WE'RE JUST TARGETS

In Jerusalem last week, TIME Correspondent Don Burke learned something of the life & death of a British constable. He cabled:

Terrorism was new to Constable Alfred Bryan Middleton, 24. He missed the war; as a farm worker in Norfolk, England, he was on the reserved list. In January 1946 he joined the Palestine Police for a three-year hitch because he wanted adventure and thought he would like police work.

Middleton was an ordinary-looking chap with black hair and a slightly cleft chin. His upper front teeth protruded slightly. A picture of Ingrid Bergman was pasted inside the lid of his kit box.

Lawrence, Koestler & Hecht. Like everyone else in Jerusalem, Middleton lived a penned-in life. He was billeted behind barbed wire in the former General Zionist Building on Jaffa Road. Every fourth day he had 36 hours off, but there were not many places he could go. It was hard meeting girls in Jerusalem; any Jewish girl who associates with Britons is liable to have her head shaved. So Middleton spent some of his free time sleeping, some of it listening to Gilbert & Sullivan records, some reading. Most of his books were cheap pocket editions, but he did have good printings of T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom and Arthur Koestler's Thieves in the Night. In his kit box was a pocket book by Ben Hecht, 1001 Afternoons in New York, written long before Hecht became an exponent of vicarious terrorism.

Middleton had few political ideas. He was not antiSemitic, but he did regard Jews as the enemy, as he would have regarded Arabs ten years ago. He got no kick out of driving along Jerusalem's streets just before the' curfew hour and watching tense crowds of Jews scurrying home to be bottled up for the night. His roommate complained: "The trouble with our job is that in their eyes we're all damned guilty, while in our eyes some of them are guilty and some are innocent. What makes it hard is that we have to regard all of them as being innocent until we catch the guilty ones. Meanwhile, we're just targets."

Jerusalem Cops & Robbers. Armored car 755P, Constable Middleton in command, rolled slowly along the sun-baked streets on routine patrol. It was an ordinary midsummer day. Jerusalem had been quiet for 24 hours. Patrols walked in single file through the streets, each man carrying a rifle or Sten gun. The British had just posted notices that the curfew (7 p.m. to 5 a.m.) would end that evening.

As car 755P turned into Agrippa's Way, Jewish kids playing in the street stopped their game long enough to watch Radioman Rex Hayes, in the turret, swing slowly around as he scanned the roofs for snipers. They took a long look at his Bren gun and hollered "Gestapo." Then they went back to their game of "terrorists and police," momentarily snarled by a collective effort to argue one of the smaller kids into playing the part of a British constable. Inside the car, Middleton and his driver, Taffy Watts, a young Welshman from Tonypandy, scanned the street for taxicabs from which grenades might be tossed.

In the Street of the Prophets. Further along, at 2:10 p.m., the radio in Car 755P sounded. The control room ordered: "Investigate Labor Department building." A minute or so later the car stopped near the building at the corner of the Street of the Prophets. As Middleton, carrying his old-style, drum-fed Tommy gun, climbed out, an excited clerk told him that at 2:10, several men carrying a large tin box had entered the building. They said it was a time bomb and would explode in 20 minutes; then they left.

Middleton, Watts, and Hayes found the box in the chief clerk's office. Middleton returned to the car to report: "There's a tin box covered with filing cases. Have we to evacuate the surrounding buildings?" Replied the control operator: "Evacuate. Do you want bomb disposal?" Answered Middleton: "Yes."

Watts and Hayes hooked ropes onto the box, started to haul it out. The rope slipped and Hayes went in to refasten it. Middleton raised his whistle to warn people in nearby buildings. The bomb went off. What was left of Hayes and Watts was buried under the collapsed stone building. Middleton's body was blown through a barbed wire barrier and across the Street of the Prophets. His police whistle was still in his mouth.

In a few minutes everyone in the area was rounded up for questioning. The curfew was on again, and the Jews of Jerusalem resumed paying the bill of terrorism committed by a small group, while the guilty men got away. Ben Hecht had said that every act of terror gave him and his extremist associates "a little holiday in their hearts." It is doubtful if Middleton had heard that Hecht had said that, or that he would have understood it if he had.

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