Leon Uris (16 page)

Onward! Onward to Palestine

In happiness we throng,

Onward! Onward to Palestine

Come join our happy song!

“Everyone keep calm,” the loud-speaker said, “there is no danger.”

By noontime a British cruiser, HMS
Defiance
, appeared on the horizon and bore down on the
Star of David,
blinker lights flashing. A sleek little destroyer, HMS
Blakely
, joined the
Defiance
. The two warships hovered about the old tramp as she chugged along.

“We have picked up our royal escort,” Bill Fry said over the loudspeaker.

By the rules of the game the contest was over. Mossad Aliyah Bet had gotten another ship out of Europe and onto the high seas. The British had sighted the vessel and were following it. The instant the
Star of David
entered the three-mile limit off Palestine she would be boarded by a British landing party and towed off to Haifa.

On the deck of the
Star of David
the refugees hooted at the warships and cursed Bevin. A large sign went up which read:
HITLER MURDERED US AND THE BRITISH WON’T LET US LIVE!
The
Defiance
and the
Blakely
paid no attention and did not, as hoped, miraculously disappear.

Once her children were calmed, Karen had more to think about. Many of them were becoming quite sick from the lack of air. She went topside and inched her way through the tangle of arms, legs, and knapsacks up to the captain’s bridge. In the wheel room Bill Fry was sipping coffee and looking down at the solid pack of humanity on deck. The Palmach head was arguing with him.

“Jesus Christ!” Bill growled. “One thing we get from Jews is conversation. Orders aren’t made to be discussed. They are made to be obeyed. How in the hell you guys going to win anything if you’ve got to talk everything over? Now I’m the captain here!”

Bill’s outburst hardly fazed the Palmach chief, who finished his argument and walked off.

Bill sat mumbling under his breath. He lit a cigar butt and then saw Karen standing rather meekly in the doorway.

“Hi, sweetheart,” he said, smiling. “Coffee?”

“I’d love some.”

“You look bad.”

“I can’t get too much sleep with the children.”

“Yeah ... how you getting along with them kids?”

“That’s what I came to talk to you about. Some of them are getting quite sick, and we have several pregnant women in the hold.”

“I know, I know.”

“I think we should have a turn on deck.”

He pointed down to the solid cluster of bodies. “Where?”

“You just find a few hundred volunteers to exchange places.”

“Aw, look now, honey, I hate to turn you down, but I’ve got a lot on my mind. It just ain’t that easy. We can’t start moving people around on this can.”

Karen’s face retained a soft sweetness and her voice showed no anger. “I am going back down there and I am taking my children on deck,” she said. She turned her back and started for the door.

“Come back here. How did a sweet-looking kid like you get so ornery?” Bill scratched his jaw. “All right! All right! We’ll get them brats of yours topside. Jesus Christ, all I get is arguments, arguments, arguments!”

That night Karen led her children to a place on the fantail of the ship. In the cool and wonderful air they fell into a deep and peaceful sleep.

The next day the sea was smooth as glass. Dawn brought more British patrol planes, and the now familiar escort, the
Defiance
and
Blakely
, were still there.

A tremor of excitement ran through the ship as Bill announced that they were less than twenty-four hours from Eretz Israel—Land of Israel. The mounting tension brought on a strange quiet that lasted far into the day. Toward evening the
Blakely
moved very close to the
Star of David.

A booming British voice cut over the water from the
Blakely
’s loudspeaker. “Immigrant ship. This is Captain Cunningham of the
Blakely
here. I want to speak to your captain.”

“Hello,
Blakely
,” Bill Fry’s voice growled back, “what’s on your mind?”

“We would like to send an emissary aboard to speak to you.”

“You can speak now. We’re all
mishpocha
here and we got no secrets.”

“Very well. Sometime after midnight you will enter the territorial waters of Palestine. At that time we intend to board you and tow you to Haifa. We want to know if you are going to accept this without resistance?”

“Hello, Cunningham. Here’s the picture. We’ve got some pregnant women and sick people aboard here and we would like you to accept them.”

