A Kaddish (poetry)
Agnon, S. Y.
a kaddish A king of flesh and blood who goes out to war against his enemies Brings forth his force to kill and to be killed. There is doubt whether he loves his soldiers, whether they are...
...God has sent the Syrian Army so that you can eat today," they ere told...
...Right after lunch a lookout screamed from the tower...
...The planes were sacrificed to lull the Israelis further into a stupefying sense of security, to probe their readiness, to test the wind...
...You tended the graves, a gentle thing to do...
...It had been practiced a hundred times...
...At what...
...Yes," answered Marshall...
...Two out of six, three out of seven . . . twenty out of thirty-one...
...But the sound was indistinguishable from the explosions and reports which filled the air, and which the night before had made the sky waxen and white...
...where they rested in expectation of dawn...
...You get close enough to kiss the fairies...
...Why...
...The Israeli soldiers were frozen with wonder and fear, Frederick had come with his staff onto the rampart...
...There was nothing more to do, so the soldiers played basketball...
...Occasionally Marshall would remembered where he was and what he was doing, and his eyes would cloud in absolute panic...
...Do we have .nought gas to get to Naffak...
...They stopped...
...An agitated sergeant leaned over him, shaking as he spoke...
...They set up with supreme speed while the halftrack idled in the hollow...
...They waited until the Syrians came into sight, and the battle was enjoined...
...Marshall made Baruch stop the halftrack...
...Yossi Merzl, the secretary of the kibbutz, came by on his tractor and stopped the motor...
...I went to the ghetto in Lodz...
...I hope you understand English," said Marshall...
...Then the Arabs made the war igainst us in forty-eight, and I went with the others to light...
...Marshall was impressed by Palmer's nonchalance about crossing the green line...
...The machine gunner blew up the mines...
...Determination suddenly flooded the vibrating steel trap in which they rode...
...Plus a minnow's eye," said Prithvi...
...When I was younger I lived in Poland...
...Hello Lydia," he said...
...He passed many troops...
...Within half an hour he started to make his way back along a different route, which led to a steep defile down which he wanted to escape...
...We can last a hundred of these wars...
...did not make an inspirational speech, though there were dozens within him...
...Chobandresh...
...I tink it is funny," he said, and then slapped his knee in the beginning of another fit, ". . . funny tat in tis little ting . . . oh . . . oh...
...He seemed so human...
...At Kfar Yona, the cows thrust their thick padded heads through the round iron rails of the pens in continual efforts to reach the other side...
...No one knew if in fact he were a Jew, or how he had gotten there...
...I didn't know there were so many...
...Caught up dangerously in only one feeling and one idea, as they rode south toward the battle, they wished to die...
...They had been trundling nut on the northern flank of the Syrian Seventh Infantry Division and had never penetrated...
...Marshall was overwhelmed by the means with which they aimed the mortar...
...The capital...
...And scowl at them when you see them...
...But then their courage had returned...
...He jumped out and stood on a boulder...
...They would never see him...
...Whatever it was, he certainly thought that it was funny...
...It was not pleasant, and he felt as if he and they were moles who had ventured into the light...
...Before morning broke, the last chamber of the dream had him in China resting on a grassy river bank, while on the water junks and sampans moved quietly and in mystery, and above, a thousand star-shells burst over the night, flickering, falling, and darkening finally in the velvet stream...
...He understood no English and balked at descending the cliffs, explaining in his own language that he could not do it...
...The Orthodox chanted in rapid discord, facing Jerusalem 'd running through the body of prayer...
...They had run out of conversation and were staring awkwardly into the fire, dealing with their decayed mouths...
...The others soon joined in...
...Because Russian tank guns could not point very far downward, Marshall sought a depression in the road...
...When Marshall had returned from the Fourth Daughter, she felt as if she were suffering with him the privations of an Ottoman soldier...
...At first, they tried to keep score, but they were too agitated to remember the numbers...
...Yes...
