Well, I decided, I had better make the effort, try and do something. It was a desperate situation. They were all looking at me. "Alright", I said, "How about cake for tea?". There were eager nods all round. I heaved a sigh of relief. The pressure would be off, well, for a couple of days at least.

I was messing member of our WO's and Sergeants mess. There were only about six of us as I remember. It's a thankless job and it comes round to everyone in turn some time. We had a tiny mess with an Arab boy doing the cooking. He wasn't bad on the whole, but it wasn't like Mum's back home. It was sort of two dimensional, if you see what I mean. A lot of frying in oil and that sort of thing.

It was 1948, just before the end of the British mandate in Palestine. We were a small squadron of Royal Signals, and we provided the radio operations of an Air Support Signals unit. Normally, in wartime, we were used to call down aircraft to strafe forward enemy positions. A rather dangerous job. As it was, with detachments out all over the country and Jordan and with a Joint ops set up with the RAF in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, we supported internal security in that troubled land.

My normal job at that time was to run the communications at the centre of things in the King David. I had a radio room with around six networks and a dozen or so radio vehicles we trundled up and down every day from our domestic accommodation on the top of Mount Scopus. I also had around twenty five or so men to look after, our troop officer having been blown up by a landmine. But that is another story.

I rather liked Mount Scopus. It overlooks the whole of Jerusalem from a knife edge position on the east of the city. On the other side we had a magnificent view of the Dead sea and the Jordan mountains. We had possession of a chateau, built in the French style, by the German Kaiser for his wife before the first World War. Today it is a hospital called the Augusta Victoria. It was set in pine trees and the Mount of Olives was a few hundred yards away over a shallow shoulder in between.

But to get back to the cake. I had volunteered to provide a cake for tea. I think it may have been a Sunday. In the afternoon I got hold of a one ton truck and driver and with tongue in cheek signed the works ticket for the trip into the city. I had to take another soldier as well as the driver, all three of us, as normal being armed with our stens. The shop I wanted was in Ben Yehuda street, the main street in the city. It was a bit of a notorious place, if there was ever going to be trouble of any kind, it was there.

The shop was one of those confectionery cum bakers, but with quite a wonderful display of delicious things in the window. I chose the best our slim funds could afford and carefully carried it out to the waiting truck. The diver and the escort were visibly nervous. A hundred yards up the street a bus had been hijacked and was blocking across the road. This was usually a prelude to either an assassination or a bomb attack in order to hinder the police or Army. We fairly hastily climbed aboard and made our way home, thankfully in the opposite direction.

As the escort had sat with the driver while I was in the shop, I climbed in the back with the cake and the escort stayed in front. So there I was, cake in hands sat looking out of the back of the one tonner. Once we were out of the centre, our route took us on a long curving road up to Mount Scopus, passing through an Arab area called Sheik Jerrah. Two or three miles in all, perhaps.

It was as we had turned out of Ben Yehuda street that we had heard an explosion further up the road and a rattle of automatic fire. There was no need to stop the truck to tell the driver to get a move on. As we moved into Sheik Jerrah I was conscious of a black car catching us up. It got to within perhaps twenty yards of us. I could see the driver bent over his wheel furiously driving as though his life depended on it, which it turned out it did.

His front passenger was firing an automatic, probably a Thompson SMG, out of the side window. I believe that there two more in the back similarly engaged. When they caught sight of me, the gunman in front tried his level best to aim at me, not the easiest thing to do out of a side window, as I was directly on front of him, sat as I was with my back to the direction of travel. I had passed being principally concerned for the safety of the cake and was seriously concerned for myself. There was not a lot I could do. I decided to sit tight with the cake and attempt to maintain a neutral expression, not wishing to aggravate them, not the easiest thing.

I did wonder whether to drop the cake and have a go with my own sten, but there was a strong chance that our driver would stop and that would not be the healthiest move at that time. I decided to sit it out, in the hope that things would somehow improve. Of course the two in the front of our truck were not aware of the drama being played out behind. Our best chance would be for us to part company with them as we got back to the Augusta Victoria. We had a double guard with a Bren at the main gatehouse and they would not want to tangle with them.

It was we passed through Sheik Jerrah there was one of those moments when the mind takes a photograph and retains it in the memory down the years. An old woman with a shopping bag at the end of each arm was just leaving the road to cross an area of waste ground. Presumably she was returning with her shopping from the city. The gunmen were so intent on firing wildly at anything in order to deter pursuit, that they fired at her, and I can still see the bullets kicking up dust all around her. By some fluke they did not hit her and as we passed out of sight the last I saw was her trotting on her way as if nothing had happened.

It all lasted such a short time really, as these things do. They peeled off at a suitable junction, leaving us to continue on our way. When we climbed out, back at the Victoria Augusta, the driver casually remarked that he had heard gunfire on the way back, but didn't know how close it was. I informed it that it was close. Another day in Jerusalem.

I sliced the cake carefully up, it being the cook's day off. And set it before the expectant circle sat around the table.

"You got it then" was all the comment and thanks that I got. It's a thankless job is messing member.

Max Frost

25 April 2003