Leon Uris (89 page)

Inside, the big switchboard rang constantly. Ari was led through the operations room where huge blown-up maps pinpointed the battle lines and the message center where a battery of radios communicated with the front lines and the settlements. As Ari looked around him he reflected that it was a far cry from the mobile one-desk headquarters of the Haganah.

Avidan, the former head of the Haganah, had given up official command to the young leaders in their mid-twenties and early thirties who had had experience as British officers or were seasoned, as Ari was, in long years of Arab fighting. Avidan now acted in the capacity of liaison between the Army and the provisional government, and although he held no official post he was still a power in general policy as “commander emeritus.”

He greeted Ari warmly. It was difficult for Ari to tell if Avidan was tired or had just awakened, or if he was morose or happy, for Avidan always wore the same solemn expression. As they went into his office he ordered all telephone calls or other interruptions withheld.

“This is quite a fancy store you have here,” Ari said.

“Not much like the old days,” Avidan agreed. “It is hard for me to get over it myself. I drive up here many mornings thoroughly expecting the British to sweep down and throw us all into Acre jail.”

“None of us expected you to retire yourself.”

“This army and running a big war is a young man’s job. Let me argue policy in my old age.”

“How goes the war?” Ari asked.

“Jerusalem ... Latrun. There is our problem. We won’t be able to hold out too much longer inside the Old City. God knows how long the New City can stand it if we don’t get through to them soon. Anyhow ... you’ve certainly done a job for us in your district.”

“We’ve been lucky.”

“Safed wasn’t luck and neither are those magnificent children at Gan Dafna luck. Don’t be modest, Ari. We’ve got children under siege at Ben Shemen too ... the Iraqis won’t dare take a try at them. Ari, Kawukji is still in the central Galilee ... we want to get rid of the bastard. That’s why I asked you to come down here. I want to extend your command and I want you to take charge of the operation. In a matter of a few weeks we should be able to get a battalion of men up there to you, along with some new stuff.”

“How do you figure it?”

“If we take Nazareth I think we’ve got it all. We’ll have the whole Galilee then, all the roads from east to west.”

“What about the Arab villages in the area?”

“Mostly Christian, as you know. They’ve already sent delegations down here to see us. They’ve asked Kawukji to leave. At any rate, they’re not interested in fighting.”

“Good.”

“Before we proceed with the planning of this operation we want you to secure your area completely, Ari.”

“Fort Esther?” Ari asked.

Avidan nodded.

“I need artillery to take Fort Esther—I wrote you that. At least three or four Davidkas.”

“Why don’t you ask for gold?”

“Look, there are two border villages guarding the approaches to Fort Esther. I just can’t get at the place without some long-range pieces.”

“All right, I’ll send them up to you.” Avidan stood up abruptly and began pacing the room. Behind him was a large map of the fighting zones. Ari had felt strangely all along about Avidan calling him to Tel Aviv. He had felt there was more to it than the planning of a new operation and he knew that Avidan was leading up to it now.

“Ari,” the bald-headed block of a man said slowly, “you were ordered to capture Abu Yesha two weeks ago.”

“So that’s why you called me down here.”

“I thought it would be best if you and I talked it over before it gets kicked around like a football in general staff.”

“I sent you a report that I didn’t feel Abu Yesha was a threat to us.”

“We think differently.”

“As area commander, I believe I’m in the best position to judge.”

“Come off it. Abu Yesha is a base for Mohammed Kassi. It’s an entry point for the irregulars and it blocks the road to Gan Dafna.”

Ari stiffened and looked away.

“You and I have known each other too long for equivocation.”

Ari was silent for a moment. “I’ve known the people in Abu Yesha since I was old enough to walk and talk,” he said. “We’ve celebrated weddings together. We’ve gone to funerals together. We built their houses and they gave us land to make Gan Dafna.”

“I know all that, Ari. Dozens of our settlements are faced with the same thing. We happen to be fighting for our lives. We didn’t invite the Arab armies to invade us.”

“But I know those people,” Ari cried; “they aren’t enemies. They’re just plain decent farmers who want nothing more in life than to be left alone.”

