Soldier of Gideon Page 9

It was a situation that would easily enough bring brave men to tears and most of these defenders were mere schoolboys. Last night they had dreamed of glory, medals, admiring women, envious men. Tonight this nightmare was real beyond all dreaming.

  Terrified, they broke out of their own defenses to run directly into Sharon's machine guns.

  The carnage continued.

  And ended only when the Israelis tired of the slaughter. Gradually, first in one section of the circle, then in others, Israeli soldiers stopped shooting. The despairing Arab survivors rushed out as the Israelis walked in, their guns held loose in their hands, or even slung over their shoulders.

  Section after section quieted until there was only sporadic fire here and there.

  And then silence, except for the panic stricken shouts of the thousands of Arabs who were running heedlessly into the dark, the screams of the wounded, and the hideous groans of the dying.

  The battle was over.

  "An unjoyous victory," Billy Glennon muttered as he recapped his canteen. "I haven't even raised a thirst."

  "No," Moynihan said, grimacing, "me neither. But I'll bet ye these boyohs who are heading away could use a drop."

  "Yeah," Glennon agreed. He well knew the truly unquenchable thirst that followed defeat in a firefight. "Dunno where they'll find any."

  "Well," Moynihan said, "Screw 'em, they picked the wrong side."

  "Born into it," Harry Russell said, "but we seem to be on the right side this time."

  "I wish you hadn't said that."

  "So do I. Damn my big mouth, so do I."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Part of General Tal's task force racing west from Al 'Arish had already made it to the Suez Canal.

  The helicopters returned to Abu Agheila and the Red colonel's regiment was ferried out but not back to rejoin General. Tal. They were delivered to Jerusalem, where fierce fighting was raging as possession of the ancient city was contested by Israeli and Jordanian troops.

  In the 1956 war, King Hussein had kept his troops aloof from the action, and it had been Israel's hope that he would do the same now, but Jordanian forces had opened fire on the Israeli part of Jerusalem within twenty five minutes of the Israeli sneak attacks on Egyptian airfields that had signaled the start of the war.

  Minister for Defense Moshe Dayan, hoping for a Jordanian withdrawal, had withheld permission to retaliate until one o'clock that afternoon. Even then he gave the Israeli commander, General Uvi Narkiss, strict orders to ensure that on no account should any damage occur to any of the holy places sacred to either Jews, Moslems, or Christians.

  All day and all night Monday and Tuesday the battle had continued. Israeli troops had captured the headquarters of the UN truce force and had advanced through the Mandelbaum Gate to fight a fierce battle for the Police School. The British trained Arab Legion put up a stubborn and almost successful defense. Throughout Monday and Tuesday nights the Jewish quarter of the city was subjected to heavy artillery bombardment. There were almost a thousand casualties amongst the Jewish civilian population. Now, in a series of flanking movements, the Israelis had taken the high ground around Jerusalem, sealing off the Old City, but leaving an escape route into Jordan for the Arab defenders.

  Casca's company was landed on the Mount of Olives to the east of the city above the Garden of Gethsemane. Israeli artillery was firing slowly and intermittently into the city, the coordinates for each shot being carefully studied before the commanding officer would give the order to fire. Major Epstein was trying to clear the Jordanians from the area inside St. Stephen's Gate on the north-eastern corner of the city. But he had to ensure that none of his shells landed on the Christian Church of St. Anne or the nearby Dome of the Rock. He was doing a sterling job of it, but as a result the Jordanians were not being dislodged. They had ensconced themselves beyond the western wall of the Church of St. Anne, between Herod's Gate and the sacred site of the Antonia Fortress.

  Casca watched the artillery officer poring over his maps, checking and rechecking his coordinates.

  "Oh, wouldn't I just love to land a shell on that damn dome," Epstein said with a scowl.

  "Fire away," Casca said. "History has forgiven Napoleon for destroying the Parthenon, and it was a much grander temple than the Dome of the Rock."

  "History is apt to be kinder than Moshe Dayan. Like myself, he doesn't even go to synagogue, but he has forbidden me to so much as put a scratch on any sacred site."

