Israel Journal: June, 1967

by Dayan, Yaël

  “To open the Nitzana–Abu-Ageila road for other formations—to fight the enemy tanks in the depth of Sinai,” the second objective of the division read.

  It was still dark when I turned my head left, to the east, and there, as far as I could see, were a thousand headlights moving on, advancing rapidly toward us, below on the main road. Arik was on top of his command half-track, raising and pointing his hand to the horizon as if blessing the sight, the moment. On the radio was Shaike, the general commanding southern command: “It’s Jaffe’s second armored brigade, make them pass you as quickly as possible.” Hundreds of our own supply and ammunition trucks were moved in a matter of minutes away from the road, our own tank-brigade reconnaissance jeep took theirs, as if by the hand, and led them, full speed, the ten more miles through Um-Katef-Um-Shihan. The fight with the Egyptians was still going on, but the whole brigade sped through, without any hindrance, to fight the concentration of Egyptian armor on the second line of the defense of Sinai–Bir-Hasana and Gebel-Libni.

  Our armor lost nineteen tanks in this battle, three half-tracks, most of them from Natke’s force. Sason had to his unit’s credit about thirty Egyptian tanks and Natke about the same number. Our tank forces lost eleven men.

  Um-Katef-Um-Shihan was in our hands before time. It was a cursed place for us in 1956, in the Sinai campaign, and the commanders and officers who knew their history still remembered the fate of the 10th Infantry Brigade and the 37th Armored Brigade. Later, as I was filling in my diary with the details which I didn’t have at the time, Dov shoved under my nose my father’s diary of the Sinai Campaign: “Read, look what was going on in the back of our minds that night; read, and you will find out why Arik was so anxious to get the tanks in and why he was pushing forward relentlessly the whole time. I took the book and read: “I explained to the brigade command that Um-Katef had to be captured as quickly as possible.… It was essential to open a favorable axis of movement.… Um-Katef commands the only asphalt road which can serve our forces …”

  There followed a description of the two attacks that failed:

  “… The first Battalion lost its way, failed to find the main enemy position, lost contact with its companies, tramped about the hills at night, etc. The 2nd Battalion, too, had difficulties in finding their objective, and after an arduous night of slogging up and down the resistant sand dunes they managed to get near the enemy position.… One platoon met with enemy fire, one man was killed and another wounded. That was the end of their attack. The Battalion withdrew.”

  Here the failure of the next attack is examined. “The first half-tracks went into a minefield … and went out of action. The command half-track was among the first to be hit.”

  My father counts all the mistakes that were studied and avoided this time. Faulty intelligence, lack of familiarity with the terrain, and an attack “which did not follow a sound operational plan which would give full battle expression to the entire strength allocated for this operation.”

  Later in the book he returns to it. “The defended localities of Abu-Ageila are the only sectors so far where the Egyptians fought extremely well and our forces extremely poorly. The basic fault in our fighting here is that it was done in dribs and drabs.” (General Dayan, Diary of the Sinai Campaign)

  I now understood why he was happy with Arik’s plans. The Egyptians fought as well this time as they did then, but there were no dribs and drabs about our combined operation.

  My father writes about the Egyptian fighting:

  “The Egyptian forces fought well during the static phase of their combat. So long as they were required to use their weapons which had been dug into fixed positions in advance … they did so automatically, accurately, and efficiently. But this was not the case when they had to leave their entrenched posts or make changes in their plans. They carried out almost no counterattacks; and when they did, their action was pretty poor.”

  Our experience that night proved they hadn’t changed. Tactically they were adequate; but when it came to a dynamic move, a change of strategy, taking initiative, or being inventive—they were hopeless. The division achieved its objective—it destroyed an important vertebra of the backbone of the Egyptian defense line. That morning we knew only that the immediate danger to Nitzana–Beer-Sheba was averted.

  Little did we know that the war was won, that Sinai was ours, that the Egyptian army was a body without a soul, without a spirit, without a command. The bulk of the Egyptian armor was still in the center of Sinai, almost untouched—the whole of the 7th Tank Division, and a couple of armor brigades, over five hundred tanks still capable of putting up a fight in spite of the fact that their air force was almost nonexistent.

  Arik was anxious to push on as quickly as possible for the next fight, before the enemy woke up, before one of their generals with initiative took over and put some guts in them. He refused to give them reprieve, respite. He demanded in radio talks with Shaike to be given new assignments. He offered to take Bir-Hasana.