“Ari!” Avidan said sharply. “We have Arab villages who have shown the courage to resist Kawukji and the Arab armies. The people in Abu Yesha made their own decision. It is wishful thinking for you to say it is not hostile. It has to go ...”

“Go to hell,” Ari said and got up to leave.

“Don’t go,” Avidan said quietly. “Please don’t go.” The big farmer now actually did appear tired. His shoulders sagged. “We’ve begged the Palestine Arabs a thousand times to stay out of this fight. No one wants to drive them from their homes. Those villages that have shown loyalty have been left alone. But the others have left us no choice. They are used as arsenals and training camps and as bases to attack our convoys and starve our settlements. A hundred thousand civilians are starving in Jerusalem now because of them. We talked about this thing for weeks. We have no choice but to kill or be killed.”

Ari walked to the window and lit a cigarette. He stared moodily out of the window. Avidan was right and he knew it. The Jewish settlements had not been given the same choice the Arab had been given. With the Jews it was stand and die ... fight to the last bullet and be massacred.

“I could easily put another man up in your command to take Abu Yesha. I don’t want to do it that way. If you feel morally incapable of doing this then I give you the choice of asking for a transfer from your area.”

“To what? Another Abu Yesha by another name?”

“Before you give an answer ... I have known you since you were a baby. You have been a fighter since you were fifteen years old. We haven’t enough men of your caliber. In all those years I’ve never known you to disobey an order.”

Ari turned from the window. His face was lined with worry, sadness, and resignation. He sagged into the chair. “I will do what has to be done,” he whispered.

“Get together with operations,” Avidan said softly.

Ari shook his head and walked to the door.

“By the way, you are Colonel Ben Canaan, now.”

Ari gave a short sarcastic laugh.

“I am sorry, believe me, I’m sorry,” Avidan said.

Colonel Ari Ben Canaan, his executive officer and his adjutant, Majors Ben Ami and Joab Yarkoni, mapped out Operation Purim for the capture of Fort Esther and the removal of Abu Yesha as an Arab base. It would be the final securing of the Huleh Valley.

The artillery that Avidan had promised never arrived, but Ari really didn’t expect it. He brought the faithful Little David mortar from Safed and rounded up fifty rounds of ammunition.

Frontal attack from Gan Dafna on Fort Esther was ruled out without the artillery. Kassi still had some four hundred men in the area and superior arms at Fort Esther plus better strategic position. Ari also knew that Kassi’s men would give a better account of themselves fighting a defensive battle inside the concrete barricade.

Ari had three Arab villages to worry about. Abu Yesha was the first on the road to Fort Esther. High up in the mountains on the Lebanese border a pair of villages flanked the entrances to Fort Esther. Kassi had men stationed in both of these. Ari planned his battle to get around to the rear of Fort Esther. In order to do it he had to get past the two flanking villages.

The move on Fort Esther was planned to involve three columns. Ari took the first unit out. At darkness, they went up the mountainside by goat trails to the Lebanese border with the Davidka and its ammunition. His objective was to get near the first of the mountain villages. The going would be hard and tricky. He had to swing wide and travel many extra miles to be able to get at their rear without detection. He had the mountain, the darkness, and the weight of the mortar and ammunition to contend with. Thirty-five men and fifteen girls carried one round of ammunition each. Another fifty men acted as cover.

Ari’s leg still gave him trouble but he pushed his column up the mountain in a brutally paced forced march. They had to make their objective by daylight or the whole operation would fail.

They reached the top of the mountain at four o’clock in the morning, exhausted. But there could be no rest now. They continued at a murderous pace along the mountaintop toward the first village. They swung wide of it and made a rendezvous with a patrol from a friendly Bedouin tribe which was acting as a watch on the village. The Bedouins advised Ari the area was clear.

Ari raced his outfit into the ruins of a small Crusader castle two miles past the village. As dawn began to break they scrambled for cover and collapsed into a heap of weariness. All day they stayed hidden, with the Bedouins standing guard.

The next night the two other columns moved out from Ein Or headquarters. Major David Ben Ami led his men up the face of the mountain on the now familiar route into Gan Dafna. He reached the village by daylight and went into hiding in the woods.

