by Herman Wouk
“There’s Dayan at his best,” Sharon says to Kishote. “Seeing for himself, sensing the mood of the men, reading the battle on the field. Not like those map room generals.”
The words are innocuous, but Don Kishote hears a new distance in Sharon’s tone.
“Sir, I’ve never forgotten the lesson I learned in the last war, at the Jeradi Pass.” Sharon’s response is a bleak quizzical look. “Just smashing ahead isn’t always the answer, sir, is it? If the enemy has the forces to close up behind you, you can lose all your men in a big disaster.”
“But you didn’t, at the Jeradi Pass.”
“I was lucky.”
“Doesn’t luck count in war? You learned exactly the wrong lesson in the Jeradi Pass.” Sharon’s voice and expression harden. “You reached El Arish the first day. I took Abu Agheila the first night. With their two anchors in the north gone, the Egyptians panicked and collapsed all over Sinai. Right or wrong?”
“That’s what happened, sir.”
“Yes, and we could have won this war by crossing in force two days ago. Attack, and the logistics follow, Yossi, because they must. But Gorodish has lost us a day and a half, and now Dado’s written off the edge of surprise we’ve still got. It’ll be a bloody long slog to victory. Not very sound, your opinion, and not very collegial.” Sharon pauses, regarding his deputy with a stony eye. “I’ll be taking my headquarters over to Africa now. Moshe Dayan is coming with me. You will remain in Sinai, get Tallik’s bridge at all cost to the Canal, and keep this yard functioning no matter what, until a ceasefire comes. Understood?”
“Understood, sir.” Kishote understands perfectly. Sharon is sentencing him to share none of the glory and career value of combat in Africa.
So be it! His own view, which he has kept strictly to himself, is that neither Arik nor Dado was the right decision maker for the crossing into Egypt, but in tandem they have been perfect. The decision called for a warrior burning to charge across the Canal against all odds, and for a calculating superior to rein him in until the right moment. In this great gamble with Israel’s fate Sharon might have gone too soon or too far, as he did in the Suez War back in ’56, at the Mitla Pass. On the other hand Dado, not dragged by Sharon, might not have seized the fleeting moment when it came. God or luck has placed Elazar and Sharon in the right niches in Jewish history to fight this war. God or luck has put Yossi Nitzan on the wrong side of the Canal for glory.
So be it.
Hannibal happens.
The Egyptian armored brigade, coming up from the south to close a vise on Deversoir, rolls blindly into gun range of Natke Nir’s brigade, concealed on its right flank in the high dunes. Nir opens up and blasts it as he closes in, while Bren Adan sends in other forces north and south of the Egyptians. They are caught under heavy fire front, rear, and flank. Their left flank is trapped against Great Bitter Lake, and there is no escape. The entire brigade is annihilated, with all its APCs and supply trains, an enormous smoking mass of ruined war machines spread over many square miles of desert. Only a few tanks escape to tell the tale of Bren Adan’s obscure victory, which protects Arik Sharon’s celebrated crossing.
“To all the devils, where is Adan? Where is Adan?” Messages from Arik Sharon in Africa begin blistering the air at Southern Command headquarters that afternoon. “The pontoon bridge has been up since four o’clock. Why doesn’t he cross?” General Adan at the time is regrouping and reloading his tanks and APCs, almost depleted of fuel and ammunition by the battle. “Where is Adan? The Minister of Defense is standing right beside me and he also wants to know. Why the delay? What to all the devils is he waiting for?”
Only half-replenished, Adan’s division begins crossing after nightfall. By now the Deversoir Yard is a nightmare of red flame, choking smoke, shattering explosions; and rows of dead and wounded lie on the sand, under the ghastly light of starshells drifting in the sky. Natke Nir’s jeep comes rolling into the Yard. “Yossi!” he bellows, holding out his arms. His driver stops the jeep and Kishote trots up to embrace him. Nir roars over the tumult, “Hannibal went a hundred percent, everything but elephants. A great battle. It’s our turn now, and why aren’t you over in Africa with Arik?”
“Too much fun still on this side,” shouts Don Kishote, and with a wave Natke Nir goes bouncing off into the smoke and the flaring crimson gloom.
