The Glory (46 page)

A map-festooned tent, stretching between two trucks and illuminated by jeep headlights, is the field war room. Sharon’s manner
at the maps shows no trace of anger or doubt. He is brisk, clear, and soldierly, laying out Gorodish’s plan for the weary
young officers, who in a few hours may have to lead their men to fight and perhaps die by it.

“We face two enemy lodgments north and south of the Great Bitter Lake,” he says, rapping the map with a pointer. “The Second
Army to the north, the Third Army to the south. General Adan will attack the Second from the north, driving southward toward
us. We’ll be his reserve, containing any enemy counterthrusts here in the center. When he has completed his mission — which
should be by midmorning — we’ll run south to smash the Third Army and exploit the breakthroughs. This day can be the turn
of the war, the saving of our homeland. If it’s a go, and we win this day’s fight, we’ll also save those boys in the moazim.
So be strong and of good courage. General Nitzan, take over.” He lumbers off to sleep in a command car.

On his feet to explain sector assignments and logistics, Kishote hopes he is being coherent. The maps and faces swim before
his burning eyes. With the responsibility for ten thousand men plus their vehicles, now lined up along the desert ridge or
on the Artillery Road below, he has been too keyed up for two days and nights to nap, too busy making notes, thinking ahead,
handling foul-ups and crises. Now he is done in. Meeting over, he gives night orders to his operations officer, stumbles to
his command APC and is asleep as he falls on the bunk.

H
eralded by a great plume of dust rising in the morning sun, Bren Adan’s division comes in sight about nine o’clock rolling
southward. Even the Sinai’s high dunes and great rocky ridges cannot dwarf the grandeur of the miles-long columns of machines.
For Kishote it is a scene out of his favorite Walter Scott, regiments of steel-clad Crusaders advancing to fight the paynim.
He says this to Sharon.

“Agreed. It’s just as well war is so terrible,” says Arik Sharon, peering through binoculars, “or we would become too fond
of it.” He turns to Kishote, his hair tousled by the wind. They stand on a high ridge overlooking the slope of the desert
to the Canal six miles away, where dust clouds show that the enemy is also on the move. “Do you know who said that?”

“Napoleon, sir?” Negative smiling headshake. “Caesar? General Patton?”

“Close! General Robert E. Lee. Have you studied Lee’s campaigns?”

“No, sir. In armor school we started with World War One, then Guderian, Rommel, and so on.”

“A mistake. Lee was a genius. The art of war doesn’t change, Yossi, just the tools — but where the devil is Bren Adan going?
He should be heading far to the west of us, toward the Canal —”

Bursts of loudspeaker chatter from Kishote’s signal jeep. “Message for General Sharon, General,” Yoram Sarak calls to Kishote.
“From Southern Command headquarters.
‘Proceed south with your division according to plan.’
”

“Proceed
south
?” Sharon bellows, lunging toward the jeep. “Now? Is Gorodish crazy? What has Adan accomplished so far? We have to hold the
center while he carries out his attack. Keep Southern Command on the line. I want to speak to General Gonen.”

I
n the Pit, after two ghastly days and nights, upbeat reports are at last trickling in from both north and south fronts, so
Pasternak declines Dayan’s suggestion that he go home to bathe and rest. Since the war started he has not been out of his
uniform or even his shoes, and his head throbs from breathing the stale Pit air, but even Dayan is seesawing to good cheer,
advocating a possible quick crossing of the Canal, just a token lodgment in “Africa.” For if the balance tips toward Israel
the UN Security Council may well impose a speedy cease-fire, and Israel needs facts on the ground to trade off for an Egyptian
withdrawal.

The Ramatkhal is as high as anybody at the apparent turn. His outward calm is unchanged, but he is saying things like, “We’re
past the critical point. … The surprise has worn off. … We’re starting to counterattack on both fronts with mobilized reserves,
this is more like it.” His mood spreads through the subterranean warren like a dawn breeze. The public above is rife with
anxious rumors after Golda’s vague somber speech, so the Pit’s inside knowledge of the counterattacks is all the more cheering.
Pasternak joins a mock pool on when the war will end, as he will later wince to recall. His guess is four days.

