Free Come To The War by Lesley Thomas

very good,' he said. "The same two have been flying down the Negev for years, to Beersheba, to Masada, and up to Rosh Pina in Galilee.'
    I continued walking towards the airport building. I could feel the sun seeping through my shirt and on to the sore pink of my back. Cursing Yacob Haydn I went gratefully into the cool interior.
    'Well, I can't say I'd like to trust my precious hide in those grandfather things,' I said to Metzer. He went to get me a drink. He was obviously upset when he returned.
    "Those grandfather things, as you so-call them,' he said nodding heavily and unhappily out of the window. "The two Dakotas, renovated only a year ago, and flying very well. Those two are for us... For you and me, and the rest of the orchestra for our journey to Eilat.'
    'I thought you might tell me that,' I told him. Taking the drink from him I looked miserably from the wooden room first at the Fouga Magister trainers with their ungainly rocket claws and then at the Dakotas. 'It's a great country for mak ing-do,' I said.
    He did not look as though he fully understood, but he was ready to agree with anything I said. 'Yes,' he said. 'For that it is surely a great country.'
    On the Thursday Moshe Dayan became Defence Minister in Jerusalem. They were setting up the orchestra on the beach when Metzer came in by jeep from the town and shouted it in Hebrew. The musicians and the others who were out there working in the late afternoon began cheering and clamouring around Metzer. The two grey Dakotas rested on the airstrip across from the beach unperturbed by the bumpy flight over the hot air rising from the bad teeth of the Negev Desert.
    I was on the balcony of the little hotel drinking tea and going through the score. There was no piano available for practising and they had only just unloaded the one to be used in the concert from the aeroplane.
    Metzer ran heavily along the beach and puffed under the balcony. I leaned over. Two motor torpedo boats had just set out from Eilat harbour and were chewing their way truculently across the bay towards Akaba. I watched them.
    'What's the cheering about?' I called down to Metzer. 'Have the Arabs surrendered?'
    His face dropped heavily. 'No, no,' he said childishly. Then decided to make a joke of it. 'Not yet. Maybe tomorrow. By then they will hear that our new Defence Minister is Moshe Dayan; you know him, him with one eye.' He closed his right eye and put his hand across it. Then he flustered. 'No. Sorry, it is the wrong eye. Our Minister has no eye this side.' He changed to the left.
    'I know the man,' I said amiably. 'He looks like Richard Widmark.'
    'Who is that?' Metzer called up.
    Instead of answering I pointed to the twin torpedo boats going like dolphins for the Arab shore. 'Where is the Jewish Navy going?' I called to him. He looked at them and returned face-up to me.
    'Just for a look,' he said. 'Every day they go to look at the Arabs and then they come back. There is no trouble. They always do it. It is a habit.'
    'Provocation,' I shouted down at him. He took me seriously and wobbled his big head. 'Just habit,' he replied. 'Will you come down to the beach when you are prepared, Mr Hollings. The piano is just being taken there.'
    I nodded that I would be down. The afternoon was well gone now, the water in the bay was dulled and a faint rouge touch was on the table of hills behind Akaba. The desert between Israel and Jordan was still and empty, but at sea the two silver boats drove on wickedly through the outlying waves.
    There was an Italian fisherman on the beach with two Abyssinians who had travelled up from Africa to work in the gulf. Time brings some strange people together. At the finish of that afternoon, as the orchestra was setting up its instruments by the sea, a tribe of fish was spotted out in the flat water.
    The Italian was a miserable man with a browned and sour face, shouting in a rough tone that made his own melodic language sound bad. The Abyssinians had journeyed to