...Baruch and Chobandresh manned the mortar, Chobandresh being gunner and Baruch shell-handler...
...There is a balance to everything—symmetry, compensations...
...hey they buried Wilson in hard ground which seemed, as gasoline-fired light flickered across it...
...The two Bengalis destroyed three tanks and forced the others into temporary retreat...
...That is why veterans will never make the peace, and why, in denying the nobility of battle, pacifists cultivate war...
...They had destroyed five tanks, the last of which blocked the road...
...On Palmer's advice, he took several belts of whisky before setting off, and tried to think of the whole thing as a lark...
...The five rocket men were hidden—two, two, and one—in a position of enfilading crossfire...
...They laughed, they cried, they even kissed the ground...
...There were men in those shining, soundless, weightless spots—swaying in arcs of gravity and flight, fighting to kill, higher above the earth than effeminate clouds, surrounded by glass and steel and tailpipes burnished black by jets of fire...
...But not me...
...His job was to get as close to as many tanks as he could, and check for night-vision equipment...
...Chobandresh...
...In the pines and thin air of the northern mountains, Marshall had thought that he was high...
...He looked at the sleepless soldiers who had been driven from all corners of the world...
...Only Marshall had understood all his words, but the others had fathomed his tone, and, with a great cheer, they turned from the walls and rushed for their vehicles...
...But their positions had changed, and they were concentrated in such a way as to appear far more numerous, at least in those sections easily observed...
...He's throwing rocks at me, the creep...
...I didn't understand...
...It doesn't go that far...
...Nothing worked...
...But you know, and 1 know, that we are the earth's sinew, rendered by force and death from almost every country, adept at paying any price...
...Prithvi and Chobandresh would use the mortar to limit the enemy's area of action, to break up concentrations of vehicles, drive them into the open, and put them out of commission...
...Inside, 1 was dead...
...He was tight inside...
...When you go to America and have your wheat farm, thrive in ihe peace, but don't pity those in war...
...They could well move on to something else...
...They were angry...
...His expression was a cross between a frown and a smile...
...Many people died, people I loved...
...The valley almost burned, and a warm wind pushed through the trees as loud as a freight train...
...the plains had arisen...
...A Syrian patrol car was slowly winding its way along the road, playing an arc light in a side to side sweep...
...And because he loves us and we are few in number, Each one of us is as important in His eyes as a whole regiment...
...Many of the T-54s had them as well...
...I escaped...
...Riding in the helicopter to the Royal George had been much the same, as had the sudden inertia and Easternness of Tel Aviv, and the thick agricultural abundance of the Jordan Valley...
...His name was Palmer...
...Profoundly shocked, Marshall realized that because they did not know mathematics, they could not call out artillerymen's degrees...
...Walk loose...
...In darkness, the Syrian patrol thought that it was a wreck...
...I did dangerous hings...
...It seemed insane for a halftrack and some infantry to hold the road against a column of two dozen or more enemy tanks—but they were doing it...
...Marshall went out alone one day late in September, just before dusk...
...When Marshall arrived at Fortress Six in the beginning of September there were actually fewer Syrian tanks than when he had left...
...When it was over and the dust had cleared, and we -larted up again even though there were many new graves, 1 hardly knew what was going on...
...She shook her head affirmitively, and smiled sadly when she thought of leaving them under siege and in danger...
...He reached the base of the cliff, and heard the Russian screaming and rocks falling into the wadi near him...
...In the way that a farmer can sense a storm from the speed of clouds, the random electrification of the air, and the light in its gray and purple variations, Arieh Ben Barak smelled the full scent of war...
...The Syrian Army covered the world...
...The Air Force was all over the place...
...Chobandresh adjusted the mortar and fired off a shot...
...With the onset of darkness he made his way across the free zone, and approached Syrian lines just as the troops began to congregate about blazing gas fires and cookpots for their dinners...
...Would I always be hitter and unhappy...
...Just to say that we're alive, for fun...