  TUESDAY, JUNE 6

  Red eyes after another sleepless night adjusted to the first light of day. Men who were tied up to transceivers stretched and moved, and Arik’s efforts were now concentrated on getting more helicopters for evacuation of the wounded. On the horizon we could see a thick cloud of dust and the first half-tracks and tanks of Avraham’s division. “What a majestic sight,” Arik said proudly. The night’s battle was almost over and fresh forces could use the road to Abu-Ageila and farther west toward Ismaelia on the Canal. Our job here was done. We had given them a free entrance to the center of Sinai and just above them the first helicopters appeared. Rachamim was asleep under the command car. By now he knew my “let’s make tea” smile, and I prepared breakfast. Arik shaved, and on a ridge overlooking the newly opened road with the endless line of vehicles on it, we had some canned sardines, biscuits, cold meat, and tea. Spasmodic fire could still be heard when Arik said, “We’re going down.” We mounted the vehicles and only then I realized how close we were to the battlefield, protected by the darkness and a few dunes.

  We drove to the center of the location, among our tired soldiers, along the grayness of the end of battle area. The dunes were gray, spotted by shells’ hits, shrapnel, and fragments covered the ground, sharp and gray, gray people, gray thoughts, blazing sun. We parked the half-tracks and descended. I looked for familiar faces. At first all faces looked alike—red eyes, a mixture of fatigue and sadness, a flicker of pride, anxious looks following the helicopters with their human load of wounded friends. Kuti appeared. Motke joined us. We hugged and embraced, and there was no need for words any more. The abstract voices of night required their human physical entity. Worn out, unshaved, but satisfied. “No arrowheads here,” Kuti said. He took a shrapnel out of his pocket. “‘Plenty of those, though. This is my personal one, almost did me in.” “I have candies this time,” I said, and gave him a pack I had. “Good girl. What are you doing here anyway?” We walked to his jeep. Someone was making coffee. “All I want is a ranch. Cattle, sheep, pasture,” and as an afterthought, “Do you know, I never killed in war; not even tonight in the ditches?” Occasional shots were heard nearby. “It is Joseph, your friend,” somebody said. “He is still clearing the third ditch.” I thought of “Bombay,” Kadosh, Cocos—his men. I remembered his reservists with the asthma and the corsets. They were clearing the bunkers now and Kuti just kept saying, “What an ugly thing war is. Now I hate it.” I showed him the arrowhead and he smiled and walked away to join Arik and Motke. They climbed to an observation point to reconstruct the details of the night’s battle. Apparently there were very few diversions from the original plan. I was standing on the head cover of a bunker. Below me was our army—refueling, resting, refilling water containers, eating. It was only then that I turned to look at the enemy or sense its destroyed presence. In the ditch leading from the bunker lay a corpse. My first contact with the dead enemy. I examined it closely, my boots almost touching the outstretched hand. He was small, dark, fine f
eatured. His face was already covered with flies and his khaki uniform hung loosely over the dead limbs. Black blood covered his belly, and his head was bare, with black dirty hair. I had to admit an absence of feeling which grew in proportion to the number of corpses I saw. This one was more than an object but less than a human reality with desires and dreams and relatives who cared. He was a victim; his death was an inevitability; he was pathetic. My eyes left him and wandered along the ditch.

  Two more corpses and a group of prisoners. Someone I knew was guarding them. They were officers. They looked better fed than the soldiers; they were older and as silent as the dead. “You should have heard Motke,” the guard told me. “He lectured them in English as if they were his pupils in a cadet school. Lectured? He preached. He told them they should be ashamed of themselves. He told them they did not deserve an officer’s rank. He pointed out to them the fear of their men, their lack of pride and devotion.” One of the prisoners looked up at me. I met his eyes. Black, curious, pleading. Here it was. Nasser’s promises and bragging, the threatening, choking political reality, the millions of dollars we invested in the army, the war songs and the arms, Kuti’s thirteen dead of last night—this was the enemy defeated, frightened, reduced to a pleading animal, grateful for the water we gave him and hoping to survive. Was he promised Tel-Aviv loot and women? Was he told of our inferiority? Did he go to war believing, the way we did, that he was bound to win? Someone offered me “a cake from home.” Only then did I realize the element of time. It seemed we were on the way for days, and the cake a piece of memory from a distant past. Into twelve hours were crammed more sensations than in weeks, raw, confused, pushed aside to be digested later, all new. “What can I give you?” Kuti asked me. “I think I would like a gun.” He walked over to a pile of weapons collected in the area, tried several, and chose one. “Here, you may have it. I don’t think you need use it.” Some prisoners were lying down, face in the sand. A few curious soldiers surrounded them, hardly commenting, never teasing or bullying, just watching. Did they think of friends who died that night? Did they compare themselves to them? Did they want to see the enemy who at night was a jaw of a machine gun throwing fire? There was no hatred in their eyes. A touch of contempt perhaps, and a touching wonder. Smoke grenades were thrown occasionally to mark landing spots for the helicopters and I walked back to our headquarters, stopping to look at the loading of wounded. What remain of battles are always heroic episodes. Little is written about the dirt and the flies, the fear and the agony. Yet it would be unjust to dismiss the heroism of our wounded for the sake of not being banal.

