Under the Desert Sky
The predawn light was crisp and clear in that early morning, in the middle of the Judean desert outside the Latrun fortress. The sun was just beginning to make its ascent over the horizon, and Ari Levin was already up and dressed, and pacing the sandbag enforced positions of the weeks-old Israel Defense Force. As he paced, he pulled a cigarette from his front shirt pocket, lit it, and took a long drag.
What the day held for him was still vastly shrouded in mystery, but he tried not to focus on it, but he tried not to focus on it, and rather, to focus on the task at hand—not freezing his hands off before the sun rose. He rubbed his hands together, and blew hot air in them to keep them warm. Suddenly, he heard metallic clanking and a crunching of sand beneath boots. Instinctively, he brandished his homemade sten gun, and whirled around to challenge the intruder.
“Come no further if you want to live!” he called.
“Come now, Ari, what kind of language is that to use with an old friend?” asked the intruder. It was Ari’s best friend, and fellow squad leader, Yossi Kohen. He was staggering up the battlements, his uniform battered and ripped, and he was bandaged and bloody and obviously exhausted.
“Yossi! What happened to you achi (brother)?” exclaimed Ari, as he slung his sten over his shoulder and moved towards Yossi to help him.
“Ani tzarech lishdot (I need a drink),” came Yossi’s reply. Ari reached down on his belt, and removed his canteen and handed it to Yossi.
Yossi replied, “No, I don’t mean water, I need a DRINK.” At this, Ari smiled and withdrew a small silver flask from his shirt pocket.
“Here, drink,” he said. Yossi unscrewed the top of the flask and took a long swig, letting some of the hard liquor run down the outside of his throat, and drip down his stubbly neck, shining in the sun.
“Ah, todah (thanks), Ari. That hit the spot,” Yossi said.
“I’m glad, Yossi. But tell me, what the hell happened to you?”
“Alright,” Yossi said, “Its quite simple really. We were on patrol down near the Bab-el-Wad, about 15 meters from the road, and we see these arab fedayeen coming up from the south east. So I tell Chaim to get under cover and set up that old Russki machine gun, and I tell Yuval to get under cover—we saw this pile of rocks on top of a rise along the side of the road. I told him to take his Springfield and high tail it up there. The rest of us—well, you know what we did. When they were about seven meters away from us—and they still hadn’t seen us, surprisingly enough—we popped up and just blasted them. We got seven of them in the first few seconds, but then they reacted, and it was a whole lot more than one squad, it was more like a platoon or two—they had like 25 men! And they recovered and started shooting us up. Yuval opened up with his Springfield, and Chaim let the Russki gun go crazy, but we couldn’t overcome they’re firepower. That Russki gun is a piece of crap, too. Less than a minute after Chaim opened up with it, it overheated, and now we can’t use it. So Chaim started back down towards us, and took out a few guys, but then he got hit in the shoulder and fell. Yuval then popped the leader off with one shot through the head, and then they started falling back. We shot at them as they ran, but most of those remaining after us survived. We just got back ten minutes ago, and Chaim and Eli are both at the medic. Eli’s wound is pretty serious,” said Yossi.
“I’m sorry. Well, soon enough you guys’ll get you’re revenge, eh?” Ari said.
“What do you mean, Ari?” asked Yossi.
“Well, you know as well as I do that the old man is adamant about keeping Jerusalem, and we can’t do that with the siege going on. So word is that he’s going to order another attack on Latrun in the next few days,” Ari responded somberly.
“But we just attacked them a few days ago, and we were slaughtered like sheep!” argued Yossi.
“I know that, but you know the Old Man, things have got to be done his way or not at all,” Ari said. “But hear we’re going to have a secret weapon of sorts this time around,” he continued. “It seems as if the old man has gotten a new commander to be the top general of the army. Someone with real experience—an American, by the name of Mickey Marcus. Supposedly, he’s a west point graduate, and he fought in Europe during the last war. If he’s gonna be our commander, I think we might stand a chance,” Ari said.
“Wow, I hope this is true, Ari. But how do you know all this, Achi?” Yossi asked.
