60 Years Ago

November 1947

THE END AND THE BEGINNING

November 1947 was a very dramatic time for Jews throughout the world. The British government had informed the United Nations of its intention to surrender its mandate, granted by the League of Nations in 192?, to govern Palestine. The UN had appointed a commission to make recommendations about the country. A resolution was  proposed to divide the country into two states, one Arab the other Jewish.  The results of the vote on this resolution was broadcast over the radio worldwide. Jews of every call and description were glued to their radios, almost hysterically anxious, cheering for the yes’s and crying at the no’s.

The resolution passed. The British were to leave Palestine on May 14th. 1948 and there were to be two states, one Jewish, one Arab. The United Nations had drawn the lines on a map but nobody was empowered to ensure that the resolution would be implemented.

All the Arab countries voted against the resolution and let it be known that even though the resolution had been passed by the UN, they would do their best to see that it was not implemented on the ground.

Since the end of World War Two, the British Empire which had included countries all over the globe, had been slowly collapsing. The name ‘Empire’ was changed to ‘Commonwealth’ and one by one, with or without turmoil, different areas of the former Empire became independent countries. Strictly speaking, Palestine was a British Protectorate though it was generally regarded as part of the Empire. The Palestine Police was entirely staffed by British people and generally run as part of the British army in the Middle East.

As it retreated from each country of its former Empire, the British Government ensured that the local population had some kind of provisional government, usually based on UK colonial law, so that the inhabitants could continue to live under some kind of law and order. The exception was Palestine.  Here, they were prepared to pull out, lock, stock and barrel, leaving the local inhabitants to their fate. The UN had not appointed anybody or any organization to ensure that the partition would be carried out as they intended.

The Arabs in Palestine has been attacking its Jewish inhabitants for many decades.  There had been pogroms in places like Hebron in 1929, and regular attacks on the kibbutzim and Jewish settlements. It was obvious to everybody that immediately the British withdrew there would be an all out war, no matter what the UN said. It was also obvious that in this war, the Arabs would be supported by the other Arab countries bordering the proposed new states of Israel and Palestine.

To the north of the new Jewish state was Lebanon and Syria. Both of these countries had been mandated to the French after the first world war.  The French had equipped and trained the armies of Lebanon and Syria to the high standards of the French Foreign Legion.

To the east lay Transjordan, a country created by the British as part of the original mandate but now a British protectorate and according to the British, a country in its own right. In fact it had been created as a ‘thank you’ gift to the Hashemite family and tribe for the assistance which they gave in the first World War in helping to defeat the Ottoman empire which had sided with Germany during that war, wanting to extend its empire to Egypt, and threatening the Suez canal, the lifeline of the British Empire.

The British protectorate of Transjordan included the supply, maintenance and training of the Transjordanian army, known as the Arab Legion. They were reputed to be the finest fighting force in the Middle East, if not the world. They had been commanded by the legendary Glub Pasha, a colonel of the UK Guards Regiment, itself a crack force within the British Army and highly trained by officers and noncommissioned officers from the UK Guards Regiments. A fearful combination!

To the south was Egypt whose army had also been supplied and trained by the British. Part of World War 2 had been fought in North Africa, indeed sometimes on Egyptian soil defending the Suez Canal. When this came to an end and the British Army went home, they left behind a well trained Egyptian army and all the surplus war supplies.

In addition, other Arab states in the area –  Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States – had promised to send troops to fight the Jews of Palestine..

The total Jewish population of Palestine at that time numbered about 600,000 people counting all the men (young and old) women and children. When the British left, they were to be faced with the massed armies of all these countries, determined to kill every Jew or drive them into the sea. It seemed almost impossible that the new Jewish state would survive.

At the time I was working as a graduate engineer, living alone in Liverpool in north-west England

 
1927 –1947

THE MAKING OF  A MACHAL-NIK

I was born in Leeds, UK. and have one sibling, a sister five years younger than me. My family were ‘middle-of-the-road’ in terms of Jewish observance. My mother kept a kosher home. My father made Kiddush  every Friday evening and we went to shul (synagogue) on High Holidays and occasionally at other times.  Before I could read or write, I was taught to say the Shema before going to sleep at night, and Modeh Ani on waking in the morning. Between the ages of 7 and 10 I was sent to cheder five times per week, to learn Hebrew, Yiddishkeit and to daven.

In 1937 when I was 10, my father, who worked for the Inland Revenue, was transferred to Birmingham which, at that time, had a small Jewish community. Houses in the ‘Jewish area’ were more than he could afford. We lived some miles away and although we were members of the local shul, it was way beyond walking distance on Shabbats and Yom Tovs  and to the best of my memory, we never went there.

In August 1939, World War 2 seemed inevitable. On September 1st I was evacuated with my school to Monmouth (a country market town on the border between England and Wales). I was sent to live on a small primitive Welsh hill farm, two miles outside Monmouth. The shock of moving from a comfortable, middle-class, kosher Jewish home, complete with a live-in maid, to a primitive farm with no electricity, one cold water tap and a bucket privy at the bottom of the garden, was enormous. But when war was finally declared on September 3rd. there was no option but to stay there and I did, for some three years.

On December 10th 1940, through a set of remarkable coincidences, my sister was evacuated to an aunt in Leeds and the maid was sacked and sent home to her family.

On December 12th 1940, during yet another air raid on Birmingham, a very large land mine was dropped by the Germans on my parents’ house. It was big enough to flatten eight houses in the row, and it killed my mother and father. There was nothing left of my home except rubble.

I continued to live on the farm until 1942, when I was 15 years old. At this time, my relatives in Leeds decided that I should go to live there, first with an uncle and aunt and later with my grandmother (my mother’s mother).  During the whole of this time, I felt exactly what I was, an orphan dependent on relatives who did not seem to be very interested in me. In fact, I was an embarrassing burden to them.

I did well at school. I got very good results in my Higher School Certificate and was offered a scholarship in Medicine at Leeds University and another in Engineering at Kings College, Durham University. Eager to get away from Leeds and the family situation, I took the up the Durham offer.

In 1946, at the age of 19, I got my degree in Electrical Engineering. At that time, the professional Institute of Electrical Engineers insisted that all graduates who wanted to become professional engineers had to spend two years after graduating as Graduate Apprentices in a factory. I wanted to go into the electrical power distribution part of the industry so I applied for a graduate apprenticeship with a firm called BICC, whose main base was in Prescot, a small town just outside Liverpool. They took me on.

That is how I came to be living in a bed-sit in Liverpool, in 1947.

