Sent to me by my oldest son, Marshall C. Sanders (also called
 Sandy.)  Jim
 I thought you all would find this article interesting.  I pulled it
 from the NY Times articles on Israel's 50th Birthday.  Sandy
 British Pilot Recalls 'Fun Stuff' in Israel Air Force
 By JOEL GREENBERG
     KFAR SHMARYAHU, Israel -- Reminiscing over the drone of planes
 taking off from an airstrip near this Tel Aviv suburb, Gordon Levett,
 a 77-year-old Englishman, savored the memories of his days as a vol-
 unteer combat pilot at Israel's birth half a century ago.
     "It was quite fun stuff," he said of the risky missions he had
 flown. "I was the only English gentile pilot in the Israeli Air
 Force."
     A squadron leader in the Royal Air Force in World War II, Levett
 was one of the few non-Jews among about 5,000 foreign volunteers who
 came to fight for Israel when it was invaded by Arab countries after
 it declared independence on May 14, 1948.
     Several hundred of the volunteers, Levett among them, were back
 in Israel recently to be honored on its 50th anniversary.
     They had enlisted mostly from the United States, Canada, Britain
 and South Africa, using their World War II experience to help organize
 the Israeli fighters as a conventional army.
     The volunteers set up Israel's air force, manned new armor,
 artillery and naval units and served in the medical and signal corps.
 Their expertise was critical in helping what had been an underground
 Zionist force win the war against the Arab armies.
     Not only was he not a Jew, but Levett was particularly notable
 because he was British. To most Israelis at that time, the recently
 lapsed British mandate in Palestine had been decidedly pro-Arab, and
 British government policy was seen as anti-Zionist.
     Recruited in March 1948 by emissaries in Europe of the Haganah,
 the Jewish fighting force in Palestine, Levett was viewed with a
 healthy dose of suspicion. "In my last interview I was told, 'We're
 quite convinced that you are a British spy, but we're going to take
 you to see what you're up to,"' he recalled.
     Levett had volunteered for the Zionist cause in outrage over
 British policy in Palestine. The British government had refused to
 cooperate with a 1947 plan by the United Nations for partitioning
 Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, saying it would withdraw its
 forces from the country.
     "I felt anger and shame," Levett recalled. "To continue that
 policy after the Holocaust was a bloody outrage and evil. There
 comes a time when morality overrides politics. After 2,000 years of
 persecution of the Jews, the establishment of Israel was one of the
 greatest humanitarian causes in all of human history."
     Levett was sent to Czechoslovakia, where American Jewish volun-
 teers had assembled a fleet of transport planes bought privately in
 the United States to ferry arms bought from the Czechs to Israel.
 The hardware, sold with Soviet approval, included 25 German-designed
 Messerschmitt fighter planes, which were dismantled for the journey.
     "They had to take the wings off, and half a Messerschmitt was
 taken per flight, shoehorned into the transport right up to the
 cockpit," Levett said. "The area around the Messerschmitt was packed
 with lots of rifles, bombs and first-aid equipment."
     Flying at night to avoid detection, Levett and his colleagues
 airlifted the supplies to Israel in defiance of a U.N. arms embargo
 on the Middle East combatants.
     "It was hairy, because we were flying with no weather reports
 and no paperwork, and crews that had to land in Greece and Rome
 because of engine trouble were arrested," Levett recalled. "None of
 us had flown that particular aircraft before. We were odd sorts from
 all over, flying illegally, at night, without licenses and with no
 parachutes."
     Later in Israel, Levett flew the same transport planes on bombing
 missions that ranged from the Sinai Peninsula to the Syrian capital,
 Damascus. "There were no bomb racks, so the bombs were rolled out by
 a 'bomb chucker' who was tied into the plane with rope," he said.
     On other flights, Levett ferried troops behind Egyptian lines in
 the Negev and brought reinforcements to Eilat, the Red Sea port. He
 flew Messerschmitt and Spitfire fighters against Egyptian warplanes,
 downing one. One of his colleagues in the squadron was Ezer Weizman,
 now Israel's president.
     "At our base I saw the Messerschmitts not with a swastika but
 with the Star of David," he recalled. "What a lovely moment. This
 notorious Nazi fighter was now serving the Jews."
     Levett was eventually appointed to turn the ragtag transport
 squadron, manned by American volunteers who refused to put on uni-
 forms, into a disciplined air force unit.
     In May 1949, after the fighting had ended, Levett bid a painful
 farewell to Israel and went home, doubtful whether he could find his
 place as a non-Jew in the Jewish state. He went on to a career as a
 civilian pilot, ferrying planes for aircraft companies.
     On the streets of Israel, he and his comrades had been treated
 as heroes, and the return to Britain was a jolt.
     "The day I returned to England it was raining," he recalled. "It
 felt like a balloon deflating. I had fought a moral war and was
 associated with a great cause. I still feel more at home here walking
 down Ben-Gurion Street than I do in England walking down Piccadilly.
 I know why: In a tiny way, I helped build this country."
 Sunday, May 10, 1998
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