UNITED NATIONS: Death on Mount Scopus

At his command post on Jerusalem's anciently named Hill of Evil Counsel, Major General Carlsson von Horn, Swedish chief of staff of the U.N. Palestine Truce Supervision Organization, had just spread a luncheon napkin across his knees when the walkie-talkie telephone began to grunt and gasp. An aide picked it up and took the message: Israelis and Jordanians were shooting at each other in the demilitarized zone on Mount Scopus behind the Mount of Olives.

The general ordered Lieut. Colonel George Flint, Canadian chairman of the Israeli-Jordan Mixed Armistice Commission, to go to the spot, bring about a cease-fire and arrange for the evacuation of the wounded. Colonel Flint, a tough, wiry Korean war veteran, had been badly wounded by an exploding mine on Mount Scopus two years before. He set forth immediately for the Arab village of Issawiya, on the Jordanian sector of Mount Scopus. Checking fast, he learned that four members of an Israeli police patrol lay wounded at the edge of the Israeli zone where they had been hit in the first shooting; other Israelis crawling up to rescue them appeared to be pinned down among the rocks and scrub cypress trees by continuing machine gun and rifle fire. At 4 o'clock, with a white truce flag in his hand and a U. N. observer carrying a walkie-talkie behind him, Flint moved to the flat top of Mount Scopus. At 4:50 General von Horn's headquarters received word from Flint: "Evacuation of wounded is about to begin."

It was the last message the Canadian sent. Minutes later the walkie-talkie man gasped that Colonel Flint had been hit, and lay unmoving on the slope. Although no more than 20 paces away, U. N. observers radioed that the fire was too heavy to permit any rescue attempt. Hours later, under cover of darkness, they found Colonel Flint's body, and near by the bodies of four Israeli police.

Colonel Flint had intended to return to Canada shortly and write a book about his two years of truce-keeping in Palestine. He had already chosen the title: Blessed Are the Peacemakers.