Part 2: The GI and Guns for the Haganah
An American Soldier's Story: The founding of modern Israel: the conclusion of a story for children 9-14 (or adults)
Summary of Part 1
Barney was a young Jewish American. Growing up in a poor family during the Great Depression, he had never learned much about Judaism. But his first language—the language he spoke with his parents—was Yiddish, the language of the Jews of eastern Europe. He learned English when he began school. He had spent the last years as an American soldier fighting the Nazis and their allies in North Africa.
After World War II was over, he decided to visit Palestine, the new/old Jewish homeland. Because languages were easy for him, he picked up some Italian and Greek on his way to Palestine. He already knew some Arabic from his years in North Africa.
The British, who controlled Palestine, would not let most Jews enter the land. So Barney could not go by sea. Instead, Barney went through Egypt. He met many Arabs who were moving to Palestine. They had left their homes because the Jews had brought improved health care and good job opportunities to Palestine.
In Palestine he had spoken to all kinds of people. He realized that the only way the Jews would have a real homeland was if they were the rulers—and that would mean a fight against the Arabs. But they did not have weapons. As a former soldier, Barney knew a lot about war materiel—the things needed to fight a war. And he had a plan to help.
Part 2: Barney’s Plan
Barney wrote down the names and addresses of many of the people he talked to. Most of these were people who were working to create an independent Jewish country. He also had written down many thoughts and ideas. He carefully packed the notebook in his duffel bag along with his clothing. Then he said goodbye to his new friends and started home.
To Alexandria, Egypt
He took a series of trains to El Kantara, along the Suez Canal. It was easy to get from El Kantara to Port Said, on the Mediterranean coast. In Port Said he found a fishing boat going across the northern coast of Egypt to Alexandria. Barney knew that in Alexandria he could find a big ship to take him further on his trip home. The captain of the fishing boat offered to give Barney food and a place to sleep if he would work with the fishermen. Barney agreed.
It was November, the beginning of the winter rainy season, and dark clouds filled the sky. It seemed to Barney that the waves were getting higher. At least that’s what his stomach thought.
“We’ll go in to shore if it looks like a storm,” the captain told him. “But I hope we don’t have to. I am anxious to get home to my family.”
But the storm got worse and worse. Although the captain said not to worry, Barney did. He didn’t want to drown in the sea off the coast of Egypt!
Then he remembered the Bible story of Jonah and the whale. Jonah was sailing away from home because he was running away from God. Then God made a big storm. The sailors told Jonah they had to throw him overboard so the storm would end. Instead of drowning, though, Jonah was swallowed by a giant fish. Immediately the storm ended. Then, inside the fish, Jonah prayed, and the fish coughed him up on dry land. But Barney wasn’t running away. He had a plan to help the Jews in Palestine. Surely God wouldn’t let him drown!
All night the wind blew, the rain poured down, and the boat bobbed up and down on the waves. Barney and some of the fishermen on the boat got seasick and threw up over the ship’s rail. Still the storm raged.
Then, suddenly the bouncing of the boat slowed. “Is the storm over?” Barney asked. “No, the fisherman replied. “The captain is pulling us into a little inlet. The arms of land are giving us a little protection from the wind.” The boat rocked, but not as much as before.
By morning, the storm had passed. Barney stood on deck and looked around. The shore around the boat was lush with green plants and the water was a light, sparkling blue. Farther out, where the water was deeper, the sea was darker blue. It was a gorgeous day!
Three days later they reached the outskirts of Alexandria. “I can’t go closer,” said the captain. “Too many big ships. But one of the carters taking my fish to market will take you, I’m sure.”
From Alexandria to San Francisco
In the port area of Alexandria, Barney found a cheap inn where he could get a hot bath and a quiet, clean bed. The next day he went to the office of the shipping company his friend in Athens, Nikos, worked for. There he found that a ship was leaving in two weeks for Malta. From Malta he could find a ship to Spain, and from there to the United States. All the ships were freighters—cargo ships that made many stops delivering and picking up freight. They all carried some passengers, but the rooms and food were very plain. They weren’t designed for pleasure trips and they were slow, but they would get Barney home.
At last his ship left Alexandria. On shipboard, he thought a lot about what he would do when he reached the USA. First and most important, he needed to help the Jews in the Holy Land build a Jewish homeland. Second, he wanted to learn history. He wanted to know why all the countries he had visited were so different from each other, and why countries fought each other. For this, he would need to go to college. Uncle Sam—the government for which he had soldiered for long years—would pay for his education. And third, he wanted to live in San Francisco. He’d lived there when he was little, before his father had gotten the job building the dam near Fresno. He had no family, but his best memories were in the city.
