life can be taken.
Our young soldiers are trying to do the best they can. They have slept only hours in five days. They are carrying the grief of friends lost and the anguish of enemy slain.
The leader’s job is to take onto his shoulders not only the tactical weight of decision, but also the moral burden. Our nineteen- and twenty-year-olds are struggling to think about what they must do and to not think about the consequences.
That responsibility belongs to Eli and to Amos and to me.
Dubi Tevet, nineteen-year-old Recon trooper:
I have not slept for more than an hour in five days. In the jeep, I am in and out of nightmares, flashbacks, and what one might call reality if he could distinguish it from these other states.
Yesterday, or maybe it was two days ago, our brigade command group spotted an enormous cloud of dust to the south. Yes, that was yesterday, Wednesday, June 7. The dust appeared to be moving north.
Eli was summoned to Gorodish’s command group, which had drawn up at a spot called Point 68 on the road between Jebel Maara and Bir Gafgafa. General Tal, the division commander, was there, too. They were all peering through binoculars at the massive ridge of dust. Gorodish, under orders from Tal, instructed Eli to take two jeeps and advance carefully along the road to the west to find out what was raising those great clouds.
Eli and I set out with a third jeep. I can’t remember who was with us. We had a Piper scout plane overhead but our jeeps were all alone, way out in front of everybody. We could see as we advanced that the dust was rising from the primary road south of Bir Gafgafa.
“That’s the better part of a division,” said Eli.
He speculated that a large Egyptian formation was moving from Bir Thamada to Bir Gafgafa, trying to reach the main east-west route—the one on which our brigade was advancing—so it could flee from there west to the Canal.
Eli Rikovitz, Recon platoon commander:
I radioed back to Gorodish. The road on which the Egyptian column was advancing lay in an open plain with no cover on either side. From the dust it was raising, I estimated the number of its vehicles at above two hundred.
Gorodish instructed us to return at once to his command post at Point 68. He was ordering both of the brigade’s tank battalions to prepare for action.
This was the kind of opportunity an armored commander dreams of his entire life.
Patton tanks of Battalion 79 and the Recon Company at Point 68, preparing to move out along the road code-named “Blokada.”
Courtesy of Eli Rikovitz.
Dubi Tevet, Recon trooper:
Gorodish sent us forward again, this time leading the tanks. We advanced along a dirt road called on the code maps “Blokada.” Blokada took us straight to the Bir Thamada–Bir Gafgafa road.
We could see the Egyptian tanks and trucks moving from left to right (south to north) before us.
Our jeeps positioned both battalions, 79 and 82, along the crest of a ridge. Below on the road was the enemy column, crawling across our field of fire like ducks in a shooting gallery.
Eli Rikovitz, Recon platoon commander:
The Egyptian column was attempting to escape from the division of Arik Sharon, which was advancing from the southeast, and probably from Yoffe’s division pushing out of the east, in addition to our own 60th Armored Brigade, which was paralleling our advance a few kilometers to the south. I was studying the map. The best part of wiping out this Egyptian column here and now was that the wreckage would block this avenue of escape for every other enemy formation in this part of the desert.
Whatever Egyptian forces remained to the south would be at the mercy of Sharon and Yoffe and our warplanes.
Dubi Tevet, Recon trooper:
The brigade’s two tank battalions positioned themselves at the top of a ridge about two thousand meters from the enemy column. Two thousand meters is what the manuals call “battle range.” The same distance we use in practice on the firing range.
Eli Rikovitz, Recon platoon commander:
Our Pattons and Centurions fired at the vehicles in the front of the column. That blocked all escape forward. At the same time other gunners were sealing the route to the rear. The Egyptians were trapped in the middle. We could see crews abandoning the vehicles and fleeing on foot.
The enemy never maneuvered into a combat formation. They were just trying to get to the main road west, to get away. Perhaps they had orders to flee at all costs, to save whatever they could of themselves and their vehicles.
Dubi Tevet, Recon trooper:
When you have seen your friends dismembered and incinerated before your eyes, it is very satisfying to witness payback.