...So that when the sun swept over the escarpment from Jordan and Iraq, instead of taking notes she found herself sketching the cows and chickens as they frolicked in front of her...
...What range...
...To make a very long story very short, the Nazis came...
...They marked the spot with a shovel and his helmet, and found a safer :ce...
...Two Syrian tanks ripped around the corner and began to charge the ridge at full speed...
...He responded in Arabic with a heavy Russian accent...
...Looks like some real stuff," Palmer had said, "like a big holy war...
...She noted in her sketchbook that they looked as distrustful as bears, and could be smelled for miles...
...The other two Bengalis went to pieces, crying .md sobbing, and it was particularly dreadful to shovel raw earth onto Wilson's small upturned face, and then leave him in the suffocating ground...
...Wilson stood at the machine gun, ready to cut down flanking infantry...
...Each war is the same, like holding your breath for as long as you can and then realizing how wonderful it is just to breathe...
...They started moving with the light...
...He got to bed by ten o'clock, and his sleep would have been peaceful had he not had one dream after another in which he was running a foot race...
...Chobandresh began to giggle and continued until he was wild with laughter...
...Prithvi turned to Chobandresh and said, "A minnow's head...
...They stood with weapons in hand and mouths open...
...He took half the force and assigned the other half to Marshall...
...But they wanted more than that to tear furiously into a Syrian column...
...This seemed nearly impossible, but saving a sudden Israeli counteradvance or coming upon a wrecked vehicle from which they could siphon gasoline, it was the only thing to do...
...But not me...
...Most important was the energy of transit—for which it was worthwhile even to be driven in a breathless life...
...Now I'll never get to sleep and I'll be too tired to fight...
...They didn't have time, and the tank got to the beginning of the slope...
...They aimed for a long moment and fired...
...And you'd better get that close...
...It was the sleeplessness, the fumes, the lack of food, and the memory of Wilson's blood spattering all over them...
...I heard this...
...He cancelled all leave, stockpiled ammunition and anti-tank weapons, summoned as many spare units as he could to the fortresses, impressed upon his subordinates the need for vigilance, and intensified efforts at gathering intelligence...
...The commanders went under...
...They had wonderful courage, and, once over the giggling fit, they looked ahead calmly and unflinchingly...
...They saw Israeli tanks many ales away raising dust clouds in little wars of close maneuver...
...He screamed his coming to the Israeli lines, but no one was there...
...Finally, we have come to enjoy this fight, and why shouldn't we...
...It was hard to see because of the sweat...
...One of the soldiers had brought a towel, and made it a present to his commander so that Marshall could wipe dry his sunglasses, his binoculars, and the knobs of the radio...
...Can you do it...
...He said to Marshall, "I am not afraid...
...The turret was knocked ajar...
...The Russian looked at him in panic...
...Yossi Merzl knew exactly what she was thinking, and dismounted from his huge tractor to sit beside her on the iron rail...
...Tt's the Purple Line," said Palmer...
...He went overland and then got onto a road...
...They were hungry and thirsty and, by evening, had lost the feeling of invulnerability which they had enjoyed for an hour or so after the tank battle...
...The Syrian turned on his floodlight to see if the vehicle approaching him were another Syrian...
...The Syrian Third Armored Division had passed through the Seventh Infantry to press the attack...
...Yes sir," answered an Ethiopian tank driver...
...Marshall went down the cliff as if he were skiing— creating rock slides, falling terrified in darkness only to be arrested suddenly on a slim ledge over a sheer drop, speaking to himself in a slow encouraging voice...
...Just after he raced across a flat half-mile in the U.N...
...Marshall did not even try to sleep...
...He continued, but the man reached him just as the two of them passed completely beyond sight of those at the campfire...
...Their cture was confused...
...You may not understand, but . . . "It was very nice of you to garden in the cemetery...
...They had enough fuel to reach the Israeli line west on the plateau, if they were to go straight through the Syrians...
...In the middle of the night a Syrian infantry patrol passed by, leading a tank...
...Move...
