creased, as if they had already seen a couple of years’ service. The others are the civilians - colorful trousers, checkered jackets, some even wearing ties.

Now they are standing next to each other, examining each other - foreign to each other. In a few hours they will be living together, standing in line at the mess, pushing for a place to shave in the morn-ing, borrowing shoe polish from each other, and firing off ancient curses in fourteen different languages. But now they are still foreign to each other. The distance between them is enormous - locally born, traditional Yemenites, Yekkes,¹² fat and thin, a roundish youth with glasses who was yesterday the director of finance in a factory, and lit-tie Ezra, who sold ice cream on the beach, standing there like a crooked question mark.

Here and there the barriers are overcome. The more active make contact. The lanky blond asks the little Yemeni for a cigarette, a first conversation develops with a few sentences - and a friendship begins that will be known to everyone in the whole training camp in a few weeks. In another corner they are comparing what they paid for their battle dress. The conversations drift from topic to topic, "acquain-tanceships" arise - a "family."

The whistle blows. The commanding officers have arrived. They observe the "human material" which they must turn into a battalion as quickly as possible. They are very young, no older than their recruits, who from now on will stand to attention before them and obey their orders.

"Atten-shun!" Talking stops. The red-haired officer arranges the men patiently in rows of three. In a few days they will form up like this to order.

They stand in ranks. Soldiers.

What was being formed here was not just an army. It was also a youth movement, a revolutionary movement. Within a few days a new lifestyle developed, a new way of talking, of dressing, of behaving. This new style was not copied from somewhere or somebody. It arose within us, from the character of a generation.

It is possible that this youth movement would have arisen even with-out the war. It was the coming-of-age of a whole generation: the first generation that grew up in this land, conscious of its freedom. Even

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