At the morning cabinet meeting Dado’s optimistic summary delights Zev Barak too, in his newfound respect for the Ramatkhal.
Phone calls from the Pit reinforce his report: a breakthrough on the Golan to the Purple Line, an Adan battalion reaching
the Canal and capturing a bridge, sixteen Egyptian planes knocked down. Though praising Dado for the swift turnaround, Golda
remains impassive. Afterward she tells Barak that Dayan so froze her blood yesterday it will be a long time thawing and circulating
again.

On his return to the Pit, Dado encounters pleas that he talk to the press. The favorable news is snowballing. Despite battle
confusion, enemy jamming, and distance distortions, signal officers monitoring the command networks keep passing on fragmentary
information from both fronts, all almost too good to be true. Long experience in intelligence warns Pasternak that they may
be listening for what they want to hear, and he is for putting off the press until the evening. After all, the battles are
still going on. Dado accepts this cautious view, orders a press conference for 6
P.M
., and goes off for a tour of the Syrian front.

Y
oram Sarak’s bristly face pokes out of the signal vehicle rolling alongside Kishote’s half-track at the rear of the southbound
column. “Sir, General Sharon wants you to report to him, highest urgency.”

Shifting to the jeep, Kishote speeds along the clanking column through a curtain of diesel fumes and whirling dust, and comes
on Sharon leaning against a Centurion tank, rapidly making notes on a writing pad. “What took you so long, Kishote? Halt the
division and turn it around. Bren is in desperate trouble. We must go to his rescue, back to exactly where we were.”

Yossi Nitzan is more or less inured to battlefield shocks, but his mouth literally falls open. The forward elements have been
running south for four hours, and the division is strung out for miles along the Lateral Road. A glance at the sun; no way
to get back to help Bren before dark. “Unbelievable, hey?” snarls Sharon. “Get them going the other way, I tell you, then
I’m sending you to Tel Aviv.” He gestures at a helicopter landed nearby on the sand, its rotor slowly turning. “En brera.
We are in extremis here. You can go there and be back by the time we reach Hamadia.”

Kishote issues orders on the brigade network, whereby the rear of the giant metal snake becomes the head, and the thousand
machines of the tank division clumsily turn around where they stand; time enough to redeploy, he decides, on the move. Sharon
is still scribbling as tanks begin to pass them heading north.

“Well done, Yossi.” Sharon hands him several sheets flapping in the wind. “Now then. Commit this to memory as you go, then
destroy the papers
! Understand? You’ll have to tell it all to Dado face to face. He knows and esteems you, and he also knows you have my confidence.
Who can figure what nonsense Gorodish is reporting to the High Command? It could even be that they think we’re winning. Read
this over, and ask any questions.”

“Yes, sir.”

Arik to Dado. Gorodish is endangering the nation’s survival. Another day like today, and we will be pleading for terms. What
has happened to Bren’s division I don’t yet know, but I am en route to help him. I suspect he received confused and contradictory
orders. The order I received this morning at 1100 was lunacy. While Bren was still fighting his way south, Gorodish ordered
me to abandon the central sector, and head toward Suez City! I pointed out that he was abandoning vital high ground and depriving
Bren of his reserve. He shouted at me to obey or consider myself relieved, so I obeyed.

My division has yet to fight. It ran a whole night on its tracks just to get to the front, and now at Gorodish’s orders it
will have spent a whole day running south and north in the desert like a chicken without a head. This cannot go on. Kishote
will verify every word. I still believe Bren and I can combine forces tomorrow for a winning smash across the Canal.

“No questions,” says Don Kishote. “But will this helicopter pilot wait there to bring me back?”

“He will, because I told him to,” says Sharon, with the sudden hard smile that probably overcame the pilot. “On your way.”

P
asternak and Barak are standing in the lobby of Beit Sokolow, the Journalists’ Hall, talking somberly about the afternoon
reports that have now sent the mood in the Pit plummeting. Dado has remained levelheaded. “War is ups and downs, gentlemen,”
he comments. “The important thing is, we’re turning the corner.”

Among the journalists streaming through the lobby comes hustling a figure in uniform; Don Kishote, unshaven, unkempt, dusty,
hollow-eyed. Barak hails him in astonishment. These are two men with whom Yossi can be frank, so in a few words he tells them
his purpose and his news. They exchange appalled glances, and Pasternak says, “Look, Yossi, Dado makes his opening statement
in ten minutes. He’s with the army spokesman now. You’ll have to see him afterward.” The three are walking into the packed
hall, which resounds with excited talk in a babel of languages.