...Enough ammunition had been stockpiled to last for days...
...The Bengalis had turned out to be excellent, excellent soldiers...
...And even if they are important in his eyes, they are no more important than corpses...
...Steeply banked, the road went downhill and was slightly curved...
...He and Lydia both had a knack for speaking other languages in various foreign dialects...
...At choke points he passed right through, eating from his plate as he walked...
...For Lydia, even in the space of minutes, a gate had -dosed, and a gate had opened...
...We'll miss you...
...a deluge of columns approached...
...Some whimpered and were told to shut up...
...A wind from the plain upwelled against the palisades, bringing with it the low unearthly sound of thousands of moving tanks and armored vehicles...
...When Marshall saw that nothing followed the dozen -.oldiers and the lone tank, he got everyone into the halftrack and started up the motor...
...Yes...
...Why did you have to wake me up to tell me that...
...Instead, he took a song shower, put on a clean uniform, and shaved close, because it was Yom Kippur, no one was supposed to eat, hut everyone did...
...We are now fighting ten times our number...
...It was a moment in which all time could anchor...
...Are you afraid of these silly incontinent bastards, those . . . those crotchless half-wits...
...The phrases were extraordinary—"a grain of rice to that way...
...Knowing that the main counter to a mass wave of Syrian armor was the Air Force, Arieh Ben Barak guessed that the Syrians (aware themselves that Israeli planes were crippled at night) would break precedent and tradition to start their jihad in darkness...
...The new Captain of Commandos arrived, an Englishman who was so calm that he seemed to enjoy the heat of the moment as an Eskimo might enjoy a blazing fire...
...Marshall was about to burst, when he took the pistol and hit the captain on the back of his neck, collapsing him onto the stones...
...was as if the ground were moving to swallow them up...
...They saw many of its planes destroyed...
...There is doubt whether he loves his soldiers, whether they are important in his eyes Or whether they are not important in his eyes...
...At the kibbutz she was generally content—and lonely...
...In fact, you should be more than a little drunk...
...Despite :he fact that it has been made the primary duty of every Jew, it in itself is not so special...
...They saw their own deaths...
...On the ,50-caliber machine gun, Wilson would try to handle opposing infantry and keep the tank commanders inside, hatches down...
...He chose the latter and, as expected, his gun would not lower enough...
...Marshall smiled at him and tossed his plate of stew onto the road, revealing in the low moonlight his Webly and Scott pistol, angular and nasty, pointing at the Russian's heart...
...They burst through dust and small stones...
...I was skillful at escaping, but so what if I could walk around...
...And I don't have contempt for them...
...He had wild white hair, and a face with so many places written into it that he could have been a gazeteer...
...A sheep's heart...
...Fortress Six did not answer...
...The sky was filled with planes, with the white trails of surface-to-air missiles, with the noise of shells...
...Somewhat optimistic, they began their drive for Naffak...
...Arieh Ben Barak decided then that war was imminent...
...He ran along the fence until a mine gap, climbed the wire, and threw himself down on the Army road—where he sat soaking wet, his heart pounding, his face flushed with heat...
...I escaped...
...Just as the tank started forward to confront the halftrack they hit it broadside with four rockets and it exploded in a muffled roar...
...They tried to sleep, and could do so only for i minute or a two at a time...
...But how do you think I got stiff enough to run around in their encampment...
...The tank commander's choice was to back off a little and machine gun the mines, or try to fire on the halftrack...
...Maybe...
...The vehicles were tanked up, turned over, and as-inbled by order of sortie, with the Centurions first and the APC's following...
...I'm not saying, you understand, that I worship survival...
...Marshall passed quite a few tank parks, keeping a running tally as best he could...
...Knowing that force ratios were ten to one against them, they realized that targets would abound on the fixed pre-ranged killing grounds for which they headed...
...like a dry field suddenly feeling the flood...
...It struck the lead tank on a corner and blew apart the tread...
...And if it were not infantry, it would be an air strike, against which they would have no chance whatsoever...
