Grandma's army

  And to round up my trio on Latrun , Charles Smith, who joined the Senior Residence complex where I live, together with his wife Shirley, sent me the following   short story. One of many among his reminiscences from their 37 years on a moshav (agricultural settlement) overlooking Latrun . “In 1978, after 3 years in Rehovot, our family moved to Moshav Bin Nun, an agricultural village in the beautiful area overlooking the Valley of Ayalon (where Joshua Bin Nun fought and subdued the locals a few thousand years ago), and the Latrun Monastery. Attached is a picture of the view from our farm and another of our vineyard which is relevant to the story below. At that time, whenever any Israeli – from my barber to taxi drivers - heard that we were going to move to that spot, he/she immediately trotted out the quotation from the Bible in Hebrew: “ The Sun stood still at Givon and the Moon in the Valley of Ayalon” - Joshua   [10:12]. This was, o...