view of Israel, its struggle and its chances of success, and David
remembered odd phrases he used. - We are building a nation, and the
blood we have been forced to mix into the foundations has strengthened
them - - We don't want to make this merely a sanctuary for all the
beaten-up Jews of the world. We want the strong bright Jews also -,
There are three million of us, and one hundred and fifty million
enemies, sworn to our total annihilation -'- if they lose a battle, they
lose a few miles of desert, if we lose one we cease to exist - - We'll
have to give them one more beating. They won't accept the others. They
believe their ammunition was faulty in 1948, after Suez the lines were
restored so they lost nothing, and in 67 they think they were cheated.
We'll have to beat them one more time before they'll leave us alone, He
talked as to a friend or an ally and David was warmed by his trust, and
enlivened by the prospect of flying again.
A plantation of eucalyptus trees grew as a heavy screen alongside the
road, and the Brig slowed to a gate in the barbed wire fence and a sign
that proclaimed in both languages: Chaim Weissmann Agricultural
Experimental Centre. They turned on to the side road through the
plantation, and there was a secondary fence and a guard post amongst the
trees.
A guard at the gate checked the Brig's papers briefly, they clearly knew
him well. Then they drove on, emerging from the plantation into neatly
laid-out blocks of different cereal crops. David recognized oats,
barley, wheat and maize, all of it flourishing in the warm spring
sunshine. The roads between each field were surveyed long and straight
and paved with concrete that had been tinted to the colour of the
surrounding earth.
There was something unnatural in these smooth twomile long fairways
bisecting each other at right angles, and to David they were familiar.
The Brig saw his interest and nodded. Yes, he said, runways. We are
digging in, not to be taken by the same tactics we used in 67. David
pondered it while they drove rapidly towards a giant concrete grain silo
that stood tall in the distance.
In the fields, scarlet tractors were at work, and overhead irrigation
equipment threw graceful glittering ostrich feathers of spray into the
air.
They reached the concrete silo and the Brig drove the compact through
the wide doors of the barn-like building that abutted it. David was
startled to see the lines of buses and automobiles parked in neat lines
along the length of the barn. There was transport here for many
hundreds of men, and yet he had noticed less than a score of
tractor-drivers.
There were guards here again, in paratrooper uniform, and when the Brig
led David to the rounded bulk of the silo, he realized suddenly that it
was a dummy. A massive bomb-proof structure of solid concrete, housing
all the sophisticated communications and radar equipment of a modern
fighter base. It was combined control tower and plot for four full
squadrons of Mirage fighters, the Brig explained briefly as they entered
an elevator and sank below the earth.
