The Settlers

by Meyer Levin

  Gidon had thought of writing but had not written the letter to be sent to Aviva should he fail to come back. Never before had he wanted to do such a thing; in the end, even now he had not done it, because if anything should happen, perhaps such a memento of him would make it harder rather than easier for her to turn to a new life.

  From close behind them their mortars rose up. It was a good job, a full-scale inundation to clear any entrenchment on the banks near the ford.

  How many were they here? Two companies. A solid barrage of shells sent in reply to their mortars could spatter the lot of them here. Still, to secure the Jordan crossing—it was a task of which Jews would forever be able to say, “It was our men who did it.”

  With daylight they moved carefully, watching the riverbank. Still they had attracted no fire. It was not entirely a good feeling. Gidon kept imagining some clever-eyed Turkish captain with his glasses on them waiting devilishly until from specks they grew larger, came closer, closer, waiting for the instant when they could be mowed down.

  At last they were ordered to stop moving. They lay down now, each with the nesting movement of squirming his body into the earth, and then settling his elbow for his rifle.

  To their volley of fire, directed into the ragged clumps of reeds on the other side of the river, there came only a few scattered shots, followed by a burst from a single machine gun. Nothing reached them. The Irishman rode up to their front line the way Trumpeldor would have done. Ah, what Josef would have given to be here!

  To Gidon’s squad the honor—“Scout ahead.” He heard Nathan mutter in Yiddish, “A shainem dank.” Thank you handsomely.

  An enemy trench, almost stumbled upon, was empty. It had the stench of abandonment. Climbing out, they got their breath. Gidon glanced around to make sure of Nathan, Herschel, Tuvia. He had always looked first for Herschel, but today it was Nathan. Herschel could take care of himself, from Gallipoli.

  A knot of men were around a Turk, on his belly in the brush. His mustache quivering like that of a terrified mouse, the wretch had been huddled in a shallow hole waiting to surrender; his skin was covered with sores, he stank. With abject imploring motions, the starved relic of a man tried to seize Gidon’s hand and kiss it.

  Gidon gestured across the river. Many?

  No no, not many. The prisoner made a gesture—departed.

  Sending Herschel back with the prisoner, Gidon scouted along further, almost to the designated crossing point. All at once a volley came from the other bank. Perhaps twenty rifles. He lay with his men behind one of the flat-topped cones of salt-rock that rose in this landscape, resembling pictures of the strangeness of the moon. But the mounds gave good cover. All his men were intact. They drew back a way to the shelflike outcropping. Presently the whole company moved in with them. A few Lewis guns were emplaced, raking the opposite bank. No return fire came. Looking down into the glistening swift water, you could see the stones of the ford; it was even shallower than the ford at home—a wagon could cross. On the Turkish side, the bank was broader, leaving no cover as far as the base of the heights. Strangely, no shelling came from up there.

  The Irishman motioned. To Jabotinsky the honor. Weighed down with a Lewis gun, but appearing in this moment of attack determinedly calm, the orator took Tuvia and a few other men. No need to feel slighted—Gidon watched the group carefully working down to the riverside. From across the ford, a heavy machine gun opened fire, but again the mounds gave the squad good cover, and from along the ledge the entire company blazed at the enemy position. The gun was silenced.

  Not long after, you could see the forward men emerging from their cover and making their dashes across the open space as far as the water, waiting there behind a clump of rushes.

  Good. The rest of the company in small clusters moved down, and darted across the open area, from mound to mound, like children playing a game of follow-my-footsteps, reaching the river edge, flopping to the ground, surprised, each in nervous exhaustion at finding himself whole.

  Still on his mount, the Irishman picked his way to them. Hastily they set up strongpoints. Like Moses signaling to Joshua, the Irishman raised his arm as a signal for Jabotinsky. Jabotinsky set his foot into the water. His gun almost unbalanced him, but he moved from stone to stone. He was across. Quickly the men followed, knee-deep in the rushing stream. Gidon passed over.

  Now they held both banks. Men laughed, clustered together, made remarks, had to be dispersed to set up positions. And still no counterattack.

