The Haj - Leon Uris [37]
Fakim was also an excellent staging place for the raids of the Mufti’s gangs and, more recently, of Kaukji’s Irregulars. After an action the raiders would drift back to Fakim, ditch their loot and weapons in secret caches, and melt back into the Judaean hills until the British pursuit gave up. The villagers were treated roughly by the rebels, ranging from common theft of crops to an occasional rape, but there was little they could do in the way of protest. On numerous occasions younger village men were impressed into service. Kaukji himself made several appearances as the village was turned into a semipermanent base. Ibn Yussuf fared poorly. His one-room factory was the largest building in Fakim and had been all but confiscated for rebel meetings. Several hundred cans of olive oil were taken as ‘donations’ to the ‘Strike Fund for Distressed Palestine.’ It was obvious that a buildup in and around Fakim was taking place, an indication that a major action was pending, and there was no doubt that Tabah was to be the target.
Meanwhile, twenty hand-picked young Haganah men, the cream of Palestine, had gathered at Shemesh Kibbutz to form the first Special Night Squad under Orde Wingate.
Wingate treated them to a preview of hell. He literally turned day into night by plunging them into soul-sucking all-night marches that included cliff and rock climbing in total darkness. Their bodies amassed lumps, cuts, bruises, and bloody feet from the brutal terrain and even more brutal hand-to-hand guerrilla training. He taught them stealth and cunning that could get them eye to eye with an unsuspecting fawn. Tracking, shooting, cliff scaling, knife fighting, strangling, crawling, underwater movement, fox and hound chases, judo, interrogation methods, patrol without compass or light: hit quick, deadly, no pity, no nonsense.
When they had succumbed to exhaustion, Wingate paraded before their prostrate bodies and preached Zionism in English and spoke long Bible passages in Hebrew from memory. He imposed upon them absolute knowledge of how to use each part of the land as it had been used by the ancient warriors of Judaea and Israel.
With Arabs, Jews, and British living in close proximity in a fairly heavily populated area, secrets were always on the open market. News of the strange English officer and his troops became part of the daily gossip. The squad was always under scrutiny as it left the kibbutz by truck. To keep their movements obscure, he taught the men to leap from the trucks at intervals while traveling at high speeds. They would hide in the roadside ditches, then go, one by one, to an assembly place unknown to the Arabs.
The twin hillocks at Latrun were the last sentinels before entering the Bab el Wad. On one side of the highway stood a British Tegart fort. On the other side there was a Trappist monastery that had won a measure of note for producing a cheap but excellent wine. The original site of the monastic settlement had been abandoned for a modern building. It was in the old abandoned monastery that Gideon and Ibn Yussuf were able to keep meeting away from prying eyes.
Gideon watched Ibn Yussuf coming through the fields toward the abandoned part of the monastery. Ibn Yussuf was a fragile man with tiny features encompassed by gray hair and a gray beard. He looked about to make certain he had not been followed, then entered the building. Gideon beckoned him from the doorway of a monk’s cell. Out of sight but within earshot, Orde Wingate strained to listen.
Ibn Yussuf had pieced together the elaborate plan of Kaukji and his rebels to attack Tabah. Two diversions would coordinate with the main attack. In Lydda and Ramle the Mufti’s preachers would incite riots to tie down the British garrisons there. A separate attack would be made on a remote Arab village with a handful of men to bring the British out of Latrun up a twisting dirt mountain road that could easily be