Reports from the Cease-Fire Fronts

As the Middle East war stumbled fitfully toward a permanent cease-fire last week, TIME correspondents on both sides of the fronts observed the action.

From William Marmon, with Israeli troops on the western bank of the Suez Canal:

"Hey, what is this, Dizengoff Street?" yelled one Israeli soldier, referring to Tel Aviv's cafe-filled main street. He was surprised to see journalists in civilian clothes on the newly secured Israeli bridgehead in Egypt. We, however, were nervous. Armed only with pink press passes, tourniquet bandages and surplus broadbrimmed British helmets (which were a source of amusement to Israeli soldiers, who wear snug-fitting U.S.-style helmets), we joked about our lack of passports and the Geneva Convention regulations concerning captured journalists.

But the Israeli presence was no joke. There was a traffic jam at the canal that stretched back for miles. Tanks, trucks and vans of every description--many with ON TO CAIRO scrawled on their sides--waited their turn to cross the bridges. The western bank was swarming with men and machines. The litter of blackened tanks and trucks of both ar mies and the stench of rotting corpses in the canal attested to the fierceness of the battle that had produced this new "bulge" in Egypt. We were soon speeding away from the bridgehead on a route that was to bring us directly into contact with the enemy forces.

Buttoned into an armored personnel carrier (APC), we clanked off toward the south. Passing a bombed-out Egyptian coast-guard camp, we saw Egyptian dead sprawled in shallow trenches. As we drove along the Great Bitter Lake, we could see smoke rising from Suez far to the south. Finally, we were dropped off in a forward command post, where I was given a lift in the APC of a colorful brigadier general. Let's call him "Tallo" (it is a violation of Israeli censorship to publish the names of brigade commanders). Moshe, the APC machine gunner, had cautioned me to sleep near the vehicle because shelling was frequent. Incoming artillery soon proved his point. "Why are you risking your life out here?" he asked incredulously as we huddled inside the APC.

We moved out before dawn. "What is the objective today?" I asked Tallo. "Arabs," he replied curtly. The battle was not long in coming. Forward observers located the Egyptians, and Tallo deployed his tanks, shouting, "Now you are going to have the opportunity to see Jews fight! Kedimah! [Forward]," he yelled into the radio; for good measure, he also screamed "Yallah!"--which means the same thing in Arabic.

Tallo's armored columns swept into the Egyptian position under the cover of an artillery barrage. He pushed me down inside the APC as the incoming thickened, but he remained exposed in a half-crouch on top of the vehicle. We blasted our way through a series of missile bases that were heavily bunkered but largely deserted. The few stragglers were cut down by .50-cal. machine-gun fire.

Tallo dressed down one tank that was taking too much time shelling a bunker into which several Egyptians had fled. "The Jews are getting excited," he explained. Then he added, in some frustration: "The Egyptians are running away, and we cannot clobber them." Watching desert dogs fleeing from the Israeli tanks, Tallo said in disgust: "Even the dogs are running away."

We moved rapidly south and west toward the southern end of the Bitter Lakes. An access road leading to Cairo was strewn with wreckage caused by earlier Israeli air strikes; everywhere there were burnt-out supply and ammunition trucks and Egyptian dead. We finally reached a point 50 km. from the canal, the farthest penetration of Israeli forces into Egypt. Cairo was only 60 km. down the road. "We could be in Cairo for lunch," grunted Tallo. "There is nothing in our way."

But word of the cease-fire had come through earlier in the day. Tallo was ordered back east to take a junction that would help block a retreat of the Egyptian army across the canal. "We should go on and teach them a lesson once and for all," Tallo insisted. "They can't go on starting wars whenever they choose and stop them when they want. We should finish the job and gain quiet for a generation."

As it turned out, there still was fighting left to do. On the way back to the Israeli bridgehead, we ran into four Egyptian tanks. Three of them were knocked out with no Israeli losses. "It is good to see the enemy burning," Tallo said. Later, he spotted a large Egyptian force of tanks, infantry, artillery and mobile missiles moving west into an Israeli position. He immediately directed his force against them. We had to leave in the middle of the battle to start the long journey back to the bridgehead.

The Israelis had thrown three bridges across the canal: two pontoons and one special bridge for heavy traffic. Despite Egyptian efforts, including two suicide helicopter plunges, the bridges were not taken out. When we returned, the procession of heavy equipment to the western bank was continuing. Radar units, prefabricated housing, searchlights, antiaircraft guns, big artillery pieces and more troops moved across.

Although there is frequent shelling, the soldiers were making the most of the area. Some Israelis were swimming in the canal, others were fishing. One group of soldiers guarding the bridge had prepared a delicious fish stew. How do you feel about being across the canal? I asked one of the men. "We'll get used to it," he replied jauntily.

From Diplomatic Editor Jerrold Schecter in Egypt:

Port Said is a ghost town. The yellow and whitewashed buildings are mute. The Sheherazade nightclub, the new Metropole Hotel and the Bank of Alexandria are scarred by bomb blasts. We were escorted into this canal-side city by Egyptian officers. They kicked down the door of the former British officers' club and led us through a billiards room where the stale smell of dust and decay hung over the neatly racked cues and a picture of the late President Nasser. The rules of the game of snooker in fine curlicued print hung on the wall. The balcony opened onto a littered street where electric lines dangled from telephone poles and a dog lay dead on the curb.

Before the June 1967 war, there were 400,000 people living in Port Said. It was evacuated after the war. When the Oct. 6 war began, there were 25,000 people living in the city. They maintained the city services, ran the banks and government offices, and kept hospitals, shops, cinemas and hotels going. Now there are only 10,000 civilians in Port Said; the women and children have been sent to the rear.

According to Port Said's governor general, Abdel Tawab Hodeib, some 200 civilians have been killed and 500 wounded since the new war began. On Oct. 9 and 10, the Egyptians claim, 347 Israeli aircraft bombed the city for 30 hours. On Oct. 22, said Hodeib, an estimated 140 Israeli sorties were flown against Port Said, and 47 people were killed and 90 wounded. He said that Israeli planes struck again only an hour before the cease-fire was to go into effect. He added that it might take two or three years to rebuild the city--provided no air strikes are launched during the cease-fire period. Most of the Egyptians seemed convinced that the Israelis will violate the cease-fire and will bomb the city again.

Perhaps because of the raids, the Egyptian troops were jittery. As our Russian-built GAZ--a Jeep-like vehicle--negotiated the rubble-strewn streets en route to the telegraph office, we were stopped five times at gunpoint. In a cellar bunker, the telegraph crew ate a quick meal of stewed fish and rice. The line to Cairo was out.

The road from Cairo to Port Said runs through Mansura, the famed city of the Crusades where King Louis IX was imprisoned and the Crusaders made their farthest advance. The war is seen only by a crowd of youngsters gathered round the wreckage of an Israeli plane in the park opposite the gleaming white marble and sandstone mosque. Along this route, there is the verdant richness of the Nile, the bursting sense of population explosion and the bitter poverty of Egypt's peasant masses. The pace is easy: boys on donkeys bouncing along the roadside, blindfolded water buffalo walking in endless circles to turn the waterwheels that irrigate the rich, black fields. This is the green, fertile Egypt that lies behind the dead Sinai Desert, and the war has not come here. Only the arch of two Phantoms in the clear blue sky, their white contrails marking a path across the horizon, reminds you that there is a war in the desert.

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