“What are you talking about, ‘how do I know’? This is Israel! Anything that’s a secret here won’t stay secret for more than twenty minutes, tops! Everyone knows everything about everybody else! You, of all people, should know that!” Ari replied, chuckling. At this point the sun had finally crested over the horizon, and Ari put on his wide-brimmed floppy hat.
“He’s supposed to be arriving in Tel-Aviv today,” he said. “What say you and I go back down to HQ and say hello to Dov?” Ari asked.
“Okay by me,” Yossi replied. They began their trek down the earthworks, past the sleeping tents, and all the storage areas, past men getting ready for a day of fighting, or waiting to fight, all the way to the rear of the complex, if that’s what you want to call the defenses. They walked all the way back to the HQ tent, where the company commander, Dov Einad, was looking over a sand table map of the Latrun fortress and the surround territory.
“Hello, Ari! Yossi, how goes it? What news do you have for me?” Dov asked.
“Nothing much from me, Dov, but Yossi’s guys got in a nice little firefight last night,” Ari said.
“Oh, is that true, Yossi?” he asked.
“Yea, it is Dov,” replied Yossi.
“Nu? What happened?” Dov asked impatiently.
“Nothing too special. The long and the short of it is that we ambushed a platoon of fedayeen, but we thought they were only a small raiding party, so we were out manned and out gunned. We fought ‘em off, though,” Yossi said.
“Any casualties?” Dov asked.
“Two. Chaim and Eli. They’re both in the medic right now. Eli’s hurt pretty bad,” Yossi said somberly.
“Well, all things considered, that’s not too bad,” Dov said. He walked around to the other end of the sand table, near the location of the scale model of the Latrun fortress. He grabbed some model howitzer guns from a side table and placed them in and around the fortress.
“The arab legion is re-enforcing their positions, gentlemen. We need to attack as soon as possible, so as to deny them a chance to dig in. Any ideas, guys?” Dov asked, while looking woefully at the situation on the sand table.
He walked over to the other side of the table, to where the Israeli forces sat, and pointed out their forces.
“We have four companies available to us, many of them below optimum strength. Two of them are below half-strength. Your guy’s company, code named Barak, is here,” he said pointing towards a model of a soldier and a truck near Bab-el-Wad. He continued, saying, “then here,” he pointed to another model, “Asher Nitzan and his company, which I’ve dubbed Nachash.” He continued pointing and moving down the line of troops as he named them off.
“Here is Uri Arbel’s brigade, I’ve code-named Maccabi. They’ve taken heavy casualties, and are below half strength. Then, here’s Yoav’s brigade over here, that has replaced most of its losses with immigrants, fresh off the boat. I’ve dubbed them Olim brigade. They’re finally back at almost full strength, however, they’re almost all immigrants who don’t know the first thing about guns, let alone fighting arabs! This is the situation we’re in, and the Old Man wants us to take Latrun?!? Who does he think I am, the Mashiach [Messiah]?” Dov challenged.
“Dov, is there any news on that American, Mickey Marcus?” Ari asked.
“Yes, Moshe is going to go collect him from the airport now. Supposedly he’s also bringing weapons and ammunition,” he said. Ari, Yossi and Dov looked at each other, and shared a great, hearty smile at the mention of supplies.
“Oh, Baruch HaShem (Blessed is the Name of God)!” said Yossi.
“God died in Poland,” said Ari, but it sure is lucky that we’re finally getting supplies,” he continued. At that, they heard the unmistakably distinct sound of jeep tires rolling on sand and gravel. They looked out of the HQ tent, and they saw Moshe pulling up to the HQ tent with Mickey Marcus inside with him. Behind them was a lorry loaded full to bursting with crates of what appeared to be guns and ammunition.
Moshe and Mickey Marcus, the American General, under the alias of “Colonel Stone” got out of the Jeep and walked into the HQ tent. Colonel Stone was tall and lanky and extremely pale. He was clean-shaven, a sure sign of an outsider among the rough and ready rag-tag new army. He was also more formal than any Israeli soldier was used to, referring to officers by their ranks rather than their names. Moshe on the other hand, was a tall and dark skinned sabra of Sephardic descent. As they walked into the command tent, Ari, looking rather scraggly and dirty, embraced Moshe, his longtime friend and rival.
“How are you, Asher?” he asked.
“Good, good, Ari. And you?”
