The Glory (41 page)

About the time Dov is taking off, Arik Sharon is returning to his division. He finds Kishote at the optical gear depot, in
a dusty field overgrown with rank-smelling weeds and crowded with a vast jumble of private cars, delivery trucks, ice cream
wagons, moving vans, taxicabs, even one cement-mixer, the motley vehicles by which the ten thousand reservists of the division
are solving the Yom Kippur dearth of busses. Kishote is quelling an angry dispute between the quartermasters and a besieging
mob of tank commanders. The hubbub dies when Arik appears in his blue leather jacket, gray-blond hair windblown, the most
recognizable man in Israel after Moshe Dayan. “What’s all this?” he demands.

The supply of binoculars and periscopes is short, Kishote explains, since many were drawn for peacetime war games and never
returned. Now the quartermasters are requiring forms filled out for each instrument. Sharon shouts to the quartermasters,
“The forms are waived! First come, first served!” Cheers from the sergeants commanding the tanks, ranging from youths who
have barely finished their draft service to middle-aged reservists. Sharon again. “If the supply runs out, there will be more
down at Tasa, don’t worry! First come, first served, I say, and make ready to move, all of you. Nitzan, call an orders group
for section heads and brigade commanders.”

Around a long narrow conference table, some fifteen senior officers gather to hear the few reliable facts that Sharon has
learned from the confused first reports at Gorodish’s HQ. Without question, he says, the Egyptians have achieved complete
strategic and tactical surprise. This is not the time to ask why and how. One day soon the people will call the government
to account, no fear!
(There speaks the politician still, thinks Kishote.)
Now there is a war to win.

The bitter truth is that Egyptian forces are crossing the Canal on motorized rafts in at least five major thrusts, bypassing
the Bar-Lev maozim, which they stunned and silenced with an hour-long rain of murderous artillery fire. Already they have
gained several shallow lodgments — he raps a pointer at the locations on a large Sinai wall map — and are now blasting breaches
in the ramparts with water pumps of fantastic power, and starting to lay pontoon bridges. General Mandler’s three regular
brigades, with less than two hundred tanks, face an Egyptian onslaught of seven divisions and at least a thousand tanks! The
position accordingly is very dangerous.

Having poured on the gloom, Sharon turns brisk and optimistic. The Arab is a good soldier and a brave enemy,
so long as he fights on a set plan
. So far Egypt appears to be doing things by the Soviet book, planned and drilled to the last detail. The way to reverse this
initial success is to break up the enemy timetable. The two reserve Sinai divisions — this one, and one under General Adan
coming from the north — have to race down the peninsula and counterattack to contain the invaders’ bridgehead, then cross
the Canal and cut them off from the rear. With this the entire Egyptian front in Sinai can falter and collapse in three days.
But meantime it will be very hard going all the way.

“The bottleneck right now is tank transporters.” Sharon slaps his pointer on a wall photograph of a monstrous low-bed trailer
truck carrying a sixty-ton Centurion. “General Adan has requested priority on these. I didn’t argue. He has farther to go.
I don’t know how long it’ll take to round some up for us, and so, gentlemen, I mean to run south all night on our treads.”
Troubled glances around the table. Sharon turns to Kishote, sitting near him at the map. “What about it, Nitzan?”

“That will grind down the tanks, sir,” says Kishote drily, “before they ever fire a shot. It’s a hundred thirty miles. It’ll
push the crews to the fatigue limit. A lot of breakdowns en route are inevitable. Traffic will pile up in the passes and the
high dunes. Tanks will bog down getting off the roads. A total mess.”

“So you’re against this?” The tone is calm, but Sharon’s eyes narrow.

“I’m saying what to expect, sir, but we have the best repair gang in Zahal. Our garageniks can take apart and put together
a Centurion in the dark like an Uzi. What’s more, transporter drivers can’t be controlled. They can wander off or be commandeered.
Our own tanks we can control. We’ll get there worn out, sir, but we’ll get there as a division, ready to fight. Let’s do it.”

Among the officers, a rueful murmur and nodding of heads. Sharon dismisses the meeting, and when he is alone with Yossi he
slaps his shoulder, “Well done, Kishote, stating all the objections before they could. I’ll lead the first company that gets
on the road. You come along with command headquarters, and check at Point Yukon yourself in the morning, to make sure that
Tal’s brainchild, that confounded roller bridge, is ready to go. I intend to cross into Egypt day after tomorrow.”

