AIR FORCE – CODES AND CYPHERS
I.D.F. NO: 73807
As a young woman I was an active member of the Federation of Zionist Youth in the UK. In the early months of 1948, I heard that volunteers were being organized to go to Israel (still Palestine then) to help establish the longed-for Jewish State.
After a brief medical, some injections, and instructions to meet someone at Victoria Station, I traveled to Paris, met up with a small group of other travelers from the UK and went straight on to Marseilles and Grand Arenas Camp where there were refugees from all over Europe waiting for ships to take them to Palestine. We were then dispersed to smaller training camps where we had to learn to dismantle and re-assemble a Sten gun and to crawl through fields and practice some drill.
Eventually we embarked on the famous “SS Kedmah,” and arrived in Haifa about one week later. The British were still in control then, I don’t know how things were arranged, but I was put on a bus to the Beit Lid camp where there was more basic training; eventually I was posted to Ramat Gan to do guard duty, four hours on, four hours off. This was the Army Headquarters, and I actually saw Ben-Gurion arrive there one day when I was on duty.
Guard duty was extremely boring and I was very pleased to hear that English-speakers were being recruited to the Codes & Ciphers unit of Air Force Signals. I was accepted for this course which I completed with the rank of sergeant. I was then posted to various camps all over the country. Those that I recall were Ekron, St Jeans, Sdom, Ramat David and Herzlia. In all these camps my job was to decipher and encipher messages coming through the Signals Unit. Our work was Top Secret and no one – not the signals operators, nor even the camp CO – was supposed to enter the Codes & Ciphers office.
I was discharged from the army after the cease-fire and joined a group of Anglo- Saxons who were founding Moshav Habonim.
Through Machal, we were entitled to visit our home countries, and on my return journey (which followed much the same route as when I had come to Israel), I met my future husband in the transit camp, waiting for a ship to take us to Israel. We were married on Moshav Habonim in October 1950, and recently celebrated our 52nd wedding anniversary.
Author: Jean Bouskila