The Glory (65 page)

“Sir, Colonel Yehiel calling.”

“L’Azazel.” This cannot be good. Yossi bolts the rest of the roll with a swallow of coffee and hastens to the signal jeep.
“Nitzan here.”

“Yehiel here. We’re under attack by eleven tanks that were lying in ambush, here in the dunes.” Yehiel’s battleground voice
is terse and cool. “My tanks have cut loose from the bridge and are engaging them.”

“Any damage to the bridge?”

“Negative, not yet.”

“Can I send help?”

“We could use air support, but there’s no time to call it in. I think we’ll be all right, but there’ll be a delay. Over.”

“Understood. Keep in touch. Out.”

“Yehiel out.”

Earsplitting concussions resume all around Deversoir, the inevitable sunrise barrage as October 18 begins. Silencing that
heavy artillery is supposed to be a high priority for the forces in Africa, but obviously no luck yet. Huge splashes in the
Canal, bricks jumping as a shell bursts at the far end of the Yard, and to all the devils, there go pontoons, flying from
a square hit on the bridge. Engineers start to swarm over the partial gap torn near the Egyptian side. Kishote orders all
traffic halted, and the Yard is again becoming choked up and smoky when Yehiel once more calls.

“Well, it’s over, Yossi. A hard fight. I’m looking at eight burning Egyptian tanks. The crews of the other three jumped out
and ran off into the dunes.”

“How about our tanks?”

“Bad shape. We were surprised, so it was fighting at close range. The bridge is all right, but this unit has sustained too
much damage, and too many casualties, to tow it any farther.”

There is no arguing with a seasoned officer like Yehiel. “Where are you?” Yehiel gives him the grid coordinates. “B’seder,
Yehiel. All tanks here have been fighting day and night at the Chinese Farm, you know. They’re beat.”

“If you need the bridge send ten tanks, Yossi. We’ll rehearse them and get going again.”

“You’ll have them inside of an hour.”

“If so I’ll be at the water at four o’clock.”

The pontoon bridge traffic is once more on the move by the time Yossi locates a ten-tank company to despatch to Yehiel. Meantime
the jam outside the Yard has gotten much worse, and urgent calls for supplies are increasing. Arik himself comes on the radiophone,
sounding exhilarated and friendly but frantic for fuel. The news about the roller bridge sobers him. “Well, these things happen.
The battle’s on your shoulders now, Kishote. I’m very glad you’re over there in charge.”

The barrage subsides, but shrapnel has ripped open the float on a ferry raft. It slowly sinks under the light blue waters,
and Yossi is watching the rescue of the crew, when he notices that all the pontoon bridge traffic is halted yet again, this
time behind one small automobile around which soldiers mill. He strides out on the bridge, and a lieutenant tells him that
the rusty black Volkswagen tore up its underside bouncing over the pontoons, and cannot get going. “What to all the devils
is a tin can like this doing on the bridge?” Yossi snaps. “It should have gone over on a raft.”

“Sir, the driver was told that. He just ignored us and ran out here, so —”

“Throw it in the Canal.”

“General, General, I’m the driver,” a paunchy gray civilian standing by loudly protests, “I volunteered this car, it’s my
car, and —”

“Nobody’s stealing it. After the war, fish it out of the Canal. Or take your ownership papers and sue the State of Israel.”
Six men pick up the Volkswagen and give it a heave. It makes a tremendous splash. The traffic resumes running, shaking the
bridge, while the car fills and submerges, and the driver, ownership papers in hand, laments that it has four new tires and
new upholstery, and the general is a maniac.

At noon Kishote calls Yehiel. The ten tanks have arrived, the colonel confirms cheerily, and are hooking up to the towlines
now. “Beat is no word for these fellows, Yossi. Most of them haven’t slept for seventy-two hours. Still, they’re strong kids,
good boys, and they’ll be all right.”

But Shimon Shimon calls an hour later, sounding lugubrious. Lauterman is repairing a new break in the bridge. “Sir, those
tank men were just too tired. The rehearsal went well, and when I asked on the network,
‘Ready to go?’
they all answered up by the numbers. So I ordered
‘Go,’
but in those few seconds one tank captain had fallen asleep. He didn’t pull, all the others did, and the bridge cracked.”

Yossi’s number-one priority is now that bridge, and he decides to go and see for himself exactly how things stand. He turns
over the Yard and the traffic-control network to his deputy, Ezra, an overworked lieutenant colonel from Raanana who is holding
up under the strain of recent days and nights by gobbling sugar cubes. Ezra is reliable, and the news from Africa is good
except for the rising howl about shortages. The answer to that is the bridge,
the bridge
.

