Away Boarders

by Daniel V Gallery

  "Yeah," said the Israeli, "but your hippies don't look at it that way. They were born after the war and got too much too easy. There's a whole generation of them that have had everything handed to them on a silver platter. They think the world owes them a living and the only place they're willing to fight for it is in the streets. They're in favor of peace except when the cops show up. Then they yell, 'Kill the pigs.' "

  "What I don't understand," said another Israeli, "is why the older people stand for it. Hell, there's ten times as many of them as there are hippies."

  "The trouble is that the hippies get all the publicity," said Fatso. "The press and radio feature everything they do. Matter of fact they promote a lot of it. They set up their cameras in front of a government building and then egg the hippies on to tear down the flag."

  "Sure, your press helps to promote a lot of it," said the Israeli. "But the real trouble is a lot deeper than that. There's another big difference between your country and ours."

  "What's that?" asked Fatso.

  "Our country is a new one. We're in the pioneer stage, where your country was two hundred years ago. Our people are willing to work, and fight if necessary. Yours is an old country - and it's getting soft."

  "Whaddya mean an old one?" demanded Izzy. "We're less than two hundred years old."

  "Sure. But you're really the oldest government in the world today, except maybe for some primitive tribes that haven't heard about democracy yet. Till the end of World War II, you were a hard-working, industrious people who had to work for what you got. But your country just doesn't have the pioneer spirit any more. I think Khrushchev was right when he said lie would bury you."

  "Now wait a minute." said Fatso. "We're still the greatest country in the world by a wide margin."

  "Sure. But not by anywhere near as wide a margin as you were only twenty-five years ago. At the end of World War II you were by far the most powerful country on earth - militarily, industrially, politically - any way you want to look at it. Since then you've fought two wars with third-rate Asiatic powers. The first one was a stalemate. You're losing the second. And vou're losing it for the same reason that France lost their Indo-China war. The people back home just don't have the guts to win it."

  "You can say that again," said Fatso. "We're losing the war on the home front."

  "But after all you people did pretty good with your country." said the Israeli. "You brought it from a third-rate colony to the greatest country in the world in a hundred and fifty years. It has started coming apart at the seams now, but you've still got thirty or forty years to go before you become second-raters like France and England."

  "I wouldn't bet on that," said Fatso. Then changing the subject he said, "Your boy sure did a nice job on that MIG this afternoon."

  "Yeah. That's the fifth MIG that pilot has shot down. That makes him an ace, and he'll get a big medal for it," said an Israeli.

  "No. That's only number four for him. He's still got one more to go," said another lad.

  "It's five by my count," said the first.

  "He's got four confirmed kills, counting the one today, and one only probable. He's got to get one more sure kill for his medal," said the second.

  "Did you ever hear about the Australian fighter pilot who was getting decorated during the Battle of Britain by His Majesty the King?" said Fatso.

  No one had.

  "Well, it seems," said Fatso, "that this young Australian fighter pilot went out one day during the Battle of Britain and he shot down five Nazi aircraft over the Channel. Five in one day. So, of course, the next time they had an honors ceremony down in London, they had this young man out to Buckingham Palace, so His Majesty could give him a medal.

  "Now you may remember, King George the Sixth used to stutter a little bit. But he had been working on this handicap and had almost overcome it. At the honors ceremony this morning, he got through all the citations except the last one without a single stutter. The last one was the one for this Australian, and when he read that one he said, 'This medal is for shooting down f-f-f-four Nazi airplanes.'

  "Well, of course, it wasn't four, it was five. And you know how these Australians are - they have no respect for anything or anybody, and if they think they're getting a bum deal they'll speak up and say so, no matter when nor where. And this young lad was not about to be short-changed on his citation. So he spoke up right there in the palace. And unfortunately he stuttered a little bit too.

  "He said, 'Your M-majesty, there's been a m-m-mistake. It wasn't f-f-f-our Nazi airplanes. It was f-f-f-five.'

