Reports from "The Meaningless War"

From their vantage points on both sides of the war, TIME correspondents in the Middle East last week sent the following battlefront reports.

From William Mormon, with Israeli forces in the Sinai:

"How about that Israeli task force operating on the west bank of the Suez Canal?" we asked the senior officer, who walked with the stiff waddle characteristic of an aging warrior. He removed his goggles, revealing the dark eyepatch that left no doubt about who the officer was. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan replied coyly: "That is, how you say, the $64,000 question." Dayan was relaxed, confident, even nonchalant as he met reporters on the tarmac of a small airfield in the Sinai. He gave the impression that the Israeli task force was not in any trouble, but he was not about to reveal how much havoc it had wreaked.

We met Dayan during our second trip of the week to Sinai. On the first visit, it was already clear that the Israeli army had recovered from its initial setback. There was a constant movement of men and equipment along the vast network of roads crisscrossing the central Sinai region. Israeli rear bases were jammed with trucks, tires, earth-moving equipment, ammunition and tank vans. Soldiers were bivouacked along the road, with masses of armored cars, artillery, antiaircraft guns and tanks near by. The Israeli logistics system was obviously working well. The soldiers were eating fresh meat, fruit and vegetables. They even seemed to have enough water vans to provide welcome makeshift showers.

When we returned for a second look at the Sinai, the Israelis had gone on the offensive and some of their units had even crossed the canal. In the southern sector they had already regained considerable territory occupied by Egyptian troops and we drove to within a few miles of the canal in two places. Everywhere the Israeli troops displayed ebullient confidence. "Yes, there are a few Egyptians left down there," said one trooper. "But they won't be there long. It will end for all of us very soon."

We were offered a soft drink as the soldiers took time off from the push forward to celebrate the joyful feast of Simhath Torah. Soldiers--dressed in sweaty fatigues and sporting twelve days' growth of beard--linked hands and danced around one trooper holding miniature Torah scrolls, singing the traditional happy songs of the holiday. Near by, a first-aid station received wounded--a reminder that the war was far from over.

The troops seemed at ease and relaxed, despite the occasional incoming rounds of artillery. Reinforcing their confidence was the arrival at the front of supplies airlifted to Israel from America. The roads were full of trucks with English markings. A further encouraging sign to the troops was the exodus of many senior commanders from a permanent command post in the middle of the Sinai. When we asked where these officers had gone, we were told with a wink that they were "far forward." We assumed that meant on the Egyptian side of the canal.

From Wilton Wynn, with Egyptian forces in the Sinai:

"There it is!" shouted Ismail, our military driver, as he pointed to the red, white and black Egyptian flag waving over a bunker on the Bar-Lev Line, Israel's former first line of defense on the eastern side of the Suez Canal. We had just crossed the canal by driving over a wooden-plank bridge that rested atop 16 pontoons. Egyptian troops standing on their tanks waved as we passed and called out, "Allahu Akbar" (God is the greatest). Others gave us the clasped-hands salute of welcome or flashed V-for-victory signs with their fingers.

Everywhere we found Egyptian soldiers in buoyant spirits and bursting with confidence. Although we could easily hear the rumble of Israeli artillery to the east and the occasional crash of shells near us, the troops behaved as if they had already won the war. Once we looked back across the Great Bitter Lake into Egypt and saw a pall of white smoke where the bitter battle raged on between Israeli and Egyptian armor. Still, no one around us showed the slightest concern.

We halted in a flat, sandy space while masses of vehicles, moving around like nervous beetles, went churning up the sand. Soldiers swarmed all over us eager to be photographed.

A husky private from Damietta, after learning that I was an American, immediately started quizzing me. "Why is Nixon selling Phantoms to Israel?" he asked. "Nixon magnum [Nixon is nuts]! We have the oil and so many people, and yet Nixon gives the Israelis the weapons to fight us. What's the matter with him?" Another private flexed his muscles and said: "Never mind. This land was held by the Israelis two weeks ago, and now we have it. This land is ours and we won't leave." Some of the troops were anxious to show us the wreckage of a blue Israeli helicopter, which they claimed to have shot down with their rifles. "Five Israelis were killed and six we took as prisoners," they boasted.

Up and down the east bank of the canal, bulldozers were leveling the Bar-Lev Line. At one still intact bunker, we met Brigadier General Abdel Wahab al Hariri, 39, commander of the unit that came across the canal and stormed the Israeli positions in that sector on Oct. 6. A veteran of previous wars with Israel, Hariri said that "after we captured this position, the Israelis counterattacked with tanks. But we foot soldiers knocked out 15 of their tanks, captured 17 of their men, and killed 100 of them. Our best weapon was the courage of the Egyptian soldier," he said proudly. "I am not saying that the Israelis are not brave. They fight bravely. But they like to fight in a tank, while we fight on our two feet."