 
November 1947 – Spring 1948

MAKING CONTACT WITH THE PALMACH

Living in Liverpool, I had made contact with the Jewish community there. The hopeless situation of the Jews of Palestine was well known, and there were frantic activities, like fund raising, to try to help. I also heard that there was a secret Palmach emissary  who, amongst other things, was looking for volunteers, men and women, who were prepared to go to the new Jewish State (as yet unnamed) to help. He was particularly looking for ex-military and professional people to help fight and establish the new Jewish State.

I thought about this for a few days. I knew about the Holocaust in Europe. I had been a Young Zionist as a child, a member of Habonim, and I remembered that each year, at Pesach, Seder night always finished with the words ‘next year in Jerusalem.’. I thought about people who would be going out there to help, I thought about the families they would leave behind. I remembered my parents who had been killed and the effect that had had on me. I thought about the parents of the volunteers who would be told that their loved ones had died fighting for the promised land. And their grief.

I thought about myself,  a young qualified engineer. Should I go? Who would grieve for me if I was killed ? No parents. No family who seemed to care. A sister whom I hardly knew. Maybe they needed engineers out there.

I let it be known that if it was thought that I could be of use, I would volunteer. I did not know who the Palmach emissary was, but I told a few people in the hope that the word would get through to him

A few days later, I had a phone call from a man who spoke good English but with a foreign accent. I think his name was Uri. He asked me to meet him at a certain time and place. I did. He asked me all kinds of questions about myself and my family. He did not make any notes, just seemed to commit it all to memory. At the end of the interview, he said that if I was wanted, somebody would be in touch with me. This was late November 1947.

About a week later I had a phone call which told me to give up my job with BICC and go to live in Leeds with my grandmother. I was also told to get a passport and wait for a letter. I gave up my apprenticeship, applied for a passport (this was before the days of regular air travel and I had never been abroad) and went to live in Leeds. I was on my way.

I told my family in Leeds what I was doing. Nobody seemed impressed or bothered. I had been right to volunteer.

The letter came. It said only that I was to go and buy a list of items from an army surplus shop. At that time there were many of these shops in England selling off surplus army clothing and other items. I had to buy things like boots, shorts, shirts, penknife and a large rucksack to put them all in.

My new passport arrived. I read it and noted that it specifically said it was not valid ‘for travel to countries for which a military or control commission or other special permit is required’. This meant that it was not valid for travel to Israel! But it was OK for France.

Some time later, the telephone rang in my grandmother’s home. I answered and was told to take my rucksack with all the kit I had bought and catch a certain train from Leeds station to London on a certain day. When I got there I was to take the tube to Oxford Circus station and then go to an office at a certain address in Oxford Street. Today I cannot remember the name of the office but I do remember that I had to memorize this information and was told very definitely not to write it down.  I said goodbye to my grandmother and set off.

I followed my instructions exactly. I found the address in Oxford Street, close to Oxford Circus. The ground floor was a fashionable dress shop. Next to the shop was an entrance which obviously led to offices above. A piece of paper, stuck on the wall in the entrance hall, told me it was the right address. The hall was clean and nicely decorated. Wide stairs ascended upwards. I went up.

The staircase wound up many flights and as it went higher, it got narrower and shabbier until, at the top, it was quite decrepit. Another piece of paper stuck on a door told me that I had found the right office. I knocked on the door and gingerly entered.

It was a small room with only a broken-down table and two somewhat wobbly chairs. Behind the table sat a tall, lean, casually dressed young man who rose to greet me as I came in. We sat down at the table. He asked me my name and many personal questions. He was obviously assuring himself that I was the young man he had been expecting. He never told me his name.

When he seemed to be satisfied that I was indeed  Cyril Grant (as I was then known), he told me to go directly to Victoria Station and to catch a certain train to Paris. I was to catch this train and no other. When I got to Paris, I was to take a taxi from the station to a pension called the Hôtel du Bois. This was in a back street near the Arc de Triomphe. If I was asked by anybody what I was doing, my story was that I was setting out on a hiking tour in France and I was to give no other information. He said that when I got to the pension I would be met by some others and told what to do next.

I had no trouble catching the train or going through customs and immigration control in England or France and in due course, arrived at the Hôtel du Bois. The receptionist seemed to be expecting me. I was told that there were other young men there and I had to share a room with some of them. Altogether there were about 10 or 12 young men, all of whom like me, were on their way to Israel. We were told that the Palmachnik in charge of this group would come to the hotel and tell us what to do next. In the meantime we just had to wait.

For a few days,  a Palmachnik came on a daily basis to tell us to stay for yet another day. We asked for some cash allowances so that we could feed ourselves but were politely told that the Palmach in Paris had no money and that we had to fend for ourselves. After having paid my train fare from Leeds to London and then from London to Paris, money was very short so we ate in very cheap French bistros.

After about four days he came with good news. We were to move on the next day. By this time there must have been about 14 people in our group, more having arrived while we were waiting. Our instructions were to travel in groups of 2 or 3 people. We were to take a certain train from Paris to Marseilles and we would be met at the station in Marseilles.

When we arrived at Marseilles, still in groups of 2 or 3, as we came off the end of the platform we were picked out of the crowd by a young man who bundled us quickly and as discreetly as possible into the back of a covered lorry. He knew exactly how many people he had to pick up and when we were all aboard, he drove off. He drove for about one hour. The lorry was totally enclosed so that we could not see where we were going and nobody could see what was in the lorry. Eventually the lorry stopped and we got out. We soon found out that we were just outside Marseilles, in the middle of a Displaced Persons Camp called Grandes Arenas.

 

Spring 1948

GRANDES ARENAS

Grandes Arenas was a large camp holding some thousands of displaced persons, many of whom had been there since the end of the war nearly three years previously. The majority, but not all, were Jews. Many had got there under their own steam, some from such places as Algiers and Morocco, but many had been brought down secretly from northern Europe by lorries of the Jewish Brigade of the British army. This had been an almighty operation carried out by the Jewish Brigade in ‘their spare time when the lorries were not being used for military purposes’. I suspect that this operation is a story in itself but I have never seen it written up anywhere.

The camp was supposed to be organised by the French gendarmerie. In fact, it was run entirely by the Palmach. It was a very large camp. In the centre was a compound which was supposed to house the French administration and guards. They all lived in and around Marseilles. When they arrived daily for work, they would simply go through the camp to their compound and emerge at the end of the day, to go home. Everything in the camp was run and done by the Palmachniks who used one of the Nissen huts as their office.

