1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (44 page)

Once again West Jerusalem was besieged and under dire threat; along its eastern edges, the Legion was mounting continuous attacks. Ben-Gurion feared a collapse. He demanded that the Haganah "take Latrun and all the surrounding villages and break through ... to Jerusalem."199 It was to be the first time Israel breached the tacit nonaggression agreement with Abdullah; the area had been earmarked by the United Nations for Arab sovereignty. During the following weeks, Israel made three major efforts to take Latrun-and failed each time, with heavy losses. And, in the end, the IDF built a bypass road that demonstrated that the attacks had not, after all, been necessary and that an alternative supply route to Jerusalem was available.

The HGS hastily assembled a plan and task force. The Seventh Brigade, in charge of the operation, had been slapped together from scratch during the previous fortnight: its men and officers were poorly trained, and its equipment was seriously deficient. The Seventh was in no shape to take on the Legion. And the state ofAlexandroni's Thirty-second Battalion, loaned to the Seventh for the attack, was not much better. It arrived at the assembly point, Kibbutz Hulda, at the last minute.200 Shlomo Shamir had some twenty-four hundred troops, with twelve armored cars, ten three-inch mortars and two 65 mm field artillery pieces.201

The Haganah went in blind; its eve-of-battle intelligence spoke of irregular "local forces" rather than of a Legion presence.202 In fact, by the evening of 24- May, the Fourth Regiment had been joined by the Second Regiment, commanded by Major Geoffrey Lockett. The area had turned into a reduced-brigade redoubt, the Fourth Regiment holding Latrun village and fort and the neighboring village of Imwas, and the Second Regiment deployed immediately to its east, between Beit Nuba, where its two batteries of twenty-five-pounders were dug in, and Yalu, and Deir Aiyub to the south. The two-regiment brigade, the Third, commanded by Colonel Teal Ashton, consisted of twenty-three hundred soldiers, plus eight hundred auxiliaries, with sixteen three-inch mortars, eight six-pounders, ten two-pounders, thirty-five armored cars (half of them with two-pounders), and the twentyfive-pounders.203 Israeli scouts had noted the arrival of the new battalionbut the information had failed to reach operation HQ.

Yadin sensed his forces' unreadiness. He tried to obtain a postponement. But Ben-Gurion refused; the prime minister, acting the generalissimo, feared a collapse in Jerusalem within hours or days. He ordered Yadin to go ahead.

Though not optimistic, the Haganah commanders believed that surprise and the fact that the main assault would take place at night, when the Legion's artillery would be less effective, would offset the Jordanians' obvious advantages. The operation was codenamed Bin-Nun, after Joshua Bin-Nun, who had commanded the Israelite forces battling the Canaanites at the same spot, the Ayalon Valley, some thirty-two hundred years before. In command was OC Seventh Brigade Shamir. The soldiers were told that they were tasked "to save Jerusalem."204

Two battalions, the Thirty-second and the Seventh Brigade's Seventy-second, were to go in, with the Seventy-third in reserve. All were unready in almost every way. There was only meager artillery support-two pre-World War 165 mm French mountain guns, four homemade Davidka heavy mortars, which failed to work, and a battery of 81 mm mortars. There was no armor. Only a quarter of the Thirty-second's soldiers had canteens; ammunition was low; there were few light mortars and machine guns. And only part of the Seventy-third Battalion was at Hulda; the rest was still equipping southeast of Haifa.

But their defeat was assured by another factor: the Thirty-second and Seventy-second set out five to six hours later than planned, which meant that the battle would take place in daylight. The Thirty-second's B and A companies were ordered to sweep, undetected, south of Latrun and head northward, taking the hilltops overlooking Latrun village and Imwas. If successful, the battalion was then to loop westward and take Latrun village and the police fort. Meanwhile, the Seventy-second Battalion, in a wider southeasterly sweep, was to take the chain of hills to the southeast, eventually conquering Deir Aiyub and the hilltops overlooking Bab al-Wad. In effect, the plan called for a frontal attack on a well-entrenched brigade complex.

The attack never really took place. The Thirty-second and Seventy-second battalions crossed the starting line at 3:00-4:0o AM, on foot, moving parallel to and just south of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road. First Platoon, B Company, Thirty-second Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Ariel ("Arils") Sharon, acted as point. An hour after setting out, B Company was spotted just south of Latrun village and hit by Legion mortars and artillery. A Company, to their south, was also hit. With sunrise, the Jordanian fire became extremely accurate. The Israelis had no answer. The battalion took heavy casualties. Hiding behind rocks, both companies replied with light weapons, ineffectively. Equally ineffective was the brigade artillery, which was out of range for counterbattery fire. The Seventy-second Battalion, moving a halfmile or so to the south of the Thirty-second, was hit by artillery from Legion positions at Latrun and Deir Aiyub and by hundreds of Arab militiamen who, summoned for the kill from nearby villages, engaged them from the south. The sun was up and it grew hot.

A Thirty-second Battalion veteran later described what happened: "We took a heavy Jordanian barrage, the likes of which I had never experienced. The shelling had a terrible effect. All my men were new immigrants. They lost their heads.... Some shouted to retreat, others pleaded for water. The wounded were covered in blood. The gnats and the hamsin [that is, hot easterly desert winds] in the Ayalon Valley were almost as bad as the artillery... Terrible was the cry of the new immigrants, many of whom were Holocaust survivors: `Wasser, wasser' (water, water) [they shouted]." The barrage ignited the brush, adding smoke to the melange.205

In both battalions, the cry went up to retreat, and, in disorderly fashion, groups of soldiers began to turn back, some carrying wounded and dead, sprinting from rock to rock, hiding behind folds of earth. A Company, Thirty-second Battalion, managed to establish a temporary position on a slope south of the main road, from which it opened up on the Jordanian positions near Latrun village and on squads of Legionnaires who sortied south of the road to pick off the Israelis. Jordanian artillery ranged in on the slope and harried the retreating troops. At ii:3o AM, Shamir, who never left Hulda and lost control over his units, issued a general order to retreat. But the brigade's artillery cover was completely ineffectual, as Jordanian casualty figures were to demonstrate.