...He was proud that he could run swiftly even in darkness...
...I don't worry," he said to them, "about the outcome of this war...
...The captain started to lose control, and so did Marshall...
...After five minutes into which ten hours seemed to fit, they went forward, tights dazing...
...The noise of the halftrack was deafening, its color and weight mortal and earthlike...
...As Marshall passed, every tortured and suspicious eye was upon him...
...He climbed the long concrete stairs...
...Yes...
...Yet another picture awaited them in Columbine...
...By this time the tanks were firing at the ridge, but they had no targets...
...What's funny...
...Israel was still fighting on the Golan, and the Reserves had not yet come into play...
...Three platoons of tanks and secondary armor rumbled through the iron doorway into the wide-open air...
...If you're going to be a Russian, you should be a little drunk," Palmer had said...
...Marshall looked at the precipice...
...They come...
...Not only did he go to the Chief of Staff and the Defense Minister (who sent only one extra armored brigade and put the Air Force on a high state of alert), but he began to take action independently...
...Hher Israeli units were fighting on the Heights not in a line, but in scattered pockets...
...Therefore, oh our brother, the whole house of Israel, who mourn in this mourning, We turn our hearts to our Father in Heaven, and we pray for ourselves and for Him: Yitgadal Vyitkadash sKmay raba B'olma deeVra chirutay, Vyamlech malchutey, v'yatzmach Vyekarev m'sheechey That we may be worthy to live and see with our very eyes Oseh shalom bim'romav, hu ya'aseh shalom aleinu Val kol Yisrael That He who in his mercies makes peace in the heavens will make peace for us And for all Israel, and let us say, Amen...
...They come...
...Baruch was the driver...
...Marshall smelled the other soldiers near him...
...The first time, Palmer had taken two men out in early morning and returned several hours later, puffing up the road, a stick under his arm...
...You see them...
...In addition to insulting the Syrians continuously and with verve, he had studied a route through the tels, consulted mine maps, and eaten carrots...
...To his disgust, a man jumped up and ran toward him yelling something in Russian, of which Marshall understood not a single word...
...Marshall asked...
...Marshall motioned for him to turn around...
...They ate nervously...
...Moving in darkness, much less fighting, was impossible with the equipment they had on the track they were to follow...
...Marshall and I are going to have a wheat farm, in America...
...Then I came to Palestine...
...The morale of the Syrians was not heightened and infused with vigor and destiny as before an assault...
...On the sixth of October, Marshall was awakened just before dawn...
...As he ran he saw the lights of the armored car sweeping the tels...
...But our king, the king of kings, the Holy One, Blessed be He, Desires life, loves peace and pursues peace, Loves Israel His people and has chosen us from all the nations, Not because we are greater in number, for we are the least in number...
...And when, with a foolish grin, Marshall had come out onto the balcony above the sea, suddenly a lieutenant in a rakish hat, she had moved through another gate...
...Chobandresh adjusted the mortar, threw in a shell, and, a little later, they saw a white puff in the valley...
...Fire a mortar round...
...Both sides were flaccid mud, but it was the crossing-over which magnetized them...
...The tank blew up in flames...
...We hold on with shocking force, and we have stiff, leathern necks...
...It wet their shirts and dripped down their bodies, but they pressed forward in a cloud of their own engine smoke...
...But there it had to stop short because Baruch had put three mines on the road...
...When she and Marshall had married, she had felt as if she were starting a new life...
...But she was full of early morning energy and light-heartedness, and she was happy...
...He was so human...
...But, you know, we left it un-tended almost on purpose...
...Coming up even with the tank, they fired their rockets in a broadside and hit it in several places...
...They turned from one of the greatest sights in history, the noise of which was like a thousand muted thunderstorms, and looked at Palmer as he proceeded across the equipment-packed courtyard—his measured pace echoing off the walls—as if he were expected to check the distance and verify what they saw or tell them that it was a dream...
...But then they came upon a high hill hich looked over everything...
