"She looks like one of them five PT boats the Israelis wangled from the French," observed Fatso.
"Yeah. That's what she is all right," said Scuttlebutt. "And look at those guys pointing their machine guns at us."
"Yeah," said Fatso. "The dumb clucks can see we've got no Arabs on board. We got our colors flying and we're all in uniform."
Soon the signal light on the PT's bridge began blinking. "What ship?" came the message.
"Answer them 'USS LCU 1124,'" said Fatso to Jughaid.
Next camp a message, "Stop your ship."
"Answer that I am in international waters," said Fatso.
This reply caused a conference on the bridge of the PT boat, which had settled down now about twenty yards abeam. The signal, "Heave to or I will fire," was still flying. After the conference they hauled this signal down and ran up another one. The meaning of this one in the international signal book was "We wish to send officer on board."
"Run up the negative flag," said Fatso. "Now send him a blinker message - 'We will heave to when we reach territorial waters.' "
When they reached the three-mile limit Fatso stopped his engines. The PT boat came up alongside and a boatswain's mate armed with a .45-caliber pistol was standing by to come aboard. Fatso yelled over at the bridge, "He won't come aboard wearing that gun."
There was another conference on the bridge, after which the boatswain's mate took off the gun. When he came aboard and was escorted to the bridge, Fatso said, "What can I do for you?"
"I want to see the Captain," said the Israeli.
"That's me," said Fatso.
"I wish to know your nationality," said the Israeli.
"Well, look at our colors," said Fatso. "Look at our uniforms. We're not Arabs. We're not Russians. Have you ever heard of the Liberty? We're the same nationality they were."
"Thank you, sir," said the Israeli and returned to the PT boat. Soon the PT hoisted a signal "You may proceed," and hauled clear.
"The clumsy ham-fisted swabs," observed Fatso. "You'd think that after the Liberty thing they would be more polite to us."
"Their Navy ain't as good as their Air Force and Army," observed Ginsberg. "It's a very small outfit and they get the leftovers from the other services."
That afternoon Ginsberg went ashore to look up his friend. Tel Aviv was a busy place. It was full of people in uniform bustling about with purposeful looks in their eyes. Everyone seemed in a hurry. Ginsberg finally located his friend in an office at the Army HQ with an orderly, a couple of clerks, and a WAAC receptionist.
"Do you speak English, good-looking?" asked Izzy of the WAAC.
"Yes indeed," said the gal. "What can I do for you?"
"Tell your boss an old friend of his from Brooklyn wants to see him."
Soon Izzy was ushered into a large office where a young captain sat behind a large desk. The Captain was a sharp-looking character about Izzy's age who looked like a linebacker for the Green Bay Packers. As Izzy entered a broad grin spread across his face, he jumped up and advanced to meet him with his hand stuck out.
"Izzy Ginsberg." he exclaimed, giving Izzv a grip that made him wince. "Last time I saw you was that time the cops nailed us for swiping those two bicycles from that shop in Brooklyn. How the hell are you?"
"I'm fine," said Izzy. "I heard you were here, so I thought I'd look you up. Pretty nice layout you got here," he added, glancing around at the spacious, well-furnished office.
"Yeah," said his friend. "It's a little different from the old days in Brooklyn. I'm on the staff of the commanding general here. Been in this army five years now. I see you're in service, too."
"Yeah. I joined the Navy a couple of years ago and I'm on a little craft that came in here this morning. We're going to be here three or four days."
"Fine," said his friend. "I'd like to show you around and let you see what we got here. This is a great country - and it's going places. You might even want to join us after you see it."
"Well - I don't know about that," said Izzy. "I joined the Navy to get out of going to war, and you guys are up to your ass in war right now."
"And we're winning it hand over fist," said his friend. "I'll be glad to take a couple of days off and take you on a tour of the fronts."
"That would be fine," said Izzy. "Could I bring my skipper and maybe one other guy from the ship along?"