On Malta he found a ship going to California. He was able to get work on the ship, so he would be paid and would keep busy. The ship made many stops in South America, delivering goods from the east and picking up other goods to take to other ports. Then the ship had gone through the Panama Canal and up the coast of California. At last, early one February day, Barney arrived in San Francisco.
He rented a room in a boarding house where for a small fee he got a tiny room, breakfast, and supper. Putting his duffel on the bureau, he pulled off his boots and lay down. He wasn’t quite ready to start his new life.
The next morning, though, he awakened ready to go. He wandered through the Mission District, then took the streetcar west. As though he hadn’t had enough of the ocean, he went to the famed Cliff House, a restaurant built right at the shore of the Pacific Ocean. He remembered going there for his birthday when he was young, just before his father lost his job because of the Great Depression. There had been seals on the rocks just outside the windows of the Cliff House. Maybe they’d still be there.
He watched the seals cavort in the water, watched the birds wheeling overhead, and thought of his parents. He was all alone, but watching the seals and remembering, he didn’t feel lonely. He was home. As the sun began to set, he found the streetcar and returned to the boarding house. It was time to begin his new life.
The Plan
The first thing he did the next day was take the streetcar to San Francisco State College. He needed to start thinking about his education. He wouldn’t start college right away, but he spent the morning making arrangements for when he would be ready.
That afternoon he started concentrating on the other plan, the one that he had to take care of immediately.
The Jews of Palestine needed guns and ammo.
The people and places Barney knew best were rough. He had known how to use a gun long before he joined the army. When he was young, most grownups he knew had guns. Maybe he could buy guns cheaply and send them to the men he had met in Israel, the men in the Haganah, one of the Jewish groups working for Jewish independence.
But after he bought the guns, how would he get them to Israel? The British had blockaded just about anything getting in for the Jews of Palestine. Although during his long months of traveling he had thought about this, he still did not have an answer.
As he walked around the city, Barney passed a drug store with a soda fountain. On a whim, he walked in, sat down at the counter, and ordered a vanilla malted. It was his first since he had joined the army. It was better than he remembered. Sipping it through a straw, he felt the years of sandy coffee and tiny cups of too-strong, too-sweet Arab coffee slide off his shoulders. The problems facing him suddenly didn’t feel so difficult. He was home. He would figure them out.
When he finished the malted, he pulled out his money and counted it carefully. When he had gotten on the last ship he had been almost broke. Now he had money from working on the ship. He decided to open a bank account with some of the money. It wouldn’t get lost or stolen, and it would be harder for him to spend on unimportant things. But there was one important thing he needed: a car. He had no idea what one would cost.
“Hey, buddy,” he called to the soda jerk, the young man behind the counter. “Where can I get a cheap but reliable car?”
The soda jerk reached under the counter and pulled out a folded-up newspaper. “Check the classified ads, but don’t take the paper. Someone else might want it.”
Barney pulled a pencil stub from his pocket along with his little notebook. He wrote down the phone numbers for several of the ads. Then he paid for his malted and got a handful of nickels in change. Going over to the phone booth, he began calling. One of the cars was an easy walk from the drug store. Half an hour later he was the proud owner of a 14-year-old Plymouth. He’d leave for Fresno early in the morning.
In the Central Valley
Fresno looked about the way it had when he had left, just a little more tired. He sat down at his favorite soda fountain and ordered a grilled cheese sandwich with a side of cole slaw. While he waited, he put his elbow on the counter and rested his chin in his hand. He sighed. Here he was. He had a plan, but a lot of the details were missing. How would he begin?
Suddenly someone slapped him on the back. He jerked up and turned. It was an old school friend, Hacop.*
“Hey, Hacop! What’ve you been up to?”
Hacop raised his eyebrows. “Got back from Europe a couple of months ago, spent some time in the hospital recovering from a gift from Hitler. Haven’t seen you around.” He glanced at the worn duffel bag sitting at Barney’s feet. “Just get back yourself?”
They traded war stories for awhile, then Barney explained his mission. “How will I find people with guns to sell?” he asked.
Hacop thought a moment. “Don’t offer to buy the guns right away. There’s a lot of sympathy for the way the Jews were treated by Hitler. People might be willing to give you their old ones. Ask for donations first.”
Barney stared. Donations? He hadn’t thought of that!
Hacop continued, “We Armenians, our families came here because the Muslim Ottoman Turks were starving and killing our people, who are Christians. We lost well over half of the Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. It wasn’t too different from what Hitler did to your people. We remember.”
