A Polish-born soldier in the British Army in the Second World War, Romek Fein was later a fighter in the Haganah, the Jewish underground that would become the Israeli Army.

In late 1947 Mr Fein was called away from his science studies and deployed in Kfar Etzion, a Jewish settlement block south of Bethlehem that was the scene of some of the heaviest fighting. There, he and his comrades shivered through the winter of 1947-48 in caves normally used by nomadic Palestinian shepherds. In heavy fighting a column came to relieve his unit but was ambushed and lost all its armoured vehicles.

Mr Fein and his unit – four of whom gathered at battle scenes this week to lay wreaths to fallen comrades – then participated in Operation Pitchfork, launched on May 15 to take West Jerusalem as the British pulled out.

“My first fight was at the Saint Simeon monastery in Katamon [now an up-market neighbourhood of West Jerusalem],” he said. The Palmach, the Jewish strike force, had conquered the monastery on the second day of fighting but had suffered heavy casualties. Mr Fein’s platoon was sent to relieve it. They fought a variety of Arab units through what are now up-market neighbourhoods of expensive Ottoman villas.

“It was no joke,” chipped in his colleague, Yehuda Taggar, 85, whose family has lived here since the 16th century. “I remember entering houses where the food was still on the tables and the people had run away. The people fled towards the train station.”

The men were too busy fighting to even hear David Ben Gurion’s declaration of independence. “We didn’t even know the state would be called Israel,” Musa Yar-Koni, now 80, a member of Mr Fein’s platoon, said. The hardest fighting occurred at Ramat Rahel, a kibbutz on the edge of Jerusalem. “After the Arab Legion conquered Kfar Etzion they wanted to conquer Jerusalem, so they attacked Ramat Rahel,” Mr Fein said. “The local defenders were not strong enough. Many were killed, and they abandoned the kibbutz.”

Later the same day his company of fewer than a hundred men were ordered to counter-attack, although they estimated that they were outnumbered ten to one. “I saw a truck going up the serpentine road out of Ramat Rahel,” Mr Fein said. “It was hit by a two-pounder. We heard they were the last settlers from Ramat Rahel and they were all killed. I saw it when it was hit.”

He and two comrades took a Bren gun and climbed a hill to observe the situation. There he spotted two groups of men in various uniforms standing on the road about 200 metres away. “We understood it was officers of the Arab armies looking to see how to enter Jerusalem. They were without rifles, in various uniforms . . . they were the scouts of the Egyptians, Iraqis, I don’t know. We opened fire on them with the Bren gun and they were quite surprised.”

Mr Yar-Koni was one of the fighters who took the strategic kibbutz back from the Arab forces, only to find himself cut off when the Arabs renewed their attack. A platoon from another military organisation, the Irgun, fled. “We spent the whole day surrounded, with no connection at all with headquarters or our friends. I sent two men at night to [fetch reinforcements] and they told them we were still alive. I saw our good friends coming back at midnight. They said, ‘Musa, if you had surrendered we’d have gone to Bethlehem or Hebron to get you back’.”

Months later he realised that the day he had spent waiting to be overrun had been his 20th birthday.

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