CHAPTER SIX: Four days after the younger children of Gan Dafna had been evacuated a series of reports filtered in to Ari. His settlement commanders were forwarding information that Arab pressure was lessening. When he learned from friends in Abu Yesha that Kassi had withdrawn half of the hundred men in the village and ordered them back to Fort Esther, Ari knew that the attack on Gan Dafna would come any day.
Ari took twenty more Palmach troops, the last that could be spared anywhere in the Galilee, and once again made the mountain climb to Gan Dafna to assume personal command.
He had forty Palmach troops in all, around thirty staff and faculty members capable of fighting, and Jordana’s Gadna youngsters, some two hundred ‘in number, His arsenal showed one hundred and fifty antiquated rifles or homemade Sten guns, two machine guns, a few hundred homemade grenades, mines, and fire bombs, and the obsolete Hungarian antitank gun with its five rounds of ammunition.
Intelligence reports indicated that, opposing him, Mohammed Kassi had eight hundred irregulars with unlimited ammunition and artillery support, plus perhaps another several hundred Arabs from Aata and other hostile villages along the Lebanese border.
Ari’s supply of ammunition was critical. He knew that when the attack did come it had to be broken immediately. His one advantage was knowledge of the enemy. Mohammed Kassi, the Iraqi highway robber, had no formal military training. He was recruited by Kawukji on the promise of adventure and loot. Ari did not consider Kassi’s men a particularly brave lot, but they could be whipped into a frenzy; if they ever got the upper hand during battle they would become murderous. Ari planned to use Arab ignorance and lack of imagination as his allies. He banked his defensive plan on the presumption that Kassi would try a direct frontal assault in the straightest and shortest line from Fort Esther. The frontal attack had been the history of Arab irregulars’ tactics since he began fighting them as a boy. He stacked his defenses in one place.
The key spot in Ari’s defense was a ravine that led like a funnel into Gan Dafna. If Ari could get Kassi to come into the ravine he had a chance. Zev Gilboa kept patrols in the 502
rocks and brush right outside Fort Esther to observe the Arab movements. He had confirmed the fact that Kassi was massing men.
Three days after Ari arrived at Gan Dafna, a young runner came into his command post with the news that Kassi’s men, nearly a thousand strong, had left the fort and were starting down the hill. Within two minutes the “black alarm” was sounded and every man, woman, and child at Gan Dafna took his post and stood by.
A deep saddle in the mountains could cover Kassi’s men until they arrived at a knoll directly over Gan Dafna, some six hundred yards from the north side of the village and two hundred yards from the critical ravine which led in like a funnel.
Ari’s men dug in to their prepared positions, became silent, and waited.
Soon heads began popping tip on the knoll. Within minutes the point was swarming with irregulars. They stopped their progress and stared down at the ominously quiet village. The Arab officers were suspicious of the silence. Not a shot had been fired by either side.
In the watch and gun tower atop Fort Esther, Mohammed Kassi looked through powerful field glasses and smiled as he saw his horde of men poised atop Gan Dafna. Since the Jews had not fired at them his confidence grew that his men would be able to overrun the place. A cannon fired from the fort as a signal for the attack to begin.
In Gan Dafna they could hear harangues and conversation in Arabic as officers shouted at their men. Still no one moved down from the knoll. The quiet from the village baffled them. More of them began to scream and point down at the village. Their curses and their anger rose in hysterical crescendo.
“They’re trying to work themselves into a heroic lather,” Ari said.
The disciplined forces of the Jews showed neither their faces nor their guns, though each man found it hard to remain controlled under the chilling abuse of the Arabs.
After twenty minutes of ranting there was a sudden eruption from the knoll as irregulars poured down with unearthly shrieks, sabers and bayonets flashing a steel silhouette against the sky.
The first phase of Ari’s defense would now receive a test. Each night he had sent patrols out to plant homemade land mines which could be detonated from inside Gan Dafna. The mines formed a corridor and were so placed to compress the Arabs toward the middle of the ravine.
Zev Gilboa, in the forwardmost position, waited until the
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Arab charge was in full fury. When the horde of men reached the mine field, Zev held up a green flag. Inside Gan Dafna, Ari set off the charges.
Twenty mines, ten on each side, blew up at once. The roar shook the mountainside. The mines exploded on the fringe of the mob, which immediately squeezed together and rushed right down the funnel of the ravine. >
On the sides of the ravine Ari had placed his forty Palmach troops, the two machine guns, and all the grenades and fire bombs in the arsenal. As the Arabs passed directly under them the Palmach opened up a crossfire with the two guns and turned the ravine into a gory turkey shoot. Flames erupted from the fire bombs and turned dozens of the irregulars into human torches, while the Palmach hurled a torrent of grenades among them.
In addition the Palmach set off strings of firecrackers, while from loudspeakers in the trees came a recording of bombing explosions. The continued din of the real and artificial arms was deafening and terrifying.
Inside Fort Esther, Mohammed Kassi frantically called for artillery to clean off the sides of the ravine. The excited Arab gunners opened fire and landed half of their shells among their own men. Finally they managed to silence one Palmach machine gun.
The advance Arab force had been cut down like cordwood, but still they poured in. They had been stimulated to such frenzy that their thrust was now that of men insane with fear.
The second machine gun stopped firing when its barrel burned out. The Palmach quit its position on the sides of the ravine and dropped back into Gan Dafna before the unabated onslaught. The Arabs’ rush came to within a hundred yards of the village in disorganized knots of screaming men. David Ben Ami had the cover off the barricaded and sandbagged Hungarian antitank gun. The projectiles had been modified and each of the five rounds now contained two thousand shotgun pellets. If the gun worked properly it would have the effect of a battery of men firing at once.
The leading bunched mass of maddened Arabs rolled to within fifty yards … forty … thirty … twenty …
The sweat poured down David Ben Ami’s face as he sighted the gun at point-blank range.
Ten yards …
“Fire one!”
The ancient antitank gun bounced off the ground and spewed pellets into the faces of the chargers. Bloodcurdling shrieks mingled with smoke, and through it, as he swiftly reloaded, David glimpsed piles of men lying dead or wounded 504
within yards of the gun and others staggering back in blind shock.
The second wave came in behind the first
“Fire two!”
The second wave went down in slaughter.
“Fire three!”
The barrel blew off the gun and she was finished, but she had done her work. In three shots the buckshot canister sprays had dropped nearly two hundred men. The momentum of the drive was halted.
A last assault was tried. A hundred Arabs again reached the edge of Gan Dafna, to be met by a broadside from Jordana Ben Canaan’s entrenched Gadna youths.
Bewildered and bleeding, the Arab survivors now scrambled back up the death-filled ravine. As they retreated, Zev Gilboa yelled out for the Palmach troops to follow him. The shepherd led his forty fighters after several hundred running Arabs. He chased them back up the knoll and continued to pursue them.
Ari looked through his field glasses.