(CHAPTER XV)
A WEEK OF AGONY:
A CONSUL IS MURDERED
"In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear thou
not: and to Zion, Let not thine hands be slack. . . .
for I will make you a name and a praise among all
the people of the earth, when I turn back your captivity. . . ."
Zephaniah iii
SUDDENLY the war claimed as victim the highest American official in Jerusalem!
Early Saturday afternoon, May 22, our popular ConsulGeneral, Thomas C. Wassen, who was also a member of the
UN Truce Commission, was striding across a clearing midway
between our Consulate and the YMCA when he was shot in
cold blood at a spot that I had crossed and recrossed many
times. The consul's bullet-proof vest did him no good, for the
missile, fired from close range by an expert marksman, passed
through an unguarded spot—the armpit. He was taken to
the Hadassah clinic where I had seen the eleven-year old boy;
and there he died the next day. Almost at the same time came
word of another murder, said to have been committed by
mysterious snipers at night—that of an American sailor, Herbert C. Walker, also attached to our Consulate. Both murders
were never cleared up, and suspicion wavered between mem-