  Casca laughed. "Every corner of this city is sacred to somebody."

  "You said it," Epstein moaned, "and Dayan has made them all sacred to me. And I'm a died in the wool atheist."

  "You're not a Sabra, are you?"

  "Hell no, I'm Dutch. I'm just an Arab hater on principle."

  "What principle is that?"

  Epstein laughed easily. "Who knows? Everybody needs somebody to hate. I hate Arabs." He thought for a moment. "You know, I suspect it's because they are really Semites, and I really am not."

  It was Casca's turn to laugh. "Now you're getting me confused."

  "Anybody who is not confused about Arabs and Jews simply has no idea of what is what," Epstein answered. "As far as I can tell, my problem dates back to medieval Russia when, on the advice of his scholars, the czar ordered his subjects to embrace the Jewish religion. They resisted mightily, and the czar invented the pogrom, massacring and torturing for a generation until a number of areas did, in fact, convert to Judaism.

  "Then the czar changed his mind, declared Judaism an illegal religion, and applied his pogroms to trying to wipe it out."

  "And these new Jews resisted?" Casca asked.

  "Strenuously," Epstein replied. "Even more strenuously than their parents had resisted conversion. They had been cowed once and could not accept it a second time. Besides, by this time they believed themselves to be the chosen people – something not easy to give up.

  "So the pogroms and persecutions continued as they do to this day. Somewhere along the way my people fled to Poland, a few generations later to Germany, and eventually to Holland.

  "And eventually, I fled here so that I can feel persecuted. In Holland we are no longer sufficiently ill-treated for me to feel like a real Jew. Understand?"

  "No." Casca laughed.

  "Nor do I." Epstein laughed too.

  "And the Arabs?" Casca asked.

  "Well, meanwhile, a madman, somewhat in the style of Christ, but more violent – his name is now Mohammed – was busy here running a program of his own, putting to the sword every Jew who would not bow down to Allah.

  "So, at the point of the Muslim sword, most of the Jews who had stayed here after the fall of Jerusalem became Muslims. A few, the Sephardic, held out and fled to Abyssinia. Today they scarcely even speak Hebrew. They're called Falasha.

  "So now, we Jews of Russian race, the Ashkenazis, but of Jewish religion, are fighting a Semitic race that is Muslim by religion. Moses, Christ, and Mohammed would all be confused if they were to come here today."

  "And how," asked Casca, "will it end, do you think?"

  "It will never end." Epstein shrugged and returned his attention to his maps.

  The Red colonel trundled his armored car up to the wall near where the Arabs waited in safety by St. Stephen's Gate on the edge of the Muslim Quarter. Weintraub called up a Centurion tank and waved it on past him and into the wall. As the masonry crumbled Weintraub followed the Centurion through the broken wall, and Casca and his company rushed behind his armored car.

  They came under heavy fire from all around the Church of St. Anne and were forced to take shelter behind the armor, trading rifle shots with the Jordanians.

  Every burst of fire brought several in reply from the well placed Arabs. Casualties mounted rapidly on both sides as the tedious firelight continued under the ever hotter sun.

  Moynihan led his squad in a blistering charge that dislodged Arabs from a large house, but then they were pinned down by Arab fire from several quarters.

  Harry Russel
l led another charge that took the adjoining house and then Casca, Billy Glennon, and a whole platoon managed to leap frog these positions and occupy the old inn on the corner of the street that led to the Damascus Gate.

  Moynihan and Russell brought up their squads and as the rest of the troops moved up, they had command of several blocks of the Muslim Quarter.

  "Just like fighting the cops in Belfast," Moynihan muttered as he charged back into the street again.

  At the end of an hour they were halfway to the Damascus Gate. But the Jordanian troops rallied strongly and mounted a series of furious charges along the narrow, twisting streets that surrounded Casca's men.

  "B'Jazus, but these Johnnies can fight," Harry Russell cursed as he fired around a stone wall, covering his men as they fell back toward the old inn.

  He was limping painfully when he made it back to the inn. An Arab bullet had singed his buttock as he had turned to run after his men.