“I can’t complain too much, Moshe, but look at you! A company commander! You still beat me at everything!”
“At least we’re on the same team this time,” Moshe said, laughing.
“Yes, very true, old friend, very true,” Ari said. He continued, whispering, “Is that the American?”
“Yes he is. But he doesn’t speak a word of Hebrew, so the Old Man’s got me assigned as his translator and aide-de-camp,” Moshe complained.
“Well, you seem to be movin’ up in the world, aren’t you, Moshe?” Ari teased.
“Yeah, I guess,” Moshe said, halfheartedly, depressed to leave his men. Ari placed his hand on Moshe’s shoulder, knowingly.
“Don’t worry, soon enough you’ll be back with your men,” Ari consoled. He continued, “Well, aren’t you going to introduce us to our new commander?”
Moshe chuckled clapped his hand to his forehead and said,
“Of course! I knew I forgot something!”
Moshe led Ari and Yossi, who had been studying the sand table while smoking a cigarette, over to where the tall, lanky, pale new general of the IDF was standing. As they were walking, Moshe spoke to his comrades saying,
“Think of this as an excuse to practice your English.”
As they came up to “Colonel Stone”, Moshe said to him in flawless English he learned during his service with the British during World War two,
“Aluf Stone, allow me to indroduce you to two very good friends of mine, both of whom happen to be platoon commanders, Ari Levin,” he pointed to Ari, who extended his hand in a friendly handshake. He continued, “And Yossi Kohen.” Yossi also extended his hand towards Aluf “Stone”.
“Its very nice to meet you both, Sergeants,” Marcus said. He continued,
“I heard you gents were low on supplies so I thought I’d bring you guys some new toys.” As he said this, he grinned widely and flourished his right arm out towards the lorry, which had become the center of commotion. Many new, young soldiers had passed by the lorry and recognized what they saw in the lorry: weapons crates. Overjoyed, they began to climb in and out of the lorry and began to prematurely unload the weapons. Aluf Stone saw what was going on, and, fearing that they might damage the contents, began yelling,
“Watch out there! Come in now, be careful with that! He yelled, taking his floppy sun hat off his head and waving it around his head like a madman. He continued yelling.
“The contents of that crate are worth more than YOU are, boy, BE CAREFUL WITH THAT!!!” He kept yelling to little or no avail, and finally he gave up yelling and just turned on his heel and his hat on the ground and put his hands on his hips, in a sure sign of desperation, because none of his soldiers unloading the crates understood him. He sighed heavily. Finally, all the crates had been unloaded from the lorry, and a soldier of about twenty years old emerged from a tent with a crowbar. He pried open the first crate, and when the lid came off, the entire gaggle of soldiers let out a unanimous “Oooooh” from sheer excitement of seeing brand new, top of the line weapons for them. In the first crate, M1 rifles, in another crate, Thomson submachine guns, in another, machine guns, in other crates, hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition. To those who saw it, it was a truly beautiful sight. The men began immediately distributing the new weapons with plenty of ammunition to every soldier. Despite the protests of Aluf Stone, who was only understood by a few, the distribution didn’t stop until each soldier had a new weapon and plenty of ammunition for it.
Finally, Stone felt obligated to finally get down to business, and cut the celebration of this small miracle to a minimum. So he stepped onto an empty crate, and yelled at the top of his lungs,
“Staff meeting in one half hour! At exactly 0630 hours, I expect to see every field commander in the HQ tent! You have a half hour!” He then stepped down from the crate and walked back into the HQ tent. Moshe then translated exactly what Aluf Stone had said to the men into Hebrew, so that all the soldiers would understand.
The staff meeting was brief, but consisted of many important things.
Mickey Marcus, the new general, said,
“Good morning, gentlemen. I am General Stone. I will be your new commander for this campaign. First, before we get into the details of planning another attack, I need to learn who’s who, and what exactly the situation is”
Moshe translated this for those who couldn’t speak English. He called on a scraggly youth who was standing right in front of the sand table, with a new rifle slung over his shoulder, and wearing a tattered, dirty, khaki “uniform” shirt.