  "Well, of course, everybody was flabbergasted at this gawd-awful breach of palace etiquette. But His Majesty kept his cool, and he looked back at the citation and said, 'Well - it s-says here f-f-f-four.'

  "The Australian still wasn't buying it. He said, 'Your M-majesty, I was there. I sh-sh-shot them down and I c-c-counted them. It wasn't f-f-f-four Nazi airplanes. It was f-f-f-five!'

  "Well, then the King began to get a bit goaty with this whippersnapper who was lousing up a formal palace ceremony. But he kept his temper as best he could. And finally he said, 'Young man. What d-difference does it make? Even if you shot down t-t-ten Nazi airplanes - you're only going to get one f-f-f-fucking medal.' "

  On that note the party broke up.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Suez

  Next morning they set forth in the station wagon for the Dead Sea. Before starting the Captain said, "We're going to be in former Arab territory today. This is territory we captured in the six-day war, and some of the natives are hostile. I've got a .45-caliber pistol for each of you, and we've got four Thompson submachine guns in the car. I don't think we're going to need them - but we've got them just in case."

  The country through which they drove was quite different from that between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The roads were dirt - and dusty - and they passed many more oxcarts than they did automobiles. The countryside was bare and barren except for small groves of olive trees and a few little cultivated fields. The most modern piece of farm machinery they saw was a hand scythe. The houses and villages were primitive; there were no electric power lines and no TV antennas. Most of the people were dirty, listless-looking Arabs who glowered at them.

  "This is what all Israel looked like twenty-five years ago," observed the Captain. "Put our people in here and in ten years we'll make a modern, prosperous country out of it just like it is around Tel Aviv."

  "Couldn't these people do it, too - if you helped them a little bit?" asked Fatso.

  "No," said the Captain. "You've just got to realize that these are inferior people. There are such people in the world, you know, despite what all the long-haired liberals say about all races and peoples being equal."

  At the end of the Dead Sea, they stood on the west bank of the Wadi d'Araba and gazed across the dry river bed at a huge array of tents and shacks.

  "That's Jordan over there. And those are Arab refugees," said the Captain.

  "Where did they come from?" asked Ginsberg.

  "These people probably came from around Tel Aviv."

  "What did you do? Just kick them out?" asked Fatso.

  "More or less," said the Captain. "You probably think we gave them a rough deal. But it was just the price of progress. If we had left them where they were, that area around Tel Aviv that we drove through yesterday would still be the same as this area we're driving through today. These people would be eking out a miserable existence there and the country would be worthless. We moved them out, and by the sweat of our brows we've made something out of the country. And these people really aren't any worse off here today than they would be if they were still living around Tel Aviv."

  "What's that stuff growing in those fields out around the edge of town?" asked Scuttlebutt.

  "Mostly opium," said the Captain. "The Arabs grow a hell of a lot of opium."

  "What the hell do they do with it?" asked Scuttlebutt.

  "Most of it winds up in the United States," said
the Captain. "They smuggle it out in bales to the big dope rings in Marseilles and Naples. They take the raw stuff and refine it to morphine and heroin and smuggle it into your country. The Arabs get about a hundred bucks a bale for it. By the time a bale has been processed into morphine and heroin and sold in the U.S. it will probably bring a couple of million bucks."

  "Those sons of bitches that are peddling dope are a bigger threat to the future of the country than the hippies or the Black Panthers," observed Fatso. "They're even selling it to high-school kids now. On nearly any high-school campus you can get any kind of dope you want, including even heroin. I think the people who supply that stuff to kids are the lowest scum of the earth. It ought to be a capital offense."

  "Well, there's big money in it," said the Captain. "Real big money. And a hell of a lot of it comes from these Arab countries."

  From there they cut across Israel to the Gaza Strip. The country was dotted with small farms and kibbutzim. Tractors and power-driven farm machines were visible everywhere, roads were good, and irrigation ditches crisscrossed the country.

