Dear Folks: Family to the rescue! With flu in Ruth's family, grandma (that's me!) has to go there to care for the three little ones, and son Wilbert comes to my rescue with what to us, are interesting travel letters. So maybe others will find things of interest in them, too. There are four installments, of which this is the first. -- Hope.
The plane was supposed to take off around noon, but due to a very unusual and quite violent wind and rainstorm, which wrecked a dozen planes on the field and grounded all flights, we didn't leave till the next day.
And so, 6:00 o'clock Wednesday morning found my Val-o-Pac and I on our way to Payne field with a seven-day leave in my pocket. We were supposed to weigh in for the Palestine flight at 7:00 a. m. (which we did), but then, as usual, began a long period of waiting which lasted until 11:00 o'clock when finally we were told to load up. The plane was a C-46, a two-motored army transport. We got into our bucket seats, fastened our safety belts, and were in the air by 11:15.
During the first part of the flight all to be seen from the plane was sand -- no vegetation, no civilization . . . real desert, typically Egyptian. Before long we crossed the thin, blue, almost straight line of the Suez canal. This was my first view of it, and it was a very pretty one. We crossed at a point just north of where the canal widened into Bitter lake, the site of President Roosevelt's middle east conference, and as we passed over we saw several surface vessels and one submarine cutting their way smoothly through the water. . . . Then more sand and more of the same nothingness that is so prevalent for miles on either side of the Nile valley.
As we continued on our northeasterly course we came to the eastern shore of the Mediterranean sea and followed it the rest of the way. The Mediterranean has the same very beautiful deep blue that all large bodies of water have as seen from the air, and has the same mysterious way of blending into the blue of the sky, making the horizon indistinguishable.
Finally we began to notice a change, gradual at first though increasing in abruptness every minute. At first the change appeared to be only desert that was being irrigated to some extent, just enough to maintain a small amount of vegetation, but there were no trees, and the color from the air was a sort of greyish one instead of the deep green we saw a little later. Seemingly all of a sudden, as we approached the area of Lydda where we were to land, the landscape changed -- and definitely for the better. Below us we saw a very pretty and colorful picture of lush farming country, an even pattern of fields, straight roads lined with trees, the dark clustered green of orchards and groves, the same dark green of grass, and the yellowish green of the ripening wheat and barley fields. We were absorbed in the changing scene below us when the order came to fasten our safety belts for the landing, and a few minutes later, at about 12:45, we were taxiing down the runway of the Lydda allied airport.
G.I. trucks took us and our baggage from the field to the Leave center at Camp Tel Litwinsky, where the enlisted men and women were to stay. While there we exchanged our Egyptian pounds and piastres for Palestinian pounds and mills. (The Egyptian pound is worth $4.13 -- the Palestinian pound $4.09.) And then a G.I. bus to the city of Tel Aviv and the Yarden hotel.
Tel Aviv is an all-Jewish town of about 200,000, the first such to be developed since the downfall of the Jewish state, and now the largest town in Palestine. It was founded in 1909 when a few Jews decided to build a garden suburb outside the northern boundary of the ancient town of Jaffa. The name Tel Aviv means "The Hill of Spring" and it is rightly named -- especially after nine months in Cairo. It was really a pleasant relief with its modern buildings and its clean, broad, uncrowded streets lined with trees of various kinds. Then, too, it is located right on the Mediterranean and has a nice sandy beach for bathing. The Yarden hotel is probably the nicest hotel in town and was taken over some time ago by the United States army for officers on leave in the Holy Land. It is run in a very hospitable manner by Jewish civilians, and the accommodations are very good.
I arrived at the Yarden about 3:00 in the afternoon. The rooms are furnished for two officers, and as yet I had no room-mate. But not for long. I had just gone upstairs and started to clean up and unpack when in walked Lt. Wily H. Shira of New Castle, Pa., an ATC pilot stationed at Payne field near Cairo. We discovered our leaves covered the same period of time, and that we were both interested in seeing the same things, so we proceeded to plan our week. While down in the lobby checking on the various tours available, who should walk in but Major "Sandy" Sundstrom, Lt. Riiso Owre, and Captain "Willy" Wilensky, all three from the Pension Elite, 39 Kasr El Nil, Cairo (my own happy home in Egypt). They were all on leave, and had been up north to Haifa and Beirut, and were now on their way back, planning to spend their last two days in Tel Aviv.
