Palestine

                We left England on His Majesty's troopship the SS Orontes
                        and disembarked at Port Said , from there we went to a large transit
                        camp on the west side of the Bitter Lakes not too far from Ismalia.
                        The only thing that sticks in my memory is the fact that the Officers
                        Club was run by German POWs mostly from the much vaunted Afrikacorps.

Finally after about a week to get acclimatized we boarded
a troop train and headed across the swing bridge to Qantara on the

west bank of the Suez canal. The swing bridge was later hit by
a ship transiting the canal and it was never re-built.

                        We traveled north across the Sinai   into Palestine and we left the
                        train near Nathanya and moved into Camp 21 about six
                        miles east of Nathanya and the same distance from Tulkarm to the west.
                        We spent many months searching Jewish settlements and generally making
                        a   nuisance of ourselves to the local populace. When one of our trucks was
                        blown up by terrorists our Brigadier (Bellamy) responded by bulldozing
                        the orange groves that provided cover for the terrorists as they waited for
                        the opportunity to blow up our trucks. Brigadier Bellamy was
                        shipped back to England the next day. We realized that this was
                        a very political situation and that things were very very different.
                       We adjusted and carried on in good old British fashion.
                        From Camp 21 we moved to the RAF Station at Lydda, just outside
                        of Tel Aviv . Our duties were about the same but we were also
                        responsible for patrolling the rail road tracks to make sure that
                        the oranges , Jaffas, could be shipped to England.

                  We left Camp 21 and moved into Peninsular Barracks Haifa, this
                        was one of the few permanent barracks in Palestine. It was situated
                        at the foot of Mt. Carmel on a peninsular that jutted out into the
                    `   Mediterranean. Our function there was to provide garrison troops
                        for the town. When an ship carrying illegal immigrants made a run for
                        the coast we provided back up to the navy boarding parties and cordoned
                        off the dock area .The immigrants were transshipped to troopships that
                        took them to Cyprus. In February 1947 a ship " The Ulua" evaded
                        the Navy and beached at Peninsular Barracks. In camp there were a
                        few cooks , walking sick and guards to keep people out. The rest of
                        the Bn was cordoning off the docks waiting to transship the
                        immigrants . Since the people debarking from the ship were already
                        inside, their main effort was to get out, which most of them did!

Safad
                     We moved from Haifa to Safad , a small town in the north east of
                        Palestine in the shadow of Mt Hermon the largest mountain in the
                        middle east. Safad was built on a small hill and the road in circled
                        the hill and came back out again.

                     A Palestine Police post, called   I believe, a Taggart was built at
                        the   entrance into town. Taggart   police stations were built during
                        the Arab troubles in the mid thirties and were in reality forts.
                       They were rectangular with massive stone walls and no outside windows.
                       Two towers diagonally opposite one another controlled all four walls.
                       There was one main entrance through a door that would have done justice
                       to a medieval castle. They were virtually impregnable.

                  During the wars that resulted in the independence of Israel the battles
                        for these Police stations as they were abandoned by the Brits
                        were the focal point of the war. The battle for the station at
                        Latrun was probably the heaviest of the war.
                        We (C Company) were stationed on a hill called Jebel Canaan (before I
                        moved to Colorado I would have called it a mountain) overlooking the town
                        some distance away. We occupied an unfinished hotel. It sounds
                        a lot better than it was. There were very few doors and even
                        fewer windows . The accompanying photo shows the building, it
                        faced west into the prevailing winds not the most hospitable of
                        accommodations.

                     A few miles away between us and the border was a settlement run by
                        the Palmach which was a striking force of the Haganah (The illegal Jewish
                        Defense Force and the forerunner of the Israeli army) that was used as a
                        training camp. The Palmach was an active force and was likened to our
                       Commandos whereas the Haganah was a volunteer force that was raised for local
                       defense of the Jewish settlements.
                       The settlement was built like a smaller version of the Palestine Police post in Safad.

The standing joke was that the passing out exercise was an attack
on our camp!

                         It was from here that I went on LIAP ( Leave in addition
                         to Python,) Python was the regular rotation schedule five years, LIAP
                        was two weeks at home after two years. I was sent to the RAF station at
                        Brize Norton where I went on a Crating and Lashing course to learn
                        how to load airplanes and drop equipment by parachute , mainly jeeps
                        and 75 mm   gun howitzers.
                        On my return I was promoted to Captain and became an Instructor
                        at the 6th Airborne Divisional Training School at the RAF Station at
                        Aquir.
                        Sometime during the stay in N.E. Palestine we spent some time at
                        Henderson Field in Transjordan as it was then. Many years later we
                        all watched on TV as Arab terrorists blew up a number of planes
                        including a 747 on an air strip in Jordan, that was Henderson Field.

                       When the 6th Airborne Divisional Training School went out of business
                       We prepared for our exit from Palestine, the 1st Arab Israeli war was
                       underway. We destroyed all of our Horsa gliders by towing them into a
                       massive pile, pouring gasoline onto them and firing incendiary bullets into them
                       the resulting blaze was unbelievable. Our instructions were to destroy and
                       render unusable anything that could be obtained elsewhere in the Middle
                       East. We evacuated the silver from the Officers Mess to Egypt and that was it
                       everything else was destroyed. This included not only the Horsa gliders but
                       a number of P57 Thunderbolts and a few miscellaneous aircraft . We also
                       mounted patrols to find out what had happened to Arab and Israeli patrols
                       that had wound up missing. Mostly these patrols had been ambushed and
                       butchered.

                       We moved to Haifa and again we tried to moderate the fighting . We occupied
                       the low ground between the Arabs in the city and the Israelis on Mt Carmel and
                       tried to separate the combatants as best we could. Our task was not made any
                       easier when terrorists on both sides dressed themselves up as parachutists to
                       deliver car bombs and carry out suprise attacks.   We were not very successful
                       so we wound up cleaning up after the two sides had had a set to . It was not a very
                       pleasant time. Eventually most of the British troops were evacuated from Haifa
                       by sea. We cordoned off the dock area while this took place. We then formed
                       an armored column and headed south to Egypt. This was an opportunity for
                       any one who had ever wanted to drive a tank or armored car to try his hand at it.
                       One days training and away we went. If a vehicle broke down we spiked the gun and
                       destroyed the engine with a shaped charge and then set it on fire . We made it to
                       Rafah a camp on the border with a few vehicles to spare and spent the night there.
                      The next day we watched the Egyptian army mount a classic infantry tank attack
                      on a small settlement with everything, including rocket firing Hurricanes. Incredible
                      as it seemed   to us the attack was unsuccessful. At that point I had no doubt
                      that Israel would survive as a nation.

                      We made it to Ismalia and after about a week they found room for us on the
                      Nieu Amsterdam a troopship that was taking families of the Polish Army back to
                      England. We docked at Liverpool and I made my way to Woking where I was given
                      a civvie suit and a raincoat. I was now a civilian .