  "All this place was practically a desert just a few years back," said the Captain, as they passed a pasture with a fine big herd of beef cattle. "Give us another ten years and this will all be rich farmland. We've got plans for some big irrigation projects as soon as the war is over."

  From the Gaza Strip they drove along the Mediterranean coast through desolate desert country. It was deserted except for occasional refugee camps, but the road was a busy one, with military convoys going both ways.

  "Our first line of defense is now the east bank of the Suez Canal," explained the Captain. "We shoved them back about a hundred miles from where they were before the six-day war, and we've also shoved the Jordanians and the Syrians back and, as you saw, we've got all of Jerusalem now."

  "You gonna keep all the territory you captured?" asked Fatso.

  "You're damn right we are," said the Captain. "We've got to. Just remember there are less than three million of us against forty million Arabs."

  "But suppose the big powers and the UN were willing to guarantee your old borders?" asked Fatso.

  The Captain spit and said, "Hah! the UN can't even guarantee to stop a tribal war in Africa. The policy of the big powers changes with each new election. No sir. We've got to go it alone and stand on our own feet. We're perfectly willing and able to do it, too."

  They drove down the east bank of the Suez Canal. It was a deserted waterway. The only ships they saw were sunk, with their upper works sticking up out of the water.

  "Nothing goes through this canal except small craft now," said the Captain. "The channel is blocked by wrecks and it's filling up with sand. This gives you a good example of what kind of worthless people the Arabs are. It used to be that a hell of a lot of oil went through this canal. Now they're building pipelines to get it out of Arabia - and tankers that carry half a million tons and take it around the Cape. Even if they opened up the canal now, there wouldn't be much use for it, any more."

  As they were proceeding along the shore of the canal a plane trailing black smoke behind it came out of the west, losing altitude rapidly.

  "Hey. That guy's in trouble." said Fatso.

  "Yeah. And he's one of ours," said the Captain. "A Mirage."

  They stopped the car and watched as the plane neared the bank of the canal, coming down and smoking heavily. As it crossed the canal, by this time only one hundred feet in the air, an object shot up in the air out of the cockpit and, an instant later, a parachute opened with a man swinging below it.

  The plane flew on about a quarter of a mile and then dove into the ground and exploded. The chute came down about one hundred yards from the car and the four occupants got out and started running to the spot.

  As soon as the flyer saw them, he flopped to the ground, whipped out a pistol, and sent a shot whistling over their heads, causing them all to flop into the sand too.

  "Hey - we're friends," yelled the Captain.

  After a moment the flyer yelled back, "One of you come forward with his hands up."

  The Captain got up and advanced slowly, his hands in the air. The flyer made him halt about twenty feet away, looked him over carefully, and they exchanged a few words. Then the flyer put up his gun, they embraced each other, and the Captain waved the others forward.

  'These are American friends of mine," he said, introducing Fatso, Scuttlebutt, and Izzy. "Are you okay?"

  "Yeah - I'm all right," said the flyer. "But I just barely made it back to this side. For a while I was afraid I was going to come down in Egypt."

  "What happened?" asked Ginsberg.

  "One of those goddamn SAM's the Russians are giving them got me near Cairo. I saw the son of a bitch coming about ten seconds before it hit. But I couldn't dodge it." -

  "You're lucky you made it back to this side," said the Captain.

  "You're telling me!" said the pilot.

  The four of them helped the pilot to gather up his chute and load it into the car.

  "You want to go look at the wreck?" asked the Captain.

  "No indeed," said the pilot. "There isn't much to look at anyway. She torched as soon as she hit."

  They got in the car and proceeded.

  After a few moments the pilot said, "I didn't think the U.S. Navy was on speaking terms with the Israelis."

  "What do you mean? On account of the Liberty?" asked Fatso.

  "Yeah," said the pilot.

