Page 18 - Kol Bogrei Habonim - Winter 20

before my leave was due, I emptied my containing the belongings of some of the new
kitbag into a large carton, which I stored
under my bed, and took the empty kitbag to
the unit’s clothing stores. As it happened, the
duty storekeeper was an Eretz-Yisraeli too.
When I explained what I wanted, he just said,
“help yourself”, and pointed to a large pile of
old clothes in the middle of the floor. I picked
out those that were in the best condition, and
soon had my kitbag bursting to the seams
with an assortment of khaki clothing, and
underwear too.
When the day of my leave came, I put a
change of clothing and all my personal items,
including the cigarettes in a large backpack,
and started out. I travelled by train from Cairo
to Haifa and spent a very enjoyable week
with my cousin Rivka and Gamliel, her
husband. We toured around including a visit
to Kibbutz Afikim where Gamliel’s brother
was a chaver.
At the end of my stay, I travelled by an early
morning bus to Binyamina and was directed
by a local resident to Meshek Hapo’alot,
where again I was well received. Most of the
women there worked in the neighbouring
pardessim (orchards) to earn some money.
However, some were nursemaids, looking
after the small children. I gave them some
chocolate that I had bought in the camp
NAAFI (army food store). The pregnant
women worked sitting down, assembling
wooden clothes-pegs that were made in a
small factory that they ran, called ‘Hedek’. I
also volunteered to help and spent a couple of
hours assembling pegs ‘to pay for my keep’.
About midday the kibbutz truck pulled into
Meshek Hapo’alot. The driver, Shlomo, had
been to Haifa port to pick up some crates
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chaverim. He was a Litvak who knew almost
no English, but we managed nicely by
speaking Yiddish (I grew up with my
grandparents, who had come from Vilna.) He
was very pleased to take me, as he would
have someone to talk to on the long journey
to the kibbutz.
Early next morning, after a quick breakfast,
we set off for the north, passing through
Hadera and Afula until we came to Tiberias.
It had rained during the night, and as we
drove along by the shore of the Sea of
Galilee, we passed several groups of jamus
(water buffalo) cooling off at the water’s
edge. We continued north until we had to stop
at a British army check-post at Rosh-Pina.
The soldiers didn’t even look at my things but
checked very carefully all of Shlomo’s
papers and the crates at the back of the truck
before waving us on. We continued north
until we came to the Arab village of Chalsa
(now, Kiryat-Shimona).
As it was the only route to the kibbutz, we
had to drive on the dirt track through the
centre of the village. Because of the previous
night’s rain, the ground was soft and muddy,
and the loaded truck sank into the mud, when
it was almost in the village centre. About half
the village crowded around us to watch
Shlomo’s futile efforts to extricate the truck.
He finally had no option but to go on foot to
the kibbutz and get a tractor to pull our
vehicle out and tow us to the kibbutz. We
both got out of the cabin and he locked the
doors. Then he said: “You sit in the back on
one of the crates; the Arabs won’t dare to
touch a British soldier in uniform.”