The final column led by Major Joab Yarkoni traced Ari’s steps in the wide circular route on the goat trails. His men were able to move faster because they did not have the weight of the Davidka and its ammunition. However they had a greater distance to travel as they had to pass the first village where Ari hid, pass Fort Esther and get near the second of the villages. Again the Bedouins met Yarkoni’s column on the mountaintop and led them undetected to their objective.

At nightfall of the second day Ari sent the Bedouin leader to the near village with a surrender ultimatum. Meanwhile Ari moved his men out of the Crusader fort and crept close to the village. The muktar and some eighty of Kassi’s soldiers thought it was a bluff: no Jews could have got up the mountains and behind them without detection. The Bedouin returned to Ari with the report that the village needed convincing, so Ari had two rounds of the Davidka fired.

Two dozen of the mud huts were blown to pieces. The Arabs were convinced. With the second mortar shot the officers of the irregulars were leading a stampede across the Lebanese border and an array of white flags was going up. Ari acted quickly. He dispatched a small part of his column into the village to guard it and sped on to the second village where Yarkoni had already opened an attack.

Twenty minutes and three Davidka rounds after Ari arrived, the village fell and another hundred of Kassi’s men fled to Lebanon. The awesome Little David had again done its job of inflicting terror and destruction. The two villages had fallen so quickly that Fort Esther was completely unaware of it. They assumed the distant sound of the Davidka shells and the firing were their own men firing for pleasure.

At dawn of the third day, David Ben Ami moved his column out of hiding at Gan Dafna and set up an ambush outside Abu Yesha where Kassi had another hundred men. With Ben Ami’s men in position to cut off reinforcements from Abu Yesha, Ari and Yarkoni’s forces moved to the rear of Fort Esther. When the Little David opened fire Kassi had only a hundred men in the fort. The rest were in Lebanon or Abu Yesha. Round after round of the buckets of dynamite swished and sputtered through the air and exploded against the concrete blockhouse. Each round came a little closer to the mark, the iron rear gate. By the twentieth round, the gate was blown off its hinges, and the next five rounds fell into the courtyard of the fort.

Ari Ben Canaan jumped off with the first wave of attackers, who crawled forward on their bellies beneath machine-gun fire and intermittent blasts of the Davidka.

The actual damage to Fort Esther was superficial, but the noise and the sudden swiftness of the attack was too much for Kassi and his dubious warriors. They made a feeble defense, waiting for reinforcements to come. The only reinforcements left moved out of Abu Yesha and walked right into David Ben Ami’s trap. Kassi saw it through his field glasses. He was cut off. The Jews were at the rear gate. The white flag of surrender went up over Fort Esther.

Yarkoni took twenty men into the fort, disarmed the Arabs and sent them packing to Lebanon. Kassi, now quite docile, and three of his officers were led to the jail as the Star of David was raised over the fort. Ari took the rest of the men down the road to where David had set the ambush. They were ready for the final phase of the end of Abu Yesha as an Arab base.

The people of Abu Yesha had seen and heard the fighting. They knew, surely, their village was next. Ari sent a truce team in to give those who were left twenty minutes to evacuate or face the consequences. From his vantage point he could see many of his lifelong friends trudging out of Abu Yesha toward the hills of Lebanon. Ari felt sick in his stomach as he saw them go.

A half hour passed and then an hour.

“We had better start,” David said to him.

“I ... I want to make sure they are all out.”

“No one has left for a half hour, Ari. Everyone is out who is coming out.”

Ari turned and walked away from his waiting troops. David followed him. “I’ll take command,” David said.

“All right,” Ari whispered.

Ari stood alone on the mountainside as David led the men down to the saddle in the hill where Abu Yesha nestled. He was pale as he heard the first sounds of gunfire. David deployed the men as they approached the outskirts. A clatter of machine-gun and small-arms fire went up. The Jews dropped and crawled forward in a squad-by-squad advance.

Inside Abu Yesha a hundred Arabs led by Taha had chosen to make a determined stand. The fight for the village was a rare situation for this war; the Jews had superior numbers of men and arms. A withering barrage of automatic fire was followed by a rain of grenades on the forward Arab positions. The first Arab machine gun was knocked out, and as the defenders fell back the Jews gained a foothold in the town itself.