...They imagined their friends lying dead in a pile just outside the gates, their whitened flesh slit in a hundred places...
...Very well," Marshall answered...
...But what I'm trying to say is, don't feel bad about ?s...
...They understood from hoarse pleadings and confused orders coming over their radio that the Israelis were inflicting heavy losses on the attackers, but suffering many casualties themselves in their much smaller ranks...
...They can burn us, and crush us, and slaughter our children, but we arise...
...Begin...
...He looked worried and preoccupied...
...A soul buried in the ground rises in the air...
...And suddenly, they came by one day and you saw that they were different, full of enthusiasm, as if their hearts had been :eplaced and they had taken new souls...
...There were 177 tanks on the Golan, and the Syrians were a few miles away with 900...
...I loved Kfar Yona, I loved to see it grow, but I was still a smashed-up Jew from a ghetto in Poland...
...I was told to tell everyone," said Bar-Shalom, in e xit...
...Prithvi signaled Chobandresh, and a mortar round soared over the ridge and landed fifty yards in front of the tanks...
...I want to tell you something," he said...
...my sister's gold bracelet forward...
...But the day ihat I got back, I looked around at this simple farm, I looked up at those mountains, and I cried...
...When that happened, they thought, they would all take their holidays in Damascus...
...It was dark...
...When the halftrack had been parked in the ditch it had tilted sideways until it had almost turned over, and they left the doors flung open...
...The scrambled for the halftrack and drove east toward the U.N...
...Prithvi lay just atop the ridge, spotting for the mortar...
...Zone, a Syrian flare burst as white as phosphorus, casting stronger than mooniike shadows, like fireworks over a lake in a summer resort...
...As the gates opened and shut, each frame had about it the satisfaction of a good painting, and the engine clicked on in strokes of color...
...The motors roared...
...Marshall had a high point from which to command, and was ready with his submachine gun to fire at infantry...
...Arriving even with the line of men, he squinted into the air and observed the unified mass of the entire Syrian Army...
...Into the valley...
...As the other tank pressed forward, Marshall shouted for them to reload...
...His knees were knocking...
...A volley of heavy machine gun fire signaled the end of their effort, and their light went off...
...They succeeded neither in reaching one of the main Syrian columns nor in coming close because the Syrian advance was protected on its flanks by heavily reinforced anti-tank positions against which they dared not move...
...We were still alive...
...Marshall heard the familiar sound of Israeli tank guns, and the familiar crack of Syrian artillery...
...Marshall felt arising within him strength which he had not known, and was thankful...
...He was a captain, and he began to cry...
...When Wilson was killed, the Bengalis had cried like babies...
...Chobandresh tried to answer but was overtaken by a fit of giggles...
...And if we pray thus for each one who dies, how much more so for our dear brothers and sisters, the children of Zion, the slaughtered ones of the land of Israel, Whose blood was spilled for the glory of His name, and for His people, and for His land, and for His inheritance...
...The floodlight would have blinded Marshall had he not turned off the head lamps of the halftrack and veered from the road onto the little plain...
...Their selves had caved in...
...The special thing was sliat life came back...
...Neither did 1. until the day before yesterday...
...Too weak and with too little fuel to swing into Syria itself and disrupt lines of supply and communication, they turned back to Fortress Six to pick up supplies...
...No mines...
...They were busy that September, and they crossed the enemy line twice...
...Everyone appreciated it...
...His Hebrew, though classical, was excellent and precise...
...Now, I suppose, we shall have to kill them...
...Marshall decided to head for Naffak and find an Israeli unit by the side of which they could fight...
...They honked their horn and yelled loudly...
...What is that...
...When he could see the tank commanders stiffly upright in their turrets, Marshall turned to Prithvi, Prithvi's black hair was shining...
...Fully alert, they had prepared everything and were waiting for the onslaught, even though Jerusalem thought differently and the world knew nothing of it at all...