All night long Don Kishote is too busy to feel deprived of his chance to win glory in Africa. He is well aware that the lifeblood of battle is logistics, a sort of colorless lifeblood noticeable only if it stops flowing, whereupon the gangrene of nonsupply can be quickly fatal. His job now is of the highest urgency, and in its shadowy way exalting; to remain quite unnoticed and inglorious so as to make glory possible for Zahal in Egypt.
By daybreak he feels on top of the job. Traffic is streaming across the rough pontoon bridge, and more traffic that has been stalled in the Sinai is loosening up and arriving. Three full divisions — twenty-five thousand men, more than three hundred tanks, a thousand other vehicles — are over in Africa, regrouping or fighting. The pontoon bridge is bumper to bumper, the ferries are ceaselessly plying back and forth, yet the clamor for resupply is on. Clearly it will be up to the great roller bridge to solve the shortfall. This it can easily do, for compared to the pontoon makeshift it is a broad highway, and after a variety of technical snags reported by Yehiel during the night, it is smoothly on its way, due at noon. Meantime the pipeline is open, the crossing so far is a success, and as the sun rises white, warm, and dazzling over the eastern crags, Don Kishote can draw breath.
He does something he has been putting off for days. In a corner of the Yard religious soldiers have put up a makeshift sukkah of ammunition boxes and packing crates, roofed with scrubby desert vegetation. He takes his morning coffee and roll inside the narrow space to breakfast at a plank over two oil drums. Sukkot is past, today is Rejoicing of the Law, but he makes the sukkah blessing anyway. The frail booth represents the precariousness of the Jews’ existence, and their ultimate dependence on God for survival. On this touch-and-go day of Jewish history, what could be more to the point? So he is thinking, while downing the hot coffee and the army roll with appetite, when his signal officer pokes his head in.
“Sir, Colonel Yehiel calling.”
“L’Azazel.” This cannot be good. Yossi bolts the rest of the roll with a swallow of coffee and hastens to the signal jeep. “Nitzan here.”
“Yehiel here. We’re under attack by eleven tanks that were lying in ambush, here in the dunes.” Yehiel’s battleground voice is terse and cool. “My tanks have cut loose from the bridge and are engaging them.”
“Any damage to the bridge?”
“Negative, not yet.”
“Can I send help?”
“We could use air support, but there’s no time to call it in. I think we’ll be all right, but there’ll be a delay. Over.”
“Understood. Keep in touch. Out.”
“Yehiel out.”
30
The Bridge Arrives
Earsplitting concussions resume all around Deversoir, the inevitable sunrise barrage as October 18 begins. Silencing that heavy artillery is supposed to be a high priority for the forces in Africa, but obviously no luck yet. Huge splashes in the Canal, bricks jumping as a shell bursts at the far end of the Yard, and to all the devils, there go pontoons, flying from a square hit on the bridge. Engineers start to swarm over the partial gap torn near the Egyptian side. Kishote orders all traffic halted, and the Yard is again becoming choked up and smoky when Yehiel once more calls.
“Well, it’s over, Yossi. A hard fight. I’m looking at eight burning Egyptian tanks. The crews of the other three jumped out and ran off into the dunes.”
“How about our tanks?”
“Bad shape. We were surprised, so it was fighting at close range. The bridge is all right, but this unit has sustained too much damage, and too many casualties, to tow it any farther.”
There is no arguing with a seasone
d officer like Yehiel. “Where are you?” Yehiel gives him the grid coordinates. “B’seder, Yehiel. All tanks here have been fighting day and night at the Chinese Farm, you know. They’re beat.”
“If you need the bridge send ten tanks, Yossi. We’ll rehearse them and get going again.”
“You’ll have them inside of an hour.”
“If so I’ll be at the water at four o’clock.”
The pontoon bridge traffic is once more on the move by the time Yossi locates a ten-tank company to despatch to Yehiel. Meantime the jam outside the Yard has gotten much worse, and urgent calls for supplies are increasing. Arik himself comes on the radiophone, sounding exhilarated and friendly but frantic for fuel. The news about the roller bridge sobers him. “Well, these things happen. The battle’s on your shoulders now, Kishote. I’m very glad you’re over there in charge.”