“You,” he said, pointing, “tell me, what is the situation in this area, and what also is your name”
“Ken, Hamifaked (Yes, Commander),” the youth replied. In English he continued, “My name is Lior Saltzman. My family has lived here for twenty years. We moved here from Poland. The situation in this area is that we need to keep the arabs from succeeding in their siege of Jerusalem, because if they do, they keep it, basically. And the Old Man wants Jerusalem. The Arab Legion, from TransJordan, armed and trained by the British, are currently surrounding the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, as well as the rest of Jerusalem. They are also taking up positions in the Latrun fortress on the Jerusalem road, in order to prevent our convoys of food and supplies from breaking through to Jerusalem. We’ve tried to take Latrun twice. On the Old Man’s orders, we assaulted the fortress twice in the past week and a half. We were slaughtered like cattle.”
“I see,” said Stone, calculating. “You,” he said, pointing to another person, “what is the status of our forces in the area?”
“My name is Adi Gadem,” he said, prefacing his answer, “Well, in terms of organized units, we have the four companies companies that are here. The only other troops available on the Jerusalem front is the small remnants of the underground who have refused to join the regular army.”
“Hmm, this could make things interesting,” said Aluf Stone. He continued, “Could someone please tell me, is there any other way of getting into Jerusalem other than under the line of fire of the guns in Latrun?”
At this, Yossi Kohen, a sabra and a Jerusalemite, said,
“Aluf Stone, there are a few ways, but there is no bypass large enough to handle an entire convoy of trucks, and lorries, and busses, let alone an army!”
This sparked five or six minutes of fierce arguing and yelling amongst the young Israeli officers, culminating in Aluf Stone shooting his pistol up in the air to regain control of the tent.
“Well, sergeant Kohen,” he said, “You might have to show me these ways and let me be the judge of that.”
“Ken (yes) Aluf Stone,” Yossi replied.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The night was dark, and there was no moon in the sky. Yossi sighed relief at this fact, because it made his job a whole lot easier, and safer. He and Ari were leading Aluf Stone into the Old City of Jerusalem through the ancient water cisterns under the city. As they approached the entrance to the cisterns on King George street, they loped amongst the shadows, making sure they were as quick and quiet as possible.
“Quickly, this way!” Yossi hissed. He ducked into an alley behind a butcher shop, and located a man-hole cover in the middle of the alley. He lifted the lid, called to his comrades to follow him, and ducked inside. The man-hole cover didn’t cover a sewer, but rather, ancient water cisterns built in the time of King David. Now, as then they would serve a vital purpose in breaking the siege of Jerusalem. On the side walls of the cisterns were deathly narrow catwalks, just wide enough for one person to traverse walking sideways, while hanging onto the walls with his hands.
“Careful, Aluf Stone, these walls can get quite slippery,” he said cautiously with an air of authority of having lived in Jerusalem all his life. “You don’t want to fall into that water, either,” he continued. “its extremely cold, very loud, and very, very, deep”
Finally, after what seemed like a couple of hours, but, in reality was only fifteen or so minutes, they came to the end of the cistern.
“This is our stop,” Yossi said, smiling at his cleverness. He grabbed an iron hand hold on the side of the cistern wall. Ari and Aluf Stone followed him. When they emerged from the cistern, they found themselves in a large alley, with a very large, old wall on one side, flanked by a large, ancient tower, and, in the distance, a large gate made of stone. Across the alley was a densely populated arab neighborhood.
“Well, sergeant, where are we?” asked Colonel Stone.
“Aluf Stone, please call me Yossi. We here in Israel are not as formal as you Americans,” Yossi said. He continued, after pausing for dramatic effect, “We are now in the kotel plaza. That tower to your left is the Tower of David, and that tall wall over there is the western wall. If you look closely, you might be able to see the dome of the Rock, and the Zion Gate.”
Stone was dumbstruck. After a pause for a reflective, speechless moment, he said,
“Wow. Who’da thunk this is what we’ve been wailing over for centuries?”
“I hate to disturb you guys, but we have places we need to be—and this isn’t one of ‘em,” Ari butted in.