  It began to feel eerie, alone here.

  They explained to each other. Surely the Turk had been lightly strung out and taken by complete surprise. The Turk was assembled far below opposite Jericho. He had not imagined a crossing so far up to the north. Some strategists said he had not imagined a crossing at all to the other side of the Jordan. The Turk and his German generals believed the attack would be directly forward into the Emek, into the Galilee. Still, they were so few to have crossed, the enemy could react and wipe them out like a bunch of fleas.

  At last a movement from their own side. Thunder on the earth —cavalry! Chator’s Mounted!

  Unceasingly the New Zealand troopers clattered across the ford, their commander waiting on the far side with the Irishman, watching the avalanche, shouting jokes at each other, “The London Tailors’ Bridge!” while the mounted men swept on, zigzagging up the cliffs of Ammon onto the plain, circling on the top, howling and waving aloft their weapons, their broad cowboy hats, rearing their steeds, and charging onward.

  Tales of enemy havoc came tumbling back. Materializing behind the main enemy position, Chator’s Mounted had surprised the Turks into a wild rout; they were surrendering by the thousands, their officers among them, Germans too.

  The crossroad town of Salt was taken. The way was open to Damascus.

  And from the Palestine side of the Jordan came snatches of news of equal triumphs. The 38th’s own rearguard, catching up with them now as the second Jewish battalion took over their old positions, told how Allenby’s broad stratagem had succeeded. Von Kressenstein had been completely fooled. All those campfires and dust clouds had led him to believe the main British drive would be forward to the Galilee, and for this he had kept his reserves there. Meanwhile with muffled hooves, at night without dust or the spark of a fire, the British had stealthily moved masses of cavalry toward the coast, and in a sudden wave swept down to the sea, overwhelming the Turks, ten horsemen to one. Never in history had there been such a clean quick defeat! There on the Sharon plain and in the Emek, as here on the Moab plain, entire enemy regiments were surrendering. The British were advancing as fast as they could travel, with no resistance before them. All Eretz was again united.

  Home, home, the way must now be clear, and the urge tugged at Gidon; it was like some halter-rope pulling him the opposite way while he stumbled forward with the battalion in the wake of Chator’s cavalry. Blackened flesh of dead mules, dead soldiers, the litter of spilled ammunition boxes, ration-tins, soldiers’ packs with their innards strewn about, and bands of Bedouin scavenging, children, women, older men, tearing off clothing from the dead. Now and again a famished half-alive Turk came crawling like some half-smashed fly, crawling toward them, making enfeebled motions with his hand to his mouth for water.

  They must march and secure the town of Salt. Their own sick must stumble on with them, for a man dropped behind could not last long among the excited scavenging Bedouin.

  Some of the men began throwing off souvenirs they had just picked up. Soon they were throwing away their emptied canteens. Their mess gear. Their hard rations. The pace slowed. This was worse than the march down to Jericho; this was uphill. A crushing, full-pack, endless climb. Some victory! There had to be a rest halt. Without an order, the entire column fell prone, directly on the path.

  Something approached. A motorcycle. A messenger. Dazedly they heard a command passed along. Countermarch. Change of order. It was not the town of Salt but a place called Zumerin they had to guard
. A prisoners’ camp. Up on your feet, turn about, and march. This was triumphal victory. With his palms, Herschel pounded the ground in exhausted bitterness. Tears were halfway down the crust of his cheeks. Most of the men lay as though never to rise. A sobbing rage was in Gidon’s throat—all this burdened way for nothing, he could have been half the distance home. Not even in the blundering night marches with his mules in Gallipoli, when some idiot had packed the wrong loads and he had had to return, had he felt such bottom bitterness. But he must rise to his feet and urge on his squad. He must pull one man after another to his feet. Even Herscheleh.

  Only one thing was certain, one thing upheld him. This time he was pointed in the right direction, and somehow he would continue and go home. Let them shoot him for it. And even as they moved on, it seemed in a dazed way that Aviva would also be there in Mishkan Yaacov, awaiting him.

