I obtained work on at sea and spent the next three years sailing on Israeli, English, and Norwegian vessels. It was my luck to have experienced situations in which my ship sank on three different occasions. The first time was because of mistakes in loading the vessel in Port Said. The ship capsized but no one was hurt. The second time was en route to Turkey, near the shore of northern Syria. We encountered a fierce storm and of the 21 crew members, five drowned. I was able to pull three survivors from the water, but two of them lost consciousness. Other crew members also went into the water and rescued men. The worse case was when our ship was hit by a German torpedo in the Atlantic, in the area of Central America. When a ship goes down, anyone close by in the water, is sucked under. It takes a very good swimmer to withstand the force of the suction. It was my luck that there were floating pieces of wood and doors that I was able to grab hold of. Then I found a ladder that I could sit on and row, and that brought me to a raft that had dropped off the ship. When I rowed close to the raft I saw that two seamen were already on it. I made them return to pick up other survivors. We picked up several more so that there were six of us on the raft.
The next morning the current drew us toward a group of small islands. At the same time, sharks swam around the raft for four days and four nights. Had we not picked up those three men, they would surely have been eaten by the sharks. On the fifth day we were picked up by an American coastal patrol vessel and taken to Trinidad. There we found 3 other members of the crew and that was all that was left of the original 47 men. I returned to Palestine several months later via the USA and England. I then continued to work on a British ship which was in the service of the British forces. I took part in the invasion of Southern France, on a ship that brought supplies and two army field medical stations.