“Right you are, Ari,” Yossi said. He continued, saying, “Yalla! (Lets go!)” At that, he cupped his hands over his mouth, and hooted like an owl. This was the code the members of the former underground were waiting for. As one, they emerged from the shadows they were hiding amongst. They were dressed in black and Khaki with their weapons slung over their shoulders, they came to meet the new arrivals. Yossi went up to their leader, Uri ben Yosef, his childhood friend, and introduced him to Aluf Stone.
“Pleased to meet you, Aluf Stone,” the tall dark skinned sabra said.
“Pleased to meet you too, Uri ben Yosef,” Stone returned.
Uri then continued,
“Ma matzav (whats up), Ari? How is everybody?”
Ari replied genially, talking in Hebrew. Then, Uri ben Yosef turned back to Aluf Stone, and said,
“What can I do for you, Mr. Stone? It seems we are fighting the same enemy, and we are both trying to break this siege”
“Yes, we are,” Stone replied. He continued, “Prime Minister Ben-Gurion wants us to take Latrun, but I am trying to find out if there are other ways of getting travel through to Jerusalem without wasting men trying to take it. Do you know any?”
“Ech….Ben-Gurion that mamzer? He thinks he can have us take Latrun just by willing it? He must take Herzl literally, then, because its impossible. Maybe if he spent more time in his own country rather than trying to get us foreign friends he’d know we can’t take Latrun with the equipment and situation we have…” Uri said.
“Uri, that’s not fair. Ben-Gurion may be a spoiled Polish mamzer, but he does go out into the land. He is a kibbutznik after all,” Yossi replied.
“Maybe so, but that doesn’t change the fact that we can’t take Latrun,” Uri said.
“I know that, and I never said it did. I just said that you weren’t being fair to the Old Man,” Yossi said.
“Fine,” Uri said. He continued, facing Stone, “I don’t, but I know someone who might. Come with me,” he said.
At that, they all moved out of the plaza, and moved into the twisting, turning, winding, narrow streets that made up the Old City of Jerusalem. They walked quickly to keep their chances of being spotted by Arab soldiers less. Within minutes, they crossed the threshold of the Lion’s Gate, into the Jewish Quarter. All of a sudden, a loud CRACK rang out across the all-to-silent night in Jerusalem. It was an Arab sniper firing at the party. Immediately, their battle-honed senses had them flatten themselves against the nearest walls, making themselves as hard a target as possible.
Uri yelled out in Hebrew to one of his men,
“Zuz! Achshav! Shi b’beit hasefer! (Move! Now! He’s in the synagogue!)”
At this, the man he was yelling at crept onto a side street, and quickly moved into the cover of an archway. Five seconds later, there was a short burst of high-powered rifle fire. CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!, followed by a painful scream and a thump of a body hitting the ground from a roof. For good measure, he lobbed a homemade grenade onto the roof where the sniper had been. As the soldier, a 19 year old Jerusalemite, named Yuval Goldstien, trotted back to the group loaded down with an extra rifle and ammunition.
“Fuckers. Won’t ever learn, do they, Uri?” he asked nonchalantly.
“I don’t know, but we’ll have to wait and see,” Uri replied. He continued, “Tell Alon that we wish to make contact with Hasan”
“B’seder (okay), Uri,” Yuval said, and disappeared around the corner.
“Well, now what?” Aluf Stone asked.
“Well, now we wait for Yuval to make contact, and come back,” Uri replied.
“Okay. How long will that take?” Stone asked.
“It depends. Normally, though, he can make contact within a few minutes.”
Fifteen minutes passed, and Yuval came trotting back to the group, with a huge smile on his face.
“He’ll meet us,” he said, smiling and nodding his head up and down.
“Yofe (beautiful),” Uri said. He continued, “Where? When?”
“On top of the Mount, in twenty minutes,” Yuval replied.
“B’seder---Kadima! (okay, Lets move!),” Uri replied. The group retraced its steps, and went up a back alley behind David’s Tower, to get to a little known staircase, that led up to the top of the Temple Mount, or Mount Zion, where Hasan was to meet them. As they crested the top, they created a defensive perimeter, just in case, on top of the mount. Yossi, Uri, Ari and Aluf Stone walked to the center of the Mount in the space between the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosques, to where Hasan was sitting, with a rifle in his lap and a cup of tea in his hand.
“Asalaam alaykum (Peace be upon you), Hasan,” called Uri.
