Exodus - Leon Uris [88]
Dov Landau was in the fight. He and other refugees were guarding the top of the ladder near the captain’s bridge. They pushed the British down the ladder half a dozen times until the tear gas and, finally, small arms drove them off.
The British had control of the deck now. They reinforced their position and held the refugees and Palmach off at gunpoint while another party stormed into the wheelhouse to gain command of the ship.
Bill Fry and five of his crew greeted the first three men who entered the wheelhouse with pistols and angry fists. Although he was completely cut off, Bill continued fighting until British marines dragged him from the wheelhouse and beat him unconscious with clubs.
After four hours of fighting, with eight of their men dead and a score wounded, the British gained control of the Promised Land. Fifteen Jews were killed, among them the American captain, Bill Fry.
A general order for secrecy was issued at Haifa harbor in Palestine as the Dunston Hill towed the Promised Land in. The old steamship was listing badly. The entire Haifa dock area was flooded with British troops. The Sixth Airborne Division was there and they were armed to the teeth. But in their attempt at maintaining the secrecy, the British did not know that the Jews had broadcast a full account of the boarding of the Promised Land over their radio.
As the ships approached Haifa Bay, the Jews in Palestine called a general strike. Troops and tanks were required in the dock area to form a barrier between the refugees and Palestine’s angry Jews.
Four British prison ships, Empire Monitor, Empire Renown, Empire Guardian, and the Magna Charta waited to effect an immediate transfer of the refugees from the Promised Land. But the very instant the Chesapeake Bay liner was towed into port, the harbor area and the entire city of Haifa shook under the impact of a mighty blast! The Empire Monitor was blown to pieces! This act was accomplished by Palmach frogmen who swam in and attached a magnetic mine to the ship’s sides.
The Promised Land docked and the transfer operation began at once. Most of the refugees had had the fight knocked out of them. They went quietly to delousing sheds where they were stripped, sprayed, searched for weapons, and moved quickly on to the three remaining prison ships. It was a tragic procession.
Dov Landau and twenty-five others locked themselves into a hold, armed themselves with pipes, and defied the British to the very end. The hold was pumped full of tear gas; and Dov was carried from the Promised Land by four soldiers, still struggling, cursing, and fighting. He was thrown into a barred cell on the Magna Charta.
The prison ships were packed even more tightly than the Promised Land had been, and that same night they sailed from Haifa with the two cruisers, Dunston Hill and Apex, as escort.
If the refugees were sent on to Cyprus to the already crowded camps there, then the Jews would have won their point. Sixty-five hundred more Jews would have been taken out of Europe and added to the ever-growing numbers waiting on Cyprus to go to Palestine.
“The refugees from the so-called Promised Land on the Empire Guardian, the Empire Renown, and the Magna Charta are to be returned to their port of embarkation, Toulon, France. Henceforth any other illegal blockade-runners that are caught will also be returned to their ports of origin.”
The Palmachniks and Mossad Aliyah Bet people who were with the refugees on the three ships knew what they had to do. If they debarked and returned to Toulon and if the British rode out the storm, then there would be no more illegal immigration.
The order for secrecy went out in Toulon as the prison ships steamed into the Gulf of Lions and dropped anchor offshore.
Simultaneously the Palmach chiefs on each of the prison ships handed the British captains a message; each one was to the effect that “We will be taken ashore only by force.”
The commander of the prison ships radioed to the Admiralty in London for instructions. Whitehall immediately