Almost everywhere we went, Egyptian officers told us that they would launch their next offensive "as soon as possible." Yet it was obvious that their emphasis was on consolidation rather than advance. On our tour of the front, we saw military vehicles spread out across the desert like swarms of locusts. There were troop transports, trucks, bulldozers, tractors and columns of tanks that seemed to stretch for miles. There was no doubt that, at least in the sector of the front that we saw, the buildup was continuing.

From Marlin Levin on the Golan Heights:

At a temporary forward camp inside Syria, we encountered Chaim Topol --the movie star who played Tevye the Milkman in Fiddler on the Roof. As soon as the war started, Topol rushed home from London to volunteer his services. He was assigned to be an escort officer for visiting correspondents. The soldiers who crowded round the actor were not disappointed. "I took some correspondents to the Sinai the other day," he told the men, grinning. "When we got close to the shooting, one of them said that he had to get back to Tel Aviv because he had a deadline." The soldiers laughed.

Driving deeper into Syria, we passed abandoned concrete bunkers built into the sides of the hills by the Syrians and protected by blast walls nearly six inches thick. Strewn about were hundreds of empty cans of Danish beef and Lebanese cheese. A camouflaged truck, looking quite new, sat abandoned outside one of the bunkers. Our escort officer, a major in intelligence, searched the truck and came out with a manual printed in Russian.

The Israelis had converted one bunker into a first-aid station. The soldiers stood silently, saying nothing, not even smoking. Others were sprawled out as still as corpses. "They're not dead," one grizzled trooper explained, "just dead tired." He explained that the men had been in combat since the opening shots of the war. One soldier asked me to phone a message to his parents. On a piece of paper ripped from a brown grocery bag he scribbled: "Dear Mom and Dad. I am writing this between battles. Don't worry. I'm O.K. Everything is fine. Love." Another soldier handed me a list of names and phone numbers, asking me: "Please call and just say drishat shalom [regards] and tell them we're O.K."

Further south we came upon a row of Israeli Centurion tanks and one muddied Ford station wagon. A bald, roly-poly civilian, incongruously wearing a white shirt and dark trousers, was distributing egg sandwiches and cold drinks. He was a construction contractor from a town near Nazareth, too old to fight in the war. Every day he packed his station wagon with sandwiches and ten-gallon containers of soft drinks and drove to the front. Whenever he found a unit, he stopped and distributed his refreshments.

Later, near a battered fort, we spied the only flag we had seen all day, a shredded, blue and white Star of David. Commanding the fort was a young lieutenant from Tel Aviv. Leaning against a bunker, he reflected bitterly: "Back home they call this 'the Yom Kippur war' or 'the war of the Day of Judgment.' I call it 'the meaningless war.' There's no point to it. We are fighting it because the Arabs started it. We are just pounding each other to hell, causing a lot of casualties, breaking each other's necks for no earthly reason. The Arabs are not going to get back their territory this way. We could achieve that result by talking. But here we are fighting to kill each other--and we are going to kill a lot of them, the poor bastards."

From Karsten Prager in Damascus:

The war greets you almost as soon as you arrive in Syria's capital. At perhaps 25,000 ft. over this city of mosques and markets, an Israeli jet, easily visible to the eye, explodes in a tiny flash and a puff of whitish smoke. Seconds later, a dull thump is heard as it crashes to the ground. The fighter plane was the victim of a "Soviet SAM," as Damascenes call their wonder weapon. The successes of the Soviet missiles are a major reason why the almost 900,000 citizens of Damascus seem relatively relaxed and unworried, even though the war is only 23 miles away.

Morale is high in Syria, no doubt about it, and so is a sense of unity and a feeling that the odds can be overcome. Damascenes do not seem to mind the inconveniences of the war: gasoline shortages, bread lines in the ancient covered suqs (markets), closed movie houses, irregular electric and telephone services, sporadic mail delivery and strict censorship. They hardly notice the camouflaged trucks of the Syrian army that continually rumble through the wide, European-like boulevards or the large numbers of their steel-helmeted soldiers carrying AK-47 automatic rifles along narrow, thousand-year-old alleyways. Some lightheartedly boast that when they hear a jet overhead they know whether it is an Israeli Phantom or one of their own Soviet-built MIG-21s. One Damascene explained: "The Phantom sound is softer. When you hear it, it is already gone."

Because of censorship, most Syrians have no idea of the magnitude of their army's losses. In the euphoria of thinking themselves ahead in a game they have never before won, they do not seem to care much. When the fighting stops, they expect a solution that will not only restore the Israeli-occupied lands to the Arabs but will result in a settlement for the Palestinians. One banker told us: "We are strong. We, not Israel, are the Middle East."

Perhaps strongest of all in Damascus is the feeling that even if the Arabs lose, the city will never be surrendered without a bloody struggle. "Even our young boys will fight if the Israelis try to take us," the banker told me. "They will have to kill all of us. Damascus for the Israelis? Never!"

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