Conditions in the camp were primitive. People lived in huts something like the Nissen huts of the British army in the UK. As I recollect, they had a roof and two walls of corrugated tin and a brick wall at each end, with a single door at one end. Very quick and cheap to erect. Each accommodated something like 40 people. Each person had a simple iron cot, and the cots were arranged in rows along the walls. There were no cupboards or chairs so people stored their meager belongings under or by the side of the beds. The inmates had few belongings, as a general rule, no more than they could carry.

The latrines were simply a trench with a thick pole suspended over it. To use a latrine you had to sit and balance yourself on the pole and do whatever you had to do, hoping that you would not fall backwards into the trench. The stench was horrendous and one held one’s breath as much as possible. When the trench was half full, it was filled in with earth and a new trench dug elsewhere.

I don’t remember how all these people were fed except that the food was very poor and there was not much of it. There were some washing facilities, something like a trough with cold water taps which some people used occasionally.

We, the English speaking boys who had traveled down from Paris, joined another few who were already in the camp. On our second day we were once more piled into a closed lorry and driven off to a place which I later discovered was Trets, a small town in the foothills of Provence.

 
Spring 1948

TRETS

The lorry rumbled its way along paved roads. We heard the sounds of other traffic for about one hour. Then we were shaken up as we were obviously travelling over a dirt road which was not made for vehicular traffic. Eventually, the lorry stopped. We all got out into what seemed to be a disused farmyard.

A large two storied house stood at one side of the large yard.  Two other sides were occupied by what seemed to be farm buildings of some kind .On the fourth side was the gate through which we had just come. I wandered over to the gate.

I saw that all the buildings were perched half way up the side of a steep hill. The whole hillside area was covered with sparse vegetation and white rocks of various sizes. I learnt later that this area had been carefully selected  for Palmach training as it was isolated and very similar to the terrain in the hills surrounding Jerusalem. My first impression that this was a disused farmhouse was probably wrong as there was no land around which could have been cultivated. It was more probably a disused old shooting lodge.

Some 10 to 20 steel cots were arranged in one of the rooms  We each took one and dumped our rucksacks.

Training began immediately. We were taught how to handle various forms of guns, sten, rifles, bren and so on. We also went through hard physical training – running up and down the mountain side, crawling along and between the rocks so as not to be seen. One of the exercises was to run at and over a wall which must have been 10 or 12 feet (2 – 3 metres) high. It was a fact that if you ran at the wall as fast as you could go, and as you got close to it you put out your foot onto the wall, the forward momentum should carry you up and over the wall. It did for everybody else but, somehow, not for me no matter how much I tried.

This training went on for 2 weeks, all day and much of the night.

We slept well at night except for one thing. When we woke in the morning at the end of the first night, every one of us was covered with red insect bites. We searched the room but could not find a single insect. The next night was the same.  Somebody got some DDT and sprinkled it around but that did not do any good. We were all still bitten.

The following night one of us woke up in the middle of the night. With a torch he searched for whatever was biting. He found a line of round red insects, about ¼” diameter going from a bed where someone was sleeping, to the wall. He woke all of us up and we all found lines of red insects going from our beds to the nearest wall. We searched the beds and found nothing. More light was brought into the room and under this extra light we were able to see lines of colourless transparent insects going from the walls to the beds. There they bit us, fed themselves on our blood and, now coloured red, went home, back into the walls.

At the time, this procession, from wall to bed to wall, seemed almost funny. The bites did not itch and, somehow, one could not object to these little things having a meal. Anyway, we eventually stopped this midnight feasting by putting a continuous ridge of DDT round each bed. The bugs would have to cross the ridge to get their meal and in so doing, would pick up the DDT which would kill them in due course. Eventually the biting stopped.

It was in Trets that I had my first lesson in official corruption.

It was apparent that the local gendarmerie were well aware that a ‘foreign power’ had occupied this old disused shooting lodge and that it ought to be investigated at regular intervals. We always had a guard on the gate who could see a long way down the rough track. One day, in the middle of the day, the guard called out “the gendarmes are coming”. At that cry all the guns were hidden away in pre-arranged hiding places.  We cleaned ourselves up and looked busy doing things about the house. In single file, the local gendarme sergeant led his 10 or 12 men up the hill, through the gate and into the courtyard.

There he was met and greeted by our captain . There was a warmth in the greeting. They had obviously met before under pleasant circumstances. A few minutes chat in the middle of the yard and the sergeant, followed by his men was led across the yard into one of the buildings. I followed out of curiosity.

The building was like a big barn. In the middle was a very big table which could seat many people. I think that in the old days, it might have been used to feed a large hunting party. The sergeant took his seat at the top of the table and his men seated themselves on seats at each side. Friendly conversation continued.

Someone appeared carrying bottles of wine which were distributed to the sergeant and his men. Comments were made to the effect that this was a very good wine. Then somebody else appeared with a box full of American cigarettes. At that time, shortly after the end of World War 2, American cigarettes were worth their weight in gold in parts of Europe. Each man was given a packet of cigarettes. They lit up and puffed and drank with gusto. The conversation was lively, funny and enjoyed by all.

After about an hour of this merry making, the sergeant rose to his feet.  “Eh bien” he said. All the men stood up. The sergeant walked round the table to the door, followed by all his men in single file. As each man passed through the doorway, he was given a plain brown envelope containing some money, which he stuffed in his pocket. In single file, they all marched out of the door, across the yard, out of the gate and down the mountain back to the village of Trets.

This was an official search of suspect premises by the local police. It was my first, but by no means last, direct experience of official corruption.

Guard duty was done in 4 hour shifts. Basically this meant standing or sitting at the gate, watching down the road to Trets and reporting any movement. Except for the searches by the local gendarmerie, movement of people or things on that road was infrequent. My turn for night guard duty came from 2.00 am to 6 am. And with it, one of the most moving experiences of my life.
For the early part of my duty, the night had been very dark. No moon, no light of any kind. Just that strange feeling of there being things around you which you know are there but you cannot see. The house was towards the top of a steep hill and on the side of a valley which ran from east to west. In daylight you could see from the gate way down the valley for some kilometers and the whole of the dirt track road which clung to its side. But this night was very dark and nothing could be seen.

I don’t remember exactly what time it was when a small sliver of light peeped over the mountains in the distance and slowly moved up my valley. There was no colour in this light. Just a tiny bit of monochrome which fell on the sides of the valley, bringing them slowly back into a black, grey and white existence.

Slowly the sliver grew and as it grew my valley slowly came back into existence. Firstly in monochrome and then as the intensity of the light increased, colour started to appear. The browns and greens of the grass and the bushes and trees all came back to life. And finally, when the sun was almost over the mountains in the distance, the full beautiful colours of the flowers was restored. It was as if another day had been created and I had witnessed that creation.