“Wa alaykum salaam (And peace be upon you), my friends,” Hasan said, rising to greet each one in the traditional arab manner, with a hug and kiss on each cheek. After he had offered each of them tea, and they had partaken, he asked,
“So, my friends, what seems to be the reason for this happy meeting?”
“Well, Hasan,” Uri began, “we were wondering if you knew any ways to bypass the Jerusalem road near Latrun.”
“Of course I do! Theres the Bab-el-Wad, and the El-Arishi pass, and many others. You should be ashamed of yourself, Uri—you’ve lived here you’re entire life! Hasan replied.
“I know about those, Hasan, but those are just camel paths—we need something wide enough to carry truck traffic—so we can bypass Latrun and break the siege”
“Insha’allah! Breaking the siege!” Hasan said, excitedly. He continued, “How can you say the Bab-el-Wad is just a camel path, boy? Last month, before the British left, my brother ‘borrowed’ an army Jeep and brought it through there fine! Well, except the price on his head…” Hasan claimed adamantly. “With a little work,” he continued, “trucks will be able to go through just fine!”
Aluf Stone broke in, saying,
“Can you show me this Bab-el-Wad, so I can see it myself and decide whether or not it can handle truck traffic?”
Ari cleared his throat,
“Aluf Stone, our camp is five kilometers from Bab-el-Wad. We can show it to you tomorrow morning at first light.”
“Yes, yes, tomorrow you will see it, American!” Hasan said. He continued. “And when you see I am right, you will grovel at my feet asking forgiveness for doubting me!”
Ari leaned in very close to Aluf Stone, and said.
“Hasan is a Bedouin chief of a very ancient line. He is very old, and very proud. But he likes us, and is very helpful. Trust me, don’t worry about him. He’s a pussycat.”
Dawn came quickly for them all, and as soon as the sun was up, they were all standing at the beginning to the Bab-el-Wad, near Latrun. Hasan Salaamiyyah, the Bedouin chief stood with them, gesticulating wildly with his arms.
“You see?!” he said, in a semi-accusatory tone, “See, trucks can fit through here!” he kept saying, insisting on the virtues of the Bab-el-Wad, as if his life, or honor, depended on its merits, when it was apparent to all the others that there was no way that the thin wadi camel path couldn’t handle truck traffic, or even cars, in its present form.
Aluf Stone stood with his hands on his hips, and turned to Ari and Yossi, saying,
“Well? What do you think? If we widen it a little bit on both sides, it may be doable, but we only have two weeks before the UN ceasefire, and we need to break the siege before then if we have any hope of keeping Jerusalem. We don’t have much time. Should we try it?”
“Well, Aluf Stone, it could be possible, but when would the work be done? All the available men are already at the fronts, and we’d have to do it at night so that the arabs wouldn’t know,” Yossi said, skeptical.
“Well, what if we did the digging with only hand tools, at night, without any extra light? We could get the labor from local citizen workforces. They might not be the best physical specimens, but they’re willing to work. It’s a longshot, that’s for damn sure, but it just might work,” Ari said.
“It’ll have to do. We start work on it immediately. Get your squads working on getting workers for the project. We’ve gotta try,” Aluf Stone said.
“B’seder (okay) Mickey,” Ari and Yossi chorused.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
A week laterm the extension of the road was finally completed, and the first convoys of supplies rolled into Jerusalem, on everything and anything that could carry the supplies: lorries, trucks, mules, camels, people walking things in, and every possible combination. This effectively broke the siege. People were flooding the streets, making it a veritable sea of people there, making next to impossible to move through the streets. Men and women, soldiers, civilians, people of all ages were dancing in the streets, celebrating the end of the siege. Uri ben Yosef and Yuval Goldstein came up to Ari, Yossi and Aluf Stone, and brought them into the middle of a ring of dancing soldiers.
“The siege is over thanks to you! The siege is over! Thank You! We owe you the lives of Jerusalem!” Uri exclaimed.
“It wasn’t just us,” Ari said, “You boys did a lot to help yourselves”
“True enough, but without your help, we never would have been able to hold out, let alone liberate the city,” Uri protested.
