In the soldiers’ memories of the Middle East, Palestine is associated with shifting hostility and encounters that unsettled it. Recalled during captivity, the episode sets the men’s conduct toward Arabs and Jews against the specific people they met, including Arab working women in Jerusalem and Jewish girls from a kibbutz offering them oranges.

A Place in the Prisoners’ Memories

Dorrigo Evans and the mostly Australian soldiers in the POW camp passed time by recalling their earlier experiences in the Middle East. Their memories ranged across places and encounters; Palestine enters this shared account through the men’s recollections of driving through the region in trucks and directing abuse at Arabs. The narrative does not present a detailed account of Palestine’s geography or wartime events there, but makes the place part of the soldiers’ retrospective catalogue of travel, conflict, and remembered people.

Encounters and Reconsideration

The recollection describes a change in the men’s behavior toward Arabs after they encountered Arab working women in Jerusalem. It then recounts a similar reversal in their treatment of Jews: after directing abuse at Jews from their trucks, the men saw Jewish girls from a kibbutz pressing bags of oranges on them. The account places antagonism and generosity side by side, showing how direct encounters interrupted the men’s group-based hostility without suggesting that the larger divisions had disappeared.

Narrative Significance

Palestine is presented through a memory shared among former soldiers, rather than through the perspective of its inhabitants. The sequence is significant for its contrast between shouted hostility from passing trucks and the intimate, practical gesture of offering oranges. By preserving both the men’s earlier conduct and the encounters that changed it, the recollection complicates their stories of the Middle East: a place remembered not only through conflict, but also through people whose actions resisted the categories the soldiers had imposed.