Yeshiva University - Masmid Yearbook (New York, NY)

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M A S M i D mud. So you got a bayonet through on arm. . . . What ' s the difference. Doesn ' t hurt too much anyhow. Just a little heavy. Nothing hurts anymore . . . just something leaning on you . . . doesn ' t feel so bad either. So there are laps all around you. So they want to kill you. . . . They want to kill me. . . . What ' s the difference. Make things a lot easier. No more trouble, no more marching, pain, rain, mud, planes . . . no more nothing. Where are those little guys. Boy I gave them something though, something they won ' t forget for a long. . . . Where are they? What are they waiting for? Gotta look and see. They ' re floating around up there, just half-men, no feet. They ' re floating away, like on a fog. There ' s Mike and the sarge. . . . They come after me and got the Japs on the run. . . . Nice guys. . . . But why don ' t they leave me alone. What ore they bending over me for . . . pulling on my arm. . . . Ugh! that hurts . ■ ■ why don ' t they leave me nice and quiet and quiet and easy just falling back and down and down and the fog all ' around so nice and peaceful and hazy and quiet and qui . . . He ' s asleep, doctor. Fine 1 That ' ll make things a lot easier. Just a little more and we ' ll be all finished. Yes, doctor. He ' s lucky to still be alive. The attendant wheeled the table out of the elevator and down the long white cor- ridor, past the nurse entering the ward. H ' ya Marge. Hello. Tough on the guy, ain ' t it! Yeah, I guess it is, she replied, look- ing slowly down at the pinned up right sleeve of his pajama top. Joe Masters had kept his promise. He had given his right arm. Twenty-four

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M A S M operate on me. A fine time to leave a guy alone — when they ' re gonna operate on him. My stomach feels all bunched up. Scared! Scared! The same feeling you get when those planes come tearing down so close you can almost see the slant-eyes and watch the little spurts of mud from the machine gun bullets. You watch them come up on you so fast you can ' t believe it; praying you don ' t get yours this time. Then they ' re gone. You take one breath and those little spurts are coming at you again. How do they expect you to fight planes when you don ' t even have enough ammunition to fight cm enemy squad on patrol. It ' s enough to drive a guy nuts. That ' s what it did too. . . . . . . Day after day, week after week; dodg- ing through the jungle; flopping flat on your face when those planes show up. And all ihe time those guys sneaking around try- ing to plug a fellow. It gets so you feel like standing up and yelling for them to come on. It get ' s so you can ' t stand it anymore. You just got to let it out, other- wise you wind up banging your head against the trees. That ' s the way I felt that time, like I told Mike. . . . Mike, I can ' t stand it no more. Keep your head down Johnny, or you ' ll wind up with a slug in it. I don ' t core. Those planes are getting on my nerves. Pretty soon I ' ll go nuts. Easy Johnny, I ' d give my right arm to meet up with some of those. . . . Mike, look! Over there on th e right. On the other side of the clearing. Japs! I ' m going after them, Mike! Johnny, don ' t go crazy. Stay put. No soap, Mike. I ' m going. So long! Ma.jters iet down! Nuts to you sargel Halfway across before they even knew I was coming. When one of them spotted me my last grenade took care of about six of them before he got three grunts out of his mouth. Charging across, firing from the hip. Made no difference if I hit any or not. I was fighting them. Spun halfway round by a bullet in the shoulder, but that didn ' t stop me. Made me feel better. This was the real stuff. No more dodging for me. Then they were all around me — me swing- ing the gun like a club, laughing. Laugh- ing crazy-like, and that furmy feeling in- side of me sort of melting into a kind of bubbling joy. Little faces, without the toothpaste smiles, moving in on all sides and being swept aside by a swinging gun butt — my gun butt. Then they were moving in behind me. I whirled around, but be- fore I was a quarter of the way around my shoulder almost cracked wide open and I knew how those yellow lice felt when my gun butt was flying around. Before I hit the ground with my knees I shoved my gun into the middle of a Jap uniform. Then I sow the guy on my right. It wasn ' t the guy — it was the bayonet he was driving towards me. My right arm went up before I even realized what the bayonet meant. The point stopped about half a foot from me. It had gone clean through my arm, leaving. . . . Relax and keep your head down. It ' ll be over in a minute. On the operating table! How did I get in here? Must of been thinking about things. . . . That stuff they ' re putting into me, Must be the anesthetic. Feels furmy too. There, now they got me lying down again. Better this way . . . much, much better. Just easy and floating like, nothing bothers you anymore. Just lie back in the Twenty-three

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Iic Ora of r relz 1 Ji. raei By ISRAEL LERNER cmd NACHUM STEPANSKY T AM well aware that ' there ' , in the world of freedom, civilized beings don ' t be- lieve what they hear. Tell them WE AF E . . . DYING. Let them rescue all those who will still be alive. We shall never forgive them for not having supplied us with arms so that we might have died like men with guns in our hands. So spoke a Jewish voice from the underground of the hell- ghetto of Warsaw. Promises, not guns, were supplied and people continue in a manner unlike anything men ever saw be- fore. But for us Jews outside the sphere of man-made hell who are helpless to aid fully those inside, there is a soothing quality in post-war promises. The cycle of birth and death will be adjusted. After so much death a rebirth must come for the Jewish people. The placating proposals of yester- year will be forgotten and the radical but right solution will be substituted — a land, a home and a piece of sky for the Jews to settle under. But the post-war period can see on emergence of a Jewish Palestine only if the world will act on the proposed solution as cm actual probability rather than a remote possibility. The politico-economic barrier pointed out as the hindrance to a proper solution must be exhibited in all its fallacies. It can be rolled aside. The assumption could be made that in the post-war world Great Britain will upon her own initiative, or through pressure of other United Nations, exhibit a genuine in- terest in resolving the Palestinian problem in on unselfish manner. This will come about only if Great Britain will be con- vinced that a Jewish Palestine can be established and still do full justice to the Arabs at the some time. The Arabs ore the chief excuse for failing to carry out the original spirit of the Balfour Declaration as evidenced by the reports of all the investi- gating commissions. The counsel of others will carry v eight. Great Britain regards the Mandate officially as a responsibility for the peace and well- being of the whole population and as an obligation which MUST BE FULFILLED. The Mandate vested great power in the League of Nations and no one country may regard itself morally or legally as absolute proprietor of the Holy Land as Great Britain ' s qctions should seem to indicate. Judging from the official attitude of the United States throughout the period of ragged peace, a Jewish Palestine would be the advice from that quarter. Applica- tion of a like test in the case of the Soviet Union might make Arab chances in turn look extremely promising. The U. S. S. R. used the Palestinian problem as a plank in her anti-imperialist campaign against Great Britain in the Near East. A renuciaticn of imperialism in the post-war period on a world-wide scale should rob the Soviet Union of its argument. While such a policy seems improbable, the closer alliance be- tween the two countries does foreshadow a severe curtailment of anti-British-impe- rialist activity on the part of the Soviet Union. It is conceivable that in view of the horror which descended on European Jewry and to which the Russians have been such close witnesses they will be more amenable to Zionist proposals than before. However, the Arab question looms large in any feasible solution the Zionist can offer. No major power will support Zionist 1) The Riots of 1936, ed. by 3 Chcrrci£. Davar Publication, Tel Aviv, 1937, p. 456 T c€nty-fivc