  "It's a right mournful thing for an Irishman to get shot in the ass," he groaned. "It's bad enough to have to run, but to bear the mark of it is a bitter pill."

  "Better than being shot in the balls," Moynihan said.

  "There is that about it," Russell agreed, then scowled and cursed as Casca poured alcohol over the graze. He twisted his neck to try to see the undignified wound. "It's a sorrowful place to be hit for certain," he lamented. "Can't be bandaged, I can't sit down and it's ruined me best Sunday trousers."

  "We'll get you a smart new pair made by the best Jewish tailor as soon as we're through here," said Moynihan. "Which might be a wee while," he went on, peeking around a window shutter at a street entirely held by Jordanians. "I think they've got us holed up here."

  Russell was gulping water from his canteen. "Have you ever noticed how your thirst increases when you're taking a licking?"

  "Aye," Moynihan said, drinking, too, as they all were. "Don't know if there's any decent water here."

  "Bound to be some wine," Russell said.

  "I suppose so, but that's not what I need."

  "I'll just have a look," Harry Russell said and headed toward the steps that led down to the cellars.

  Moynihan looked after him with a puzzled frown. When it came to drinking Harry was no slouch, but only a novice alongside Moynihan. But neither of them ever drank on the job.

  Russell reappeared with a bottle in each hand. He craned his neck around the shutter and withdrew it smartly as a shot ricocheted from the wall. "Aye, we're going to be here a wee while."

  He ran his bayonet up the sloping neck of the bottle and beamed as it popped off the top inch of glass and the cork. He held the neatly broken neck just away from his lips and gulped several mouthfuls.

  Moynihan shook his head as Harry offered him the bottle. So did Casca and the others. Russell shrugged and drank some more. "I'd enjoy this more if I could sit down to it." He laughed.

  He drained the bottle and, using the same technique to open it, started on the second. Moynihan glanced at him and shrugged. Well, two bottles of light table wine was no big deal for a drinker like Harry, especially with the battle thirst on him.

  Casca was thinking along the same lines. His old comrade's behavior had him slightly puzzled, but his mind and his eyes were mainly on the street.

  House to house fighting was his element. He had survived more street confrontations than any hundred men alive if only because he had also died in a dozen or more inner city battles. But this city was something else.

  And he knew this city.

  In this very inn, nineteen hundred odd years earlier, he had stabbed to death his own sergeant. And had died for it. And lived again.

  Over the intervening centuries, the inn had been ruined and rebuilt a dozen, perhaps a hundred times. The room where he and the sergeant had fought over the whore now lay beneath his feet, under the accumulated debris of the ages. The cellar from which Harry had looted the wine was built way above the roof of the inn where that fight had taken place.

  The Damascus Gate was still where it had been then. So was Herod's Gate, and several other landmarks. But the territory between had changed beyond all recognition. Where there had once been hollows there were now hills, built up by the endless rebuilding of the city upon its own ruins. And the great landmarks, the Dome of the Rock, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Citadel, and the Tower of David, which had all once stood proud upon heights, were now sunk in the hollows between the giant mounds of the repeated reconstruction.

  And in between, the streets were a mad, meaningless maze that twisted and turned in every conceivable direction, a warren of cobbled alleys winding through arches over and around the mounds of the ruins below. Streets that had once run level now climbed in flights of steps or descended in steep ramps, or simply came to an abrupt end in blunt walls.

  And the Jordanians they were fighting had lived here for generations. They knew this territory, and they, knew how to fight.

  It came down to the old dilemma. When all strategy fails there are just two choices: run or attack.

  And there was nowhere for the Israelis to run.

  "We're going to move out," Casca said.

  "About time, I reckon," Harry Russell said. He pointed west down the one straight street, the Via Dolorosa. "Okay if I take my squad right down there?"

  Casca had been thinking of leading that charge himself. "I think that will be pretty rough."

  The big Paddy smiled and Casca caught a whiff of the wine on his breath as he spoke. "If ye've got a better idea, I'm here to take orders."

  Casca nodded. "Okay, Harry, it's yours. Move out."

  They poured out of the inn a dozen different ways, through doors and windows, over courtyard walls, up into the middle of the street from an old storm drain. The sudden fury of their charge set the Arabs reeling.

