SUNDAY morning was even more radiant than the Shabbat -- and even more frightful! The British Broadcasting Company had reported "restrained joyfulness" in Egypt. "This is like the Crusades all over again. Only this time the Arabs have gone out to save the Holy Land," it said. Cairo boasted: "This war will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongol massacres and the Crusades."

Tel Aviv had been bombed by Egyptian planes, and Egyptian and Arab Legion forces were marching upon both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, bound on their mission of "extermination and momentous massacre." The Jewish sector of the Old City, which had survived for centuries, had a night of terror as Arab gangs attacked its few hundred Haganah fighters, who defended some two thousand civilians, most of whom were elderly orthodox men and women who had refused to leave their homes.

We climbed to the roof. Cozy sandbag shelters had been erected and a canopy furnished shade for the half dozen young men and two Haganah girls -- both buxom, and pleasing to the eye. One was dressed in khaki trousers, the other in shorts. The latter who had just turned eighteen, was married to the dark, curly-haired leader of the group, a Jew from Poland. She showed the Auschwitz concentration camp number tatooed above her wrist. Her parents and her husband's parents, as well as most of their families, had been liquidated.

"With Europe we are finish. In Israel we begin new life."

Her husband spoke to her in Hebrew. She turned to me and said gayly: "Moshe wants you know he will be father in six months."

We all laughed. "Congratulations. I wish I could give you a gift. Wait. For you, Moshe, I have cigarettes. For the baby I will bring something later."

Morale here was high. Many couples in the Haganah fought side by side as friends, fiances, and not infrequently as man and wife. I guessed that roughly one out of twenty of the front-line fighters was a girl. The presence of women, sharing risks with the men, was one of the greatest morale-boosting factors in the Army of Israel, in contrast to the Arabs who did not even use women for desk work. Most of the girls were either native-born -- sabras -- or had been in Israel long enough to get over their European experiences and imbibe the invigorating spirit that the New Land bred. I asked the married girl about her companion, who seemed a few years older.

"She sharpshooter. Verry verry good sharpshooter soldier."