"Sure. The more the merrier," said his friend. "We can start off tomorrow morning and in three days I'll give you the grand tour, including Jerusalem, Suez, and the Sinai Peninsula."
"Okay," said Izzy. "We'll be here at eight tomorrow morning."
Next morning Scuttlebutt, Fatso, and Izzy were at the Captain's office at eight. "Captain Cohen," said Izzy, "this is Captain Gioninni and Machinist's Mate First Class Grogan."
"Pleased to meet you," said Cohen. "The name I go by is Benny. What do you gentlemen call yourselves?"
"I'm Fatso and he's Scuttlebutt," said Fatso.
"Now so far the only contact you've had with our people has been with the Navy, hasn't it?" asked Benny.
"That's right," said Fatso.
"Well, don't judge the rest of us from that," said Benny. "The Navy is inexperienced. They haven't had much part in this war, and they're anxious to get into it and show what they can do. They sometimes get pretty ham-fisted - like they did with the Liberty."
"Ummm," Fatso murmured.
"Now I'm going to show you the other side of the coin," said the Captain. "I'll take you on the grand tour and show you anything you want. We'll get to some places where the natives are unfriendly. It will take three days. Okay?"
"Okay," said Fatso. "We've heard a great deal about Israel from our friend Izzy here. We'd like to have a look at it."
So the four of them set out in an Army station wagon for Jerusalem. The country they passed through on the way was a far cry from the usual Near East countryside. There were green, well-kept, and prosperous-looking farms on all sides. The people were clean, alert, and happy looking. Highways were well paved and roadside villages, obviously only a few years old, were of modern construction and the houses were all neatly painted with bright gardens around them. Electric power and telephone lines crisscrossed the country, and every house had a TV antenna on top.
"Hell, this doesn't look much like what I thought it would," observed Fatso. "It looks almost like our country back home."
"It does now," said Benny. "But you should of seen it five or six years ago. Most of it was just about the same as it had been for the past two thousand years.
"Didn't anybody live here then?" asked Fatso.
"Yeah. The Arabs lived here," said Benny.
"What happened to them?"
"We moved 'em out," said Benny.
"Just moved 'em out? Where to?" asked Fatso.
"Across the border to Jordan," said Benny. "Later on I'll show you their camps. They were a shiftless, no-good bunch."
"So you just threw them out. Just like that?"
"Well, after all," said Izzy, "this country is ours by rights. We owned it two thousand years ago and got thrown out. Now we're just taking it back again. What's wrong with that?"
"I don't take no stock in this idea that just because a country belonged to you two thousand years ago you got a right to take it back now," said Fatso. "If you figure things that way some Indian wearing a crummy blanket is apt to come up to my house someday and say, 'Get out - this place belonged to my ancestors a couple of hundred years ago.' "
"I go along with that," said Benny. "This stuff about having title to this place two thousand years ago is just a lot of malarkcv the longhairs put out because they aren't willing to face the facts of life. We're in here because we're a tough, industrious, and adventurous people. We found a desert here and we've converted it into a thriving, prosperous country. It belongs to us now because we developed it from nothing and because we are willing and able to defend it. The six-day war settled that pretty well."
"Now you're talking a lan
guage that I understand," said Fatso. "That's exactly what I say to the Indians who want to throw me out."
"This world is still run by force, whether you like it or not," continued the Captain. "Hell, even your peaceniks back in the States know that. They agitate for peace by defying the cops, heaving rocks, and setting fire to things."
"Of course, you know we've got the UN now to keep the peace," said Fatso.
"The UN! Hah!" snorted the Captain. "The UN don't amount to a fart in a piss pot. They had a peacekeeping force here for some years, but they bugged out the minute Nasser said boo to them."
"Israel is a member of the UN," said Fatso.
"Sure. But I'll be damned if I know why," said the Captain. "All these brand-new cannibal republics in Africa have one vote, the same as we do, and most of them side with the Russians now."
"You don't believe in this one-man-one-vote idea?" asked Fatso.
