Page 160 - big friday
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The officers at their bar were most pleasant chaps […] but one officer, a bullet-head,
with glasses, stocky, dissented from the general eagerness to go home and said fiercely that
he was going to join the Arab Legion to fight the Jews. He was terribly excited over a report
he heard that Maj. Roy Alexander Farran and 200 Nazi commandos had arrived to join
the Arabs. This officer, whom the others regarded with politely tired indifference, thought
the Nazis were nice chaps. He seemed as woozy as the Farran rumor.
T he two sergeants assigned to escort us through Jaffa arrived as we were finishing our
beers.
I remembered Jaffa from several previous visits as a busy Arab metropolis full of
wild taxi drivers, donkey carts and smells of bad sanitation. Even the smells were gone.
W e walked down the Jaffa-Tel-Aviv road to the central city square and down the business
streets toward the port area. The iron shutters were drawn and one place, the Jazireh Hotel,
had actually walled up its entrance with a concrete block and fresh mortar.
Our sergeant escorts pointed out with a professional eye how well prepared the city had
been for defense, how little damaged by the attack.
"All the Jews have to do," one sergeant said, "is fire one 25-pounder, and these Arabs bail
out."
The other sergeant said that the Jews had a bit of a temperamental advantage.
"These Arabs," he said, "are full of talk of what they are going to do to the Jews one day,
and way down in the dumps at the first reverse." The sergeant thought the Jews were
more stable and sober. He clearly favored the Jews, but purely as a professional observer
watching a kind of boxing match, and this seemed to be the attitude of the other soldiers
we encountered.
T he only sign of business activity was one elderly Arab with a curbside stand near the
French Hospital, offering a few radishes and cucumbers. My British friend asked him in
Arabic how was business; the Arab, perhaps thinking we were both Jews, answered in
Hebrew: "Business is bad."
In the inner courtyard garden of the French Hospital the Mother Superior, a bright-
eyed, intelligent, elderly little French woman, told us that all the Arab doctors and nurses
ran away as soon as the Jewish attack began, though the hospital was on the other side of
town from the scene of the fighting. A young Arab orderly, with a Red Crescent arm-band,
asked one sergeant, while we were talking with the Mother Superior, whether the hospital
staff would be protected if the Jews came in. The sergeant assured him with a grin that
under international law he had nothing to fear.
In the wards we found many Arab wounded, including several of Abdullah's
Legionnaires and one chap who complained he had been shot by a fellow Arab soldier,
though all he was trying to do was get out of the town as fast as possible.
]…[In one ward I encountered the sole Arab with spirit. We came across, on the Jaffa trip,
a young fellow whose beard marked him as a religious Moslem. […] He offered me his last
cigarette with real desert Arab hospitality which I could not in courtesy refuse, and then
in his broken English assured us that there could be no peace between Arab and Jews; that
158 The Friday That Changed Destiny
with glasses, stocky, dissented from the general eagerness to go home and said fiercely that
he was going to join the Arab Legion to fight the Jews. He was terribly excited over a report
he heard that Maj. Roy Alexander Farran and 200 Nazi commandos had arrived to join
the Arabs. This officer, whom the others regarded with politely tired indifference, thought
the Nazis were nice chaps. He seemed as woozy as the Farran rumor.
T he two sergeants assigned to escort us through Jaffa arrived as we were finishing our
beers.
I remembered Jaffa from several previous visits as a busy Arab metropolis full of
wild taxi drivers, donkey carts and smells of bad sanitation. Even the smells were gone.
W e walked down the Jaffa-Tel-Aviv road to the central city square and down the business
streets toward the port area. The iron shutters were drawn and one place, the Jazireh Hotel,
had actually walled up its entrance with a concrete block and fresh mortar.
Our sergeant escorts pointed out with a professional eye how well prepared the city had
been for defense, how little damaged by the attack.
"All the Jews have to do," one sergeant said, "is fire one 25-pounder, and these Arabs bail
out."
The other sergeant said that the Jews had a bit of a temperamental advantage.
"These Arabs," he said, "are full of talk of what they are going to do to the Jews one day,
and way down in the dumps at the first reverse." The sergeant thought the Jews were
more stable and sober. He clearly favored the Jews, but purely as a professional observer
watching a kind of boxing match, and this seemed to be the attitude of the other soldiers
we encountered.
T he only sign of business activity was one elderly Arab with a curbside stand near the
French Hospital, offering a few radishes and cucumbers. My British friend asked him in
Arabic how was business; the Arab, perhaps thinking we were both Jews, answered in
Hebrew: "Business is bad."
In the inner courtyard garden of the French Hospital the Mother Superior, a bright-
eyed, intelligent, elderly little French woman, told us that all the Arab doctors and nurses
ran away as soon as the Jewish attack began, though the hospital was on the other side of
town from the scene of the fighting. A young Arab orderly, with a Red Crescent arm-band,
asked one sergeant, while we were talking with the Mother Superior, whether the hospital
staff would be protected if the Jews came in. The sergeant assured him with a grin that
under international law he had nothing to fear.
In the wards we found many Arab wounded, including several of Abdullah's
Legionnaires and one chap who complained he had been shot by a fellow Arab soldier,
though all he was trying to do was get out of the town as fast as possible.
]…[In one ward I encountered the sole Arab with spirit. We came across, on the Jaffa trip,
a young fellow whose beard marked him as a religious Moslem. […] He offered me his last
cigarette with real desert Arab hospitality which I could not in courtesy refuse, and then
in his broken English assured us that there could be no peace between Arab and Jews; that
158 The Friday That Changed Destiny