They chewed their sandwiches silently for a few moments.
“Where will I find people?” Barney asked. “I can’t just go up to strangers. And this has to be secret. I trust you, we were good friends. The British have prohibited arms shipments to the Jews. And collecting guns like that might be against American law, too.”
“I’ll think about it. I’ll be busy tonight early, but I can meet you around 10 pm at Joe’s Tavern and we can talk then.”
The two men paid for their lunches, shook hands, and went off.
Joe’s Tavern
It was a weeknight, and by 10 pm the bar was half-empty. Barney sat down at a table and ordered a pitcher of beer and 2 glasses. He looked around. There were men his father’s age who looked like laborers. Ther were many other young and fit men, maybe also returned soldiers. Most of them probably had guns. Could he just ask for them?
Just after 10 pm, Hagop arrived. He sat down and poured himself a drink. “Here’s to our buddies who didn’t make it home,” he said. They both drank. Then Barney said, “I was looking around. I wonder if I just sat at the bar and started talking, what would happen?”
“I was thinking, don’t tell anyone why you want the guns. Chat them up. Just tell them you’re just back from North Africa and you’d feel a lot safer with a gun, do they know where you can get a cheap one,” said Hagop.
“Nah, I know I can’t afford to buy them all. I was thinking of finding out if a guy is sympathetic to the Jews or not. If not, I don’t have to say anything. But if they are, I could say it’s a shame the Jews are going to have to fight for their land, I bet they need guns. Then I can move the conversation over to Stalin in the USSR or the chances of the Red Sox over the Yankees, and then ask if they have any guns they don’t need. I won’t be direct. But if they’re smart, they’ll figure it out.”
“Try it,” said Hagop. “A different bar in a different community each night. You don’t want anyone to see a pattern.”
Barney nodded. “Good point! But then there’s the problem of shipping the guns.”
“Let me worry about that,” said Hagop. “I’ve got some ideas. Let’s meet here next week, same time.”
They shook hands, then left.
Collecting Guns and Ammo
Barney found a clean boarding house with good food and rented a room for a month. He unpacked his duffel. For the first time since his father’s death, he unwrapped the small, framed photo of his parents and set it on the chest of drawers.
The next morning he found a job cleaning machine parts in a Lockheed plant. It was dirty, unpleasant work. Barney didn’t care. It was just to give him money for his room, meals, and gas, and to save something for school. It wasn’t a career.
That night, he drove out into the country, found a small bar, and pulled into the parking lot. He stood in the doorway and looked around. Some bars were rowdy. He didn’t want that kind of place. Here everything was quiet. He sat down at the bar, one stool away from a young man who might also be a returned soldier.
He ordered a beer, then struck up a conversation. He just barely mentioned the concentration camp survivors when the other man broke in. “I feel so bad for those people! I was in Europe, I saw some on the streets after the war. I didn’t know people could be that skinny and still be alive. I wish I could do something to help them!”
Barney thought, “Thank you God!” Then he said, “I was in Palestine on my way home from North Africa. There’s going to be a war, and the Jews need guns.”
“You know any way to get them to them?” asked his new friend. “My dad died while I was away, and I found about six guns in his trunk. I’ve got mine, I don’t need his. If you think you can get them to the Jews in Palestine, I’ll run and get them. You can have them. I’m getting married and my fiancee doesn’t want what she calls ‘all that old junk of your dad’s.’”
Barney said, “I might. I can try.”
The man stood up, slapping coins for his beer on the bar. “I’ll be back in 20 minutes or a half-hour. Wait here.”
When the man returned he had seven guns and ammo for them, wrapped in an old towel in a burlap sack.
By the following week, Barney had collected 18 guns and ammo. He had no idea how he would get them to the Jews in Palestine, but he trusted that between them, he and Hagop would come up with a way.
When he met Hagop at Joe’s Tavern, Hagop was practically jumping with excitement. “I think I’ve got the way,” he said. “You know that there are lots of wheat farmers here in the Central Valley. My uncle, who has a mill, has a brother-in-law, Artak, who is in the wholesale grain business. I spoke with Artak. He has a sales contract with a cousin of his in some little city on the Mediterranean called Port Said. The cousin sells wheat in that region.
“Artak doesn’t know anything about shipping from Port Said to Palestine, but he will find out. You know how slow the mail is, we will not get an answer for a couple of months. But he thinks there will be a way. He said that the cousin once wrote that among the small Armenian community around Port Said, support for the Jews is very strong. Artak has already written to his cousin. The letters are in the Armenian language, so he is not worried about the British reading them.”