“Yeah,” Yossi replied, “but Yuval, if you hadn’t made contact with that Bedouin chief—Hasan, his name was, we would never have been able to have even known about the bypass. How do you know him anyway? And why is he helping us, he is arab, after all,” Yossi said.
“True enough. Hasan Salaamiyyah al-Watani is a Bedouin chief of an ancient family. He befriended my grandfather after the first war. I have known his since I had cognitive thought, and he’s helping us because he trusts us, and hated the other arabs. They murdered his people for hundreds of years, and he, rightfully so, doesn’t trust them. That’s why he’s helping us. But I’m not complaining.”
“Aluf Stone, where are you going from here?” Uri asked.
“Well, Uri, seeing as there is still a war going on, and I am still the general, we move into the Abu Ghosh monastery for the night, and move out towards the Galilee in the morning to re-enforce them there,” Marcus replied, short winded.
“Oh, B’seder (okay) Aluf Stone, that’s very good. The monks there will treat you well,” Uri said, and walked away, towards a café.
As the night fell at the Abu Ghosh monastery, the Jerusalem stone walls echoed with rejoicing. The men of the convoy had moved into the monastery for the night, however, that did nothing to slow their celebration of their accomplishment, nor to sober them for the task ahead. If anything, the hospitality of the monks aided them in their revelry, as the free-flowing alcohol enabled them to celebrate long into the night; longer than they normally would have been able to. After the drunken merriment had all but ended, Colonel Mickey Marcus, also known as Aluf Stone, awoke from his drunken stupor in a sqare chamber, with an over-full bladder. Wrapped in his white bedsheet for warmth against the cold Judean desert night, he walked into the courtyard to relive himself. As he approached the opposite end of the courtyard, a young, green, sentry was standing guard duty for the first time. Ever aware of the nearby Arab threat, he saw Aluf Stone, walking toward him in a white bedsheet, similar to arab clothing. Being a new recruit, he didn’t recognize the general, and he raised his gun to the firing position and yelled in Hebrew and Yiddish,
“Stop, Arab! Don’t come any further or I’ll blow your fucking head off!”
But Aluf Stone, who spoke no Hebrew, kept walking in his half drunken state. The sentry repeated himself,
“I said stop! Don’t move you Arab shit head! If you come any further, I’ll blow your head off!”
But Aluf Stone kept walking. Finally, the young sentry, thinking that the general was an arab infiltrator, pulled his rifle up to his shoulder and pulled the trigger.
CRACK! The rifle shot echoed through the monastery, and Mickey Marcus, American Jew from Brooklyn, New York, and the first general of the IDF, fell to the marble floor, dead.
CHAPTER 2
The air in the small Tel-Aviv office was hot and sticky, and the fan didn’t really cool the air, so much as stir it around the room. At the large desk in the center of the room, Prime Minister David ben-Gurion sat, engrossed in his work.
Suddenly, there were two sharp rasps on the door.
“Enter,” the Prime Minister said. In entered a woman, relatively nice looking, clean and not scraggly, in her late 30s to early or mid forties, entered the room.
“Ah, Golda! To what do I owe the pleasure?” the Prime Minister said, rising out of his chair to give her a friendly embrace.
“Nothing good, David,” she said solemly. She continued, “The American, Mickey Marucs, is dead.”
“What?” Ben-Gurion said, shocked. “How? When?” he asked, mixing business-like calculations with personal shock.
“Late last night, in Abu Ghosh. He was shot by some new immigrant sentry who didn’t know English, and he never knew Hebrew, so, this is what happened,” Golda replied. David ben-Gurion sunk into his chair, and covered his face with his hands, worried.
“Oy gevalt! (Oh woe!) What are we supposed to do now?” David ben-Gurion asked, rhetorically. “We can’t just pick a commander out of a hat. This is going to be a very interesting week and a half,” he muttered. “Please tell me that’s the worst of it, Golda,” he said, pleadingly.
“Well, um no, not exactly,” Golda said. “Also, remnants of the Irgun underground chartered a freighter, the Atalena, to sail here filled with weapons. But, unfortunately, they are saying they will only give them to Irgunniks (members of the Irgun),” Golda said, sadly.
“Ugh, what are things coming to, that we can’t even unify against the common enemy?” Ben-Gurion said, exasperated.
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