(NEE REICHMAN)
1st May, 1948 – Here I was with my mother, Freda Reichman, two qualified nursing sisters arriving in Haifa to the sounds of small ships welcoming us. “What a reception”, I thought. Well, it wasn’t me for whom they cheered (I had traveled on a forged stamp on my British passport), but the fact that Haifa was in Jewish hands was the reason for the cheering.
We disembarked, were inspected by British soldiers, and off we went to some camp in Kiryat Haim. After three days we decided to go to Tel Aviv, where the late Chana Levin interviewed us. We were sent to a desolated camp, Tel Litwinsky. The hospital there was closed. Declaring that I had not come to learn how to march, and my intention in coming was to nurse and not to waste time, we were taken to the Kirya. Somebody decided to send us to the 2nd Battalion of Golani at Rosh Pina, to Professor Meier.
We landed up in Yavniel and we were told to get off the bus on a dusty road outside this village. There we were, no Hebrew, no idea where we were, but never one to lose my head, I started looking for the nearest army post. The late Dr. Morris welcomed us. The bus we had traveled on continued on to Degania to evacuate the elderly and the children.
After a few days at Yavniel, we continued to Tiberias, first to the Dafna Hotel where sick soldiers were, and then to the Scottish Missionary Hospital in Tiberias where we cleaned the operating theater, which had been left in a hurry by the missionaries. Tiberias was in a shambles after the fighting in the old part of the town. The wounded soldiers had been placed in the police station uptown, and there we were, two qualified nurses cleaning up this mess. Talk about Chelm.
Someone from the 12th Battalion would fetch me daily by jeep and take me to the kosher kitchen uptown. The 12th Battalion was a religious unit. No longer feeling like being a charwoman, I asked to be transferred.
We in Afula where the army had a few rooms in a hotel where soldiers with fractures had been placed after being transferred from the Emek Hospital. With deaf and dumb language I managed to converse with my Yemenite patients. Moshe, a male nurse from Mechavia, and Dr. Sommerfield from Afula, worked with me.
Tragedy struck one night. Dr. Isaiah Morris from London was killed with others on the Sejera front. What a loss. A charming gentleman and a brilliant doctor who gave his “all” for the young State. We buried him at night, our thoughts with his family in England who could not get to Israel in time to attend the funeral.
The hotel manager refused to give us more rooms, which we needed desperately for the lightly wounded. One, two, three, we had him locked up in the local police station until we got the keys. I felt like I was part of a western film.
The hotel was closed after some time and we left for Bet Lechem Hagalilit, a former German Templar village which had been captured from the Arabs a short time before. This village was also a training school for sergeants from Golani. The village had lovely houses built in the German style and included a water tower, on which the soldiers practiced climbing. At this stage my mother, as a Medical Corps nurse, was sent to serve at the Afula Hospital.
One day we went out on an attack in order to clean up resistance before capturing Nazareth. We divided into three groups, one going through Ginegar, another group a different way, and my group to a place called Migdal Ha’Emek. We entered a convent and the nuns looked at me aghast. My face was black, my tin hat covered with twigs, dirty all over. Not at all feminine and far from being a lady! I was the only woman amongst all the soldiers and we had to spend part of the night in the field before the attack.
I want you to realize that I am religious and was a member of the Brit Chaluzim Datiyim in England. I knew it was my religious and national duty to help in the creation of the state in the land which had been promised to Avraham by God.
We returned to Bet Lechem Hagalilit with the body of one of the soldiers. I don’t know if he belonged to a kibbutz. The bullet which had killed him had pierced the photographs he carried above his heart. We covered him in ice until people came to collect him. Whilst there we also heard that “Chumi” from Nahalal had fallen.
One day, Professor Sheba and Dr. Sommerfield, may their souls rest in peace, decided to take me to Sarin in the Emek. It had just been captured. On the way, an Arab plane swooped down on us and we jumped into a nearby ditch. Finally we arrived in Sarin where a clinic had been set up in a mud hut. Outside the clinic a radio with a high antenna was operated by a woman soldier. No sooner had I entered, the same plane that had followed us swooped down with a vengeance. The pilot had spotted the antenna! Bullets flew around me in the clinic where I was alone. As always when in danger, I prayed the Shemah! Now I had actually witnessed a miracle with my own eyes – I was alive! The newspaper Al HaMishmar had a reporter there who seemed to be quite impressed to meet an English-speaking nurse in the middle of all the balagan (chaos).
From there I went on to relieve two nurses near Jenin, which had not yet been taken. One was called Martha and both had been working hard before I arrived.
I stayed in Bet Lechem Hagalilit until I broke my kneecap. I was treated in Haifa and operated on at the Sieff Hospital. All my papers got lost, and suffering from a limp due to the fall in Bet Lechem, I was not recognized as an invalid. I spent my recuperation period in the Katamon Recuperation Center for Soldiers.
When I left, and as I was still on sick leave, I decided to hitch a ride to Eilat. It took 14 hours from Beersheba. This was around Pesach time 1949, and Eilat had been in our hands for one month. Of course, Golani had been involved in its capture. There were no houses, no water, and no streets. A lonely blue and white flag flew on one of the few mud huts. I slept along the shore (freezing cold), tried my hand at driving a command car (no chance of killing anyone!) and, surprise upon surprise, met a fellow member of Brit Haluzim Datiyim, a member of Kibbutz Tirat Zvi, Benno Penner. We explored the surroundings. Oranges were kept in a tent to quench our thirst.
On my ride back to Beersheva, my jeep was stopped. Some officer from Golani spotted me. “You are a nurse?” “Yes,” I affirmed. “Get into my car!” No questions, no answers. The sun added to our discomfort. We stopped between two huge boulders. Carnage. On the ground, boys and girls, dead, dying, and wounded. In an open car, with one Sten gun, they had ventured into the wilderness and had been attacked from the top of the boulders. The driver had jumped out of the cabin and left everyone to their fate. Blood everywhere. A young doctor had also been located. We packed the wounded, dead, and dying into the lorry and with the car bouncing over stones and uneven earth, we made it to Sdom. There plasma was given, and we flew with the dead and the wounded to Tel Aviv. To add to the confusion, we entered an air pocket, imagine how we felt. The pilots and navigators of both planes were American. We almost landed in Cyprus, where we would have to do a lot of explaining. I spotted one girl whose pulse I could not detect. She quickly received treatment. A Mrs. Tubiansky flew with us. She was a lovely lady who had worked for the army and whose husband had been killed. I often wondered what became of her.
We landed at Sde Dov amongst great confusion, and were whisked off to Tel Litwinsky where we left the wounded. The fighting had stopped. As I had married while in the army to the second-in-command of the Ramat Gan action against the British, when Dov Gruner was captured, the army let me go with reluctance.
I was called up to the army for reserve duty. At that time, women without children were called up for miluim (reserve duty). I was pregnant, feeling sick, vomiting, sleepy, and of no use to anyone. A few days later my army career ended and in my second month of pregnancy, I was finally discharged.
The son I gave birth to served in the Paratroopers, and my second son kept up the tradition and joined Golani. My grandson from Kiryat Arba also served in Golani.
My husband Dov, may his soul rest in peace, was a captain in the anti-tank unit during the War of Independence, and also came from England. We were married in the Machal Club in Hayarkon Street, Tel Aviv.
Author: Miriam Rozen (nee Reichman)