A Kibbutz at War...and picking melons

A Kibbutz at war...melons by the truckload!

   It was 4 am and we were ready for work. Tractors were already fired up waiting to take us to the melon fields below Kibbutz Grofit. Even at this time of the morning it was warmer than I'd experienced in England.

"This is a ripe melon" our driver told us," as he plucked a melon and threw the fruit into the box behind the tractor. “This one is not!” It just took more effort to separate the fruit from the vine. We stood in the Negev Desert, surrounded by green fields .It was the first day for volunteers in the fields.

   The engines roared again and the day began. We followed them along the first row, bent over, testing, picking and tossing little balls into the box.

I guess the important words there were "bent over". At the end of our first row we all straightened up while the tractors turned for the next row." Was the creaking from the tractors' gears, or from our joints?" They both sounded the same. Most of us were city kids in the fields for the first time. The work was hard but over the next few hours friendships were made that would last forty years and more.

"While I turn around, you can take a melon slice each" the driver told us.

   We needed no second directive to quench our thirst, splitting open the fruit and sharing the flesh and juice. That simple act brought us all together. There was also another consequence.

Did anyone ever tell you that melons were a laxative?

I didn't know that, and by the look of the number of people disappearing into the hedges as time wore on, neither did the others. One by one we disappeared into the bushes, thankful for the paper towels hung over the tractor seats to wipe the sweat away.

It was an experience we soon became accustomed to and managed to control.

   Each day the rota was the same:

• 8 am backup to the Kibbutz for breakfast.
• 9 am to the fields for more picking until Midday.
• 12 pm the sun was too hot to work in so we slept.
• 3 pm back to the fields to tidy up and load the melons onto transport.
• Then at 5 pm it was back to the kibbutz to wash ready for dinner.
• After that the time was our own until midnight.

Why is this memorable?

It was October 1973..seven days after the Yom Kippur War began. Israel was at war. The kibbutz was at war. We were at war. We had volunteered to become kibbutzniks. We became soldiers. 

The mixing of young people can be fun, seeing the sights amazing. But be prepared to work hard. Hopefully you will not be at war,