After introductions and we had taken a 30-minute swim in the Mediterranean, we diced we'd like to try the Jewish kosher dinner that Willy so nobly suggested, and try it we did. First we had chopped herring salad, then "fruit soup," then Hungarian goulash (actually stew) and lastly fruit for dessert. It was all very tasty and we were favorably impressed, though due to being strictly a kosher menu, we had no milk or cream, since we had butter and weren't allowed both.
On Thursday we got up at 6:00 and after a very nice breakfast of bacon and eggs, we found we had been mis-informed on the Thursday tour, and instead of going to the Sea of Galilee would have to go to Jerusalem. Since Sundstrom, Owre, and Wilensky had already been there, they decided to spend the day in Tel Aviv, but Wily and I caught the 7:30 bus, went out to Camp Tel Litwinsky to pick up the enlisted men, and then went to Jerusalem in a convoy of about half a dozen G.I. trucks. The trip was an interesting and scenic one. For the first time we got a close look at the Palestinian countryside and it was certainly a sight for sore eyes after the sand and dirt of Egypt and the little garden-plot farms of the Nile valley.
As we left Tel Aviv we first passed through a quite level area, most of which was covered with orchards and groves of lemon, orange, and nut trees, many of which were enclosed by fences of either cactus (of the prickly pear variety) or evergreens of some kind. The smell of the orange blossoms was "something to write home about," and the fruit hanging on the trees looked very tempting. Gradually we moved from the orchards and tomato plots and vineyards to an area of more open and slightly rolling plains, the real agricultural district. Here we saw broad fields of ripening wheat and barley, a few patches of corn and oats, some large bare plowed fields, and no fences. It reminded me some of the wheat plains of South Dakota, though on a smaller scale, of course. It was certainly nice to be able to look off into the distance at fields of good looking grain crops for as far as one could see. We also saw herds of dairy cattle grazing here and there, in this section. From this fertile and slightly rolling agricultural area we proceeded into a much more hilly, almost mountainous, terrain that was quite similar in topography to the hill country of some of our eastern states, except that the hills were not as well covered with trees. There were some trees growing on the hillsides and along the road when we first entered this area. In fact, we saw some beautiful conifers that were straight and slender and green. But soon this "tree" country gave way to hills almost completely bare. The soil here was stony and rocky and all fences and buildings (where there were such things) were made of stone. The native hillside villages were built on the same style as the mud villages of the Nile valley, one-story, flat-topped, little huts, all fastened together, with sheep, goats, and children all running around together in and out of the small doorways, but we noticed right away how much cleaner they must actually have been, as a result of their being built of rock instead of mud.
One interesting thing about these rocky hills that we passed through before reaching Jerusalem was the fact that the rock on the hillsides out-cropped in such a way as to form almost perfect natural terraces from the bottom to the top, a regular stair-step appearance when viewed from a distance. In places we could see where the natural terraces had been improved and built-up by neatly stacked small rocks and stone, but mostly the "steps" were natural. Most of the flat surfaces of these terraces were bare except for weeds or a little scrub growth of some kind, but some of them supported small, irregular patches of wheat and barley. We saw lots of flocks of sheep and goats, mostly goats, and a few dairy cattle, grazing on the hillsides of this rough, rocky country. most of the goats were solid black, with long hair under their bellies, which gave them a very square bodied appearance. From a distance they looked much like a herd of Angus cattle. In fact, I was fooled more than once in this very way.
I noticed when I first arrived in Palestine, on the trip from the airport to Tel Aviv, and I continued to notice on all of these trips through the countryside, how many of the same weeds that we have at home grow in the Holy Land -- wild lettuce, wild mustard, dog fennel (plenty of it), bull thistles, and wild carrots, among others. In fact, we saw many spots that could have been put in Illinois or Indiana -- weeds, crops, soil, and all -- and would never have been noticed. What a difference from Egypt!
And then into Jerusalem. (To be continued.) -- Wilbert.