The Drifters by James A. Michener
‘You know you can.’
‘I’ll be in Israel.’
The girl stiffened as if an electric shock had coursed through her. In a flash she comprehended everything and realized that she was being asked to become a conspirator for a noble cause. She said nothing as Bruce explained that in his family, people kept their passports up to date and that when he came to America each autumn he had a roundtrip plane ticket. From a leatherette folder he produced the two imposing documents and satisfied her that he was telling the truth.
‘I’m driving to the airport right now, catching a plane to New York, and at seven ‘I’ll be in the air for Israel. My grandfather’s a smart old geezer, and if he doesn’t hear from me, he just might guess what I’m doing, because he’s as worried about Israel as I am. I figure he’ll be getting suspicious about six o’clock, and I don’t want him telephoning the airport police in New York.’
So the plot was laid, and although his co-conspirator was not a pretty girl, nor one that he had ever dated, he kissed her, and she asked, ‘Are you going to join the army?’ and he said, ‘Most of my friends are in the army and I help them with the radio bit.’ He kissed her again, jumped into his Pontiac convertible, and sped off to the Detroit air terminal. At seven, as he had predicted, he was flying out of New York bound for Israel.
He landed mid-morning on Friday, June 2, to find his homeland caught up in what he later described in a letter to his grandfather as ‘a terrible reality. No one panicked. No one made empty boasts. But everyone knew the dreadful threats that had come from Radio Damascus. What stupefied me was that King Hussein, on whom we relied for some kind of balance, had joined the chorus and was shouting stupid things. We knew it was to be war, and we knew that if we lost we would be slaughtered. They told us so. So we decided not to lose.’
He caught a cherut—a private car operating as a taxi on a set run—and drove north to Haifa, where his parents were both astonished and relieved to see him; they approved of what he had done and said that at such times a family ought to be together. ‘I was prepared to see them, and their quiet courage,’ he wrote to his grandfather, ‘and I was prepared for the tense excitement that gripped Haifa, but I was totally unprepared for what happened when I met my two sisters, for suddenly it dawned on me that when Radio Damascus cried that everyone in Haifa was to be slaughtered, it was Ruth and Shoshana they meant, and without being able to control myself, I burst into tears.’
He had arrived in Israel on Friday, the day of worship, and although his family avoided synagogues, on this night Dr. Zmora said, ‘I think we might go to shul,’ and they went as a group. Later that evening Yigal established contact with his older friends who were in the army reserve. He had gone into the center of Haifa to that public square where the Carmelit, the underground funicular, starts its climb up to the top of Mount Carmel, and at the open-air café he met three of his gang. They were delighted to see him, but the air of hushed expectancy which gripped the whole city operated there, too, and they kept their voices low lest their neighbors at the other tables think them afraid or excited.
‘It’s got to be war,’ they told him.
‘Why aren’t you at the front?’ he asked.
‘The front? Everywhere’s the front. They haven’t called us yet because there isn’t room to absorb us. We’re waiting.’
June nights in Haifa can be exquisite, with the dark whisper of cedars on the hills and the echo of the sea along the waterfront. Lovers climb hand in hand up the long flights of stairs, while the babel of many languages lends a counterpoint to the fundamental Hebrew which most speak. But on this Friday night the city was trebly beautiful, for people on the edge of doom were trebly attentive to one another.
Then, without sirens or horns, ordinary passenger cars began circulating through the city, both in the alleys by the waterfront and on the broad boulevards of Carmel. The driver was often a girl, never in uniform, and the men she drove were in civilian dress too. The car would stop, motor running, and the men would move out quickly, but never at a run lest they excite panic. They would go from door to door, almost in silence, knock once or twice, and nod to the man who had been anticipating their call. Oftentimes not a word was spoken, just the knowing nod, the grim smile of recognition, the closing door and the messenger on his way back to the car, which would then carry him to another quarter of the city. Israel was moving quietly, without a single word on the radio or in the streets, into total mobilization.
