You are smuggled by the Maquis across the
English Channel and report back to your unit. Your commanding officer
thinks you have taken enough risks, but you persist:
Sir, I must fight; Hitler is my personal enemy.
You continue to fly
dangerous missions. For your bravery, you are eventually awarded the
Distinguished Flying Cross.
With the war over, you must decide what to do with your future. You receive a call from Irwin Schindler at Service Airways in the United States, telling you he is recruiting Jewish aircrews. Although he will not tell you the details over the trans-Atlantic telephone, something about the offer intrigues you. You go to the training base in California. Here you discover that you and other war veterans are training to become the core of an air force which will go to the new State of Israel. You are excited; fighting for a Jewish state is exactly what you want to do.
Schindler sends you and several others with a Palestinian named Elie
Schalit to Czechoslovakia, where you pick up some used planes. They have
been purchased by the Haganah and are filled with crates marked
Agricultural Implements
and Used Machinery.
Schalit winks at
you and shows you that the implements and machinery
are really guns
and ammunition to defend the new Jewish nation. You fly the planes and
their cargo to an airport near Tel Aviv and participate in the War of
Independence. You are so happy in the Israel Air Force that you continue
as a career officer.
END