“We have no instructions. Will you accept our tow or not?”

“Where did you say?”

“Haifa.”

“Well I’ll be damned. We must be off course. This is a Great Lakes pleasure boat.”

“We will be compelled to board you forcibly!”

“Cunningham!”

“Yes?”

“Inform your officers and men ... you can all go to hell!”

Night came. No one slept. Everyone strained through the darkness for some sight of shore—the first look at Eretz Israel. Nothing could be seen. The night was misty and there were no stars or moon and the
Star of David
danced on brisk waves.

Around midnight a Palmach section head tapped Karen on the shoulder. “Karen,” he said, “come up to the wheelhouse with me.”

They threaded their way over the prone bodies to the wheelhouse, which was also packed with twenty of the crew and Palmach section heads. It was pitch black inside except for a bluish light from the compass. Near the wheel she could make out the husky outline of Bill Fry.

“Everyone here?”

“All accounted for.”

“All right, pay attention.” Bill’s voice sounded in the darkness. “I’ve talked it over with the Palmach heads and my crew and we’ve reached a decision. The weather off Palestine is socking in solid ... fog all over the coast. We are carrying an auxiliary motor aboard capable of boosting our speed to fifteen knots. In two hours we will be inside territorial waters. If this weather stays bad we’ve decided to make a run for it and beach ourselves south of Caesarea.”

An excited murmur raced around the room.

“Can we get away from those warships?”

“They’ll think this tub’s the
Thunderbird
before I’m finished,” Fry snapped back.

“How about radar? Won’t they keep us on their screens?”

“Yeah ... but they ain’t going to follow us too close to shore. They’re not going to risk beaching a cruiser.”

“How about the British garrison in Palestine?”

“We have established contact with the Palmach ashore. They are expecting us. I’m sure they’ll give the British an interesting evening. Now all of you section leaders have had special instructions at La Ciotat in beaching operations. You know what to expect and what to do. Karen, and you other two chiefs with children ... better wait here for special orders. Any questions?”

There were none.

“Any arguments?”

There were none.

“I’ll be damned. Good luck and God bless all of you.”

A
WIND-DRIVEN MIST
whistled around the ancient and abandoned port of Caesarea, Palestine, and its heaps of rubble, broken walls, and moss-covered harbor which was in use four hundred years before the Christian era.

For five long centuries Caesarea—built by Herod in honor of Caesar—had been the capital of Roman Palestine. All that was left was ruin. The wind howled and churned up the water into a swirling foam which dashed against rocks jutting far into the sea.

Here the revolution against Roman tyranny ended with the slaughter of twenty thousand Hebrews and their great sage, Rabbi Akiva, who had called his people to fight for freedom with Bar Kochba, met his martyrdom. The Crocodile River still flowed to the sea where Akiva was skinned alive.

A few yards south of the ruins were the first buildings of a collective Jewish fishing village named Sdot Yam (Fields of the Sea). This night no fisherman or his wife slept.

They were all crouched throughout the ruins and they silently, breathlessly strained their eyes to the sea. They numbered two hundred and were joined by two hundred more Palmach soldiers.

A flashlight signal blinked out from the ancient Tower of Drusus which jutted into the surf, and everyone tensed.

Aboard the
Star of David
, Bill Fry’s teeth tightened on a cigar stub and his hands tightened on the wheel of the old ship. He zigzagged her in slowly, inching past treacherous reefs and shoals. On deck the refugees pressed toward the rail and steeled themselves.

The
Star of David
shuddered and creaked as her timbers slashed into a craggy boulder! A single flare spiraled into the air! The melee was on!

Everyone scrambled over the sides, diving into shoulder-high water, and began fighting foot by foot through the surf toward the shore line several hundred yards away.

As the flare burst, the fishermen and Palmachniks scrambled from their cover and waded out to meet the refugees. Many slipped and fell into potholes or were overturned by a sudden wave and went down on slimy rocks, but nothing could stop them. The two forces met! The strong hands from the shore grabbed the refugees and began dragging them in.

“Quick! Quick!” they were ordered. “Take off your clothing and change into these at once!”