"Hell, no. That's the damnedest bill of goods the longhairs ever sold to a gullible world. All men are born equal,' they tell you with a straight face. Hell, if you think the Arabs and the Israeli are equal, just compare this country right now with what it was only twenty years ago. The only time all men are equal is when they die. And the churches will all give you an argument about even that proposition."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jerusalem
In Jerusalem, they made the grand tour of the city, visiting the Wailing Wall, the Mosque of Omar, and all the holy places of the Christian religion. In the Jewish sections, the city was a beehive of activity, with alert citizens bustling about with purposeful looks on their faces. One very noticeable feature of the Jerusalem scene was that everyone of military age was in uniform. The only civilians were youngsters and old people.
The Arab section of the city provided a marked contrast. The streets, patrolled by armed soldiers, were full of beggars and urchins. Many of the shops were closed, and even in those that were open sullen-looking Arabs glared at them evilly as they went by.
"Quite a contrast between the old and new sections of the city," observed Fatso.
"Yes. They're about a thousand years apart," said the Captain. "In the buildings, the people, and their outlooks on life."
"What are you going to do with these people?" asked Fatso.
"If they are willing to conform, we can absorb them. Otherwise, they will have to get out."
"Where can they go?"
"That's their problem," said the Captain.
That afternoon they visited a fighter field just outside Jerusalem. The Captain checked in at the CO's office, where his credentials were obviously of the very best, and a young lieutenant was assigned to them as guide. The Lieutenant took them out to the line and introduced them to the pilot of one of the fighter aircraft sitting there on two minutes' notice to take off.
He was a bright-eyed young lad of about twenty, who spoke good English. He rattled off a lot of performance figures on his aircraft, described the armament, and then said, "Of course, these are planes we got from the French. They're good planes. But the Russians are now supplying the Egyptians with MIG's, which can outperform these by quite a bit. We are now negotiating with your country for forty Phantoms of more modern design."
"You guys seem to be doing pretty well with the planes you've got," said Fatso.
"That's because the Arabs are stupid," said the pilot. "Their planes are better than ours, but they don't know how to fly them. And we haven't come up against any of the late MIG's the Russians are supposed to be giving them now."
"What will you do if the Russians start flying them?"
"We'll have to knock them out on the ground," said the pilot. "And the Russians don't really want the Egyptians to win this war, anyway. They just want to keep it going."
From the line they went into the operations room. When they got there the controllers were in a huddle at the big early-warning radar scope.
An unidentified blip had just appeared on the southern edge of the scope, heading for Jerusalem.
After a quick glance at the big board showing the location of all of his own airborne planes, the senior controller said, "Okay, challenge him on IFF." After the third challenge the senior controller said, "Okay - sound the alarm - scramble four fighters." Everyone on watch immediately put out their cigarettes and settled down to business as the siren outside let out a wail, followed shortly by the roar of jet engines starting up.
The controller took station in the middle of the room facing the big vertical plotting board and put on his phones. His board was now showing a plot of a bogey approaching Jerusalem from the south about eighty miles away. It also showed two fighters orbiting over the field at forty thousand feet.
The controller called the fighters and said, "Unidentified bogey approaching from the south at forty thousand feet, eighty miles. Vector 180. Intercept and identify."
Back over the loudspeaker came a "Roger," and the plot of the orbiting aircraft became a line heading south.
A minute later the controller talking to the aircraft then scrambling from the field gave them the same orders. Then he called the pair making the intercept and said, "Bogey shows no IFF. Vector 160."
Back came a matter-of-fact "Roger."
By now the bogey was only sixty miles from Jerusalem. The four scramblers were streaking south and climbing. The two interceptors were closing rapidly. The air of the control room was tense and silent as all hands riveted their gaze on the big board. The wing commander had come in and taken station right behind the controller.
Soon the loudspeaker said, "We've got him on radar." and a moment later, "Tallyho. It's a MIG - am attacking."