“What!
Monday?
” Kishote blinks. “Does Gorodish agree?”

“Gorodish is out of his head. The roof has fallen in on him. He’s issuing orders that make no sense, and he’s very self-conscious
and touchy about taking advice. He served under both Bren Adan and me in this very command, and now he has to command us.
He’s well aware that Bren created the Bar-Lev Line, that I built up the Sinai infrastructure and road system, and that we
both know ten times as much as he does about all this.
Zeh mah she’yaish
, Kishote. But Bren’s the greatest tank man in Israel, and between us and Mandler’s brigades we’ll win Gorodish’s campaign
for him.”

D
roning over the white-capped Sea of Galilee, Dov’s plane and the three other Phantoms are bumping into the dense murk over
Syria. Now Dov is locked to the dead reckoning of Major Goldstein, once his navigation instructor. Their target is a large
Syrian tank force, and as Dov is figuring it the objective has to be ahead at about five miles, when Goldstein’s voice breaks
radio silence with one word:
“Nered.”
(“Let’s go down.”) The air becomes rougher, the cloud layer thicker and darker, as they descend. At moments Dov can see only
Itzik’s wing ahead and to his right. Two thousand feet, fifteen hundred. Dirty mist, rain hammering on the canopy. Okay, there
is the ground, glimpsed through thinning wisps of cloud and drifting rain curtains.

Nothing there.

Not a thing. Broken rock, greenish scrub, here and there a shallow conical hill, not a sign of war in the two-mile circle
of hazy visibility. Nothing! Old intelligence? Wrong intelligence? Or has there been a sudden breakthrough, and are those
Syrian tanks already rolling westward over the Purple Line forts into the Golan?

Straight ahead a jagged ridge of low hills, vague in the mist. Goldstein:
“That ridge is not on the map. The target may be on the far side of it. Forward, then.”

As they are arching over the ridge, antiaircraft fire ignites the air all around them; sudden hell of fireworks, ground twinkling
below, colored balls rising up, flames exploding all over the murky sky.

Wow, the real thing! Change altitude, jink like mad, evade, evade, evade …

Oh God, oh God, ITZIK! No!

It happens so close to Dov that the blast rocks his aircraft. One moment Itzik is zooming to evade, and the next second he
is vanishing in a dirty billowing expanding globe of flame, with black ragged pieces tumbling away. Blown to bits! Red and
yellow explosions flaring everywhere in the gray sky, over the canopy, across the windshield. Oh,
Itzik!

Now Goldstein, level-voiced.
“I’m hit, but I have power. I’ll try to eject over our territory. Abort, abort, return to base. God rest poor Itzik. Abort!
Dov, Avrash, acknowledge.”

“Avrash here.”
Very shaky tones.
“Acknowledged.”

“Dov here. Acknowledged. Major, Avrash and I can still try to find that tank force. It’s our mission.”

“Shlilee, shlilee! [Negative, negative!] Abort. Go home. That’s an order. I’m turning west. Out.”
Dov reverses course and roars full throttle skyward, for the antiaircraft is obviously locked in on their altitude. In seconds
he is over the ridge, climbing into thick clouds. He can’t see Avrash. Has he too fallen?

Whirling thoughts. Sickly urge to urinate, never mind that. Flying by instinct and by drilled-in responses. Compass course
west by south and climb, climb, to get out of the overcast. Hang on to yourself. Itzik is gone, you have to fight all the
harder, fly more missions. What a pitiful start for a combat career! What a difference from the Six-Day War … what a defeat
… one pilot out of four surely dead. Maybe two, maybe three. Benny Luria’s son fleeing for his life. How can he face his father
and Itzik’s ground crew? And Itzik’s pregnant wife, Ida, from the same kibbutz, nineteen years old, a religious girl, no television
on Shabbat … After the debriefing he’ll have to walk past the apartment of big-bellied little Ida, a widow and not yet aware
of it. Dov’s father has talked much about the sad side of being a tayass, but not until you’ve seen a wonderful guy like Itzik
die instantly in a midair explosion … Why not me? Just crazy luck …

Out of the clouds. Ahead the Sea of Galilee, the ribbon of the Jordan, and there is a Phantom in front at eleven o’clock low,
on the same course. Avrash! So he’ll be breaking the terrible news first. …

At Tel Nof, when Dov releases the drag parachute and rolls to a stop, he can see Itzik’s crew huddled on the runway and Avrash
walking away head down, helmet dangling from his hand. Itzik’s plane captain calls as Dov climbs out of the cockpit, “Any
chance he made it? Ejected? Got captured?”

