Erich Segal - The Class

The soldier at Jason’s immediate right was struck in the chest and fell backward. For a moment Jason was frozen, watching the red blood stain the shirt of the man he knew merely as Avi.

It was the first time he had ever seen someone wounded in battle. He continued to stare. It was only when the medical officer rushing toward them waved him on that Jason turned and started up the hill again, his anger inflamed.

As he charged, he pulled a grenade from his belt, withdrew the pin, and hurled it toward the center of the village. It exploded on a rooftop.

By the time the paratroops entered Samua, the terrorists had fled, leaving behind them a few aged and confused inhabitants. The Israelis quickly searched the houses and herded the frightened villagers down the slopes.

A flare was set off to signal that Samua was now empty. With lightning speed, Jason and the explosives experts began to set charges to the houses. Ten minutes later, the Israeli raiding party had regrouped 250 yards below. One of the engineers detonated the first charge. In quick succession the stone houses were blown into the air.

Seventeen minutes later, they were all back across the border. Jason was riding in a half-track with Yoram Zahavi, their chief in command.

“Well,” said Yoram, “Operation Samua is a total success.”

Jason turned to him and said bitterly, “Try telling that to Avi’s parents.”

The officer nodded, shook his head, and answered Jason softly, “Listen, saba , war isn’t like a football match. You can never win by a shutout.”

There were more operations like Samua, but the Israelis still could not stem the rising tide of terrorist infiltrations.

In fact, from early 1967 onward, the guerrilla strikes became bolder and more savage. The shelling from the Golan Heights of the kibbutzim in the Huleh Valley grew more intense than ever.

On the southern front, Cairo Radio was broadcasting the voice of Egyptian leader Nasser shrieking, “A hundred million Arabs are living for the day when the imperialist Israelis will be driven into the sea.”

At the end of May 1967, Captain Jason Gilbert was home with Eva celebrating the birth of their first child — a son they named Joshua in memory of her father — when the radio announced a general mobilization, All reserve troops were being called up.

During the next twenty-four hours, the Voice of Israel poured forth an endless flow of seeming nonsense, like, “Chocolate ice cream must go on the birthday cake,” “Giraffes like watermelon,” “Mickey Mouse can’t swim.” These were the code signals telling the citizen-soldiers where to report with their weapons.

Nasser had massed a hundred thousand men armed with Soviet equipment, as well as a thousand tanks, in the Sinai Peninsula on Israel’s southern border.

War was inevitable. The only question was whether Israel could survive it.

Since 1956, Egypt and Israel had been separated by small token units of the United Nations Emergency Force, scattered along the frontier. Nasser ordered the UNEF units out of his way. When they withdrew, nothing but sand stood between the two countries.

The King of Jordan put his own army under the Egyptian high command and contingents arrived from other Arab countries.

Israel was now confronted by over a quarter of a million troops, two thousand tanks, and seven hundred aircraft. The country was menaced on three borders. Its fourth frontier was the sea. And that was where the Arabs intended to drive them.

With the odds so heavily stacked against them and all the nations of the world preaching restraint but doing nothing to enforce it, they were totally on their own.

Jason Gilbert’s platoon of the 54th Paratroop Battalion had been mobilized for over a week, camping in an olive grove near Tel Shahar.

On the order of Battalion Command, they did endless stretcher training to practice the rapid evacuation of the wounded. This was hardly an encouraging exercise. Nor was the fact that so many of his men had portable radios and could keep abreast of the worsening situation. The British and American Embassies advised their staffs to leave Israel.

As darkness fell each evening, Jason would try to lift the morale of his soldiers. But as the days drew on and the tension mounted, he was less and less convincing. Especially since he himself knew so little of what was happening.

Finally, on the evening of June 4, he received a communiqué: Prepare to move men tomorrow at 0600 . It did not say where.

When he told this to his platoon, they were actually heartened. At last they would be doing something other than waiting to be bombed out of existence.

“Try and get some sleep, guys,” Jason said. “We’re going to have a job to do tomorrow.”

As the men disbanded and started toward their sleeping bags, a young reservist in a skullcap approached Jason and, withdrawing a small blue leather book from his breast pocket, asked politely, “ Saba , would it be all right if I prayed instead of sleeping?”

“Okay, Baruch,” Jason said. “Maybe God is listening tonight. But what prayers can you say the night before — before an attack?”

“The Psalms are always appropriate, saba . You know, ‘Out of the depths I cried unto Thee, Thou answered me with great deliverance.’ ”

“Yeah,” Jason smiled wanly, “just be sure you ask for a three-pronged deliverance.”

The young soldier nodded and walked off to a quiet corner where he would not disturb his sleeping comrades, And began to chant the Psalms very softly. Over and over.

Jason lay down in his sleeping bag and wondered if he would ever see his wife and son again.

At dawn on Monday, June 5, the buses arrived. They were the same rickety vehicles on which some of these men rode to work in Tel Aviv. Today they were taking them down toward the Sinai. To an air base deep in the Negev where a fleet of Sikorsky helicopters was waiting.

As they left the buses, the soldiers glanced nervously toward the sky, instinctively sensing that hostilities had begun. And, being so close to the border, fearing an attack by the Egyptian Air Force.

Jason was in the midst of reassembling his men and dividing them into groups of eight for each chopper, when a senior officer called him over for a moment. He came sprinting back, his face beaming.

“I’ve got a pretty interesting announcement, guys,” he called out. “It appears that at 0745 hours this morning, our planes undertook a preemptive strike against enemy airfields. There is no longer such a thing as the Egyptian Air Force. The skies belong to Israel. Now it’s up to us to take the ground.”

Before the men could cheer, a young soldier raised his hand. It was Baruch. Pointing to his little prayer book, he shouted exultantly, “You see, saba , God was listening!”

There were no agnostics in the Israeli Army that morning.

“Okay,” Jason said, “here’s our agenda. We’re all moving out. The tanks, the infantry, everybody. We’re going right across the Canal to visit the pyramids. There’s only one little job we have to do first. The Egyptians are really dug in at Um Katef — the front door of Sinai. The tanks can’t get close enough, so it’s our job to clear them the hell out. Now — there’s not enough room for everybody, so I’ll take volunteers.”

Every hand shot up. And even when he had picked his troops, extra men pushed themselves onto the helicopters.

As soon as it was fully dark, they began to land in the dunes north of the Egyptian stronghold. The choppers went back and forth ferrying troops like businessmen in a subway rush-hour. The last few landings were under heavy fire from the fortress.

By prearrangement, the men split into an attack force and a cover group. Jason led his soldiers toward the Egyptian guns, firing rifles, Uzis, and bazookas as they advanced.