...S. Y.Agnon Translated by Samuel H. Dresner © Rabbi Samuel H. Dresner 1961 The late S. Y. Agnon was Israel's leading poet and, in 1966, a Nobel Laureate...
...He heard a voice call out in Arabic, asking him where he was going...
...Many halftracks were fitted out more or less the same way to help offset the dearth of tanks...
...Anyway, they wanted to make contact with another Israeli force, for they had been alone since they had peeled off from the column which left the steel gates of Six...
...When they first saw it in the distance...
...If you don't, you'll look out of place...
...Coming upon the Syrians in a wide arena between two tels...
...Let them come at night or in the day, in the winter, and in the dark...
...Their encounter with the Syrians had been tense, fast, and lucky...
...The information he reported was received with close attention and he was commended...
...asked Baruch as he guided them down a wadi road...
...Lifting his binoculars, he saw through the dusk that the Syrian flag flew over the citadel into which he had wanted to retreat...
...Therefore we pray after the death of each Jew Yitgadal, Vyitkadash, sWmay raba May the power of the Name be magnified, and may no lessening of power come to Him Who is blessed and sanctified in the worlds He has created according to His will...
...The armored car got closer...
...When the light snapped on above his head he shielded his eyes and felt for his boots, assuming that the Syrians had begun to move...
...Then he turned to those who stood awaiting his verdict, and, speaking in English, he said, "Arabs...
...He was noncommittal and emotionless, preferring not to describe the foray in detail except to give Marshall a few pointers on procedure, and to render his report—which attributed to the deployment of surface-to-air missiles a frightening density...
...Men were sent out at various places along the line...
...On the plain below the patterns al-¦wed Marshall to see that he and the others had been nly on the fringes of battle...
...Pulling out in the glow of the burning tank, they jolted across the field to a spot where they could not be seen...
...Let them do what they will and say what they will...
...An elephant's heart...
...For many hours the halftrack crew had gone without food or sleep...
...All the men rushed in a massed wave to the ramparts...
...He ran up to Marshall chattering away happily, glad to have found a companion...
...He was tittle and stocky and had two chisel-like buck teeth and reddish hair of which not too much was left on his shiny head...
...to be orange-colored...
...In these moments his heart beat fast and then he would cool in his own sweat...
...dust filled the air...
...They too were eating, but their mess kits were shaped differently...
...It's hard to explain, but I'll try...
...Only then did he back off, while his machine gunner sprayed the halftrack, in which Baruch and Chobandresh were crouched low...
...He said that he was Russian and spoke little Arabic, and that they should mind their own business...
...There were flies...
...He was the only one who had remained in the diningroom to finish dessert...
...However, Marshall was apprehensive of the tank column's infantry, whom he knew would next be sent to attack his men, who were not armed, positioned, or numerous enough to resist even a platoon of good foot soldiers...
...It hanged open into a ball of orange flame, in the light of which Wilson shot the unsheltered infantry, but was killed by return fire directed at the flashes of the gun...
...For many of us it was better than a new life, and even at the pier you could see people being reborn...
...Thus the tanks could come at them only one or two at a time...
...They lost themselves, and were refined from all they had known...
...They certainly hadn't enough gas to reach that far...
...If he could hold a ridge with his anti-tank rockets, the halftrack could sit in the hollow and supply a mortar barrage...
...In the sound of their ancient words, the other soldiers despaired...
...This perplexed him because he didn't know that even the Syrian commanders were ignorant of the plans for war until just hours before it was to begin...
...Marshall loaded Baruch's halftrack with five infantry soldiers carrying anti-tank rockets...
...he said...
...They can do anything they please, and we arise...
...Definitive information," he said, "the attack will occur tomorrow, this afternoon that is, at four...
...His eyes had never been opened so wide...
...We can come around on the Syrian flank...
...He took many swigs from the lemonade bottle only to spit them back and his bites were suitable for a tiny mouse...
...Then they went to Tirat where she became lost in a world of books and she and Marshall dashed through warm shallow waters undulating with smooth fishlike waves...