“Itzik is gone. We’ll never see him again.” Their stricken looks spur him to add, “It was over in a second. He went out in
fire.”

Among the somber faces is his own plane captain. “Major Goldstein is safe, sir, behind our lines,” he says.

“Thank God.”

In the briefing room, his father is waiting with the squadron commander and Avrash. Dov does his best to return professional
answers to the questions, to show no trace of feeling. That rule he has breathed in with the air of his family. “In your judgment,
what went wrong,” asks the debriefer routinely toward the end, “and what can be corrected?”

Avrash and Dov look at each other. Though Avrash is senior, he gestures to Dov, the base commander’s son, to speak. Maybe
Avrash just isn’t up to it.

“What went wrong, sir? Bad weather, poor intelligence, very bad luck. What I really think is, sir, we lost two Phantoms on
a wild goose chase.” Dov glances at his impassive father, and regrets the escape of the angry words. Unprofessional. But he
blurts on, “How can it be corrected? Well, I don’t know exactly how Itzik can be brought back. Sorry, sir.”

On the grass-lined path to the quarters Benny Luria puts an arm around his son’s shoulders. “Itzik was a superb aviator.”

Dov chokes out, “I guess you’re glad to see me.”

“Don’t talk about it. I’m going back to fighter control.”

“What’s happening in the war?”

“Terrible confusion, no solid information. We seem to be holding them, north and south, but the air force is mostly responding
to howls for help. No coherent new battle plan yet.”

“I have to walk past poor Ida’s porch.”

“You won’t see her.”

Dov does not. The shades are drawn. When he enters the family quarters he smells frying meat, Yom Kippur quite forgotten.
Galia springs at him to embrace him, and her face is wet. He has to clear his throat. “So you know about Itzik.”

She leans away in his arms, staring at him with tearstained dark eyes. “And about Major Goldstein.”

“Well, Goldstein’s fine. Listen, so is Itzik. Is it so bad to die fighting for your country? It’s bad for his wife.” He gives
her a squeeze and a kiss. “Something to think about, motek.”

T
hat night Zev Barak works his way through corridors of the labyrinthine Pit far below central Tel Aviv, where there is no
night or day, and officers hurry here and there with harassed pallid faces. He finds Sam Pasternak in the Defense Minister’s
cubicle, morosely writing on a pad. “Can we talk, Sam?”

“Make it fast. Dayan wants a sitrep for the cabinet meeting at ten.”

“That’s exactly what Golda wants — some solid facts going into the meeting.” Barak takes the hard chair facing the desk. “The
telephone reports are making her head swim. She told me to question Dado, but his room is so jammed with ex-Ramatkhals and
major generals, you can’t see him for the uniforms and the smoke.”

“Ask me the questions.”

“Aleph, is the news really that bad?”

“Not that good.” Pasternak’s head sinks between his shoulders. “When the sirens sounded this afternoon, Zev — and it seems
a week ago — I estimated that if the Egyptians sleep tonight on this side of the Canal in substantial force, they’ll have
won the war. Politically, which is what counts in the long run. I hope I was wrong, because it’s happening, and the north
is worse.” He peered blearily at Barak. “Amos is up there, though I don’t know just where. The Syrians are overrunning or
bypassing our fortified points all along the Purple Line. They have night-vision equipment, we don’t have any, and they have
ten tanks to our one. The Mount Hermon outpost has already fallen, with all our ultrasecret stuff. Small but terrible disaster
right there.”

“In short,” Barak says, his heart cold, “no good news on any front?”

“Well, the mobilization is way ahead of schedule. At this rate we’ll be up to strength north and south by tomorrow night.
Amazing job. And of course the Jordanians haven’t attacked yet. Still, they’re massing troops, and two Iraqi formations are
reported on the way. Now, Zev, what about the politics? The UN? What does Golda hear? The Arabs blatantly broke the UN cease-fire,
no? Fired the first shot, no? So? No action in New York?”

“Oh, yes, the Egyptians claim
we
started it. Our navy shelled them, so they’re simply defending themselves, and the Syrians are coming to their aid as allies.
The UN is studying this grave charge of Israeli aggression.”