I was working in the kitchens of Kibbutz Reshafim, in southern Galilee, about three miles from the border with Jordan, preparing food in a kosher way. One day I was detailed to provide carrot juice for a couple of hundred kibbutzniks and volunteers, most of them sweaty and tired from working in the fields and date palms all day. All I needed to do was juice the carrots and transfer it into huge bains-marie filled with iced water.

It was quiet in the dining halls as I poured from one of the vast jugs I had used to catch the juice as it was crushed by the pressing machine. I could hear the slap of naked feet on the floor behind me as someone approached, so I turned.

There was a golden brown man, a couple of years younger than me, about eighteen or so, standing by a serving table laden with fruit. His hair was shaven almost to the skin, and he was almost naked, save for a pair of khaki green boxers and a silver chain with a dog tag. In one hand was a two-litre carton of milk, freshly stolen from the kitchens, some of the milk left on his precocious moustache. At his waist, slung nonchalantly over one shoulder with a leather strap, was a machine gun, pointed vaguely in my direction.  He nodded at me slightly, and I returned it.

"Bocha-tov," I said.     

"Okay?" he asked, motioning to the pile of fruit.     
         
"Sure." 

After pondering, he took a slice of watermelon. He nodded again to me, and bit, the sides of melon coming almost to his ears. He grinned again to me, and I could see the red juice of the melon mixing with the milk on his face to turn almost pink. He took another huge bite from the melon, and leant against the steel table, looking at me. 

"You are from England?"    

"Yeah, near Manchester."

"Ah, it rains a lot, yes? I was in Bristol for a year, at University. I stayed with a family who had friends from Manchester. They always complained about the, er, the word Moshe, the word. Little rain?"    

"Drizzle" - he nodded "Oh, yeah, it rains a lot, not like here. I haven't seen the rain since I left England."     

"You want some fruit?" He asked.

"No," I replied, and gestured towards the juice. He screwed his face up. 

"How long are you on leave for?" I asked. 

"Ah, only two days. I just finished the first part of my national service training and go back to the army then. In Kyriat Shmona, in Golan, you know?" I nodded.

I knew it. "The town of the eight", named for a brave band of fighters who died defending it from Arab marauders in the twenties, it was not far north of the kibbutz, so a trip to sleep under the stars in the Golan Heights was laid on each summer for the volunteers. It mainly involved visiting a museum of Biblical archaeology, river rafting in a mountain stream, getting drunk in the town and sleeping in a sleeping bag in a park near Lebanon. I told him about it.

"Good. Nice place for visit, but not if you are in the army.

"Why? Because you don't want to be in the army, or because of what might happen?"    

"No. I want to be in the army, but I am just Moshe. I lived all my life here in Reshafim. Then I went to University in England. I was studying Veterinary Science, so that I could come back and look after the animals here.

"Usually there is a dispensation, but they have forgotten all about it. They said, you are nineteen years old, here is your gun. Go. Fight.  I could have stayed in England, to finish my studies, then go in the Army, But, you know, I must defend my country and brothers. What can I do? So I get it out of the way and go. I go, they give my gun - he raised the gun towards me and looked at me with the melancholy of an older man. -  may be I fight. Who knows? One day I will go back to Bristol, and then come back to Reshafim. Perhaps it will still be the same then."

He stopped and shrugged, paused a second to look at the sights of his gun. Then he pushed himself to standing, and raised one hand to me.       

"I must go. Shalom."

He turned and went back into the kitchen, taking the milk and melon skin with him.    

"Shalom." I said to his back, and I turned also.   

It was the only time I saw the soldier Moshe. 

*

That night I went with a couple of the other volunteers into Beit Shean for some beers, along the West Bank road. A few miles away, as the mountains rose from the fertile plain of the river, the lights in the nearest Jordan town reflected the stars through the palm groves. 

The road was unusually deserted so we started to walk the three miles into town. Just before an army helicopter swooped overhead, nearly frightening us half to death, we found the shed skin of a snake on the road. I got a stick and held up the skin, almost see through, even in the dim moonlight.        

When the helicopter passed over us, shattering the night with noise, its searchlight panning across the open fields that lay between us and the border, we just stood and watched. It disappeared over the Mt Gilboa behind Reshafim, heading towards the West Bank proper. For a minute it was silent, then the night insects came back, louder than before. Funny, it was only when the insects were not there that you noticed them. 

Then a white Mercedes appeared on the road, the Arabic numbers and white plate marking it out as a Palestinian car. It stopped by the side of the road, and the window wound down, it's old mechanism creaking loudly. A face that seemed to be covered in bark peered out at us.        

"Good evening fine gentlemen. It is late to be on this road with no car. I can take you to Beit Shean. If you would like, please, please, climb in."  

After a quick glance at each other to see if we were going to ignore the advice not to get in a Palestinian car, we clambered into the back seat, and he pulled back onto the tarmac. 

"Thanks a lot for this. It's too hot to walk."  

"Yes, this heat, hey?" he said. "I see you crazy people on this road all the time. It's no problem. I like to speak English so I stop."  

"That's cool. Did you learn it in England?" I asked, thinking of Moshe.    

"Oh no. My brother, he has a market shop in Jerusalem. I have worked there from a small boy. I see all fine ladies and fine gentlemens who visit and speak English to them."

"Did you see the helicopter. What was that all about?"

"I saw it, but I do not know. I hope nothing, but I saw also three army cars with soldiers travelling down towards Ramalla."   

As we drove into Beit Shean, he turned to us, smiling widely, and said that we should enjoy our night, not drink too much beer, or the pretty girls would not talk to us. We smiled and asked him if he wanted to join us for a drink. He looked over, through the dusty windscreen, at the families sat in the square, lively and happy in the balmy heat, at the bar where locals and and visitors were drinking from large glasses, at the gaudy sign "Volunteers Bar" to one side of the Hebrew equivalent. 

" No, I think not," he said, shaking his head slightly, and waving to us as we climbed out of the car. 

"Salaam, my friends, salaam."  

As we climbed out and headed to the bar, waving to our friends, I turned and watched the white Mercedes turn around and head back towards the main road out of town. 

* 

The next day Pascal, a French volunteer rushed into the dining room in with the Jerusalem Post, showing us the headline "Saddam Invades Kuwait". Breakfast went on a while longer that day, Kibbutzniks and Volunteers in no hurry to get back to their work. At first we could not comprehend what it all meant. There were anguished discussions about whether we should leave the country, or whether there was any threat to us there in the idyllic surroundings of Reshafim. At one point a senior Kibbutznik came to remind us that we Volunteers had a bomb shelter set aside for us.  

It seems odd now, but after the initial shock, we sort of forgot about Saddam and Kuwait, and life went on as serenely as it had before. 

Three weeks later the Knesset decided that no gas masks were necessary for Kibbutz volunteers and I left Israel shortly after. Six months after that, when I was back in England, CNN bounced pictures into my television of the carnage caused by an Iraqi scud missile to an army barracks outside Kiryat Shmona, near the border with Lebanon. 

The reporter coming live from the Golan told me that at least ten soldiers were killed and many more were badly injured. Most of the soldiers were young men and women from the local villages and towns.