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CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
army. They were all heavily armed, and ammunition was being brought up constantly in boxes with English markings.
There was shortage neither of men nor armaments.
I got permission from a junior officer to visit the defenses
on Zion Gate. One of the massive portals hung crazily from
one set of hinges, the other was blown off. The passageway,
about twenty feet wide and thirty feet high, was now packed
tight with barbed wire, rails, and rocks. Above it the walls
were manned heavily by Legion troops. Here, also, I found a
concentration of several dozen British deserters, fighting with
the Arabs. Immediately beside the Gate three heavy British
armored cars lay in waiting for the Palmach. The Jews would
certainly get a scorching reception if they tried another breakthrough.
I walked back to the monastery grounds, to the School of
the Holy Translators. The windowpanes were broken and the
rooms filthy. Swarms of flies buzzed around. Swishing my
way through them, I walked to the rear. Sitting in a classroom
chair behind a desk was the commander of the Zion Gate
Front, Captain Mahmoud Bey Mousa, soft-spoken and scholarly-looking, swathed in layers of an oversized khaffiya that
covered his face except for eyes and mouth. I assumed this
was his protection against the flies. Through an interpreter I
reported my name and profession, and asked his permission
to stay for the surrender.
"I think the negotiations will begin tomorrow morning,"
Mahmoud Bey said.
He was sitting literally on the proverbial keg of gunpowder,
for stacked behind and all around him, under his bed near by,
and all the way to the farther end of the basement, which was
being used as an emergency hospital, were cases upon cases of
ammunition with the usual markings of His Majesty's Army.
I squeezed my bag between cases of ammunition under his
bed, and then went to the top floor of the school to take
photographs of the Jewish quarter. They were to prove of