“Throw away any identification papers!”

“Those dressed, follow us ... move ... move ... move!”

“Quiet! No noise!”

“No lights!”

The refugees tore the drenched clothing from their bodies and put on the blue uniforms of the fishermen.

“Mingle ... everyone mingle....”

On deck of the
Star of David
, Karen handed children down to the Palmachniks one by one as fast as they could make a trip in and come back out. Strong, sure-footed men were needed to hold the children in the surf.

“Faster ... faster ...”

There were uninhibited cries of emotion from some who fell on the holy soil to kiss it.

“You will have plenty of time to kiss the ground later but not now ... move on!”

Bill Fry stood on his bridge barking orders through a megaphone. Within an hour nearly everyone had abandoned the
Star of David
except for a few dozen children and the section chiefs.

Thirty kilometers to the north a Palmach unit staged a devastating assault on some British warehouses south of Haifa in an effort to divert the British troops in that area away from the beaching operation at Caesarea.

On the beach the fishermen and Palmachniks worked rapidly. Some of the refugees were taken into the village and others to trucks which sped them inland.

As the last of the children was handed over the rail of the
Star of David
, Bill Fry tore down the ladder to the deck and ordered the section heads over the side.

Karen felt the icy water close over her head. She balanced on her toes, treaded water for a moment, and found her direction. She swam in close enough to find footing. Ahead of her, on the beach, she could hear confused shouts in Hebrew and German. She came to a huge rock and crawled over it on all fours. A wave washed her back into the sea. Now she worked to solid ground and pushed in foot by foot against a driving undertow. Downed again on all fours she crawled closer to the shore.

A piercing sound of sirens!

An ear-splitting crackle of rifle fire!

On the beach everyone was dispersing!

Karen gasped for breath as she emerged into knee-high water, holding her side. Directly before her stood a half dozen khaki-clad British soldiers with truncheons in their hands.

“No!” she shrieked. “No! No! No!”

She hurled herself into the cordon screaming, clawing, and kicking with fury. A strong arm seized her from behind and she was wrestled into the surf. Her teeth sank into the soldier’s hand. He yelled in pain and released her. She flung herself forward again fighting like a savage. A second soldier held his truncheon high and brought it down and it thudded against her head. Karen moaned, went limp, and rolled unconscious into the water.

She opened her eyes. Her head throbbed horribly. But she smiled as she looked up into the face of stubble-jawed, bleary-eyed Bill Fry.

“The children!” she screamed, and spun off the cot. Bill’s hands grabbed her.

“Take it easy. Most of the kids got away. Some of them are here.”

Karen closed her eyes and sighed and lay back on the cot again.

“Where are we?”

“British detention camp ... Atlit. It was a wonderful show. More than half the people got away. The British are so damned mad they rounded everybody up and herded us off here. We got crew, fishermen, refugees ... everybody mixed up in this mess. How do you feel?”

“I feel horrible. What happened?”

“You tried to whip the British Army singlehanded.”

She pushed the blanket off and sat up again and felt the lump on the side of her head. Her dress was still damp. She stood and walked, a bit wobbly, to the tent opening. There were several hundred more tents and a wall of barbed wire. Beyond the barbed wire were British sentries. “I don’t know what came over me,” Karen said. “I’ve never struck anyone in my life. I saw those soldiers standing there ... trying to stop me. Somehow the most important thing that ever happened, happened that moment. I had to put my foot on Palestine. I had to or I’d die ... I don’t know what came over me.” She sat down beside him.

“Want something to eat, kid?”

“I’m not hungry. What are they going to do with us?”

Bill shrugged. “It will be light in a few hours. They’ll start processing us and asking a lot of damned fool questions. You know the answers.”

“Yes ... I keep repeating that this is my country to whatever they ask.”

“Yeah ... anyhow, they’ll keep you here a couple or three months and then they’ll turn you loose. At least you’re in Palestine.”

“What about you?”

“Me? Hell, they’ll throw me out of Palestine same as they did the last time. I’ll get another Mossad ship ... try another run on the blockade.”