There was a smell of Gauloise cigarettes in the freshness of that new morning air. Ever since that time, whenever I smell Gauloise cigarette smoke I am back on that hillside watching the world being created for another day.

After about 2 weeks, word came that we should return to the camp at Grandes Arenas. We did, again in a closed lorry so that no one should see the movements in France of this group of foreigners.

 
April 1948

WELFARE OFFICER IN GRANDES ARENAS

On our return to Grandes Arenas, we were each given work to do in the day to day running of the camp. I, at 21 years of age, was to be a camp Welfare Officer. This involved looking after the inmates of the camp as best I could and was, in fact, a dangerous job.

The inmates of that camp were there because they had nowhere else to go, the Jews waiting to be shipped out to Israel, the others, waiting for who knows what. Most had lost everything that makes a man more than an animal. Many had fallen to that level of existence where the normal laws of decent human behaviour no longer apply. Survival was the password and anybody or anything which challenged or threatened that in even the remotest way had to be dealt with quickly. Knives were the usual weapon. Stabbings were frequent and murder was a regular occurrence, usually for some small offence or some item from the small collection of things that people carried with them to the end, and which was all that they had

Part of my job was to go round the huts every day and where there was a mess, insist that the instigators clear it up immediately. The mess could be anything from rotting food to excreta . Many of the inhabitants refused to leave their beds, even to go to the latrines, in case somebody might steal their meager belongings, so they did what they had to do where they stood. As a result, the huts stank and people lived in the stench.

One day I, as welfare officer, was approached by a small man, under  five feet tall, probably in his late 50’s, of either Algerian of Moroccan extraction who had a problem which he was very much ashamed to share. Eventually he told me his story.

He and his life-long best friend had brought their families from North Africa to Grandes Arenas in the hope of being sent from there to Israel.  They had discovered that priority was given to young people, especially those of fighting age, and because of the ages of the parents, it was very unlikely that they could go as families.

He had a daughter,16 years old, and his friend had a 17 year old son, and the two men had agreed that these two youngsters should be married so they could go to Israel as a young couple, leaving the older folk behind until some later time. This had been firmly agreed.

In their society it was the custom for the brides’ father to make all the arrangements for the wedding and, to his shame, he had neither the means nor the ability to do that. He asked for my help.

I managed to get a space cleared at the end of one of the huts where the wedding could be held. In the camp I found a man who claimed to be a rabbi and he agreed to come and conduct the wedding.  I spoke to the French people in their compound and they gave me half a bottle of sour wine for the wedding. I pleaded with the kitchen and they gave me half a loaf of bread and a small tin of corned beef. This was to be the wedding feast. I also found a man who had a violin who was prepared to come and play. The wedding took place and I know that the young couple got on the next boat to Israel.

The bride’s father could not express the extent of his gratitude to me.  He came and slept on the concrete at the foot of my bed because nights were the dangerous times. Everywhere I went in the camp, he followed me. When I got into a threatening situation, which was frequently, he would jump out from behind me, put himself between me and a possible antagonist with his knife drawn to defend me. Only when he was satisfied that I was in no danger, would he withdraw. That man would have died for me. What for? I asked myself frequently.  Half a bottle of red wine, half a loaf of bread and a small tine of corned beef? At 21 years old, this was a moving realisation.
I was welfare officer for some days, then the call came. We were on our way. A boat was ready to take 600 people from France to Palestine. This was in Spring 1948, before the State of Israel was declared.

 
April – May 1948

THE BOAT  

The lorries came to take the people to the boat which would take them to the land of their dreams.  The first lorry was filled with about 20 Palmachniks.. I don’t remember any women, though there might have been since in the Palmach no distinction was made. Men and women lived together, ate together, worked together, fought together, and died together.

The lorry was closed up to avoid prying eyes and off we went. After what seemed like about half an hour driving, we stopped and everyone piled out.

We appeared to be on a small dock. A small ship, which I believe was called the Tetti, was tied up to the quay. A gangplank was in place for boarding.  I discovered later that the vessel was an old Italian ship of 200 tons,  a coastal cargo ship with two holds, fore and aft. It had been condemned by the Italian Naval authorities as being unseaworthy. Indeed when we were at sea, it was easy to see that the ship had a permanent list of five degrees. I think its top speed was probably three or four knots. It limped along through the sea.

The crew were Italian and they wore life jackets all the time we were at sea. It was obvious that they expected the ship to sink at any moment. The only lifeboats were on the upper deck where only the crew were allowed. The lifeboats were sufficient only for the crew and they made sure that nobody else came near them.

On the dock by the gangplank were three small tables, each about the size of a card table. Behind the middle table sat two French officials in uniform. Seated at the first and last tables were Palmachniks.

I discovered later that the French authorities were very aware of this ship and its purpose. I am sure that they must have been aware that the ship was unseaworthy  but decided to turn a blind eye. Perhaps somebody had shown them a ‘home made certificate’ for the boat, the kind that can be produced in the kitchen if you know how

The French authorities insisted that everybody who leaves the country must pass immigration and passport control. Nobody was officially allowed to leave without a valid passport or travel document. I knew that the only people who had valid passports were the 20 or so volunteers (Machalniks) who had came from the UK, USA, etc.  All of us had surrendered our passports to the Palmach when we first arrived in Paris.

Problem :- how do you get 600 people on board a ship with only 20 passports. Answer :- call in the Palmach.

One at a time, each would-be passenger went to the first table. There he or she was given a passport with a piece of paper in it. It did not matter whose passport it was. Next, on to the second table and give the passport to the French Customs officer. He opens it, stamps the piece of paper, closes it and passes it on to his colleague, the immigration officer. He opens the passport, stamps it, closes it and gives it back to the passenger. On to the third table and hand the passport back. The passport is then taken back to the first table, where the piece of paper is thrown away and a new piece put inside. On to the next passenger.

That is how 600 people left France, legally, on 20 passports. Each one had a valid passport when they went through customs and immigration.

Next question :- how do you get 600 people on board a small 200 ton ship?.  Answer just stack them in the holds.

Both the holds of the ship had been filled with wooden shelves. The shelves were about fifty centimeters apart and just wide and long enough for a person to lie down full length. You pushed your rucksack in first then, lying on your back, you inched your head in followed by the shoulders and the rest of the body. It was not possible to turn over as the space between shelves was less than the width of a young man’s shoulders.