  Medics and doctors, who worked miracles under fire, were amazed at their behavior. “Not in the war of independence, not even in Sinai, were the wounded so brave.” The infantry doctor told me of soldiers who hid a serious wound until morning so as not to be evacuated before the battle was over. The sentence “Treat him first, I can wait,” was a common phrase used by them all, and their sense of humor and high morale didn’t leave even the dying. Doctors carried on in spite of their own wounds, treating enemy soldiers as well as their own, and with a last bit of strength those who were evacuated smiled to us from the stretchers.

  The ten-o’clock news announced the victory in Um-Katef and the Jordanian retreat from Latrun, Nebi Samuel, and Jenin.

  Our half-tracks were refueled, we had a fresh supply of water and were ready to go. “Where to?” I asked. “Along the road south where we shall stop for the night and await instructions.”

  I moved from the artillery half-track to Dov’s jeep where I was to stay through the remaining days of the war. It was a good change. Somehow the speed and size of the jeep gave me a sense of security. Dov was a brilliant driver and jeep driving in this area was not an easy task. What from a distance looked like smooth terrain proved to be a broken ground. One had to drive along contours, modify the acceleration when stuck, choose a track avoiding the deep tracks of heavy vehicles and tanks on the road, and keep the jeep steady and fast. In a few minutes we were leading the headquarters convoy. With us on the jeep, as a permanent crew, were Katz, a gunner and a reconnaissance soldier, and Itzik, a radio operator. Our transceiver was open and we could hear all communications. We had a good set of maps, the machine gun was loaded, and we had a container of water and K-rations. Driving meant very little dust and I felt I could go on like this forever. Along any road, in any direction. At this stage we were still looking with a touch of excitement at every destroyed vehicle of the enemy. We were heading south and leading the division when Arik suggested we stop. In our footsteps arrived the armored brigade and we moved on a few miles to a hill left of the road where we parked for the night. The forces were moving on, along the bad road, to stop a mile or so ahead. We sat and watched them, tank after tank, jeeps, half-tracks, command cars. They waved and drove on in whirlpools of dust. The dust didn’t matter any more; somehow it didn’t feel like dirt. I longed for the moment I could take off my shoes and socks but felt physically better than ever. The afternoon news broadcast announced the city of Gaza was taken and described the shelling of several kibbutzim by Syrian artillery. Yet we felt isolated. I was anxious to get news of other fronts but didn’t have a feeling that we were a part of a total war. There was the division, behind it the rear headquarters, and the logistic branches, behind them was Shivta, the Lark with our belongings, and home much farther. The war until now was a day of advance, a night of battle, and today—its aftermath. Ahead was the road, the next target, the wilderness of Sinai, and perhaps a few hours’ sleep. Right there the war was our war, and breaking the sense of isolation were the air-force actions in our area and the division which drove through Um-Katef in the morning, westward.

  I prepared supper. Heated cans of goulash, peas and sweet corn mixed, slices of apple in syrup, and tea. We could hear and clearly see shells falling from the direction of Kseime but I was too tired to register. With darkness, small log fires appeared and the site looked like a gypsy camp. I managed to wash my face and arms and behind a low hill changed my shirt. I succeeded in combing and rebraiding my hair and even applied some moisturizing cream to my face and neck. Itzik and Katz were asleep in the jeep, cuddled in blankets, and Dov and I took our sleeping bags to a group of desert bushes between the vehicles. The hard white surface felt like the softest of beds once I took off my shoes and zipped myself in the bag. I don’t think I managed to say good night. We had had no sleep for sixty hours now.

