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صفحة: 113
An American Hero Soon after the War of Independence began , the Arabs cut the only through-road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem . The 50 , 000 Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem were cut off from their supply route , without food and ammunition . A small Piper Cub plane made two trips a day . In the morning it carried a barrel of flour in the passenger’s seat ; in the afternoon , a barrel filled with ammunition . But this was scarcely enough . Convoys of armored vehicles––trucks with iron plates fastened over their windows––tried to make their way through , but the Arabs destroyed almost every truck that tried . You can still see the shattered trucks lining the road to Jerusalem when you enter Sha’ar Hagai , the Gate to the Valley . To the rescue came a Jewish-American graduate of West Point , Colonel David Marcus , a veteran of the U . S . army . He surveyed the maps and discovered a few tiny paths paralleling the major road . He was assigned men who labored day and night to make these paths into a road––known as the “ Burma Road” ––passable by light trucks and even herds of cows . Jerusalem was saved ! During the war , Colonel Marcus was given the undercover name “ Mickey Stone” to hide his identity . In 1966 , Hollywood made a movie , Cast a Giant Shadow , of this extraordinary mission . The Jewish-American actor Kirk Douglas played the role of Colonel Marcus . This tank was left on the road to Jerusalem as a memorial to the soldiers who lost their lives bringing supplies to the city during Israel’s War of Independence . To guard against attacks by Arabs , Jewish policemen in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa area built defense posts out of oil drums , barrels , and the pointed tops of metal gates .
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