...Zone...
...The Syrians had bypassed all but a few of the strongpoints, and, almost in the old Israeli style, were driving steadily toward the lip of the plateau...
...On the thirteenth, the Syrians pressed home an air battle over the sea, into which they flung and lost thirteen planes...
...They come now...
...they saw the tank turret slowly swing around...
...It was hot...
...Remember, there are a hundred thousand of them down there in vast confusion...
...He didn't want to kill the man who stood crying in front of him...
...But unlike Marshall, she knew that it might not last as long as they thought...
...And they pressed on...
...They knew that only two armored brigades were in position, that full mobilization would take at least another day...
...They had their second wind, and a cool breeze had washed over them when they came upon the overlook...
...The Syrians were far to the west, but the Israelis had not stopped fighting around Kuneitra or Naffak, and in many other places downline...
...That was something...
...a finger to this way...
...There was a lot of laughing and joking—as in all armies at dinner-time unless it is raining...
...The soldiers behaved like soldiers on maneuver...
...Marshall had carried with him all the way from Fortress Six a plate of stew and a bottle of lemonade...
...During September itself the armor on the plain multiplied steadily until at month's end 900 tanks were in position...
...Palmer gripped Marshall urgently by his lapels...
...It didn't matter, as it would not have mattered in Israeli lines...
...Why here...
...The little son of a bitch," said Marshall...
...A lot of meat was served up, and even the Orthodox were coaxed to partake of lunch...
...They had been broken and weak...
...To stop something so powerful you must at least tell the truth about it, and they don't...
...So they pulled off the road into a ditch and waited for the light...
...Chobandresh, a thick hair to that way," said Prithvi, pointing left...
...I was put in a camp...
...The mortar was useless, and Marshall ordered the five rocket men out of the rocks...
...He thought that a man is like an ore, that difficulty and trial vaporize the earthly and the dross, and that in very hard times steel and gold and silver spring from the previously soft souls of the tried...
...He was small and intent...
...We'll try then...
...Few have ever seen such a sight...
...Captain Palmer came walking across the courtyard...
...Marshall turned to Baruch...
...There are very many, sir, very many...
...I was in a camp in Cyprus...
...The could not understand how Six had fallen so easily, or why it appeared not to be battered...
...a dog's bark...
...Almost slowly, the rockets converged on the lead tank and blew it to pieces with a sound that echoed in the lungs of the Israelis...
...They were frightened of fighting, frightened of the ripping steel, frightened of dying in blood-soaked dirt or burning to death in a slime of searing napalm...
...He returned to the tractor and drove off to the hay iields...
...On their radio they heard of preparations for defending the Daughters of ktcob Bridge, which spanned the Jordan at the base of the (iolan...
...The war lasted for a long time...
...He died before the others could wipe his blood from their sweaty i'aces...
...A beautiful dip in the topography gave them just what they wanted, and needed—for several miles away a column of Syrian tanks moved toward them...
...With this tank-hunting halftrack he planned to match up against T-54s and T-62s despite their rapid fire, heavy armor, and gyroscopic and laser sights...
...Then Marshall looked up and saw in infinitely intense blue two silver flecks tumbling and swooping...
...Bar-Shalom...
...A few hundred yards from the point where he planned to vanish down the precipice he passed a campfire around which a platoon sat picking its teeth...
...Of course you see them...
...Look, they're all worked up...
...He wanted intelligence on the percentage of their tanks with infrared and starlight scopes...
...We ourselves may die, it is true...
...I wondered if ever 1 too would emerge as had many of my friends...
...All the T-62s were fitted with scopes...
...The five ATR's would be used either in ambush outside the halftrack, or from inside, rocket tubes leveled over the armor plate to give a naval-style broadside...
...Taken up as in the slow rhythmic ease of a float trip, she walked about for hours doing renditions of the hollow-brained chickens...
...But did vou know that for everyone who dies in war, there are others who are born, and reborn...
Vol. 2 • October 1977 • No. 10