It was about nine o’clock that lovely spring evening when one of the cars pulled into the plaza where Yigal was drinking orange soda with his friends. They saw it coming and could guess its import as soon as they spotted the girl driver. She pulled beside the curb, and four men sifted through the crowd. When one of them reached Yigal’s table, there was a flash of recognition, but neither the messenger nor the civilian soldiers spoke. The man simply looked at them and nodded. When he was gone the young men quickly rose and walked unostentatiously from the plaza, except that as they went, one of them turned back to Yigal and asked, without speaking a word, if he wanted to come along, and he did want to, very much, and he rose as casually as if he were going to a movie and followed them into the darkness.
Mobilization plans for this particular unit called for them to requisition one of the cheruts and twenty gallons of gasoline from a dealer at the edge of town, and to motor down to the desert capital of Beersheba. They were to leave immediately, without goodbyes, and would find that the necessary gear had been assembled in the south. From there they would pretty surely head westward into the Sinai, for their specialty was foot-soldier support for heavy tanks, the kind of operation in which communications were vital.
As they drove south that clear, still night Yigal thought: The difference between an American and an Israeli is that my grandparents are wailing in Detroit, asking, ‘Why has he done this thing?’ while my parents in Haifa, when they find I’ve gone, will ask, ‘What else could he have done?’
It was not yet dawn when their car reached Beersheba, to fall in line behind a thousand others that had assembled from all parts of the nation, and the military depot to which they reported was so agitated that Yigal’s unauthorized presence was not noticed; after all, he was not much younger than many of the troops, and his civilian appearance corresponded to theirs, for it was a civilian nation that was girding for war. When it became apparent that their unit was not going to accomplish much that night, they fell asleep in the car, a bunch of casual young men who might have been waiting for a soccer game.
By noon on June 3 the unit was more or less formed up, and the officer in charge, a civilian-dressed major known to everyone as the Sabra, for he had been born in Israel and spoke only Hebrew, looked into Yigal’s car and asked, ‘Who’s this?’ and Yigal’s friends explained. ‘He’s a communications nut. He can fix anything.’ The Sabra studied him and asked, ‘You acquainted with our gear?’ When Yigal nodded, the major said, ‘We could use him,’ and in this haphazard way Yigal Zmora went to war.
By midnight on June 3 the unit had moved, by commandeered taxicabs, to a point within two miles of the Egyptian border, but this measure was misleading, for the part of Egypt which touched Israel in this region was merely the Sinai, that vast and empty wasteland which ought to have served, throughout history, as a natural buffer between Egypt and her neighbors to the east but which never did. Instead of forming a wall, it formed a garish, terrifying highway which for the past four thousand years had consumed camels and armies and which in recent decades had developed an appetite for tanks and airplanes.
During the long, hot day of June 4 Yigal and his companions waited; they cleaned their guns and he fiddled with the radio gear, unable to test it properly because of the enforced silence. He did monitor messages coming from the Sinai, and although they were in code, he deduced that there must be considerable tank movement in the area. ‘I wonder what it’s like facing a tank?’ he asked his buddies. ‘We’ll find out,’ they said stoically, ‘bec
It was known generally among the foot soldiers that once the war began, they were on their own, because victory depended not on their safety but on the speed with which the tanks could slash into Egypt. ‘We’ll be at the Suez Canal two days after war begins,’ one of Yigal’s companions predicted. ‘We’re going to move so fast … well, you keep that radio going so they can keep track of where we are. Because we’re on our own.’
The unit had some trucks geared for desert warfare, but not enough. They also had some taxicabs with extra tires and racks for gasoline cans, but not enough of them either. ‘You couldn’t claim we were a flashy unit,’ Yigal’s friend said. ‘The good gear is up front, where it’s needed. But you know what I think? I feel absolutely confident that before nightfall of the first day we’ll be riding in Egyptian equipment.’
