The day the war broke out, my unit of reservists had already been mobilized for three weeks. Those weeks came to be known as the “waiting period.” I was in Reserve Battalion 161 of the Jerusalem Brigade (Hativa) under Lt. Col. Asher Dreizin.
I was born in London and came to Israel in 1963. When I arrived in Jerusalem, the city had a small-town feel. There were around 165,000 people in western Jerusalem. There was one traffic light—at the intersection of King George, Strauss and Jaffa Streets.
I arrived on June 10, 1967, on a special El Al flight for war volunteers. It came from Paris, where I lived at the time. It was packed and quite frightening. We did not know what we were coming to. They did not give us the usual meal, but just a packet…
I immigrated to Israel from Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1964. By then, I was already a registered nurse, having trained at Manchester Jewish Hospital in England. Right away, I got a job at Hadassah Hospital Ein Karem.
The day the war broke out, along with my fellow paratroopers, I was at the Tel NofAirbase located not far from Rehovot. At age 34, I was the commander of a battalion of paratroopers, though I was not a full-time army man.