“E
lohim, Yehiel, what happened now?”

“Verkakteh air attack, Yossi, right after Shimon talked to you. That’s what happened.”

Yehiel is lying on a stretcher, his left leg in a splint and a thick bloodstained dressing. The desert around the stalled
bridge is pitted with shell holes, and corpsmen are working on several other soldiers down on the sand. A cool afternoon breeze
is springing up. The bridge makes a long shallow
V
on the desert, the break hardly visible. Tanks are pushing and pulling at it, combat engineers are climbing all over it in
a great noise of tools and yells, and Lieutenant Colonel Lauterman stands at the break, flipping his yo-yo. Three low-flying
Egyptian aircraft attacked the bridge shortly after it broke, Yehiel tells Kishote. The bombs missed, but though he dove for
cover under a truck, shrapnel got his leg. A medical helicopter is on its way to evacuate the casualties. Fortunately, nobody
has been killed.

“My mistake of course was to take cover,” says Yehiel, with a groan. “With Egyptian marksmanship, the safest place was right
on the bridge.”

“Yehiel, three divisions are now operating in Africa. The pontoon bridge and the ferries can’t supply such a force, and besides,
they’re very vulnerable. This structure must reach the Canal tonight.”

“I’m out of it. Good luck to you,” groans Yehiel. “I don’t know what else can go wrong, but I tell you that this bridge is
alive, it’s vicious, and it doesn’t want to cross the Suez Canal. I need more morphine.”

When the corpsmen are about to load him on the helicopter, Yehiel reaches out a hand to Yossi Nitzan, and pulls him close.
“You won’t forget, will you, Kishote,” he gasps, “to make sure Arik talks to the promotion board?”

“I’ll do it, I promise.”

“Yossi, I’m not religious, but I do fear God. I’ll hold a Torah and swear I didn’t rape that woman. In fact it was all her
idea. She had disgusting legs.” He catches his breath and groans. “Damn, I hurt. Goodbye, Yossi.”

As the helicopter departs, Lauterman stands by Kishote, watching it go. “A fine officer,” he says. “He’d have gotten us there.
I’m not sure I can, sir. But I’ll try, and I’ll be ready to move before nightfall.”

“I’ll take it to the Canal,” says Don Kishote.

Peering at him to make sure he is serious, Lauterman exclaims, “Hundred percent, sir!”

The sun is setting when the repairs are done. The tank crews, forty yawning disheveled green-clad youngsters, are sitting
on the sand as Kishote briefs them, hands on hips, squinting into the red sunset glare. “Soldiers, once we start going, we
GO
. Only one signal will halt this bridge, a word from me.
Atzor
[Stop]. Understood?”

Murmurs and tired nods from the soldiers. He has in mind to give them a fighting talk about the life-or-death necessity for
the bridge in the next crucial hours of the war, but looking at these Zahal tank men, he cuts it down to, “Soldiers, nothing
is more important to our victory than getting this bridge to the Canal before midnight. I tell you this as Arik’s second-in-command.
Yallah
.” They jump up and run to their tanks.

A long uneventful crawl ensues.

Darkness has fallen and the crowded desert stars are shining bright when they reach the Tirtur Road, a straight run to the
Canal laid down long ago for this bridge. Hardly has the whole majestic structure rolled onto the road, however, when shellfire
engulfs it from “Missouri,” high ground that the Egyptians still cling to, despite repeated attacks, so as to interdict Tirtur
traffic. Moving steadily ahead, the ten towing tanks return fire with all guns, and for some minutes the air is filled with
red tracer streaks and the booming of the salvos. But it is all noise and flame. Undamaged, the bridge passes beyond gun range
of Missouri, and emerges from smoke into starlight. Riding in a lead tank, Kishote sees that the road ahead is cut clear across
by a dark hole.

“Atzor!”

He and Lauterman leave their vehicles and peer down into a deep wide freshly dug trench. “The bridge can cross this,” says
Lauterman. “No problem.”

“The tanks can’t,” Kishote says. “It’s a standard antitank ditch.”

He orders the tanks to unhook from the bridge, attach bulldozer blades, and set about filling up the hole. In a wild tumult
of tumbling earth and snorting engines, they comply. When the hole is almost level ground again, Shimon Shimon appears out
of the gloom. “Sir, there’s a call for you from Deversoir.”

“Very well.”