On the big radar scope the blips of the bogey and the interceptors had now merged into one. The controller walked over and peered at the scope. Soon word came in from the leader of the scramblers: "Have sighted spiral of black smoke dead ahead about ten miles."
Israeli smoke is just as black as Egyptian - so for a few seconds the tense silence held. Then came a jubilant call from the interceptor, "Have shot down a MIG in flames," and a wild cheer broke out from everyone in the ops room. The voice from the air continued, "It was a late-model MIG - I put a long burst into him - he torched and blew up."
There was another wild cheer with all hands in the control room dancing up and down and slapping each other on the back.
"How the hell can your obsolete French planes knock down a late-model MIG that way?" demanded Fatso of their escort when the cheering subsided.
"Our pilots are better," said the escort simply.
When they left the ops room the Captain said, "I suppose you guys would like to spend the night on the town, but this town closes up at eight P.M."
"Why is that?" demanded Ginsberg.
"Everybody is either in uniform or is working like hell," said the Captain. "We don't have time for any night life around the town. But there's apt to be plenty on the base tonight, celebrating the victory you just saw. I suggest we spend the night here."
They had dinner in the mess hall and went around to the enlisted men's club afterward. The club was jammed and everyone was in a hilarious mood celebrating the kill. Three American sailors in uniform naturally attracted attention, and soon a group of young Israelis who spoke English had gathered at their table.
"Well, how do you like our country?" asked one of Fatso.
"Fine." said Fatso, "what I've seen of it. But it looks like defending it is the major occupation."
"That's right. It is," said the Israeli. "Another showdown with the Arabs is coming up soon. We've got to be ready for it - or we won't have any country left to defend."
"Are you worried about it?" asked Fatso.
"Not a damn bit. We've beaten them twice in the past ten years. They haven't learned a thing. We'll do it again."
"Well, yeah," said Fatso. "Maybe you can take the Arabs all right. But how about the Russians?"
"As long as all they do is supply the Arabs with arms, we'll still beat them. The Arabs are just infer
ior people, and the Russians will find out sooner or later that any arms they give them just go down the drain. Last week you know we captured a whole Russian radar station intact at Suez. This afternoon we shot down one of their latest MIG's."
"Well, yeah. But suppose the Russians take an active part in the war. Then what?" asked Fatso.
"We'll cross that bridge when and if we come to it. The Russians don't want to get into any all-out shooting war down here. They've got the Chinese to worry about, you know. They just want to keep this war going, and they really don't give a damn who wins it."
"They're giving the Arabs Navy ships now, and MIG's with Russian pilots," said Scuttlebutt.
"Sure. And you saw what we did to their MIG this afternoon."
"And you just watch," said Ginsberg. "Pretty soon we are going to be sending some of our Phantom jet fighters to these people. They'll knock every MIG right out of the sky."
"One thing that's quite noticeable around here," said Fatso, "is that nearly everybody of military age is in uniform."
"Yeah. We're one hundred percent mobilized. We have to be."
"Do you have any hippies, peaceniks, or conscientious objectors?" asked Fatso.
"Hell, no," said the Israeli. "I've never heard of one. But lots of people over and under draft age lie about their age to get into the service."
"Boy! That's a hell of a lot different from the way we've got it at home," observed Scuttlebutt. "Every college campus is full of beatniks, hippies, and draft-card burners. They have big parades and rallies in Washington where they haul down the American flag and hoist the Viet Cong."
"Your situation is different from ours," observed the Israeli, "in at least two important ways. First of all, your war is on the other side of the world eight thousand miles away. Ours is right here in our own front yard. That makes a hell of a difference. We're fighting for our lives."
"Well, so are we, when you come right down to it," said Scuttlebutt. "We're not fighting in Vietnam because they're friends of ours and we want to free them. That's just incidental. We're fighting to prevent the Reds from dominating the world. If they get to be top dog, we will become a slave nation like Czechoslovakia. That's the real reason why we're in Vietnam. I'd a damn sight rather fight the Reds in Vietnam than in the United States."
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