SINAI, EGYPT
June 5, 1967
At 07:45, with Egyptian pilots on coffee break, their command staff stuck in Cairo traffic, and their Sinai command’s radio frequencies partially jammed, four Israeli Mystère fighter-bombers hugged the ground over southern Israel, engines flaming, jet stream shimmering. They flew so low that Arie flinched, he swiveled his head so fast his helmet slipped over his eyes. As he adjusted it, another rumble from the north and four Israeli Mirages thundered by, skimming the dunes, so low Arie could count their missiles.
This must be it, at last. A tremor went through the men. They had been on red alert since first light, tank engines idling, systems warmed, radio silence. Needing no order, they climbed into their tanks, ready to move. The young gunner at tank eight waved and cheered after the warplanes, but most moved deliberately, lost in thought. If the eighteen-year-old conscripts were exhilarated at the prospect of drawing their first blood, all these family men wanted was to get through the coming slaughter and go home. But first they needed to protect it.
At 08:00 a siren pierced the radio silence, startling everyone, and the code, “Red Flag, Red Flag.” Nothing fully prepares for the shock: War.
Two helicopters clattered overhead as the four tanks of Platoon 2, D company roared from the eucalyptus groves onto the track south. A hundred yards to the left, more tanks appeared through the trees, ripping up the potato fields, while behind them APCs chased them with squads of infantry sitting in rows. Arie, like all the commanders, stood tall in the turret, a warrior at war, and he felt the power of the mighty killing machine course through his body. He held out his hand. No, it wasn’t shaking. Twice that morning he had found himself trembling, from anticipation more than fear, or so he told himself. He was by now a veteran of death. He raised his fingers to his lips and kissed his wedding ring.
The massive war machines kept a rough formation, spread over a mile, five deep. Plunging forward, Arie felt the heat of raw power, the thrill of battle, a thrill also at what this mighty force stood for: victim no more. He had survived the Holocaust, barely able to walk, and grown into a fighter: in the War of Independence, then in the Suez war; now he was again at the tip of the Jewish spear: this would be their war to end all wars. As for Peter … No. Not now, he ordered himself. First of all, stay alive.
The radio crackled with the commander’s call to arms: “God is with us, for Israel.” Arie’s skin prickled, he flagged that he understood, and he ducked into the command cupola. They had entered the sands of Egypt. Death could come at any instant, a bullet, a missile, a mine, a freak accident. With a tight grimace, Arie glanced at the sky: God, don’t forget, I’m on your side.
Tamara heard the same siren, as did every citizen and soldier of Israel. She gathered the children and her parents and ran to the bomb shelter, where nervous neighbors collected around the radio. Would the Arabs bomb Tel Aviv? Ashkelon and Ashdod were farther south, closer to Egypt, would they be hit first? At 9:00 instead of the news the Hebrew announcer read in a flat voice a list of coded mobilization orders: No information here. Later someone tuned to the BBC, and Rachel went white. For weeks the nation had trembled with fear, threatened with another Holocaust, and now there was no escape. The Egyptians were already bombing the towns of Israel, destroying the army, they had shot down 124 Israeli planes and that was just their opening shot. The BBC quoted Arab boasts: Jihad was triumphing, the Jews would be slaughtered. An Arab speaker turned to Radio Cairo and translated in a trembling voice: “We are drowning the Zionist cowards in our hellfire. Now, Jews, you will see how your cowards die.”
Tamara pulled Carmel into her bosom as if she would be safe there, and glared at Rachel, who had begun to sob. “Calm down,” Moshe said. “Everyone calm down,” he said again. “What else would the Arabs say? I don’t believe a word of it. Let’s wait and see, there is a long way to go.”
But it wasn’t long. Within an hour the BBC had changed its tune. It was the other way around. The Israelis were smashing the Egyptian forces, destroying their air force on the ground. No official word from Israel, but the BBC reported that in the first hour Israel had destroyed the Egyptian air force and had won complete control of the skies. The announcers struggled to believe it: almost before it started the Jews had all but won the war.
But on the ground, there was still a long way to go. Arie’s platoon fell in with the mad dash south, led by General Israel Tal’s northern armored brigade. Over rough tracks that linked villages, through crushed vegetable patches, past terrified donkeys and cattle. Arie’s four M-50 Shermans made quick progress in the wake of the havoc wreaked by Tal’s tanks. His machine gunner fired blindly into copses and thickets, a cloud of dust announced their progress from afar. A tank shell obliterated a barricade of bricks and wood that had blocked the road, but still no sign of the enemy.
Only in the fields approaching Khan Younis to the west did they catch up with the war. They saw men running through destroyed houses, followed immediately by the pings of bullets bouncing off their armor. They rode on, speed of the essence, along tracks cleared of land mines. His brigade was to rendezvous in El Arish, thirty miles south, then swing east with General Tal’s Steel Division to link up with General Ariel Sharon and destroy the Egyptians at Abu Ageila. This would open the gateway to the Suez Canal, and certain defeat for Egypt. If it worked.
Around a bend the road narrowed between clusters of houses on either side. Perfect ambush spot. Arie’s stomach clenched. This isn’t right. Was he on the wrong road? He glanced down at his map, but it was too late for that. His company had fanned out, three tanks were right behind him. Nothing left but to barrel through. Swinging the machine gun, he laid down protective fire at the right side and then the left. They were abreast of the houses now, his body braced for the shock of a shell, but they were through; he felt his bowels tighten. They passed burning wrecks, Arab prisoners, an old man pulling a reluctant donkey by a rope. Medics worked on wounded Israeli soldiers lying in rows by the track, while behind them, pillars of smoke rose over the dunes. Arie slowed, knowing battle was close, his skin crawling with tension. He was almost relieved when the order came: “Advance southeast, enemy at six hundred meters, engage and destroy.”
