As the men disbanded and started toward their sleeping bags, a young reservist in a skullcap approached Jason and, withdrawing a small blue leather book from his breast pocket, asked politely, “Saba, would it be all right if I prayed instead of sleeping?”
“Okay, Baruch,” Jason said. “Maybe God is listening tonight. But what prayers can you say the night before — before an attack?”
“The Psalms are always appropriate, saba. You know, ‘Out of the depths I cried unto Thee, Thou answered me with great deliverance.’ ”
“Yeah,” Jason smiled wanly, “just be sure you ask for a three-pronged deliverance.”
The young soldier nodded and walked off to a quiet corner where he would not disturb his sleeping comrades, And began to chant the Psalms very softly. Over and over.
Jason lay down in his sleeping bag and wondered if he would ever see his wife and son again.
At dawn on Monday, June 5, the buses arrived. They were the same rickety vehicles on which some of these men rode to work in Tel Aviv. Today they were taking them down toward the Sinai. To an air base deep in the Negev where a fleet of Sikorsky helicopters was waiting.
As they left the buses, the soldiers glanced nervously toward the sky, instinctively sensing that hostilities had begun. And, being so close to the border, fearing an attack by the Egyptian Air Force.
Jason was in the midst of reassembling his men and dividing them into groups of eight for each chopper, when a senior officer called him over for a moment. He came sprinting back, his face beaming.
“I’ve got a pretty interesting announcement, guys,” he called out. “It appears that at 0745 hours this morning, our planes undertook a preemptive strike against enemy airfields. There is no longer such a thing as the Egyptian Air Force. The skies belong to Israel. Now it’s up to us to take the ground.”
Before the men could cheer, a young soldier raised his hand. It was Baruch. Pointing to his little prayer book, he shouted exultantly, “You see, saba, God was listening!”
There were no agnostics in the Israeli Army that morning.
“Okay,” Jason said, “here’s our agenda. We’re all moving out. The tanks, the infantry, everybody. We’re going right across the Canal to visit the pyramids. There’s only one little job we have to do first. The Egyptians are really dug in at Um Katef — the front door of Sinai. The tanks can’t get close enough, so it’s our job to clear them the hell out. Now — there’s not enough room for everybody, so I’ll take volunteers.”
Every hand shot up. And even when he had picked his troops, extra men pushed themselves onto the helicopters.
As soon as it was fully dark, they began to land in the dunes north of the Egyptian stronghold. The choppers went back and forth ferrying troops like businessmen in a subway rush-hour. The last few landings were under heavy fire from the fortress.
By prearrangement, the men split into an attack force and a cover group. Jason led his soldiers toward the Egyptian guns, firing rifles, Uzis, and bazookas as they advanced.
Suddenly one of their own rockets hit an ammunition convoy. It exploded, causing devastation on both sides. By the light of the flaming tower, Jason counted five motionless bodies and dozens of wounded comrades. He ordered his men to stop their advance and wait for the stretchers to come up. Then they performed in earnest the exercises they had done so many times in practice.
At last he picked up his gun and went back to the inhuman job of killing. For the sake of peace.
By the end of the first day the threat of annihilation no longer existed. For the Jordanian and Syrian air forces had suffered the same fate as the Egyptian. The Southern Command was on its way toward the Suez Canal almost unimpeded.
Though Israel was fighting a war on three fronts, it did not have three armies. Its single fighting force had to fire to the north as well as to the south. Thus, as soon as the exhausted 54th Paratroop Battalion had cleared the way for the capture of the Sinai, they drove northward where the battle for the Golan Heights was raging.
And all the while they were traveling, a fierce hand-to-hand battle was under way for the ultimate prize — Jerusalem.
When they reached the Golan on Wednesday morning they were greeted by news that paratroops had recaptured the Old City. And were at the holiest of Jewish shrines — the Temple Wall.
Meanwhile, Jason’s battalion captured the Syrian position east of Dar Bashiya. The big guns that had for years been pounding the northern kibbutzim were finally silenced.
Six days after it started, the war was over. And the face of Israel had changed. In the south it had the entire Sinai Desert as a protective buffer. It controlled all the territory to the east down to the River Jordan, giving it a defensible frontier. And in the north, Israelis were now on the Golan Heights, threatening Syria instead of vice versa.
It was a success in every way but one. It did not bring peace.
On September 1, the Arab Summit Conference at Khartoum passed three resolutions: no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no peace with Israel.
Jason Gilbert, rocking his son in his arms, remarked to his wife, “They could have added no rest for Israel, either.”
Even as he spoke, the shellshocked and defeated Arabs were planning a new kind of war against their enemy. A campaign of terror and sabotage. They created the PLO, whose stated aim was the “national liberation” of the people who had never been a nation.
No measures seemed to prevent these new terrorists from entering Israeli territory. They could slip across the Jordan River, hide in caves, do their mischief, and either return or travel north and vanish across the Lebanese border. At first the Israeli Army tried the retaliatory raids that had proven moderately effective before the war. Now they were of no avail.
They sealed off the Jordan with a fence of minefields. They even raked the paths so that early-morning patrols could tell if anyone had passed through during the night. But like the hydra serpent of Greek mythology, every time one head was cut off, the invaders seemed to grow two more.
To deal with this problem the best commandos of every unit were recruited for a supreme counterterrorist force known as Sayaret Matkal, the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit.
Jason was determined to be part of this group. He drove to headquarters prepared to fight the same “you’re too old” battle he had fought five years earlier.
But when he met the interviewing officer he realized it was not necessary. For it was none other than Zvi Doron, whom he had so persuasively “convinced” in the paratroop-recruitment shack. This time the two men laughed for a few minutes until Zvi voiced his single qualm about Jason’s desire to join.
“Listen, saba, I know you can do this job physically. But you’re a father and a husband now. And this is not really the kind of job that makes for happy marriages. To begin with, you’ll be away a lot. For another thing, you won’t be able to talk to your wife about any of our operations. Believe me, I saw enough divorces in para reconnaissance.”
“Look,” Jason answered, “I’m not in Israel to pick oranges. I stayed here to do a job. And as long as I can still be useful, I’ll run any risk that’s necessary. Now will you take me?”
“Only if you promise to talk it over with your wife.”
“That’s a deal.”
Eva understood him too well even to argue. She knew she had married a man with fire in his soul. And in a sense, it was that fire which warmed their marriage. She would not stand in his way. She merely extracted from him the futile promise that he wouldn’t take any unnecessary chances.