By the time Hagop finished, Barney was bouncing from foot to foot.
“I was in Port Said! It’s a perfect place!! There’s a short railroad from there to a town called El Kantara, and a different railroad from there to Palestine, right to the city of Lydda. If there’s a way to get the wheat past the British, it’ll work.”
Completion of the Plan
The plan developed by Artak was very simple. He already sold wheat to an Armenian dealer Jerusalem. He would have new sacks printed for the wheat, with the lettering in a slightly different color. The guns would be put into the new sacks, with enough wheat added so that they felt normal. The new sacks would be loaded into the crates of wheat along with the regular sacks of wheat.
Then the shop in Jerusalem would send the new sacks to a Jewish shop in Jaffa, and from there they would be distributed.
The Armenians were happy to help the Jews. “Artak said that the contact in Port Said wrote that the Armenians feel that helping the Jews is God’s way of letting them avenge their dead,” said Hagop.
Barney put hundreds of miles on that old Plymouth, driving all around the small towns of the Central Valley. Little, tired-looking bars in tiny communities were the best places. There, he almost always found an old farmer or laborer who had a gun he didn’t need and was happy to give to a returned soldier. Some wanted a little money for their extra gun. If the gun was in good condition and the price was low enough, Barney paid.
A few times, when Barney brought up Jews or Palestine, the man he was speaking with turned ugly. One man even slugged Barney in the face, giving him a black eye. Barney fought the man. The police were called and Barney and the other man were put into handcuffs. But a few men told the police that Barney and the other man were just having a quiet conversation. Suddenly the other man had punched Barney. That’s what had started the fight. When the police heard this, they let Barney go. The other man was hauled off to jail.
Over the months, Barney collected many hundreds of guns: small and large handguns, shotguns, and rifles, most with ammo. Every kind of gun imaginable was given or sold cheaply to him. He cleaned them, then gave them to Hagop.
The plan Artak worked out with his cousin in Port Said worked perfectly. The guns were delivered safely to members of the Hagana, the largest of the illegal Jewish militias. They collected them, made sure they all worked properly, and distributed them.
These guns were important when Israel’s War for Independence broke out. With them, the Jews were able to protect their communities and families. Barney stayed in the Central Valley, collecting guns, until near the end of the War for Independence. When they were no longer needed, he returned to San Francisco and entered college.
Barney eventually got a job as Clerk of Court in the civil courts in San Francisco, a job where he could continue to work for justice. But he never forgot those exciting days, when, from the Central Valley of California, he helped Israel become an independent country.
For Parents, Teachers, and Others
Barney was a Clerk of Court when I worked for the San Francisco legal newspaper, The Recorder, my first full-time job after college. I went into his courtroom twice a day to collect information. My last day of work, just before I went to Israel to work and learn Hebrew, I told him I was leaving the job. He asked why. When I told him, he insisted on buying me a cup of coffee when he was on his afternoon break.
That was when he told me the outline of this story. I have filled it in with details that I have researched, so it is a work of fiction. But the main points of the story happened.
Important Points
I have included a lot of the history of Israel of that time. Israel’s 50th anniversary was in 1998. At that time I was a Jewish storyteller. I read about 40 books about the founding of Israel, including many first-person accounts. I have moved many times since then and no longer have my bibliography. But after studying those books and telling the stories at synagogues, Jewish schools and camps, and other venues, the historic outline is still fresh in my mind. Unfortunately, much of this information has been buried by Google’s algorithms, and a lot of the history has been rewritten.
The books I used have been out of print now for years. I cannot vouch for which recent authors have rewritten history to make Israel look bad. The old books listed below were written by and about people who had experienced the things they wrote about. They were written before anti-Zionism became a favorite topic of so-called scholars, Jewish as well as others.
To read these books, you might need to go to the Open Library or Google Books and borrow e-books. Here are a few of the books I read:
Cohen, Geula, Woman of Violence.
Gilbert, Martin, Israel: A History
Gruber, Ruth, Raquela, A Woman of Israel
Kuchler-Silberman, Lena, My Hundred Children**
Meir, Golda, My Life
Uris, Leon, Exodus
Watson, Sally, To Build a Land***
*Hacop is the Armenian pronunciation of the name Jacob.
**This book has received a lot of criticism as being mostly fiction. However, as incredible as the story may be, my friend’s mother has lived for many years next-door to a woman who was one of the 100 children saved by Ms. Kuchler-Silberman. She said that the book is accurate.
***This book was written for children 8-14.