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blue cloth hardcover 8vo. (octavo). dustwrapper in protective plastic book jacket cover. fine cond. binding square & tight. covers clean. edges clean. contents free of markings. price clipped dustwrapper in vg cond. bit of rubbing, spine chipped top and bottom. nice clean copy. no library markings, store stamps, stickers, bookplates, no names, inking, underlining, remainder markings etc~. first edition so stated. first printing (NAP). endpaper maps with inset. xii+471p. 54 b&w photo illustrations. world history. history of israel. middle east history. history of egypt. military history ~ Late on the morning of June 5, 1967, Arab Legion guns opened a heavy bombardment of the Israeli sector of divided Jerusalem. The battle for Jerusalem, suspended by an uneasy armistice nineteen years before, had resumed. This book, written by an American reporter who covered the battle, describes in engrossing detail what happened during the next 48 hours. The Arab Legion, undefeated by the fledgling Israeli Army in 1948, was confronted in the city by the Jerusalem Brigade~a collection of academics and other reservists, most of them fighting within bullet range of their own homes. The mission of the unit, half of whose men were over 35, was to hold the line until reinforcements could arrive. By nightfall a crack paratroop brigade pulled off the Egyptian front had reached the city and was driving against the main Jordanian defenses in some of the fiercest fighting of the Six~Day War. Simultaneously, an armored unit was slowly pushing its way across rugged hills in an agonizing race to head off a Jordanian counterattack at dawn. Neither the paratroopers nor the armored unit had expected to fight in Jerusalem, and their officers, from brigade to platoon level, had to work out their attack plans as they moved up into combat. The battle was to be fought in places that are landmarks to most of the world's population~the Mount of Olives, Gethsemane, the Via Dolorosa, the Temple Mount. The book, based on interviews with 300 persons, describes in its opening chapters how the isolated capital, which had survived a grueling siege in 1948, prepared itself calmly for war as tension mounted. The line between civilian and soldier faded as husbands donned uniforms, children dug trenches, and wives sewed sandbags. It was a memorable period of utter unity. The Battle for Jerusalem is illuminated by vignettes that give a human dimension to the climactic tale: rabbis taking off their dark jackets on a Sabbath to dig trenches with their yeshiva students; the woman concentration camp survivor breaking out a cache of old rifles to stop an Arab Legion advance on Jewish Jerusalem; the 62~year~old inventor wounded by enemy fire as he launched one of his secret weapons on the front line; the general who prevented indiscriminate shelling of the Old City. The Battle for Jerusalem, June 5~7, 1967, is a vivid, carefully researched account of an epic event, the return of a sovereign Jewish nation to the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. Seller Inventory # 5252103
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