“The God-damned fool!” Ari yelled, “he’s going to try to take Fort Esther. I told him to stop at the knoll.”
“What’s the matter with Zev?” David grunted between his teeth.
“Come on,” Ari cried. “Let’s see if we can stop him.”
Ari issued hasty orders for Jordana to have the Gadna children pick up the Arab arms in the field and pull back into Gan Dafna.
His plan had paid off. In less than fifteen minutes he had dissipated the strength of his defense, but nearly half Kassi’s troops lay dead or wounded.
When Mohammed Kassi saw his men run back up toward the fort, confusion broke out. Zev Gilboa was twenty-five yards out ahead of the rest of the Palmach when it happened. Arab gunners from Fort Esther began firing toward their own retreating men in order to stop the pursuing Palmach. Some of the Arabs managed to get inside Fort Esther. Those too close to the pursuing Jews were shut out and fired on. Zev had passed the outer accordions of barbed wire only forty yards from the fort.
“Cover!” he screamed at his troops. He threw himself flat and fired his Sten gun at the fort until the Palmach fell back out of range. Seeing that his attack was futile, Zev turned and tried to crawl back down the hill. A barrage of bullets came from the fort and he was hit. He stood up and ran and again he was hit, and this time he fell into the barbed wire and became entangled. He was unable to move.
The Palmach had dug in and were preparing to go up to
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try to bring Zev out when Ari and David crawled up to them.
“It’s Zev. He’s out there tangled up in the wire.”
Ari looked out from behind a large rock. He was a hundred yards away from Zev across an open field. There were some places he could find cover behind large rocks, but close to Zev he would be fully exposed. ,
Suddenly the firing from Fort Esther stopped and it became very still.
“What’s going on?” David asked.
“They’re using Zev for bait. They see he can’t move and they hope we’ll try to get up there and get him.”
“Those bastards. Why don’t they shoot him and get it over with?”
“Can’t you see, David? He’s lost his rifle. They’re going to wait until we leave and try to take him alive. They’re going to take it out on him for all the men they lost today.”
“Oh, my God,” David groaned. He jumped out from cover but Ari grabbed him and threw him back.
“Somebody give me a pair of grenades,” Ari said. “Good. David, take the troops back into Gan Dafna.”
“You’re not going up there by yourself, Ari…”
“Do what I order, damn you!”
David turned quietly and signaled to start a withdrawal. He looked back to see Ari already scuttling up the hill toward Zev.
The Arabs watched Ari move up. They, knew someone would try to get the wounded man. They would wait until he got close enough and try to wound him too; then the Jews would send another man up … and another.
Ari got up, sprinted, and dived behind a rock. The Arabs did not shoot.
Then he crawled again until he got to cover twenty yards from where Zev was tangled in the wire. Ari guessed that the Arabs would wait until he actually reached Zev and was an unmissable target.
“Get back … !” Zev called. “Get back!”
Ari peeked around the boulder. He could see Zev clearly. The blood was spurting from his face and stomach. He was completely trapped in the wire. Ari looked up to Fort Esther. He could see the sun glint off the barrels of rifles trained on Zev.
“Get back!” Zev shouted again. “My guts are hanging out. I can’t last ten minutes… get back!”
Ari slipped the hand grenades from his belt.
“Zev. I’m going to throw you some grenades!” he called in German. Ari locked the pins in so they could not explode. He stood up quickly and threw both grenades to the boy. One landed just beside him. 506
Zev picked up the grenade and held it close to his torn stomach.
“I’ve got it… now get back!”
Ari ran down the hill quickly, catching the Arabs off guard; they had been expecting him to come up after Zev. When they opened fire he was out of range and making his way toward Gan Dafna.
Zev Gilboa was alone now and the life was oozing from him. The Arabs waited for a half hour, watching for a trick, expecting a Jew to come up after him. They wanted him alive.
The gates of Fort Esther opened. Some thirty Arabs emerged and trotted down to surround Zev.
Zev twisted the pin out of the grenade, held it next to his head and let the spoon fly off. t
Ari heard the blast and stopped. He turned chalky white and his bad leg folded up under him. The insides of him shook; then he continued crawling down to Gan Dafna.
Ari sat in the command-post bunker alone. His face was waxen, and only the trembling of his cheek muscles showed there was life in him. His eyes stared dully from black-ringed sockets.
The Jews had lost twenty-four people: eleven Palmach boys, three Palmach girls, six faculty members, and four children. There were another twenty-two wounded. Mohammed Kassi had lost four hundred and eighteen men killed and a hundred and seventy wounded.
The Jews had taken enough weapons to make it likely that Kassi would never try another attack on Gan Dafna. But the Arabs still held Fort Esther and controlled the road through Abu Yesha.
Kitty Fremont entered the bunker. She too was on the brink of exhaustion. “The Arab casualties have all been removed to Abu Yesha except those you wanted for questioning.”
Ari nodded. “How about our wounded?”
“Two of the children don’t look as though they’ll make it. The rest will be all right. Here … I brought you some brandy,” Kitty said.
“Thanks… thanks …”
Ari sipped and remained quiet.
“I brought Zev Gilboa’s things over to you. There isn’t very much here … a few personal things.”
“A kibbutznik doesn’t have very much of his own. Everything, including his life, belongs to something else,” he said, with a trace of irony.
“I liked Zev,” Kitty said. “He was telling me last night how
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he looked forward to tending his sheep again. Anyhow … his wife may want these things. She’s having another baby, you know.”
“Zev was a damned fool!” Ari snarled. “He had no business trying to take that fort.”
Ari picked up the handkerchief filled with Zev’s, meager articles. “Liora’s a good girl. She’s tough. She’ll come through it.” Ari threw the belongings into the kerosene stove. “I’ll have a hard time replacing him.”
Kitty’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what you were thinking … you’d have a hard time replacing him?”
Ari stood up and lit a cigarette. “You don’t grow men like Zev on trees.”
“Is there nothing you cherish?”
“Tell me, Kitty. What did your husband’s commander do when he was killed at Guadalcanal? Did he hold a wake for him?”
“I thought this was a little different, Ari. You’ve known Zev since he was a boy. That girl, his wife, is a Yad El girl. She was raised two farms away from yours.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Cry for that poor girl!”
For a second Ari’s face twisted and his lips trembled and then his features sat rigidly. “It is nothing new to see a man die in battle. Get out of here____”
CHAPTER SEVEN: The siege of Safed had begun exactly one day after the partition vote of November 29, 1947. When the British left Safed in the spring of 1948, as expected, they handed the three key spots over to the Arabs: the police station looking right down on the Jewish quarter, the acropolis commanding the entire city, and the Taggart fort on Mount Canaan just outside town.
Safed was shaped like an inverted cone. The Jewish quarter occupied a slice of about one eighth of the cone, so that the Arabs were above, below, and on both sides of them. The Jews had only two hundred half-trained Haganah men. Their refusal of evacuation and their decision to fight to the last man was in the spirit and tradition of the ancient Hebrews. The Cabalists of Safed, the least capable among the Jews of defending themselves, had been a primary target for the Mufti’s riots. They had faced slaughter from Arab mobs before and they had cringed. Now they had made up their minds that they would stand and die. The Jewish quarter, jammed into the narrow twisting lanes, sustained an amazing spirit.