Exodus - Leon Uris [286]
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 When he learned from friends in Abu Yesha that Kassi had withdrawn half of the hundred men in the village and ordered them back to Fort Esther, Ari knew that the attack on Gan Dafna would come any day.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 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 up 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