The Bombing of the King David Hotel

The King David Hotel shortly after the cloud of dust had dissipated

By modern standards the bombing of the King David Hotel on July 22^nd 1946 was no big shakes.  There were only 91 people killed and 46 injured. 

The initial reason it made such a big impact in the international news was that the targeted South wing of the hotel  housed the British Civil administration but the main  reason it became a pivotal point in the history of the  Middle East was  the outburst by General Sir Evelyn Hugh Barker, commander of British forces in Palestine from 1946 to 1947.  He had been working  in the unscathed middle section of the hotel on a floor housing the army HQ when the bombs went off.  He sat down at his desk only two hours later to write an order to his troops forbidding them to fraternise with Jews or buy goods from Jewish shops adding the notorious sentence We will be punishing the Jews in a way the race dislikes as much as any, by striking at their pockets and showing our contempt of them.

The order was rescinded a fortnight later but by then the damage had been done. A copy of the document had been circulated and printed in newspapers throughout the world and made it impossible for the civil government to work with the Jews to deliver a peaceful solution to the problem of Palestinian independence.

There  were many witnesses to the event, mostly from people across the road at the YMCA. They were left with two striking images.

One was a swarm of what looked like coloured parachutes rising high into the air above the South Wing. Only when the ‘parachutes’ plummeted down into the rubble did the viewers realise that they were the billowing summer skirts of the women who had been at their desks in the Secretariat’s typing pool.

The other image was that of a gargoyle  that  appeared on the wall of the Sports Wing of the YMCA. In reality the gargoyle  was the head, with all facial features intact, of the Post Master General who had been walking up the path to the South wing when the bombs went off.

The incident remains vivid to me because my father was in his office in the South Wing at the time.  My Aunt and I heard the news when a BBC announcer  interrupted our weekly after-school session of ‘Larry the Lamb’ to give the breaking news. I remember my mental agony as we waited for a telegram to let us know whether my father was one of the many casualties. It was several hours before we learnt that he had survived with only minor injuries.

I incorporated much of what my father told me about the incident into ‘Patsy’.  All main characters in the novels, apart from Jim and Addy Shepard, are completely fictitious, and the legal disclaimer applies to them, but it wouldn't take a genius to work out that Jim Shepard’s actions and experiences are  based on those of my father.  Ive just removed a few warts and added some others.

So that is why I chose the photograph above as the background to all three novels in the series.