Tel Aviv  

June 22, 1948

Dearest Mother, Dad and Naomi,

It is six o'clock in the morning and I've just awakened from a very bad nightmare in which there was shooting and shelling, hunger and thirst, blood and tension and unbelievable bravery.

I looked around and saw a cozy hotel room with a private bath and someone sleeping in the twin bed. I listened to the honking of bus horns and neighbors on a nearby balcony arguing. I stared at the ceiling. I'M IN TEL AVIV!!!.

Under the protection of the United Nations a convoy of wounded, which I accompanied for Magen David Adom, was allowed to leave besieged Jerusalem and to pass on the old Jerusalem‑Tel Aviv route as far as Latrun or what remains of it. Before letting us proceed, everybody checked and double checked us the Arab Legionnaires checked us, the American representatives checked us, the United  Nations representative checked.  For what I do not know we had only bona fide patients with unhealed wounds.

From Latrun we took to the hills, jockeying and rumbling our way to Kfar Bilu, a converted hospital camp,  formerly  a British Army camp. Most of the patients were amputees and lurching over the rugged terrain was sheer agony for them. How desperately I tried to be cheerful, efficient, to give whatever sympathy and comfort I could.

There, the pain‑weary and exhausted patients were given  tea and sandwiches with TOMATOES  and  CUCUMBERS after months of deprivation. Who could have thought a human being could get so excited about an honest‑to‑goodness tomato, but all of us did. It tasted of everything I had ever dreamed about eating during hunger pangs in Jerusalem ice cream, coffee, hamburgers with ketchup, whatever memory or imagination could conjure.

It suddenly dawned on all of us when we arrived that WE WERE ACTUALLY IN THE STATE OF ISRAEL. A wild and joyous moment, filled with relief and pain and overwhelming excitement. The patients banged their crutches and canes on the ambulance and bus doors. The din was deafening, the exultation uncontrollable.

The boys were sorted into two groups by an army doctor those to be kept for treatment and those to be sent for convalescence. I accompanied the convalescent group on to a Tel Aviv Rest Home. We had started out from Jerusalem at about noon, after much sitting around and waiting for approvals, but it was after 10:30 p.m. when we arrived at the outskirts of Tel Aviv‑ Jaffa, where the Rest Home was and I was able to deliver my patients. Everyone was in high spirits, singing loudly and boisterously, proud of having come from the battlefield of JERUSALEM and relieved  at being somewhere else.

I woke up this morning wondering if all the comforts of Tel Aviv had dissolved during the night but they were still there, along  with  glorious sunshine.

 My first stop this morning will be at the post office to send you a cable and mail this letter and the twenty other letters that people pushed into my hand as I boarded the convoy. Then I am going to have breakfast with my "date," order a tall glass of orange juice, an egg or two and enough coffee to drown in.  Off with the uniform.  A casual outfit and saddle shoes. Lady for a day.

Actually three days. Three whole days and nights of this paradise.

  Love,

  Zippy