14th May 1948

[joseyclosey]

An interesting article from my local paper, The Northern Echo......

http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/featur ... y_land.php

Not so Holy Land



The state of Israel came into being at midnight on May 14, 1948. A 19-year-old British journalist, Arnold Hadwin, found himself a witness to a moment of history while doing national service in Palestine. Sixty years on, these are his memories

IT WAS a brilliant May morning in Haifa in the shade of Mount Carmel. Palestine had just ceased to exist, to be replaced by the new state of Israel. As a young Royal Marine, with the task of keeping the warring communities apart through these historic events, it felt curiously mundane - just another day.

But not for Michaela, one of the Jewish girls, working as a clerk in the Port Pass offices of 40 Commando Royal Marines. With visible emotion, she handed me a stamped envelope. It was a firstday cover.

"It's finally happened," she said.

The six stamps on the envelope bore the word ISRAEL. It was no longer a metaphysical concept or part of a prayer ... "next year in Jerusalem". It was now a land of people, homes and enterprise.

I was a 19-year-old member of the Intelligence Section of 40 Commando RM, on National Service in what we used to call the Holy Land. I had been trained in the arts of war, but now had to learn new tricks about keeping the peace.

My unit remained in Haifa until the end of June.

We were the last to leave Palestine, witnesses to the birth pangs of Israel and the bloody aftermath of this uneasy United Nations compromise. On that first day of the State of Israel, I was conscious of the emotion-filled atmosphere, but more preoccupied with the life-and-death struggle to come, as five Arab armies mounted their invasion from north, south and east.

A few weeks earlier I had been sitting outside a dockside cafe with a Palestinian Arab acquaintance. George was articulate, a member of the educated, middle class. He was worried about what would happen when British troops pulled out, and pointed to my green beret on the table.

"This - the Yehudi (the Jews)," he said. Running his fingers along the edge of the table, he went on: "This - the sea. Within 24 hours of you leaving ..."

He swept the beret off the table with his hand, not needing to finish the sentence.

He was expressing a belief, common at the time, that the combined armies of Transjordan, Egypt, Syria, the Lebanon and Iraq (financially backed by other oil-rich Arab states) would easily crush Israeli forces. In theory, they should have done. What George and the other pundits failed to realise was that when an Israeli unit lost a battle, it had to regroup and fight again because there was nowhere else to go but the sea.

On that first day of Israel's existence, I remember musing to myself that it would be an extraordinary state. Even the young women clerks in our Commando office had a couple of degrees and spoke several languages. It seemed that no other country would be able to tap such intellect, such culture, such sophistication for its top jobs and its most lowly.

Back in 1948, Israel had many things going for it.

The kibbutznics - the communal settlement dwellers - were overwhelmingly impressive. They were dedicated to the land, vigorous, self-reliant, and proud in the best sense of the word. They were committed, but not in a bigoted religious way. And their soldiers had the same virtues.

Many Arabs had already left their homes - some because they had been told to get out of the way of the invading armies, many more being brutally ousted by Jewish terrorists. Fear reigned supreme.

The Royal Marines had arrived in the Holy Land in January, 1948. A small advance party of 40 Commando disembarked from HMS Cheviot to secure Haifa Port in case there were to be a fighting withdrawal at the end of the Mandate.

I could not believe my luck. I had been a cub reporter on The Northern Echo before being called up for my National Service. I was now a reporter with a notebook, pencil and Sten gun.

Our tour of duty in Haifa was a reporter's dream.

There were enough incidents every day - bombings, shootings, killings - to fill half a dozen newspapers, and no news editor to say I was wet behind the ears.

It was exciting as a reporter, but as a Royal Marine caught up in a complex life-and-death struggle, with the deeply entrenched hatred of the warring sides ever present, it was often disturbing and distasteful.

I quickly realised we had not been trained for peace-keeping and spent the next 30 years trying to persuade military authorities to re-write the training manuals. We had to play it by ear.

As the end of the Mandate approached, Jews and Arabs jockeyed for position, trying to occupy key buildings, crossroads and vantage points. By April 22, Haganah, the Jewish Defence Army, had attacked the Suk, the Arab quarter of Haifa, and we had to evacuate 12,000 refugees across the bay to Acre, up to the Syrian frontier or on to Beirut.

On one such operation I was on a 15cwt truck at the rear of a convoy of vehicles heading for the Syrian border. A lorry carrying about 30 or so refugees and their belongings broke down opposite a kibbutz on the road to Acre. The Arabs were terrified. So it was decided that myself and two companions on the 15cwt should tow the lorry into Acre and the rest of the convoy would pick us up on its way back.

Theoretically, security military vehicles should travel in pairs. But this was an emergency. In the market place at the Crusader fortress town of Acre, we were lauded as heroes. Food, fruit and hooch were plied upon us, but as darkness fell, and with no sign of the convoy, we became apprehensive.

EVERY man appeared to have an arsenal of weapons - automatics, pistols, knives, grenades. It wasn't that we thought they would attack us, rather, that few of them seemed to know how to handle these instruments of destruction. A bullet from an incompetent friend wreaks as much havoc as a bullet from an enemy.

So we decided to seek refuge in the prison fortress, run by competent British warders.

Unfortunately, the telephone wires had been cut, so there was no way of contacting our unit in Haifa.

And a voice on the radio announced that a 15cwt 40 Commando RM with three men aboard had been lost without trace. As dawn broke, we scuttled back to Haifa, foot down hard on the accelerator. There was another heroes' welcome for us from comrades who had given us up for lost.

Securing the port for our final withdrawal and making sure all British servicemen and endangered civilians made it safely to Haifa was a tedious business after such excitements. The final evacuation - named Z Day - was set for June 30. We took our last look at the beauty of Mount Carmel.

I had been witness to a moment in history which has cast a long shadow. The present leaders are not out of the kibbutznic mould.

* Arnold Hadwin edited The Evening Despatch (Darlington) 1964-73; The Telegraph & Argus (Bradford) 1973-84, and was editor of The Lincolnshire Standard Group from 1984 until his retirement in 1989. Since then he has been on several assignments training journalists in Tanzania, Uganda, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Moldova and Russia. He was President of the Guild of British Newspaper Editors 1981-82.