Where the Desert Meets the Sea

by Werner Sonne

Higgins was in a sour mood. Those Jews out there were becoming more and more brazen. And more dangerous. Every report of an attack on British soldiers passed across his desk here in the outer office of the commanding general of British Armed Forces in Palestine. Higgins had been at this for twenty years—India, Yemen, then the invasion of Normandy, finally Germany. He’d been with the troops that liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. In the beginning, he felt compassion for the victims of the Nazis. But then he was transferred to Palestine. Higgins had been in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem when the Irgun bombed it. He had escaped with an ear injury. Over seventy people had died. Since then, the Jews’ attacks on the military had only increased. British headquarters in Jerusalem resembled a fortress now, surrounded by rows of barbed wire. They called it Bevingrad, after Foreign Secretary Bevin. As with most soldiers, Higgins’s sympathy for the Jews had vanished completely.