  "You better not get me talking about the Liberty" said Fatso, "or we may not be friends any longer."

  "You can't hurt my feelings by anything you say about the Liberty" said the Captain. "The Army had nothing to do with that snafu."

  "Yeah," said the pilot. "It was a Navy show all the way."

  "The hell you say," said Fatso. "There were a couple of Air Force planes that strafed her and shot the hell out of her."

  "Yeah, I know," said the pilot. "I was there. But I didn't take any part in the shooting. My job was just to get pictures."

  "Well, how the hell do you explain what happened?" asked Fatso.

  "We got booby-trapped into it by the Navy," said the pilot. "The Navy had torpedo boats right there. They actually put a torpedo into the Liberty. You couldn't blame our pilots for opening up on her after that."

  "Well, maybe not," conceded Fatso. "But how the hell do you explain your Navy going off half-cocked the way they did? They just opened up on her without even a challenge."

  "Yeah, that was pretty stupid," said the flyer. "But they had no notice that you had a ship out there. They found this strange ship close to our own shores. She wasn't one of ours. She wasn't a merchant ship. You can't blame them for thinking she was working for the other side."

  "Balls," said Fatso. "She was fifteen miles offshore, outside territorial waters. Your torpedo boats had her surrounded and they could make forty knots so she couldn't possibly get away from them. It was just plain murder for them to open up on her the way they did."

  "It was pretty bad," said the Captain. "The real trouble was that the Navy was just too damn anxious to get a piece of the action in the war. The Air Force and the Army had been covering themselves with glory and the Navy felt left out of things. When they thought they saw a chance to make some headlines for themselves they went off half-cocked."

  "That's what I've been saying ever since it happened," said Fatso.

  "Well - we apologized and paid an indemnity," said the Captain.

  "If you hang around the outskirts of a barroom brawl, you're apt to get hurt," said the flyer.

  "Humph." observed Fatso.

  Soon they came to a sentry post, where they stopped, and the pilot checked in with HQ by phone and asked them to notify his home station that he had been shot down but was O.K.

  They spent the night at Bohr Selim, at the north end of the Gulf of Suez, about thirty miles from the city of Suez. There was a large Army camp there, obviously a front-line outpost. The first ring of sentries was ten m
iles from the main camp; there were strongpoints and roadblocks every few miles along the road where they were stopped and inspected by nervously alert guards.

  "We have commando raids by both sides here nearly every night," said the Captain. "We retaliate against each other, but we've lost track of who started it and which side is retaliating now."

  "How do you get across to the other side?" asked Scuttlebutt.

  "We've got a detachment of Navy PT boats here," said the Captain. "You remember those five boats we got from the French about a year ago? The ones that were supposed to be going to Sweden? Well, we hauled them overland to the Gulf of Aqaba and brought them up here."

  After dinner that night Fatso, Scuttlebutt, and the Captain were in the operations center. The duty officer was explaining to them: "Things are quiet so far tonight. There was an Egyptian commando raid up toward the Port Said sector, which was driven back and we got ten prisoners. But nothing down this way yet. But, if you stick around about an hour, we may have some pretty good action for you up in Suez by the Navy."

  "What have you got cooking?" asked the Captain.

  "We've got four PT boats on the way to Suez now," said the duty officer. "They're going to make a raid into the harbor there and shoot up the waterfront. They're about halfway there now," he added, pointing to a plot on the big vertical board. "We won't hear from them until they start shooting."

  "Where did you learn to speak English so good?" asked Scuttlebutt.

  "In Brooklyn," said the duty officer. "I was born and raised there."

  "Huh," said Scuttlebutt. "We got a guy from Brooklyn along with us . . . Where the hell is Izzy? ... I haven't seen him since chow."

  "You mean Izzy Ginsberg?" said the DO. "Izzy and I went to school together back in Brooklyn. He was in here just before supper and wc had quite a time cutting up old touches. He's gone out on one of the PT boats on the Suez raid."