Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [0]
LEON URIS
This book is dedicated
to my beloved sister
ESSIE
Contents
Part One: Geronimo!
TEL AVIV, October 20, 1956, D DAY MINUS NINE
GIDEON, HERZLIA, ISRAEL, October 29, 1956, D DAY, H HOUR MINUS NINE
VAL, HERZLIA, ISRAEL, October 10, 1956
GIDEON, San Francisco Bay Area, 1953
HERZLIA, ISRAEL, October 11, 1956
GIDEON, MITLA PASS, October 29, 1956, D DAY, H HOUR MINUS 40 MINUTES
Part Two: Shtetl Boy
WHITE RUSSIA, Wolkowysk, 1906
NATHAN, Wolkowysk and Kiev, 1911
WHITE RUSSIA, Wolkowysk-Bialystok, 1916-1919
TO PALESTINE, Warsaw, 1920
TO PALESTINE, 1920-1921
Part Three: America! America!
GIDEON, MITLA PASS, October 30, 1956, D DAY PLUS ONE
IRELAND TO AMERICA, Queenstown, the Port of Cork, Ireland, 1887
BALTIMORE, 1902–1913
Part Four: Arise, Ye Prisoners of Starvation
TEL AVIV, IDF HEADQUARTERS, October 30, 1956, NOON, D DAY PLUS ONE
GIDEON, MITLA PASS, October 30, 1956, EVENING, D DAY PLUS ONE
SHLOMO
JERUSALEM, February 1956
NATASHA
MITLA PASS, October 31, 1956, 0400 HOURS, D DAY PLUS TWO
MITLA PASS, October 31, 1956, 0800 HOURS, D DAY PLUS TWO
MOLLY, 1922
NORFOLK-BALTIMORE, 1935
LAZAR, 1939–1941
Part Five: Just Before the Battle, Mother
MITLA PASS, October 31, 1956, 1100 HOURS, D DAY PLUS TWO
CYPRUS, KYRENIA, November 12, 1956
ROME, November 15, 1956
Acknowledgments
A Biography of Leon Uris
PART ONE
GERONIMO!
TEL AVIV
October 20, 1956
D DAY MINUS NINE
THE PRIME MINISTER’S COTTAGE, a remnant of the former German colony, sat unobtrusively in the midst of the outsized defense complex on the northern end of Tel Aviv. Midnight had come and gone. The stream of callers faded to a trickle, then halted.
For the moment David Ben-Gurion sat alone, his first opportunity all day for solitary contemplation. He was behind a desk that looked down a long conference table which was covered with green felt. Dead cigarette butts spilled over their ashtrays. The fruit baskets held spoiling apple and pear cores, grape seeds, banana skins, and peach pits, their fruit devoured. Half-empty soda bottles had lost their fizz and others, tipped over in disarray, appeared like a platoon of soldiers caught in a cross fire.
The cleanup crew of soldiers, two young men and two young women wearing top-security clearance badges, tiptoed in and attacked the mess.
“Can I get you anything—some tea?” one of the girls asked.
Ben-Gurion shook his head. It was a great head that seemed even greater perched on his short dumpling body. It was bald on top with an angry white mane flaring out in every which direction. The cherub face remained deceptively peaceful.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Morocco,” one of the girls said.
“Romania. I live at Moshav Mikhmoret.”
“South Africa. My family is in Haifa,” the second girl said.
“I am a sabra, Kibbutz Ginnosar.”
“Yigal Allon’s kibbutz,” Ben-Gurion said.
“Yes,” the soldier boy answered proudly.
Ben-Gurion’s head tilted and his eyes blinked. He was a past master at grabbing forty winks, a skill honed at a hundred Zionist conferences. When the crew departed it was nearly two o’clock in the morning.
The Old Man’s eyes fluttered open and became fixed on a single paged document awaiting his signature, the approval of a plan, Operation Kadesh, that would commit his young nation to war. Only eight years earlier he had signed another document, a proud document that declared statehood. Would there even be a ninth birthday, or would it all end in horror like a biblical siege with a final ghastly scene of a national massacre?
The past three weeks had been nightmarish in the speed and intensity of events: the secret meetings in Paris with the French and later the British and the clandestine agreement to go to war together ... the return of Israeli officers who had been training in military academies and army specialty schools around the world ... the call-up of reserves ... the near-disastrous raid on Kalkilia to make the world believe that Jordan, not Egypt, was the enemy of record ... French equipment arriving without spare parts ... pressure from