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7

  We were as good as new in the morning. A short discussion resulted in agreement that it was Wednesday, and while the men were washing I prepared breakfast. Breakfast menu never left much chance for surprise. Pickles, sardines, biscuits and jam, tea and cold meat. We ran out of canned fruit salad but I discovered a crate of Jaffa oranges for export under the blankets and guns and boxes in the command car. The sight of the oranges this morning won me smiles and gratitude as if I had succeeded in growing them overnight. I put on a khaki shirt which was sleeveless, sleeves removed by a pocketknife, and under a bush set up the food. Arik and Dov were looking at the maps and Arik was awaiting information and instructions. “I would like to go west,” Arik said. “Will you take me to the sea? Any sea?” “I promise,” Dov answered. A jeep pulled toward us and Kuti appeared. We had said good-by in Um-Katef and his arrival was a good surprise. “Want to go for a swim?” he asked. He was taking his brigade north, to El-Arish. “You can’t have her,” someone said. “We’ll reach water, too, sooner or later, and meanwhile we’ve got to eat.” Arik was called to the radio and returned suggesting we were to head south. Sharm-El-Sheikh. When the tea was hot and ready, he was called again. “We are off soon. We’ll follow the track south toward Nahel. There are several enemy concentrations along the way.”

  Kuti left us. Walking infantry was useless for our task and we were a smaller division now. While we started moving south, Uri’s force entered Kseime. My reservist friends from Bari’s battalion descended from the Little Sabcha, and climb
ed the Big Sabcha in twenty-five minutes. They had no vehicles and walked along the asphalt road to Kseime. At ten o’clock they reached Kseime, facing the third minefield along their advance route. They entered Kseime to find no resistance. The locality was evacuated and the few remaining soldiers were killed or captured. A Piper Cub coordinated Uri’s people with our armored infantry battalion which entered Kseime from the rear, and after reorganization Uri moved his forces toward our axis of movement. The enemy used last night to retreat from Kseime. Our forces caught up with some of them later, but we didn’t succeed fully in blocking their retreat because of fatigue, misunderstandings, communication problems, and the fact that the service echelons were late in catching up with the armor which was left without fuel. Now we were on the move again. If ever I thought the Negev was a real desert it took the Sinai wilderness to prove me wrong. The Negev was intimate and friendly in comparison. Here it was larger than life and deadlier than death—as far as the eye could see. Monotonous, colorless, hostile. To our east was Kadesh Barnea. I wondered were my father there would he have stopped and driven over to do some digging. We said nothing, but we were conscious of the fact that we were covering backward the route Moses took. “And the people abode in Kadesh; and Miriam died there.” Here “Moses smote the rock and water came out abundantly.” Here they were refused entrance to Edom and had to bypass it and travel down to the Red Sea. Here Karah rebelled and God’s wrath sent the plague down. Arie was leading with the tanks, followed by Sason’s armored battalion and the headquarters, when we reached a plateau and a crossroad. The road from Kseime to Bir-Hasana, east to west, was before us, and to our right was a defended locality called Abirik. Arie reported that the axis he was on—a few miles ahead of us—was a muddy valley and impassable. I thought he must have been exaggerating. All around us the dryness was evident, not a drop of water, and it seemed impossible for tanks to be stuck in a muddy wadi. A few moments later he was under T-34 tank’s fire. The jeeps and two AMX tanks were stuck, and the jeeps fired on the attacking tanks and their crews. On several occasions we had jeep-to-tank battle, and Arie silenced the tanks and pulled out of the wadi. We had to choose a different route to advance south toward Nahel, and while studying the maps the first Katiusha shells hit the area around us. We were fully exposed. A large concentration of forces was in an open field and in range. Again the state of danger was stripped of reality for me. We were on the jeep, the shells raised dust and smoke as they fell, but not for a moment did I have the feeling that anything might really happen. We discovered the Abirik locality to be empty and could see enemy tanks on the slopes. Their fire was soon silenced, and Itzik went to an observation point when one of our self-propelled gun crews was suddenly under fire. This was one of the very few cases when our own forces mistook us for the enemy and fortunately Itzik noticed the mistake in time. We didn’t return fire and emergency net was put in operation to communicate with the firing battalion—of another Israeli division heading west—and stop it. Considering the fact that the enemy is often equipped with identical weapons, the lack of observation aircraft or helicopters attached permanently to each force, and the long ranges, it is amazing and remarkable that mistakes occurred so seldom. Meanwhile, Arie and his reconnaissance advanced toward a burned-out radar post on top of a hill to check on a new axis and Dov suggested we drive there. We drove fast and overtook Arie’s half-track. He stopped and was a bit annoyed with the “people from headquarters” getting in front of him. He ordered us to follow behind his force. Just below the radar Arie opened fire on escaping crews of an armored personnel carrier and destroyed an armored vehicle which was burning when we reached it a few moments later. Glued to the hill above it were about sixty corpses. Little spots of khaki flew up as they tried to run and hide. The flames generated heat as far as the road and we drove up to a ridge where Arie dispersed his tanks and jeeps observing the track below.