The barrage subsides, but shrapnel has ripped open the float on a ferry raft. It slowly sinks under the light blue waters, and Yossi is watching the rescue of the crew, when he notices that all the pontoon bridge traffic is halted yet again, this time behind one small automobile around which soldiers mill. He strides out on the bridge, and a lieutenant tells him that the rusty black Volkswagen tore up its underside bouncing over the pontoons, and cannot get going. “What to all the devils is a tin can like this doing on the bridge?” Yossi snaps. “It should have gone over on a raft.”
“Sir, the driver was told that. He just ignored us and ran out here, so —”
“Throw it in the Canal.”
“General, General, I’m the driver,” a paunchy gray civilian standing by loudly protests, “I volunteered this car, it’s my car, and —”
“Nobody’s stealing it. After the war, fish it out of the Canal. Or take your ownership papers and sue the State of Israel.” Six men pick up the Volkswagen and give it a heave. It makes a tremendous splash. The traffic resumes running, shaking the bridge, while the car fills and submerges, and the driver, ownership papers in hand, laments that it has four new tires and new upholstery, and the general is a maniac.
At noon Kishote calls Yehiel. The ten tanks have arrived, the colonel confirms cheerily, and are hooking up to the towlines now. “Beat is no word for these fellows, Yossi. Most of them haven’t slept for seventy-two hours. Still, they’re strong kids, good boys, and they’ll be all right.”
But Shimon Shimon calls an hour later, sounding lugubrious. Lauterman is repairing a new break in the bridge. “Sir, those tank men were just too tired. The rehearsal went well, and when I asked on the network, ‘Ready to go?’ they all answered up by the numbers. So I ordered ‘Go,’ but in those few seconds one tank captain had fallen asleep. He didn’t pull, all the others did, and the bridge cracked.”
Yossi’s number-one priority is now that bridge, and he decides to go and see for himself exactly how things stand. He turns over the Yard and the traffic-control network to his deputy, Ezra, an overworked lieutenant colonel from Raanana who is holding up under the strain of recent days and nights by gobbling sugar cubes. Ezra is reliable, and the news from Africa is good except for the rising howl about shortages. The answer to that is the bridge, the bridge.
“Elohim, Yehiel, what happened now?”
“Verkakteh air attack, Yossi, right after Shimon talked to you. That’s what happened.”
Yehiel is lying on a stretcher, his left leg in a splint and a thick bloodstained dressing. The desert around the stalled bridge is pitted with shell holes, and corpsmen are working on several other soldiers down on the sand. A cool afternoon breeze is springing up. The bridge makes a long shallow V on the desert, the break hardly visible. Tanks are pushing and pulling at it, combat engineers are climbing all over it in a great noise of tools and yells, and Lieutenant Colonel Lauterman stands at the break, flipping his yo-yo. Three low-flying Egyptian aircraft attacked the bridge shortly after it broke, Yehiel tells Kishote. The bombs missed, but though he dove for cover under a truck, shrapnel got his leg. A medical helicopter is on its way to evacuate the casualties. Fortunately, nobody has been killed.
“My mistake of course was to take cover,” says Yehiel, with a groan. “With Egyptian marksmanship, the safest place was right on the bridge.”
“Yehiel, three divisions are now operating in Africa. The pontoon bridge and the ferries can’t supply such a force, and besides, they’re very vulnerable. This structure must reach the Canal tonight.”
“I’m out of it. Good luck to you,” groans Yehiel. “I don’t know what else can go wrong, but I tell you that this bridge is alive, it’s vicious, and it doesn’t want to cross the Suez Canal. I need more morphine.”
When the corpsmen are about to load him on the helicopter, Yehiel reaches out a hand to Yossi Nitzan, and pulls him close. “You won’t forget, will you, Kishote,” he gasps, “to make sure Arik talks to the promotion board?”
“I’ll do it, I promise.”
“Yossi, I’m not religious, but I do fear God. I’ll hold a Torah and swear I didn’t rape that woman. In fact it was all her idea. She had disgusting legs.” He catches his breath and groans. “Damn, I hurt. Goodbye, Yossi.”