You got in and stayed in. If you wanted to change your position, you slid out, breathed deeply and slid back in again. The Palmach museum in Tel Aviv has a faithful reproduction of some of these shelves.

I claimed a place for myself on the second level down, lodged my rucksack and went to work helping the others get aboard and settle in. I don’t remember exactly what we, the Machalniks, did for the first three days on the boat. I know for certain that we did not sleep for those three days, helping the refugees, settling them into their slots on the shelves. The next thing I knew we were out at sea, heading east. After three days of working non-stop, I crawled into my slot on the second shelf down and went to sleep. The date was end of April, 1948.

The British mandate for Palestine was still in force. What we were doing, i.e. trying to take Jews to their home land, was strictly illegal in British eyes. Their warships patrolled the Mediterranean searching for ships and boats like us. When they found one, the British would board the vessel, turn it round and send it back, under escort, to whereever it had come from. They even sent refugees from the death camps in Poland and Germany, back to those countries.

To avoid detection we sailed flying a Panamanian flag with our hatches battened down. To the outside world we were a load of rotten bananas going somewhere to be dumped. British destroyers came within hailing distance on no less than two occasions that I know about. The idea of boarding a ship full of rotting bananas was, apparently, enough to put them off and they sailed away. Little did they know that there were 600 people under those hatches.

Life on that ship was hell, HELL.

Conditions below deck quickly deteriorated. People lying on their shelves became seasick. They vomited. The vomit ran onto the shelf below. Their natural functions worked, onto the shelves below. The whole place, closed up away from any fresh air, started to stink. And people had to stay where they were, there was no other place to go.

Food and water were very scarce. The water ration was two cups of water each day, one in the morning and one in the evening. A deck hatch would be opened and a few people allowed up on deck. They would queue by the deck water pump and each be given a cup of water and a ship’s biscuit.

They drank the water and nibbled at the biscuit before returning to their place in the hold. Then the next lot could come up. There was a very strict limit on how many people could be on the deck at any one time. This limit was  fixed by the ability of that small group to get back below deck and the hatches closed again before any unfriendly ship or airplane could spot us.

For those who do not know, ships biscuits are disgusting things. They are normally kept in ships’ lifeboats to be eaten only as a last resort should the lifeboat need to be launched in an emergency. They are about four inches square and half an inch thick. They feel and look like concrete. They have no taste and in the dry state they are almost impossible to chew. You suck or nibble them as best you can. They do support life. Just.

It was part of our job to issue the water ration. For the first two or three days people accepted that this was a fair ration and everybody was getting the same. But after two or three days of lying in the heat and stench under closed hatch covers, tempers more than frayed. The odd person, man or woman, tried to rush the water pump to get more than their entitlement. It soon reached such a point that when water was issued, a Machalnik had to stand on each side of the water pump with a one inch chain in their hands. If anybody, man or woman, young or old, stepped out of the water queue and came near the tap, you had to hit them hard with the chain. I took my turn on water guard duty. It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do – to hit these desperate people with a chain. But it had to be done, otherwise there would have been panic.

There was another thing which we found in connection with the water issue. We had some mothers with young children, babes in arms, on board. Most of them were on shelves in the forward hold. We discovered that many of these mothers were getting water for their children and drinking it themselves. The children were not getting any water and on the way to death. When we asked the mothers why they were literally condemning their children to death the standard reply was “I can always have another child”.

It came to the point that we had to take the children away from their mothers and make sure that the child drank its water before returning the child to its mother. This usually involved a big fight with the mother. It usually took three or four young tough men to get the child from the mother and hold her whilst the baby/child drank. I have no doubt that taking the children thus, reminded some of them of the Nazis taking the children in the concentration camps – or was it their own thirst they were considering?

There is one little personal incident that  I would like to record. None of us, Palmachniks, Machalniks or refugees, had washed for some time. Washing facilities at Grandes Arenas left much to be desired and there was no fresh water for washing on the ship. After about 10 days of dirt and stench on the ship I had had enough. I had kept a small bar of good soap in my rucksack from the time I left England. Now, in absolute desperation I got it out.

A bucket on the end of a rope over the side of the ship brought me sea water, and my head went into the bucket. Out came the soap and for the first time for a very long time, I attempted a shampoo with the soap. Quickly massaging the soap into my hair I suddenly realised what a big mistake I had made.  The soap combined with the salt in the sea water to produce a very thick scum and no matter how much I tried, I could not get that scum out of my hair with more sea water.  Eventually it all dried and set hard . Much to the amusement of everybody, I had to spend the remaining 10 days or so walking around like the old classic golliwog except my hair, standing on end, was a horrible dirty grey colour in place of the golliwog’s black.

There was one great day on that ship which I shall never forget. We were sailing along the north coast of Cyprus, about half way along on the way to Haifa. We had been battened down under hatches for some days only allowing people on deck a few at a time.

Suddenly there was a noise of unusual activity on the deck above us. Our hatches were opened and everybody EVERYBODY was invited to come up.  This was extremely unusual.. It was only then that we could see, for the first time, how many people were actually on that little ship. We all crowded out into the fresh air, actually expecting the worst. Perhaps the British had boarded us after all and we were all going to be interned in Cyprus.

But no. There were no strange sailors or soldiers on board. Just the leading Palmachniks busying themselves with loudspeakers and lots of wire. We had no idea about what was happening.

Eventually, there was a call for silence. The loudspeakers crackled a bit. A man’s voice said a few words in Hebrew which few of us understood, until somebody shouted out ‘Ben Gurion’. We all heard Ben Gurion reading out the Declaration of the State of Israel. The world, our world on board that ship, went mad. Six hundred hungry, thirsty, filthy, dirty people, hugged and kissed each other, crying and laughing.   We danced and sang around the open hatches as the magnificent strains of Hatikva dominated the atmosphere – not once but time and time again.

Down came the Panamanian flag.  With enormous cheers from 600 newly freed people, up went the Israeli flag, the blue and white Magen David. We had made it. We were now a ship of a sovereign country which had every international right to sail the high seas. No one could stop us now.

No more battening down of hatches. You could sleep on deck and pee over the side, if you could find a place. With the hatches off, fresh air could go into the holds. Water and food were still scarce but with only a couple of days to go to Haifa, one could put up with that. Besides, the crew had found a big box of dried fruit, dates etc. which was distributed all around. One small handful per person. Truly a sweet day.

 
May 1948

ARRIVAL IN ISRAEL

The ship pulled onto the quay in Haifa harbour. At last the hellish journey of two and a half weeks was over. We had arrived in the Promised Land. A new life for each of us was about to begin.