In the hot afternoon they asked Yigal what the United States was like, and he said, ‘Not bad. Big roads. Air conditioning. I liked it, but the schools are sort of sloppy. You don’t learn much … not if you’ve been to a good school in Israel first.’ None of his listeners had been to high school, so they couldn’t judge.
‘You think you might like to live there … permanently, I mean?’
‘You could do a lot worse.’
‘The girls?’
‘Funny thing. Something I never realized before. But when you’re in the United States, people expect you to be a Jew. Over here—who gives a damn, except maybe the Egyptians, and only some of them. My parents almost never go to synagogue. But in the United States … You were asking about girls. Every girl is either Jewish or not Jewish. Big deal. Besides, any soccer player in Israel could make one of their teams.’
Night fell and there was silence. From the Sinai, not a sound. Pale light showed nothing moving, and the men fell asleep, but toward morning there was a steady sound of airplanes. Everyone prepared for an attack from the Egyptians, but none came, and shortly before dawn the word was passed, ‘Move out,’ and the motley collection of cars and trucks revved up and started westward toward the border, but they had gone only two miles when they were ordered to pull off the road, and they sat in dust, amazed and somehow terrified, as a convoy of tanks sped past with every apparent intention of crossing the border ahead. Even when the young soldiers saw these monsters standing only a few feet away, they were awed by the tremendous power, but when they heard them rushing past, collapsing the world with noise, they understood for the first time what war might be.
It was daylight when they reached the border and halted, which seemed a ridiculous thing to do, for obviously the tanks had already penetrated deep into Egyptian territory, but final orders were missing, so they waited, and soon they saw a stream of planes overhead and at first took them to be Egyptian. ‘Hit the ditch!’ the officers yelled, but before Yigal could leave the communications truck, someone else shouted, ‘Israelis! Israelis!’ and the men cheered.
They waited at the border for about two hours, during which they heard nothing and saw nothing, but at eight in the morning a motorcyclist roared up with instructions that would turn them loose, and for the second time Yigal had a taste of what war could be, for the messenger was a girl—about twenty, very broad shoulders—and somehow she seemed more a human being than the men, and when she wheeled in the dust and sped back toward Beersheba, Yigal found himself shouting, ‘Good luck!’ It was as if she were going into battle, not he.
‘On to Cairo!’ someone yelled, and everyone took up the cry. The motley convoy swung into action and at maximum speed crossed the border and entered that vast desolation in which God had once handed down to the children of Israel His commandments on tablets of stone.
From the speed at which the convoy traveled, Yigal supposed they were trying to reach Cairo by nightfall, with no expectation of encountering hostile Egyptians, for throttles were jammed to the floorboards and no account was taken of bumps or dangers in the road. They had penetrated about forty miles before the war became a reality; ahead of them, flaming fitfully like a dying torch, stood a burned-out Egyptian tank. The men cheered as they sped past, and Yigal was surprised to note that no one even so much as fired a shot at the tank.
But by mid-afternoon the situation changed considerably. For one thing, the terrain was much rougher. For another, an Egyptian aircraft appeared in a wild and futile strafing attempt. ‘That pilot must be drunk,’ one of Yigal’s companions said. ‘I could fly a plane better than that, and I’ve never been in one.’
‘Look! He wasn’t drunk. He was scared.’ Another soldier pointed to the horizon where two swift Israeli jets appeared from the other side of low mountains. With hideous speed they swept through the sky and closed upon the bewildered Egyptian. It wasn’t a fight, merely a shooting exercise, with first one, then the other Israeli plane running at the doomed Egyptian, who dodged and twisted before exploding in the air. Yigal and the men cheered.
It was about dusk, at the close of an unimpeded dash across the Sinai, when the column approached the western mountains and located a cleft named on the maps Qarash Pass. At a signal the trucks halted and the soldiers dismounted to look at the terrain ahead. Like all men, they experienced the delusion which mountains create: ‘If we could just get to the top of that ridge, we could see all the way to the Suez.’ Attainment of the ridge became an end in itself.