As the helicopter departs, Lauterman stands by Kishote, watching it go. “A fine officer,” he says. “He’d have gotten us there. I’m not sure I can, sir. But I’ll try, and I’ll be ready to move before nightfall.”
“I’ll take it to the Canal,” says Don Kishote.
Peering at him to make sure he is serious, Lauterman exclaims, “Hundred percent, sir!”
The sun is setting when the repairs are done. The tank crews, forty yawning disheveled green-clad youngsters, are sitting on the sand as Kishote briefs them, hands on hips, squinting into the red sunset glare. “Soldiers, once we start going, we GO. Only one signal will halt this bridge, a word from me. Atzor [Stop]. Understood?”
Murmurs and tired nods from the soldiers. He has in mind to give them a fighting talk about the life-or-death necessity for the bridge in the next crucial hours of the war, but looking at these Zahal tank men, he cuts it down to, “Soldiers, nothing is more important to our victory than getting this bridge to the Canal before midnight. I tell you this as Arik’s second-in-command. Yallah.” They jump up and run to their tanks.
A long uneventful crawl ensues.
Darkness has fallen and the crowded desert stars are shining bright when they reach the Tirtur Road, a straight run to the Canal laid down long ago for this bridge. Hardly has the whole majestic structure rolled onto the road, however, when shellfire engulfs it from “Missouri,” high ground that the Egyptians still cling to, despite repeated attacks, so as to interdict Tirtur traffic. Moving steadily ahead, the ten towing tanks return fire with all guns, and for some minutes the air is filled with red tracer streaks and the booming of the salvos. But it is all noise and flame. Undamaged, the bridge passes beyond gun range of Missouri, and emerges from smoke into starlight. Riding in a lead tank, Kishote sees that the road ahead is cut clear across by a dark hole.
“Atzor!”
He and Lauterman leave their vehicles and peer down into a deep wide freshly dug trench. “The bridge can cross this,” says Lauterman. “No problem.”
“The tanks can’t,” Kishote says. “It’s a standard antitank ditch.”
He orders the tanks to unhook from the bridge, attach bulldozer blades, and set about filling up the hole. In a wild tumult of tumbling earth and snorting engines, they comply. When the hole is almost level ground again, Shimon Shimon appears out of the gloom. “Sir, there’s a call for you from Deversoir.”
“Very well.”
“Sir, how’s Yoram? Not wounded, is he?”
“He’s over in Africa with General Sharon’s signal crew, at his own request. Looking for material for his book, I suppose.”
“No doubt.” The ceramicist wearily laughs.
It is now eleven o’clock, and off to the south the bombardment of Deversoir is lighting up the sky. All is going well, Ezra reports, though casualties are mounting, an
d the demands for fuel, food, and ammunition are overwhelming the signal channels. He is calling to warn Kishote that eyewitnesses have seen the Egyptians laying a minefield in the Tirtur Road.
Cursing under his breath but exhibiting calm good cheer, Kishote orders sappers to clear the mines. He and Lauterman walk behind them, as the bridge ponderously follows with its accustomed clanks, squeals, and rumbles. The night is turning bitter cold, too cold for the slow plod behind the line of sappers, who advance step by step, poking very cautiously into the sand with long slender flexible steel probes. So far, nothing. This can take till morning, thinks Kishote, and further delay menaces the lives of the fighters in Egypt. He has a memory flash of Yehuda Kan-Dror, driving through the Mitla Pass to draw the enemy’s fire. “I tell you what, Lauterman,” he says. “The battle’s been going back and forth across this road for days. I’ll bet there’s no minefield here. I’ll run a jeep to the Canal and see.”
“Sir, that’s committing suicide. The eyewitness report said —”
“I know, I know. Half the time, on the battlefield, such reports are nonsense.”
The sappers stare open-mouthed when he drives past them. “Keep searching,” he shouts. The jeep wheelbase is a fraction of the roller width, so he zigzags as he drives down the Tirtur Road. After five very long hairy minutes of bouncing westward under the stars in a chilly wind, and praying from the heart not to get blown up, he sees the moonlit Canal through a gap in the rampart. So much for eyewitness reports! Catching sight of him returning, the sappers cease their prodding to cheer.
“Lauterman, we roll.”