The situation in Israel in mid-May 1948 was critical. The Egyptian army, equipped and trained by the British, had attacked from the south. The Arab Legion, also equipped and trained by the British and commanded by Glub Pasha of the British Guards regiment, attacked from the east. Syria and Lebanon, equipped and trained by the French, attacked from the north.

The total Jewish population of Israel at that time was 600,000 people including women, children and old folks, against the combined armies of the strongest and best equipped soldiers in the Middle East. Moreover under the British mandate, it had been illegal for Jews to arm themselves.

The Palmach, Hagana, Irgun, and other underground movements had acquired arms, one way or another, during the latter years of the British Mandate. Guns had been made in the back street workshops in Haifa and Tel Aviv in pieces which did not always fit together very well. Bullets had been made in the cellars of some of the kibbutzim though one could never be sure that the bullet would fire when the trigger of the gun was pressed or, if it did fire, where the bullet would go.

The whole world watched this drama and, with exception of the USA and one or two others, did nothing. They just waited until the Jews were driven into the sea, the promise of the Arab nations.

But somehow, it did not happen.

In the selection of people to travel on our ship from France to what was now Israel, preference had been given to young fit men who were capable of joining the army and fighting. Now was their hour.

Open lorries were lined up on the dockside.  Some young men were called off the ship onto the quay. Many of them fell on their knees and kissed the bare earth, tears streaming down their faces. At long last they could look forward to spending the rest of their lives living in peace and harmony. No need to fear the knock on the door at midnight. No need to fear walking down the street and the groups of youths standing by, waiting to pounce on them. They were Jews in the Land of Israel, the Land of their Fathers.

They were loaded into the lorries, between 30 and 40 to a lorry. Full of hope they drove off.

In each lorry was a pile of Israeli made sten guns, ammunition for same, and an Israeli army officer. The guns were distributed to the men and as the lorry drove towards its unknown destination, the officer demonstrated how to load the gun, take aim and fire. Very few understood the officer’s words. These young men had come from all over Russia, Europe, North Africa and many other places. They knew only their own languages. They were able to learn how to use a gun by example but when it came to understanding orders issued in Hebrew, they were at a complete loss.

At that point, it did not seem to matter. They were on their way to fight for Israel, for their own country. For the first time, they had guns to point and fire at someone else. They were no longer the targets, no longer the victims. They could defend themselves and fight for their own rights and the right to live as Jews.

The road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was a simple, narrow two lane highway. From the coast to Latrun, the landscape is comparatively flat, arable farmland. At Latrun the hills start to rise. The road follows a gully into the mountains. On the right hand side at the top of the first big hill is the fort of Latrun. On the other side is the old monastery which was heavily defended   In May 1948, both these military strongpoints were occupied by the Jordanian Arab Legion  The place was well fortified with cannon and machine guns. Anything trying to get from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem came under heavy fire.

The Jewish community in Jerusalem was cut off from the rest of the country, and  was completely surrounded by the Jordanian Arab Legion. The biggest blockage preventing supplies and relief from getting through was at Latrun. Ben Gurion ordered that Latrun should be taken, virtually whatever the cost.

The lorries, carrying about four hundred young people were driven straight to the flat land at Latrun. At that time, most of the land was covered with ripening corn. Under the command of their new found officers, the refugees spread out, through the corn, with their guns, about to attack.

From their vantage points in the fort and the monastery the Arabs saw what was happening and opened fire with everything they had. The Israeli officers shouted orders at the new immigrants – but all in Hebrew which they did not understand. The final order was to retreat. They did not understand, so they stood their ground. The Arab machine guns razed them to the ground. Almost all died.

Almost all these young people, who had been through hell in Europe, as few on this earth know it, who thought that their dream of a life in the Holy Land was at long last a reality, who fell on their knees and kissed the ground in Haifa, died in the chaos of the Latrun killing fields.

The body count of those killed at Latrun varies according to the political views of those reporting. For most of them, there is not even a record of their names..

 

May 1948

TEL LITVINSKY

When the ship was clear of all its passengers, we too, the English speaking Machalniks, were loaded into a lorry and taken to Tel Litvinsky camp. Tel Litvinsky was not far from Tel Aviv, and had been a very large British army camp. This camp, (on whose site Tel Hashomer hospital now stands), had a few big buildings but was mainly a very large collection of small buildings. These had been mostly used as sleeping accommodation for the British troops, and were now used for the Israeli army.

We were allocated bunk beds in one of the huts. A good shower, some decent fresh food and a good nights’ undisturbed sleep and we were ready for action again.

Our hut was at the edge of the camp. On the other side of the fence was a melon field, full of what seemed to be good ripe sweet melons. After some weeks of no fresh fruit or vegetables, the melons were most attractive but we were warned that under no circumstances should we cross the fence and eat the melons.

Some of our men, thinking that this warning was simply to protect the property of whoever owned the field, waited until nightfall, crossed the fence and came back with handfuls of ripe melons. These were eaten by some. Within hours the runs and the vomiting started. The men who ate the melons suffered enormously from dysentery – very bad dysentery.

 It appeared that the Arab who owned the field had run away from the war, as had most of the Arabs in the Tel Aviv area. This was in response to a call from their leaders to clear the area of all Arabs so that the Arab armies could kill everybody who was left there. Before he left the area, he flooded his field with raw sewage, hence  the dysentery. His way of fighting the war I suppose.

 
May – June 1948

TEL AVIV AND THE MACHAL CLUB

Those of us not lying on our beds suffering from dysentery were given a couple of days leave. Very few of us had any family or even friendly people in Tel Aviv whom we could visit. We were told to ‘make our way’ (meaning ‘hitch a lift’) into Tel Aviv and, once there, to report to the Town Marshall who would fix us up with a hotel. As for food, we were told about the Machal Club in Ben Yehuda street, where we could get something to eat.

 My friend Geoff Barnet and I set off,  extremely happy in the thought that at long last we could have a good night’s sleep in a nice hotel bedroom, complete with hot and cold showers and everything else that one could expect from a decent hotel.

We found the Town Marshal’s office, handed over our pieces of paper which stated that we were on leave. In return, we received another piece of paper which, we were told, entitled us to a room and board in a specific hotel, very near to the beach and the sea. The hotel was the Monopole Hotel at the bottom of Allenby Street, which was the main street running from the sea and beach, directly inland.

Off we went down Allenby Street, talking happily to each other. There were only a few people about as we wandered down to the sea. Suddenly two rifle shots rang out in the comparatively quiet street. Two bullets whined past our heads and ricocheted off the walls of the building. In heavy accented English we heard a cry “Go back to England, you bloody Englishmen.”