“Follow me, boys,” Arie called on his radio, and Levi the driver sped forward. The hull of a Soviet T-34 appeared backward from behind a dune, reversing from some threat, only to position itself right in Arie’s line of fire, an opening gift from the God of war. “Straight ahead gunner!” Arie shouted. The cannon roared and the Egyptian tank shook in a ball of flame and black smoke. Soldiers leapt out, one on fire. Levi edged past, and within a minute the Sherman was looming over a trench with dozens of Egyptian soldiers. With his cannon pointing straight at them, they threw down their weapons and fled for their lives.
Israeli and Egyptian tanks clashed in a ferocious battle over two square miles. The Israelis pressed forward, machine-gunning soldiers in ditches, crushing barbed wire a dozen meters thick, outgunning the Egyptian tanks with speed and accuracy. They were vastly outnumbered by the Egyptian brigade but with Israeli fighter planes swooping through the uncontested skies, strafing and bombing, the Egyptian force was obliterated.
There was a ten-minute respite in their seats for Arie’s men, surrounded by burning tanks and wounded or abandoned Egyptian soldiers wandering the desert. Arie was soaked in sweat; he gulped water from his flask. Then his orders were changed. Instead of continuing south to the rendezvous at El Arish, his platoon was ordered west into Rafah, a crowded, sprawling town at the southern end of the Gaza Strip. Something’s changed, Arie thought, high command told us we’d keep out of Gaza. We’re doing too well, it must have gone to their heads.
Out of the desert it looked like a different planet. They passed lush vegetable fields, stands of trees, fences of twigs and branches with sand on one side and dark earth on the other. Didn’t I pass here in ’56, Arie wondered. Are we fighting for the same land? I almost died then, and now I’ll be lucky to get through this again. He thought of his son and daughter, safe with Tamara. In three years they’d be in the army. Would Daniel be in a tank in the same shit desert? No way, the boy would be a cook, he’d make sure of that. Carmel will be in intelligence, safe in army HQ in Tel Aviv. This is madness.
The radio crackled with shouting and explosions from the field and panicked appeals for help, answered by the calm, stern voice of the colonel. Paratroopers were in trouble in Rafah, they needed support. Arie’s tanks were ordered to avoid the refugee camps, stay on the main road, evade the enemy, head due west, and find the trapped soldiers around the blue mosque on the crossroads of the main Gaza north-south road. Quick.
Arie guided his force of four tanks from high inside the command cupola, forcing his way deeper into the packed Arab town. Progress was too slow. Between the low houses he saw an Israeli armored personnel carrier racing the same way, but he couldn’t get his tank onto the fast road. The roads he was on narrowed and curved, crossed each other and went off at tangents, they were entering a warren, due west toward the sea was what looked like a school, a clinic, crowded homes. Arie tried to go around, he swung to the left but was blocked by a row of buildings.
Now there was the staccato of shooting, paint chips flew from his tank, bullets pinged off the armor, and then: and then a red flash from ahead and the tank behind him rocked on its tracks, a direct hit from a missile. To escape the line of sight, Arie roared up an alley, crushing homes of wood and tin. Each time they swung the cannon’s barrel it knocked the corner of a building. There were more Egyptians ahead. “Shoot!” Arie shouted, and the cannon fired a shell blindly, to clear the way. “Left!” Arie yelled, swinging the machine gun at the rooftops from where Arab fighters were pouring fire into his tank. He was alone, separated from his column, he was sweating, his heart pounding, struggling not to panic. “Back up,” he shouted to the driver, and then repeated it, quieter, trying to project calm. The tank stopped with a jolt and went into fast reverse, tracks digging into the dirt. “Hula 1,” he said into the radio, identifying himself. “We’re trapped, separated, trying to find the main road.”
The radio responded, “Hula 1, your position?”
“I don’t fucking know,” he shouted, regretting it immediately. “I don’t know,” he tried again as calmly as he could. He flew to the side, banging his shoulder as the driver tried to make a sharp turn. He saw an Arab rush from the side and throw a hand grenade, and ducked. The grenade bounced off the turret. More Arabs appeared between shacks with guns, there was a flash and a boom as another grenade exploded by the cupola, muted by his headphones, on the roofs he saw a dozen men firing at him. Levi couldn’t make the turn, but down an alley he saw open land. He made a dash for it, engine roaring. The tank hit rubble and veered on one track like a sailboat racing into the wind, finding purchase on piles of concrete and bricks.
And then, Arie’s heart all but stopped. An Egyptian T-54 blocked the alley, its turret swung round, its barrel found them from fifty yards. “Fire,” Arie yelled, “now!” His gunner had seen the target and swung the turret but the barrel smashed into a wall. The driver reversed to free the cannon, just as the Egyptian fired. Not again, Arie’s brain screamed. There was a blinding flash of light inside the hull, the tank rocked on its axle, a direct hit, Arie’s head smashed into the metal cupola base, he smelled the stink of burning oil. “Out boys, out!” Arie yelled, jerking the cupola open. He leapt to the ground, rolled away and jammed against the wall of a house. Chaim the gunner joined him; they fired their Uzis from their hips as they ran.
Behind them the explosion shot a blast of heat and smoke up the alley, shrapnel hit Chaim in the head and back and Arie, who had just turned to see who else made it, was hit in the shoulder and face. Bullets whizzed by, ricocheted off the walls, dug into the earth at their feet. Wiping blood from their faces they ran low and fast, but to where? The alley was narrow and straight, Arabs at both ends and on the roofs.