Life on the Bar-Lev Line

"Seventeen, this is five. Need your report immediately. Over."

"Seventeen here. Busy now. Will send it later. Over."

"This is five. Send immediately. Over."

"Roger. Will do. Over."

"Only let there be peace."

THAT exchange between an Israeli headquarters in the Sinai and a fortress commander on the Suez Canal occurred during a thunderous Egyptian barrage early this year. The sign-off stuck, and radio calls to and from outposts on the canal now normally end with the words "Only let there be peace."

In the 100-mile string of underground forts and minefields known as the Bar-Lev Line, after Israel's chief of staff, peace seems remote. Running opposite Port Said in the north to a point opposite the city of Suez in the south, the line was finished only days before Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser renounced the cease-fire and launched his "war of attrition" in March 1969. Lieut. General Haim Bar-Lev devised the Suez defense system as both a shield and a springboard. "Its day-to-day mission is to prevent a serious breaching of the canal," he said last week. "But the system can easily be turned into a jump-ing-off point." So far, however, only small commando raids have been launched. Heavily outgunned (10 to 1), the Israelis are also outmanned. A lone Israeli division faces an Egyptian force perhaps ten times larger, yet so far has dissuaded Nasser from attempting a drive across Suez to regain a foothold on the Sinai Peninsula. Says Bar-Lev: "I think they will get tired before we will." -

Relentless shelling, sniping and the searing Sinai sun make the Bar-Lev Line the hottest front in casualties and climate. There is no sweet smell of victory there, only the odors of cordite, of dead fish in the narrow canal (a mere 80 yds. across at some points), of sweaty bunkers and boots left out to air. Yet plenty of spirited Israelis volunteer for the Suez front. Explains one reserve officer who chose duty on the line: "You cannot argue in your living room unless you have taken part."

Daily bombardments force soldiers to spend most of the time under the desert in the strongly fortified bunkers, emerging at night for patrols and showers when shelling slackens. Rookies invariably bring suntan lotion but go home white as cheese. They also find themselves wincing at auto backfires and occasionally even hurling themselves to the sidewalk out of habit. A week's respite each month allows time for soaking up sun and satisfying other appetites. "Down there you just don't think about sex," says a reserve captain who spent three months at the front. "It's probably the tension."

Inside the sunken, multistory bunkers, equipped with electric lights, TV, foam-rubber mattresses and even disposable plastic mess gear, life becomes a routine of sitting out one artillery barrage after another. Dust blows off the dunes in gagging flurries and the heat is stifling, but the bunkers are relatively safe. The tanklike forts are topped with such a sturdy mixture of sand, concrete, timber and steel rails ripped up from the trans-Sinai line that even accurate salvos send little more than tremors below. The Suez defenders, who call themselves "moles," pass the hours in the cramped forts cleaning their weapons and playing backgammon. -

Egyptian barrages are not as worrisome to Israeli troopers as the sudden single shell that can catch a man in the open, on his way to the kitchen or the latrine. Also worrisome are the "monkeys," as the moles refer to the camouflaged Egyptian snipers who perch in 60-ft. eucalyptus trees across the canal. At one fort, a sniper plinked away whenever an Israeli headed for a shower. The commander knew that artillery would be of little use; 105-mm. howitzers had been tried before, but only made the trees sway. Besides, the shells cost $85 apiece. One morning, the commander rose before dawn, hid among the dunes and, as soon as the sun began rising at his back, saw a slight movement in the sniper's tree. The commander's second shot brought the Egyptian down.

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