The shock of this event was enormous and affected my life for many years afterwards.  Not because we had almost been killed. We had both come to Israel prepared to die because the world  expected the Arab armies to sweep the Jews  into the sea, and that included us.

When I had been a teenager in Leeds, one dark night, returning home alone from the Judean club, I had been beaten up in the street by four thugs.  Some years later in the Trafford Park area of Manchester I had again been severely attacked by some youths in the street. In both of these cases, the cry had been “Go back to Palestine you bloody Jew”. I had done just that and, having done it, I was told to go back again to England. Again, I was not welcome, again I did not belong.

If I was not English, to live in peace with other Englishmen and I was not Jewish, to live in peace with other Jews, who and what was I? The answer to that question took many years to resolve.

I was not alone with these feelings. Geoff felt the same as I, and although we could not share our feelings at that time, we did many years later.

We found the Metropole Hotel at the bottom of Allenby Street. It seemed a bit of a run-down place, not a patch on the Dan hotel further up the road where some of the Air Force men were staying. We went in.

Reception was a poky little office with a window through which all business was conducted. We handed over our documents and we were told that the hotel was very full and that we would have to share a room with others. We were given a room number and we found our own way up the stairs.

We opened the door of the room and looked in. The room was packed with beds, probably eight, ten or twelve iron cot type beds, with just enough space between to squeeze past. It was just like the accommodation in the Tel Litvinsky  camp. Most of the cots had some belongings dumped on them, and had obviously been claimed by other personnel. We claimed our two cots and went out to find the Machal Club.
Later we discovered that if we had gone back to the Town Marshall office and kicked up a fuss, we could have been billeted in a proper decent hotel and not in the brothel which the Monopole seemed to be. We had a lot to learn as to how things were done  in Israel at that time.

We found the Machal Club in Ben Yehuda street. It became the general meeting place for all Machal-niks, in fact the only place in Israel where one could meet friends, chat and be generally sociable with one’s friends. It was somewhere we could get a sandwich and a cup of coffee but it was much more besides.

It was here that we learnt what was really happening in the war. Men coming back from the various fronts would talk about their experiences, what they had done and what they had seen. Some of the stories were fantastic, almost beyond belief, except we knew the men who had taken part and we knew they were telling the truth.

We heard about the British equipped Egyptian army which was advancing north from Egypt well into the Negev, the desert part of southern Israel. The embryo Israeli army had very few men and almost no guns to stop them and the way seemed clear for them to go all the way to Tel Aviv.

A small group of Palmachniks knew that they could do little to stop this advance militarily. They made a mad dash to Tel Aviv and  commandeered half a dozen lorries from kibbutzim on the way. At every opportunity they filled the back of the lorries with big empty oil cans which were to be found in profusion in the streets. On the way back to the fighting front, they half filled the cans with stones.

The lorries were driven to the top of a hill just beyond the view of the advancing Egyptian forces. The lorries were unloaded of their cans of stone. Some of the Arabic speaking Palmachniks ran to the top of the hill and down the other side. In full view of the advancing Egyptian army they started screaming in Egyptian Arabic “Run for your lives. The tanks are coming. Run for your lives. The tanks are coming”. The remaining Palmachniks, out of sight on the other side of the hill, tipped over the oil cans and sent them rolling down the hill. With the stones inside, they made a huge din, sounding just like a flotilla of tanks on the move. The Egyptians turned tail and ran. The advance was stopped .

This is only one incident of many told in the Machal club. I have hear it said that at West Point Military Academy in the USA, probably one of the best military academies in the world, they teach the strategies and tactics of all the great wars in the past – except the Israeli War of Independence. Asked why not by one of the (Jewish) students, a senior instructor said that there was nothing to be learnt from that war because there was absolutely no logical military  explanation for why the Israelis won.

Another important function of the club had to do with many of the young ladies who worked there. These girls, who had avoided the army service demanded equally of young men and women, wanted to get out of Israel. They could not do so on Israeli passports or travel documents because very few countries in the world recognized Israel as a sovereign state. The solution was to marry an English Machal-nik.

Love, personal relationships or anything of that nature did not come into these equations. It worked like this :-

Providing the young man had a British passport, a wedding was arranged, the Rabbi was called and he did everything that was necessary to perform a marriage. The girl would get her Ketuba, marriage certificate, borrow her new husband’s passport, jump into a taxi and go immediately to the British consul who was still operating in Haifa. He would record the marriage and issue the new bride with her new UK passport. She would then return to her home in Tel Aviv or whereever she lived.

At a convenient time later, the bride and groom would meet with the Rabbi. In the club it was said that the Rabbi would say the necessary blessings, spit three times   and declare the marriage void. The groom would then receive twenty five pounds in cash, the going rate and equivalent to five months salary. This happened many times. The news was who was the latest to fall for his twenty five pounds.

And every night it was back to Tel Litvinsky, except for one other night in the Metropole hotel when we had to sleep on the concrete floor, and a few other nights when we learnt to sleep on the beach. That was quite an art. You wriggled about in the sand until the sand took up your natural shape. As long as you did move you could sleep quite comfortably. All the same, I wouldn’t recommend it.
 

 

Summer 1948

IN THE ARMY

Within a couple of days we were all called for interview. Based on each person’s practical experience, we were allocated to various units in the newly formed Israeli army. Amongst the English speaking Machal-niks, many had fought in the British, American or South African armies in World War 2 and they were allocated to similar units in the Israeli army and air force.

The Palmach, Haganah, and others formed the basis of the Israeli army, but the air force and navy depended for their expertise on people who had served in similar positions in foreign units. My very good friend, Harold Decofski, had served in the British Air Force in Egypt and had taken his discharge there. He made his way to Israel and joined the Israeli Air Force. At that time, the Israeli Air Force consisted of  two Piper Cub planes.

Harold was immediately appointed bombardier. That means that he sat in the second seat of the Cub, behind the pilot, with home made bombs around his feet. The pilot flew the little plane over the enemy lines and Harold’s job was to throw the bombs overboard when he saw an appropriate target. Such was the beginning of the Israeli Air Force. At a later time, he was sent to Czekoslovakia to assist in bringing the first Spitfires to Israel.

In fact the first real war planes to arrive in Israel were two Messerschmitts. They arrived in Israel in bits, in packing cases and it needed some real experts to assemble them and get them flying.