  How it was accomplished no one could explain. If it were a march to a rescue, if a battle hung in balance—but only a blunder, a countermarch! In the numbness of exhaustion, with failed, wobbling knees, in tremor, they reached the mud-hut village.

  The Irishman’s adjutant actually complimented them. A military feat. In twelve years of service he had not witnessed such a lengthy march and countermarch, and under highly adverse conditions! They were real soldiers and he was proud to be their officer.

  In the night, fever outbreaks began. Two of Gidon’s men were delirious, and in the morning a third lay retching out the victory.

  A few huts were cleared for the sick. The doctor, himself packed full of quinine, his pupils dilated, appeared and tottered among the stricken. Meanwhile an endless, uncountable line of prisoners stumbled into the compound, herded by mounted Australians brutally healthy, waving their wide-brimmed hats with cowboy whoops.

  The Irishman had galloped back to staff headquarters, and now he brought them word, they were being given a new name. Not yet the Jewish Brigade, no, not quite. But they were no longer the London Fusiliers. They were now named Patterson’s Force. His! They and their sister battalion, the 40th, and when the third battalion, the volunteers from Palestine who had been sent to Egypt for training, became ready, they would all at last become a full brigade. And then, the Irishman trusted, his Jewish fighters would finally receive their promised special insignia, the Star of David.

  The crowning victory of these days, he said, was according to Biblical prophecy. “Ha-ah-tereth!” he pronounced the Hebrew word for “the crown.” Surely they all knew that these Hebrew letters stood for the numerals five, six, seven, and nine. And in the Hebrew calendar this was the year 5697! The Crown of Victory! Ha-ah-tereth!

  “He too is being given a new name.” Herscheleh was still able to jest in his fever. “He is now Chief Cabbalist of His Majesty’s Forces.”

  Now it was guard duty over the prisoners; Gidon walked behind a detail of the stronger ones as they carried out those who lay dead on the ground of their compound to a burial trench.

  Not yet could he make off from this pestilential hole, not while Herscheleh was down. No way to help except to sit by him and talk of home. Only a bit more to endure, and then home; the great new days of the Yishuv would begin.

  Late in the afternoon, as he sat there, Gidon felt his arm gripped in the iron fingers of the enfevered. “Let us go,” Herscheleh whispered hoarsely. He too had been planning it: they would take horses and make off!

  “Not yet, Herschel.” Gidon had to hold back his friend from what he himself so wanted to do. “When your fever is gone, we’ll do it.”

  “I can do it now. I can make it, I know. Going home I can make it.” With one of those excesses of wild energy, he even wobbled upward onto his feet; Gidon caught him in time to break his fall.

  The droves of prisoners kept coming; even with the masses of dead carried out each morning, there was not enough room in the compound for the surrendering horde.

  Herscheleh was able to get up now and nagged Gidon each hour—they must at least put in a request for leave. Had Gidon forgotten their plan?

  Jabotinsky had vanished again on official tasks in Jerusalem. Gidon approached the adjutant.

  “Chaimofsky”—this one had never got his name right—“don’t think I fail to understand your feelings, but how can I give anyone leave at this juncture? Twenty men are down—I haven’t got a single officer left on his feet.” Wearily he motioned to an order on his table. “On top of it all, I’m to send a detachment back with prisoners, so as to make room in the compound. I haven’t got an officer to send.”

  As the major lifted his head, their eyes met and it was done. “All right, Chaimofsky, take half your squad and escort them.” The eyes remained impenetrable. This major, Gidon had never been able to measure. He was correct. He seemed to regard the whole business with the Jews as an odd bit of experience, one of those curious things that happen to a man in a war that he would no doubt afterward tell about amusingly. Was he for or against? Gidon never knew. But a disciplinarian he was. Break a regulation and there was no pity. It was he who had come on a little Tunisian, Gedalia Mograbi, fallen asleep on guard duty one night, and reported him without mercy, though they had been on a forced march all that day. And when a court-martial at regimental level automatically sentenced Gedalia to be shot, the major had not even put in a clemency request. It had taken the Irishman himself, at the last moment, sending a motorcycle rider with a personal plea to his old friend Allenby, to save Gedalia’s life. Strangely, when Gedalia had returned to the ranks, the major had called him in to tell him he was glad he had been saved. “He really seemed glad over it,” Gedalia repeated, puzzled.