By permission of Carta, Jerusalem

The First Battle of Latrun (Bin-Nun aleph), Central Front, zs May 1948

It was 95 degrees Fahrenheit, with 38 percent humidity. The retreat under heavy, accurate fire, with many already dead and wounded, and some overwhelmed by thirst, was difficult and disorganized.206 Many soldiers discarded their equipment; the Jordanians were later to collect 22o rifles, dozens of Sten guns, and fifteen machine guns.207 Among the seriously wounded was Sharon, hit in the stomach and leg (he later recalled mumbling "imah," mommy);208 he was eventually pushed and dragged to safety by a (badly wounded) sixteen-year-old subordinate.

Jordanian irregulars, screaming "Idbah al yahud" (slaughter the Jews), pressed southward from Latrun and northward from the village of Beit Susin in an effort to surround and pick off the Israelis.'()' Shamir ruled against sending his few armored vehicles into the killing fields. A handful of Israeli machine-gunners, with great heroism, stayed put and kept the irregulars at bay as the Thirty-second's survivors ran and crawled their way to safety. Some, noted witnesses, were in such a stupor that they walked upright, slowly, as if oblivious to the machine gun fire and shells. Arab irregulars and Legionnaires killed off stragglers. By late afternoon, most had reached safety or had been picked up by rescue squads in cars and armored vehicles. Alexandroni had suffered fifty-two dead; the Seventh Brigade, twenty dead. The Legion took six prisoners. About 14o Israelis were wounded and saved.210 The dead included some killed off or left to die after the Legionnaires and irregulars had occupied the battlefield. The Legion and irregulars suffered no more than five dead and six wounded.211 Ben-Gurion wrote: "The blow was so harsh that also those not physically injured were badly affected.... It was a very bad blow. "212

Israeli intelligence subsequently was full of praise for the Legion's performance, noting especially the quality of the infantry and mortar crews. 213 But the Jordanians failed to exploit their success and attack the headquarters at Hulda, which they could easily have done. Nonetheless, the defeat left a lasting scar on the psyche of the IDF General Staff-and, conversely, a feeling of elation among the Jordanians.214

The road remained closed, and West Jerusalem on the verge of starvation. As the city's military governor, Dov Yosef, wrote to Ben-Gurion: "I don't want to add to your difficulties and I am trying to keep up the morale of the inhabitants, but we have food left for only a few days."2 rs

The Legion was wary of an Israeli follow-up attempt and asked Iraq and Egypt to help out. Both sent aircraft to strafe Israeli positions west of Latrun, and the Iraqis launched a local assault at Geulim, near Netanya, which the Haganah command initially interpreted as an effort to drive to the sea and cut Israel in two. The Egyptian advance from Majdal to Isdud during 27-29 May (see below) may also have been, at least in part, a response to the Jordanian request.

But the Israelis were not to be deflected from a second try. The Seventh Brigade was eager to neutralize the effects, on morale and unit prestige, of the debacle. More important, West Jerusalem cried out for relief (especially after the fall of the Jewish Quarter). And there was an international-political imperative: on 29 May the UN Security Council issued a call for a four-week ceasefire-which threatened to freeze the front lines from the moment it went into effect. Ben-Gurion feared that if the road remained blocked, the political settlement that might follow would leave West Jerusalem outside the Jewish State.216 The road had to be opened.

The Seventh Brigade, now reinforced by the Fifty-second Battalion, Giv'ati Brigade (which replaced the decimated Thirty-second, which had been returned to Alexandroni), had five days to plan a second attack. But again it incorrectly assessed the Jordanian deployments; it failed to fathom the quantity and quality of the Legion's positions in the Yalu-Deir Aiyub sector, held by the Second Regiment.217 And the operational planning was defective. In effect, the Haganah repeated the first attack. Again, instead of mounting a brigade-sized attack on the key objective, the Latrun fort, the Israeli assault was diffuse. The plan called for an eastern effort, by the Seventy-second Battalion and the Fifty-second Battalion-an experienced infantry force-setting out from Beit Susin, to take Deir Aiyub and Yalu, from there hitting Latrun village from the east, and a western effort, by the Seventy-first and Seventy-third battalions, to take the fort and Latrun village from the northwest.

This time (Operation Bin-Nun Bet) it would be a night attack. At about midnight, 3o-31 May, the eastern arm silently crossed the road at Bab alWad and, dividing in two, began the climb, on foot, to Deir Aiyub (Seventysecond Battalion) and Yalu (Fifty-second Battalion). They hoped to achieve surprise. One company passed through Deir Aiyub, which was empty, but then, climbing the hillock overlooking the village-the site of the tomb of Job-was spotted by Jordanian sentries, and all hell broke loose. Grenades and light weapons, artillery and machine gun fire poured down on the Israelis. Thirteen men were killed and several wounded. The company, mainly composed of new immigrants, broke and ran, retreating southward to Bab al-Wad.

Meanwhile the Fifty-second Battalion, on the right, prepared to assault the spur ("Artillery Ridge") just above Yalu. But the eastern arm's headquarters, hearing of the shambles at Deir Aiyub, ordered the battalion to pull back, which it did in orderly fashion, taking only a handful of casualties from Jordanian gunners.218 By dawn it, too, was back in Bab al-Wad.