My expertise lay in the fact that I was a qualified Electrical Engineer with practical experience in cables and the distribution of electricity. I was sent to assigned to a unit called  Sherut Ichsun.- given an address in Tel Aviv and told to make my own way there. There were a few, but very few buses, each owned by their drivers and used when the drivers were not on active service. Hitch hiking was the order of the day. Taxis ran, usually crowded with everybody contributing towards the fare.

I found my way to the address. It turned our to be a small office. Inside was a desk, two chairs and two men in pseudo officers uniform, arguing heatedly over a small packet of what looked to me like bacon which lay on the desk between them  The arguement went on until one of them noticed me standing in the doorway. The little packet was hurriedly scrambled to a drawer and I was called into the room.

Apparently I was expected. A short interview followed and then I was presented with a large scale map of the camp at Tel Litvinsky. Apparently when the British  withdrew from Israel they took with them all the official documentation about the camps. The drawing which I held in my hand was a copy of one that had been stolen from them some time ago. My job was to explore and draw on that map the electricity cables which distributed the electricity from the point of supply, to each and every hut and house in the camp.

Tel Litvinsky was a very large camp. All the cables were overhead from one hut to another and, working in the open air and heat, it took many weeks to complete this assignment.  When it was finished I took the final drawing back to the office and handed it over. They seemed satisfied with my work and gave me another camp to map out. This was the Sarafand camp.

It was at this point that I was told that I had been appointed to the illustrious rank of Corporal. I don’t know how this had come about. With my qualifications, I should have been a junior officer but in those days in Israel, qualifications meant little. ‘Protectsia’ meant a great deal more. If your uncle or any distant relative held a rank, then you could expect to be given a rank. If not, you stayed where you were. The exception was the Palmach, who elected their own officers.

My CO invited me to his home for dinner. It was one of only two occasions when I was actually invited for a meal in somebody’s home during the whole year I was in Israel. It was a remarkable experience because of my CO’s young 8 or 9 year old daughter. My CO was of French origin. His wife had been German. The daughter was their only child, born in Israel, a true Sabra.  Since birth, the father had spoken to her in French, the mother in German. She had learnt Hebrew and Arabic in the street and had learnt English in school. The amazing thing was that whatever language you spoke to her, she replied in the same language! Truly amazing. Every language was fluent.

There was one other occasion when I was invited to a private house for dinner and that was one of the big mistakes I made whilst in Israel. The invitation came from a young Polish maid who worked in the Machal Club. I gratefully accepted, turned up at the girl’s house, to be met and made very welcome by the whole, large family. They entertained me very hospitably even though food was generally in short supply. After that the girl would not leave me alone. She followed me whereever I had to go, came searching for me, embarrassingly, wherever I went.

I could not understand her attitude at all until somebody explained to me that in her particular society, when a young lady invites an eligible young man home to dinner, to meet all the family, his acceptance is a sign of the beginning of an engagement with a wedding soon to follow. I ran!

Sarafand was an enormous camp. It had been the largest British army camp in the Middle East. It was know as the Leisure Camp as soldiers, exhausted from fighting in North Africa and elsewhere in the greater area, were sent there to rest and have a little fun before going back to the war. The camp was like a small town. It even had its own electricity generating station in the middle, two massive diesel engines driving a big generator. There was an interesting story as to how we, the Jews, came to occupy Sarafand.

The story, as told in the Machal club, was that the British were to evacuate Sarafand on May 14th 1948. It was supposed to be handed over complete and working to the Israelis. But there was a secret agreement between the retreating British and the local Arab militia, to the effect that as the British withdrew, there was to be a one kilometer gap between them and the Arabs, and the Arabs were to come into the camp and take possession.

Haganah got wind of this arrangement and arranged for its forces to come in from both sides, between the British and the Arabs. The Arabs, expecting no resistance, were lightly armed with comparatively few personnel, so were easily held up by the Haganah force. Sarafand thus became ours.

My job, once again, was to map out the electricity supply. When I arrived there, the camp was absolutely empty. I worked there for some months and never saw a single soul the whole time. I was sleeping and eating, morning and night, in Tel Litvinsky but working from sun up to sun down in Sarafand. This was right through the summer and it was very hot. Every morning I had to hitch my way to the camp, some distance away, and back again in the evening, and I worked without talking to anybody all day. I almost finished the job when I went down with a very bad dose of jaundice.

I was in hospital in Tel Litvinsky for some weeks until all the yellow had gone. They discharged me from hospital and from the army at the same time.

 

 
Autumn 1948 – March 1949

HAIFA

I found a job in Haifa, in a factory which made small electrical cables, my specialty, and a very nice small bedsit in which to live. The wages were very low.

Haifa is very hilly indeed. It is built on the side of a mountain behind Haifa Bay. The noise in the factory was horrendous, and climbing the mountain to get back to my room at night was more than exhausting. I knew no English speaking people there at all and my Hebrew, although sufficient to get by, was never fluent. The isolation and loneliness were unbearable.

I stuck it out for a few weeks then I went back to the office in Tel Litvinsky and asked to be sent home to England. Within a couple of days, they found my passport and in March 1949 I was on my was back home.

 
EPILOGUE

In all, there were 3500 Machalniks (Volunteers From Abroad) of whom 450 came from Britain. Of these 450, 21 were killed in action and the majority of the rest returned to the UK in the first six months of 1949. The only ones who stayed in Israel were those who already had family there or who had married, and not many of those stayed. Most of those who returned never set foot again in Israel.

 We thought that there should be a permanent memorial to the 200 of the 3500 Machalniks who were killed in action. Numerous approaches to the government were of no avail. There seemed to be little realization of the part played in the War of Independence by the Machalniks.

Finally, a small piece of land was offered by the JNF, in a forest between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem but no money to design and build the memorial. This had to come from the Machalniks themselves. Bearing in mine the contributions made to this country by these people who gave their lives, this official attitude is, in the view of many people,
unforgivable.

When I left Israel in March 1949, I swore that I would never set foot in this country again. And I did not, until circumstances changed in 1992 and I found myself on holiday in Tel Aviv.

I spent two days looking for the old Machal haunts and found none of  them. The country had changed beyond all recognition. Sand dunes had become modern high-rise residential areas, cars streamed down 3-lane highways, shopping centres, cafes and restaurants abounded.  It was very clear that the Israel of today is not the same country I left in 1948.

Our object in 1948 had been to fight for and create a Jewish state, known in those days as a “homeland for Jews” and this we (and others) had done. Here, after 2000 years, was a country where being a Jew was the norm and where I felt at home. Here there was nobody to tell us to “go back anywhere”. We could walk the streets comfortably, wearing a kippa or not. We were at home. My wife and I made aliya three years later.