大象传媒

I was born in 1933 and in 1936 moved from the UK to the British Mandate of Palestine with my family.

My father was a British telecommunicatons engineer seconded to the Palestinian Post and Telegraph service. He was also recruited as an undercover agent for Eastern Mediterannean Intelligence Service which had its HQ in Cairo.

Although I was only six when war was declared I was close to my father and came to understand a great deal both about WW2 and the political situation in the Mandate.

In 1943, however, after Palestine was freed from the threat of invasion, my father was sent to South Africa on a mission to Field Marshall Smuts. He took us with him, mainly for cover but when he returned my mother and we three children had to remain in South Africa until we could get tickets back to Palestine, a near impossibility during the war.

I was sent to hostels for over a year, while we lived in South Africa, and lost contact with the outside world.

Both pieces I have put up here have been ripped from the memoir I am writing centred on my relationship with my father. I have decided the memoir can do without these pieces they are not particularly relevant to that theme,

The story "Boy's own Stuff in the Balkans" I think will fit in quite well with two categories already created in the 大象传媒 site i.e. "Special Ops" and the Balkans.

The piece "Cabin No 13" is less easy to categorise. It is is the story of the wartime struggle of my mother and us three children marooned in South Africa to rejoin my father in Palestine. However, I think it illustrates the way war tore families apart even when the father was not a member of the fighting forces. It showed too how civilians had to come to terms with cultures they would not have met in peace time.