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| My father in 1941 |
Today I give two examples of why one the evidence of
witnesses to any historical event shouldn’t .
The first is my own memory of the capsizing of the Patria. Standing
by the back wall of Allenby Park after
the capsizing, along with hundreds of others on Mt Carmel I watched the police
and army rescue operations. The sight left a permanent impression, but,
when someone asked me the date of that
event, I was about to reply, 1939.
Then I paused. Hang on, I told myself, I wasn’t living in
Haifa in 1939. We didn’t return there until
January 1940. So I checked with the Palestine Post and yes the date is 1940
and late at that, 25th of November,to be exact. So why do I keep thinking 1939? I suspect that if I had lived continuously in Haifa between 1936
and 1943 and had only been writing a memoir, I would probably still be convinced
that the Patria capsized a year before it did. So now, even if I witnessed an event for myself, I always
check dates in the local newspapers of the time and consult reputable
histories.
It doesn’t only happen to me. The second example happened
only today. I was online discussing Operation Exporter, otherwise known as the Syria/Lebanon
campaign with a group of people who had
been born before WW2. One person, who had
watched his father dig defence trenches on Mt Carmel in anticipation of a
German invasion from the north, wrote that Operation Exporter took place in 1942. I would
probably have agreed with him if 1941 hadn’t been such a momentous year for
me and I had had to fit several historic
bits together looking for cause and
effect.
The event I use as background when sorting the major events of 1941 in chronological order is of no
significance to anyone else but looms large in my memory. I was eight , and had been catapaulted away from my friends at the instigation of my
mother into a class where I was by far the youngest. The only other British girl was
twelve and my father was abroad on a mission in the Balkans and had been missing for three months, so I couldn’t appeal to him.
At the end of April 1941 my father returned to Palestine via the last convoy from
Athens. After his adventures in the
Balkans he was in poor physical shape. Nevertheless the powers that
be flew him almost immediately to Iraq where a British base, Habbaniyah ,was being besieged. I don't know
why they wanted him there, but when he returned about a fortnight later, obviously
very ill, he refused to consult a doctor because he was too busy preparing for
a show in Syria. (I can only presume it was to do with wireless or telephone
support for the invasion) My mother was furious. Anyway the result of his
self-neglect was that he collapsed in his office and was rushed to the
government hospital with yellow jaundice at the same time as all those nose-to-tail
convoys filled with Ozzies rattled through Haifa on the way to the Lebanese
border. (Yes, I know yellow jaundice is tautologous but that is what we called
it in those days.)
He was still in
the government hospital when Moshe Dayan
was there having his eye socket treated after taking part in Operation Exporter.
After my father came out of hospital he plunged
straight into setting up wireless communications against a probable invasion from the
south .
For details of Op Exporter see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria-Lebanon_campaign
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