THE letter from Sue Cooke (The Press, April 12) concerning the Zionist attack on the small Palestinian village of Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948, evoked vivid memories of those times, when I was a junior officer at Headquarters 2nd Infantry Brigade in Jerusalem – some three miles away.

The forthcoming end of the British Mandate had been declared in November 1947 and the timetable for withdrawal published on December 4.

The Eastern side of Palestine (including Jerusalem) was to be evacuated by midnight on May 14, 1948; the Western half by not later than August 1, 1948.

This was a massive task and both the military and the Palestine police were heavily engaged in backloading stores, equipment, machinery and vehicles to Rafah or directly to Egypt by road, rail and sea.

I was in the last convoy to leave Jerusalem, on May 14, travelling to Egypt via Bethlehem and Hebron.

However, attacks by Jewish terrorists on British personnel intensified after these announcements.

It has been recorded that 222 military and 31 Palestine police died during the last six months.

Attacks on Arab communities also increased. Tirah, near Haifa, was attacked on December 11, 1947, 13 villagers being killed. Grenades were thrown into a crowd in Jerusalem on December 13 and there were numerous lethal incidents throughout the country.

But it was the massacre and destruction at Deir Yassin that caused the greatest shock to everyone, because of its sheer barbarity, and undoubtedly this atrocity was the pivotal event leading to the depopulation of over 400 Palestinian villages as their inhabitants fled. Ethnic cleansing indeed.

Ironically, I have read that, from the Holocaust Museum at Yad Vasham there is a clear view of the site of Deir Yassin, although the remains of that village have long since been bulldozed and built over. No memorial exists there.

Derek Walker, Moor Lane, Strensall, York