The Egyptians never returned fire. The crews had all run away. Nor did we in Recon have to direct our tank gunners. We sat back and enjoyed the show.
When dark came, we led the tanks back to Point 68, the spot where we had left the main road to advance along the dirt road called Blokada to the plains south of Bir Gafgafa. The tanks went into defensive positions, what they call a “night leaguer.”
Eli Rikovitz, Recon platoon commander:
There was no time for celebrating. The tanks were out of fuel and ammunition. The crews remained awake all night working, replenishing lubricants, gasoline, water, ammo for the cannons and the machine guns, and performing the dozens of repair and maintenance tasks that tanks require in the desert—tightening tracks, replacing filters, oiling friction points, cleaning sand and debris out of essential mechanisms like the traversing gears for the turrets.
In Recon we can refuel our jeeps in minutes using jerry cans. But a tank has to take a number, get in line, butt up to a refueling truck, then wait again when something goes wrong with the orders, which it always does. The crews are lucky to wolf down some sardines and biscuits and maybe a mug of tea, heated on a Primus stove or an engine block.
They know they have wiped out most of an enemy division this afternoon. This makes up for losing another night’s sleep.
Ori Orr, Recon Company commander:
Now it is two days later, the hours of darkness between Thursday and Friday, the eighth and ninth of June.
The Long Night continues.
My watch says 03:20. We are passing a burning truck with manufacturer’s markings from East Germany. This vehicle is, what, the five hundredth so far tonight?
In a way you are lucky to be a commander. Things that might frighten or upset those under you don’t produce the same effect on you. Why? Because you cannot let them.
I ask myself sometimes, “Ori, are you afraid?” The answer is, “I have no time to be afraid.”
The commander bears responsibility not just for the completion of the mission, but also for the lives of his men. A military unit, particularly a reconnaissance company, is like a street gang. You are closer than brothers. Each life is precious to you. For every man under my responsibility, I see in my mind’s eye his mother and father, his girlfriend or wife, his children, even if he has none yet—his children-to-be, and their children as well. All will suffer if he dies. Such a weight makes concerns such as personal fear, loss, even one’s own death seem trivial.
War for the commander is not like war for the individual soldier. What is going on in external reality is for me only context. The real war is inside my head.
In my head I must overlook nothing, forget nothing, fail to act on no wa
rning or intuition.
I am lucky. My position denies me the luxury of doubt or hesitation or fear.
Eli Rikovitz, Recon platoon commander:
The scale of destruction along this route is beyond anything I could have imagined. It goes on for kilometer after kilometer.
We started at eight this evening. Another eight hours have elapsed since then. All that time we have been passing wrecked and burnt-out tanks, trucks, ambulances, gun tractors, command cars, three-tonners pulling antitank guns, mobile field kitchens, personnel carriers, and half-tracks. The stench of incinerated flesh has not let up in all that time.
This is what war smells like. Burning rubber and gasoline, gunpowder, cordite, the melting surface of the asphalt road. Egyptian army trucks squat on bare rims in the road and along the sides, their tires burnt to liquid. Of engines nothing remains but the blocks; in cabs, you see only the springs of seats.
Between Bir Gafgafa and the Suez Canal.
Courtesy of Eli Rikovitz.
The road we’re on is the main road from Bir Gafgafa to Ismailiya. Bir Gafgafa is a huge Egyptian base, with tanks, infantry, an airfield, everything. That’s where most of this traffic is fleeing from. That, and from columns running away from Sharon’s and Yoffe’s divisions.
Ismailiya is a key crossing of the Suez Canal. The Firdan Bridge is there. The Egyptians are fleeing toward that span.
They are trying to get across the Canal to safety.
Dubi Tevet, Recon trooper:
This night is like a nightmare, where what you see with your eyes seems like some terrible dream, but from which you wake only to realize that it is real and it remains real and you and your friends are still in it. But this night is not the worst. The worst was the first night, at El Arish, counting our dead.
The Lion’s Gate Page 35
