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A British Soldier at Nakba '48-'49

By Colin Guiver, May 2008

In, 1946, I was 18 years old and the British Army was waiting to conscript me into the Royal Corp of Signals which pleased me to no end because that meant no shooting. When I learned my posting would be somewhere in the Middle East, I was thrilled as I did not wish to be serve in Germany after experiencing the bombing of London and Weymouth. My hopes lay in places like Palestine or Trans Jordan. I knew of the stories of T.E. Lawrence of Arabia as he lived and was killed in a motor cycle accident just a few miles from where I was born in Weymouth, England.

I arrived first in Cairo and soon was sitting in a jeep, crossing the famous Sinai Desert from Lawrence’s book, “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom”. My first sight of Palestine was at Beersheba, and I was not disappointed at all Bedouins and Palestinian Arabs in traditional clothing was the normal attire-not the t-shirts and jeans of today. My army camp was just a few miles north of Gaza and Working trips took me to places like Hebron, Akaba on the gulf, and the wonderful city of Petra in Jordan. I could not believe my luck. Once, we even followed the Turkish Railway and saw the abandoned forts and trenches of the southern desert war of the Arab revolt.

It was some surprise to me, when on a trip to Haifa and driving through a mainly Jewish Tel Aviv, to find that this Palestine also contained a large number of people who looked like Arabs, but were dressed in very European clothes and their houses and farms appeared to be very modern. I saw the same thing in Haifa and Jerusalem, so got to observe the resident Jews of Palestine.

One day some rusty old ships ran aground and the Jewish flood gates opened to what we all knew was a problem. We also knew this happening was not good for our Palestinian workers. My driver, Librahim Farly filled me in on what all this meant for his future. Libraham an Arab friend and was the man who not only taught me to drive, but also started teaching me some Arabic. I can still say, to this day, my army number in Arabic which surprised a lot of friends at that time and still does today, to me fond memories of the time spent in an Arab country. Librahim told me was that the British government will let the Palestinian people down just like they did in the 1914-18 war. I understood then why T.E. Lawrence changed his name to Shaw and tried to hide in a small cottage, “Clouds Hill”, near Weymouth. It is still there, but hard to find off in the woods-just the right place for someone ashamed of his country’s failure to keep its promise for the Arab revolt.

The end came very quickly for all of us Brits in Palestine. With a big push from the USA , England, at that time broke and shattered by more than five years of war, did not argue. After losing many soldiers to the Jewish underground, they simply gave in. I returned home. They gave me a medal, it’s in a drawer somewhere.

Now, 60 years later, I find it so difficult to watch on TV what is happening in Palestine. It is so very sad. I am hoping the new U.S. President will help both sides to achieve a lasting peace. The Palestinian people need our help now to recover all the property they have lost. - without the land there is no real Palestine-only memories that are 60 years old and fading fast.

Colin Guiver was a Signalman in the British Mandate Army. He now resides in the Bay Area.