  Casca and Moynihan and their men made it to the Damascus Gate and forced its defenders from the towers.

  Now they had command of another straight street, the el Wad Road, a major north south artery that intersected the Via Dolorosa. From atop the gate Casca could see Harry's men fighting their way along the Dolorosa one house at a time. When they occupied a house on one side of the street, they would use its windows and roof to lay a withering hail of fire on the house opposite. Then a sudden pause and a mad charge directly across the street to storm the enemy held building.

  Then this new vantage point would enable them to pour similar fire on the next house opposite. Casca noticed that Harry was limping much worse, and guessed that he had been hit again.

  The loss of the Damascas Gate had sapped the morale of the Jordanians in the el Wad Road, and coming under Billy Glennon's fire from their own machine guns demoralized them completely. In a few more minutes Moynihan was greeting Harry Russell where the street met the Via Dolorosa. The greeting died in his throat.

  Harry was standing erect, but only because one long arm above his head supported him on the wall. Moynihan watched in horror as the Uzi dropped from his other arm. There were several red holes in the chest of his uniform. Blood poured from his mouth as he opened it to smile. Moynihan reached him as he crashed to the cobblestones.

  "Last fight, Tommy lad." He grinned up at him

  Moynihan struggled for a moment to answer. "Nonsense. There'll be lots more fights, you gossoon."

  "Not for me old omithorn," Casca arrived to hear him say. "There's a last fight for all of us." As Harry died, Casca sighed that it could not be so for him. Through the sounds of gunfire he could hear Tommy grind his teeth.

  The little Irishman dropped the empty magazine from his Uzi and deliberately clipped another in its place.

  "Which way to the Wailing Wall?" he gritted to Casca.

  Casca pointed south along the el Wad Road.

  Moynihan stepped out to the center of the roadway and walked slowly south. His squad fanned out and accompanied him along the sidewalks.

  A burst of submachine gun fire kicked up dust ahead of him. Moynihan pointed his Uzi at the Arab
s on a balcony.

  He squeezed off a single shot, which missed, but the Jordanians were almost cut in two by the concentrated fire on half a dozen of Moynihan's men.

  He walked on unhurriedly, drawing fire now and then from the occasional Jordanian who had stayed under cover to rearguard their general withdrawal.

  Tommy's deliberate marksmanship accounted for some of them. The concentrated firepower of his men took care of the rest. After an hour Israeli troops held most of the Muslim Quarter, including the Dome of the Rock and the Mosque of al-Aqsa.

  Casca ran to the mosque. At the entrance he carefully carried out the ritual prescribed for a devout Muslim. The faithful had fled into the interior, but one old priest watched in amazement as this man in the uniform of the army of the Jews went meticulously through the ritual of the faithful.

  Casca made his way into the mosque proper. His only transgression was the Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder. He couldn't tell whether it was the rifle or his devout manner that kept the Arabs at a respectful distance.

  He headed for the carved wooden pulpit and paused before it. "Not bad," he whispered to himself as if he were praying quietly. "Still here after all this time."

  The last time he had been inside this mosque was as one of Saladin's hosts on October 9, 1187. Saladin had paced the pulpit as he prayed after capturing Jerusalem from the Crusaders.

  He made a last small obeisance and ran back into the street. By noon, fighting street by street, house by house, room by room, the Israeli troops had broken through to what had once been the Jewish Quarter, but where no Jew had been allowed to live since Jordan gained control of the city in 1948. They headed for the Dung Gate that led out of the Old City on the edge of the steep slopes that led down to the Valley of Kidron. The slopes were clear of Jordanians and they returned their attention to within the city walls.

  An hour later they were fighting in the Christian Quarter and in the Armenian Quarter, and by fourteen hundred hours the Israelis were in possession of New Gate, the Tower of David, and the Zion Gate. The whole of the Old City was under Israeli control.

  At the wheel of a jeep, Major General Moshe Dayan drove through the Mandelbaum Gate to the Wailing Wall, all that was left of the Second Temple. He walked to the Wall and placed a prayer in a chink between its stones.