“Sam, are you sure? Maybe Dado should first hear all this,” Zev Barak argues. “We can still get Kishote through to him. Let
these curs wait a few minutes more.”

“Don’t worry. Dado’s no fool, he’s read all the reports, he’ll handle this thing. Anyway, it’s too late, there’s the spokesman
now.”

A youngish officer comes to the microphone and reads off the latest veiled army communiqué. During the English translation
the noise level keeps rising in the hall, but when Dado strides to the rostrum there is silence. In a fresh uniform, shaved
and well groomed, Dado makes a noble figure: his color good, his frame erect, his bearing exuding modest authority. He reads
a statement in Hebrew about the day’s developments on the battlefield, illustrating at a map with a pointer. To the relief
of Barak and Pasternak, his words are cautious. But when he puts aside the written statement and the pointer he puts aside
caution, and speaks with the fighting spirit of the battlefield: of counterattacks on both fronts, of dogfight victories in
the air, of full coordination of air and ground forces. “We have the upper hand now,” he concludes. “This is a grave battle,
a serious war, but we are at the turning point, and on the advance. I’ll take questions.”

Hands go up all over the hall. Sharp queries shoot at him about the delay in counterattacking, about the failure to mobilize,
about the extent of losses, about the Arab victory claims. He fields these well, but with an edge of growing weariness. One
Hebrew journalist in front persists with a single question: “Dado, how long will the war last?” Though Dado repeatedly turns
him off, the reporter insists and nags that he at least make a forecast. “Forecast? All right, I’ll forecast one thing,” the
badgered Ramatkhal retorts. “We’ll continue striking back at them, and we’ll break their bones.”

This brings a burst of applause, and a small groan from Barak. “There’s tomorrow’s headline,” he says. “
‘We’ll break their bones.’
”

Pasternak makes his way into the tumultuous anteroom where Dado is taking the plaudits of generals and senior journalists,
while Barak brings Yossi through the gloom outside to the Ramatkhal’s flagged car. After a while Dado appears at the car,
and his careworn face lights up. “So, Don Kishote, here you are. Ride with me.”

He leans back in the rear seat, nodding and nodding at Sharon’s message. An audible sigh. “Well, Yossi, I approved Gorodish’s
order for Arik to go south. I acted on the information I was given, and it’s my responsibility. Dayan and I will fly down
there around midnight to confer about what is happening in Sinai. Tell Arik I guarantee he’ll take part in that meeting. B’seder?
My car will take you back to the helicopter.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I’m glad you’re with Arik.” Dado grips Yossi’s shoulder. “He needs you. Logistics never mattered for Rommel, either. He would
seize the moment, his staff would go crazy, and the logistics one way or another would follow.” Dado grunts. “That is, usually!
And so to Rommel his superiors were sluggish fools who didn’t get the picture. Tell Arik I
know
we have to cross the Canal to win the war, and I
know
there are problems with Gorodish. Stand by him. Cool him down when he boils over. He’s a fighter, and it will be all right.”

October 9.

The newspapers are spread on Golda Meir’s desk, as her haggard war cabinet hears Dayan holding forth. On this morning of the
fourth day of the war, the Minister of Defense is calling not only for retreat to the mountains, but the mobilizing of seventeen-year-olds,
overage citizens, and the physically exempt, to be armed with antitank weapons against a surge of Arab forces into Israel’s
heartland. Only an immediate huge American airlift, he warns Golda Meir, will enable Israel to fight on. Golda’s sadly ironic
glance goes from Zev Barak to the streamer headlines:

DADO: “WE WILL BREAK THEIR BONES”

WAR HAS TURNED THE CORNER — RAMATKHAL

On the front page of one paper is a grimly smiling picture of David Elazar. She speaks with slow gravity, “It’s so serious,
Moshe? So urgent? Overnight? Nixon has already promised to make good our losses. Are you saying I should fly to Washington?”

“Absolutely, Madame Prime Minister, today, if you can.”

“Moshe, what’s happened to you?” Allon exclaims. “Mobilize teenagers, elderly, sickly? Is the enemy at the gate? A
levée en masse
? We had a bad day in Sinai yesterday, sure. We had bad weeks, bad months in 1948. You drove on like a lion. So did we all,
and it never came to a
levée en masse
.”