Griff's Story Home Page - War Around the World

Back down Suez Canal. Big ship made fast to bollards East side as large trans port filled with Indian troops passes her, followed by cargo vessel. Turn East north of Ismailia. Cross canal in chain-rigged ferry after showing orders and passes to English. Fill up at rare petrol point, get extra can of water, and start out on two hundred mile run across Sinai Desert. Two hundred miles of utter desolation.

Around a rocky bend past an archway in which revolve two wooden waterwheels, and we pass through the narrow street lined with the open shops of Beersheba.

Hebron, gray rock on high, bleak, wintry hills. Arabs' bold, proud, unfriendly stare, children screaming at us.

Past monasteries perched on high hilltops, and there, laid out before us, Jerusalem in the golden light of eventide.

Drive to King David hotel, opposite the huge Y.M.C.A., one of the best in the world.

The rectangular building, constructed of locally quarried pink sandstone and boasting 200 rooms and 60 bathrooms, was opened in 1931 on Julian’s Way –– today King David Street in Jerusalem. The hotel hosted such royalty as the dowager empress of Persia, queen mother Nazli of Egypt and King Abdullah I of Jordan, who arrived with a retinue on horses and camels. The hotel afforded asylum to three royal heads of state who had to flee their countries: King Alfonso VIII of Spain, forced to abdicate in 1931; Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, driven out by the Italians in 1936; and King George II of Greece, who set up his government in exile at the hotel after the Nazi occupation of his country in 1942.

In a little over two years from the time Griff checked into the King David Hotel, on July 22, 1946, Menachem Begin (future Prime Minister of Israel) and the Irgun would blow up the King David Hotel killing 91 and injuring 45 in a Jewish terrorist action to drive the British out of Palestine.

See the last part of the Sinai Desert, still moving past, as delicate in light cream yellows as Georgia O'Keefe's tonal paintings.