“Sir, how’s Yoram? Not wounded, is he?”

“He’s over in Africa with General Sharon’s signal crew, at his own request. Looking for material for his book, I suppose.”

“No doubt.” The ceramicist wearily laughs.

It is now eleven o’clock, and off to the south the bombardment of Deversoir is lighting up the sky. All is going well, Ezra
reports, though casualties are mounting, and the demands for fuel, food, and ammunition are overwhelming the signal channels.
He is calling to warn Kishote that eyewitnesses have seen the Egyptians laying a minefield in the Tirtur Road.

Cursing under his breath but exhibiting calm good cheer, Kishote orders sappers to clear the mines. He and Lauterman walk
behind them, as the bridge ponderously follows with its accustomed clanks, squeals, and rumbles. The night is turning bitter
cold, too cold for the slow plod behind the line of sappers, who advance step by step, poking very cautiously into the sand
with long slender flexible steel probes. So far, nothing. This can take till morning, thinks Kishote, and further delay menaces
the lives of the fighters in Egypt. He has a memory flash of Yehuda Kan-Dror, driving through the Mitla Pass to draw the enemy’s
fire. “I tell you what, Lauterman,” he says. “The battle’s been going back and forth across this road for days. I’ll bet there’s
no minefield here. I’ll run a jeep to the Canal and see.”

“Sir, that’s committing suicide. The eyewitness report said —”

“I know, I know. Half the time, on the battlefield, such reports are nonsense.”

The sappers stare open-mouthed when he drives past them. “Keep searching,” he shouts. The jeep wheelbase is a fraction of
the roller width, so he zigzags as he drives down the Tirtur Road. After five very long hairy minutes of bouncing westward
under the stars in a chilly wind, and praying from the heart not to get blown up, he sees the moonlit Canal through a gap
in the rampart. So much for eyewitness reports! Catching sight of him returning, the sappers cease their prodding to cheer.

“Lauterman, we roll.”

“Sir, I salute you.”

And that does it. All the fight is out of the bridge. It moves with tamed docility and no further balking to the brink of
the Suez Canal, and soon engineers and tanks are easing it into the water a short distance north of Deversoir. The first rollers
slide down the embankment, hit with a towering splash, and float. Heavy as the steel colossus is, the huge cylinders give
it all the buoyancy it needs. Slowly it is pushed across to where paratroopers await with signal flares, and tanks start hauling
it up on the embankment.

Kishote gets on the radiophone. “Ezra, Nitzan here. The bridge has arrived.”

“Beautiful. Hundred percent, sir.”

“What’s your situation at the Yard?”

“Further bombardment casualties, not too bad. Bridge traffic and ferries going strong, but supply problem truly getting out
of hand.”

“It’ll improve now. Out.”

Lauterman approaches him, flipping the yo-yo up and down. “Ah, sir, we encounter a problem.”

“Problem? What problem? It’s across, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir, but as it turns out, the bridge is too long.”

“Too long?
Too long?
” Kishote cannot believe his ears. “Lauterman, how to all the devils can a bridge be too long? It can be too
short
. Is that what you mean? Too short?”

“No, sir. Too long. You see, sir, the Canal is only a hundred eighty meters wide, and the bridge is two hundred meters long.
That’s creating a very steep slope on both sides. Tanks can manage it, but supply trucks won’t be able to.”

Don Kishote stares at the Jeptha colonel, and at the spinning yo-yo, and at the bridge floating gently on the Canal. There
certainly is a very long tail draped over the rampart and out on the road.

“I see. Got any ideas?”

“Oh, yes, sir. It’s simply a matter of removing two rollers. We should have the bridge ready by dawn.”

“Just tell me this, Lauterman. Everybody — but
everybody
— knows the width of the Suez Canal. It’s a world statistic. How is it that Jepthah made a bridge seventy feet too long?”

“I would have to call it an oversight, sir.”

“I see. That explains it. Remove the two rollers, then. I’m going to check things at Deversoir, and I’ll be back before dawn.”

The bridge has yielded, Kishote muses as he drives south, it is spanning the Canal, but it has had the last laugh.

B
y the glare of starshells and the glow of guide flares, a very strange sight greets him at the pontoon bridge. Vehicles are
rolling across as before — tanks, busses, APCs, self-propelled guns, fuel trucks — but near the middle, on one side, stands
a stark naked stout man, fighting with soldiers. As Kishote hurries out on the bridge the naked man breaks free and dives.
“What in God’s name is this?” Kishote shouts.