The Sabra gathered his lieutenants about him and said, ‘Common sense says there’s got to be Egyptian tanks hidden away in there.’ His subordinates nodded. ‘But I think we ought to push through.’ Again his assistants agreed. He hesitated, walked slowly from one group of men to the next, looking into their faces. In civilian life he was an insurance adjuster, but as an army man he had fought in the Sinai in 1956 and he knew that Israel’s principal weapon was mobility backed up by the courage of her men.
‘We go,’ he said quietly. No one cried, ‘On to Cairo.’ For them it was into a nest of dark hills on which the sun would set just as they reached the deepest point.
‘We go,’ the subordinates said, and they all returned to their vehicles and left the flatlands behind them.
When they were well into the narrow defile, where retreat was impossible, Egyptians opened fire from three sides and unlimbered six tanks that had been hidden among the rocks, thus escaping the probing eyes of the Israeli air force. A frightened Israeli lieutenant rushed up to Yigal and shouted, ‘Send a message. We’re surrounded.’
Before Yigal could operate his radio, an Egyptian shell roared through the truck, destroying most of his equipment and ripping off the head of the lieutenant. Yigal’s first action in the battle of the Sinai was to push away the gaping torso, whose open neck was spewing blood over what was left of the radio.
As night fell, the trapped Israelis had fourteen useless vehicles, two mounted guns and one hundred and twenty men. They were surrounded by six tanks, a large number of emplaced guns and more than six hundred enemy soldiers. Continuing salvos killed off about thirty of the Israelis before any damage had been done to the Egyptians. At midnight the Sabra gathered his officers under a truck, trying to decide what to do. Yigal heard them talking gravely about alternatives, and he sensed that they anticipated a disaster. The Sabra left the conclave and came to him, asking how soon the radio would be working, and Yigal said, ‘The big one, never. The smaller one, pretty soon,’ and the Sabra said, ‘You told me you could provide radio communication,’ and Yigal said, ‘Look at the equipment,’ and the major snapped, ‘Well, get it working.’
About three in the morning, with the Egyptians still shooting into the stalled trucks, Yigal had the receiving elements of his radio in shape, and the officers gathered to hear reports on world-wide news programs and thus learned of the mighty victory that Israel had won that day. They could scarcely believe what they heard: six hundred aircraft destroyed; tank units poised to attack the Suez; great battles at Jerusalem and in Golan Heights; the skies em
‘My God,’ one of the officers said solemnly. ‘We’re in a position to win.’
‘The other units, not us,’ the Sabra pointed out, and as if to underscore the correctness of this analysis, the Egyptians sent another flurry of shells into the trucks.
‘They don’t know they’ve lost,’ the Sabra said, ‘and when morning comes they’ll chop us up. Our planes will never find those tanks. How’s that goddamned radio?’
Yigal could do nothing with the sending apparatus, but over the receiver there continued to come a constant stream of reports that exhilarated all who heard them. In Jerusalem the leaders of the government were openly hailing a victory of enormous proportions, with more likely to follow the next day. In the darkness the men cheered, then speculated soberly upon their own ridiculous position: about to be wiped out at the moment of national triumph.
So just before dawn the Sabra assembled his ninety survivors and told them, ‘We’re going to knock off those tanks one by one. We’re going to drive every Egyptian out of this pass. And we’re not going to lose one Israeli doing it.’
They surrendered any hope of miraculous intervention from the outside; if the air force hadn’t sighted the Egyptian tanks yesterday, they wouldn’t see them today, and if the radio could not send messages of location, no help could be expected. ‘We destroy those tanks,’ the Sabra said, and before light broke across the timeless hills the Israelis scattered into eleven assault parties. Yigal and four of his friends from Haifa would remain in the shattered radio truck, trying to establish some kind of contact with the victorious Israeli forces. They would be at the center of the perimeter, but they would not be protected. ‘You stay here and work,’ the Sabra said, and Yigal nodded: ‘I’ll get it fixed … somehow.’
The Sabra asked, ‘How old are you?’
‘Sixteen.’
‘You’re sure you know about radio?’