It was dusk when we decided to call it a day. Arabs usually retired from fighting after sundown, and expected the Jews to do the same. The Jews, however, did the opposite. The Haganah did its best work under cover of darkness. Sneaking unseen upon the enemy, it combined daring with the element of total surprise and usually succeeded in terrifying the Arabs. Another advantage of night attack was that the darkness hid the numbers of the wosefully small -- though superbly trained -- Jewish units. Under these conditions events proved that one inspired Haganah Commando was easily worth ten average Arabs.

This was true here too. For by nightfall the Jews had captured the strategic heights of Katamon and our Holy Warriors had clambered into trucks and rolled back to Deir Aboutor in the silence and gloom of defeat. Later, from Deir Aboutor, we heard the muffled blasting of Jewish sappers as they moved forward consolidating their positions. In the Monastery of St. Simeon, Jews found instructions in German as well as Arabic, a wholly reasonable discovery in view of Iraq's history during World War II. (See Chapter XXII).

The following morning Moustafa took me aside.

"Artour," he said, "You remember Hamid Sharkaf?"

I remembered Hamid Sharkaf. I knew him as John Kenny, a twenty-one-year-old boy from Glasgow, with red cheeks and an ever present smile. Before he deserted from the British army on the Arab promise of £15 a month, he had been attached to the Royal Engineers. His specialty was mine-laying and demolition-bomb-making; he also taught the Arabs how to use their British machine-guns. "Hamid Sharkaf" was the name he had taken among the Arabs, after the fashion of many of the British deserters.

"He is dead," Moustafa said, genuinely sorry.

"How did he die?"

"At Katamon. We killed him last night by mistake. He wouldn't retreat with the rest of our boys, so when the Jews chased him to our lines, we took him for a Jew and killed him."

"He was Catholic," I said, "Who buried him?"

"The Arab soldiers. They dug a grave in the Moslem cemetery by the Dome of the Rock, and the imam said a prayer."

So died -- and so was buried -- many a British soldier!