Mitla Pass - Leon Uris [103]
“Let me try this bugger out,” I said.
Shlomo pulled me to my feet very slowly and held my hand for balance. I saw my hip through torn trousers. It looked like a rotten banana and was still swollen to almost the size of a basketball. I gingerly set some weight on the leg, took a step, and fell onto Shlomo, then pulled back from him carefully. I could bear my own weight, but my balance was tentative. I hobbled a few crooked steps, probably looking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Well, at least I could move somewhat on my own.
“How is it?” Shlomo asked.
“Shit city.”
A few more steps, each a bit better, but it was hurting. I sank to the ground. “Afraid you’re going to have to scratch me from the hundred-yard-dash competition,” I said.
“Not so bad,” Shlomo said. “Dr. Schwartz says that in three or four days you should have pretty good movement again, so take it easy.”
“We got anything to eat?”
As Shlomo opened a can of rations, I allowed myself a few mouthfuls of water to rinse out the grit and unpleasantness.
“Take yourself a good drink,” Shlomo said; “the Egyptians left us a full water tanker lorry near the monument.”
I guzzled. Water in the desert! Lord, it was among the greatest of all sensations. However, the rations fought back at me angrily.
“How in the hell can those sons of bitches in your kitchens go out of their way to make anything taste so gruesome? Jesus H. Christ, this is worse than Marine Corps C rations, and nothing is worse than Marine Corps C rations.”
“Kosher,” Shlomo answered, “we’ve got to keep kosher.”
“It’s what makes the Israeli Army so mean, these mother rations.”
Shlomo pacified me with an orange from his knapsack. If you travel with Shlomo, you never go hungry. A cloud of dust rose from the desert floor in the distance, heralding the arrival of a convoy consisting of the six working jeeps. The wounded para was loaded first and was rushed away. The rest of us “walking wounded” piled aboard the other jeeps for a twenty-minute sprint to battalion headquarters, which was situated on a rise halfway between the Parker Monument and Mitla Pass.
Activity now carried an air of urgency as the paras hacked away at the hard-baked soil and rock to dig in before nightfall. Four recoilless rifles and a pair of heavy mortars dropped during the night were now being entrenched and zoning in on the Pass.
A phone line was hooked up between Major Ben Asher at the command post and the forward observation post. Canvas panels were being laid out to indicate a landing strip on a flat stretch of track below.
Only minutes after the panels were staked down, a little Piper Cub glided in like a toy and sputtered to a halt. While the wounded soldier and a medic were being squeezed aboard, the pilot handed a packet of communications to the major. Shlomo and I, who were privy to discussions with the officers, went to the edge of their circle and listened.
The balance of the Para Brigade, which had to cross a hundred and fifty-odd miles of desert track through the middle of the Sinai in order to link up with us, had apparently run into stiff opposition from fortified Egyptian positions. The desert itself was ravaging their vehicles and armor.
The commander of Para 202 Brigade was a semi-legendary figure, Colonel Zechariah. We took some comfort in the conviction that if anyone would break through to us, it would be Zechariah. Yet, with the day only beginning, the hours would be long and filled with tension and, perhaps, battle.
About forty minutes after the first Piper Cub flew off, a second one found its way in, and the two paras with broken legs were boarded. The pilot brought further disconcerting news that an Egyptian column had been spotted on the road from the Canal moving into the opposite entrance of Mitla Pass, some sixteen miles away.
Ben Asher ordered the balance of the walking wounded to assemble and went into a consultation with Dr. Schwartz. As they broke up their meeting, the major came directly toward