  So now, Gidon hardly knew what to make of the opportunity the major had given him. Surely the Englishman guessed what he intended to do.

  “You’re to deliver the damned wretches to the Jerusalem compound,” the major instructed. “I’ll prepare your orders. It should take you three days to get them up there and two days back. No monkeyshines,” he added cheerfully. Again the impenetrable glance. “Well, the state they’re in, make it five days to get there. Dismissed.” Gidon saluted. Perhaps the bastard had a heart after all.

  He would be mounted; at the King’s Highway he would turn off, leaving Herscheleh in charge. Herscheleh was well enough now; he could ride in the supply wagon. In Jerusalem he would wait for Gidon to get back from Mishkan Yaacov, and then take his own turn for a quick visit home. To reach Chedera he had in any case to pass through Jerusalem.

  “If there are any questions while I’m gone,” Gidon said, “just tell them some prisoners escaped and I went after them.”

  Their line of prisoners could hardly move even at a crawl. These ragged remnants of men, who could have the heart to urge them on? And what difference did it make? Let their slow steps drag to a halt every half hour, let them take a whole week, a month to climb up to Jerusalem. As the column reached the old Roman highway, Gidon made off.

  34

  IN THE feverish evacuation Reuven had his own task. With the first news of the complete rout in Palestine, Menahem and Young Avram had begun their preparations. It could only be a matter of days until Damascus fell. The Widow Gelman’s house was to be the assembly point. One of the Tel Aviv Gymnasia group, who had been stationed with the German staff officers as interpreter, brought word that the Germans had already commandeered a hotel in Aleppo and would be evacuating before the end of the week. Damascus would not be defended. This would be the moment for Jews in the Turkish army to remain behind. Civilian clothing must be prepared. As for the prisoners—here was a dangerous situation. It could even be that in a last moment of madness the Turks would take them along, drag them out on the roads. At least the work-parties must escape. On the eve of the capture of Damascus they must not be returned to the prison. Reuven would bring his gardeners to the warehouse and they would have to be hidden in various homes in the Harat al Yahud. The same with Bushinsky’s “engineers.” Indeed, both Reuven and Bushinsky should ask for double the quota on the pretext of needing men
to build fortifications. Even with small sums of gold in these frantic days you could ransom out half a prison. Young Avram had found a kadi who was already preparing for good connections with the coming regime, and understood it would be well to be able to show that he had saved hundreds of prisoners who had been victims of the Ottoman rulers. At the proper moment he might persuade the departing prison commander to leave the gates unlocked.

  Despite orders for gathering them at the edge of the city, ragged, bloodied soldiers were drifting in and wandering dazedly through the streets. Military vehicles crammed with personal belongings were departing northward; inlaid Damascus coffee tables, French chandeliers, were seen balanced atop suitcases and huge wickers of food. A convoy was lining up at Djemal Pasha’s palace. Reuven fled out of sight deep into the garden. Behind a toolshed he had prepared his own cart for evacuation, and now he began to dig out certain saplings from his nursery, date-palms of the most valuable strain that he had brought from along the Euphrates, cedars of Lebanon that he had kept in special soil. His pistachios. Each plant carefully wrapped now in damp burlap.

  Djemal’s convoy was gone. Before dusk, Reuven assembled his band of gardeners and marched them to the warehouse. In pairs, in threes, they were quickly spirited down the lanes of the Jewish quarter. To Elisheva, that night, after she had guided her last group of prisoners to a lodging, Reuven mused, “I am not certain Djemal forgot to have me called for the evacuation. He never forgets the slightest detail. Perhaps it was intentional.”

  “Reuven, I love you for it, but we mustn’t always believe in the good of people. It can be dangerous.” She kissed him softly. Who knew but what this might yet be the last night for all of them in Harat al Yahud?