Mickey Marcus- Israel's first commander

            Future Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion had a difficult situation on his hands in 1947. The British were about to leave the Middle East (except in Trans-Jordan where they organized the Arabs to fight the Jews) and since the United Nations were soon to give Israel statehood, he needed an army. The Hagana, under Israel Galali, was an underground unit of about 30,000 soldiers and the Palmach, a highly trained and Israel’s only full time unit under the command of Yigal Allon, had about 2,500 commandos. Ben-Gurion needed an experienced officer to lead the soldiers in the upcoming War of Independence and so he sent Shlomo Shamir to New York to search for that man. He consulted with a highly recommended Jewish colonel, Mickey Marcus, and before long they both realized that Marcus was the man.

            Davis Daniel “Mickey” Marcus was born on Hester Street in the Lower East Side to Jewish parents who were immigrants from Romania. He entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY in 1920 and graduated four years later. He studied law at night and in 1927 he became a law clerk in New York and resigned from the infantry to work as an assistant US attorney. He worked closely with Thomas Dewey (who would lose the 1948 presidential election to Harry Truman) and Mayor Fiorello La Guardia appointed him as commissioner of corrections.

            Even though he was in the state government he still kept a reserve commission in the army. In 1939, his New York National Guard unit, the 27^th Infantry Division, was sent to prepare for World War II and now Lieutenant Colonel Marcus was the unit’s judge advocate. The division was then sent to Hawaii to await deployment to the Pacific after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. While there, Marcus was tasked with organizing and commanding a Ranger school (another branch in the US Special Forces) but because of his legal position in the army was turned down to lead them in combat. In 1943, he was sent to serve a tour in the Pentagon under Major General Hilldring of the Civil Affairs Department (CAD). He drafted many legal documents, even the terms of the Italian surrender. He also was the CAD legal advisor and was the military government advisor at the most important conferences of the war (the talks between the US, Britain, Russia and other allies on how to fight the war and what should be done after the war ended).

            With his magic tongue, Marcus convinced Hilldring to send him on temporary duty as a liaison to provide legal council for the military government of France. Hilldring became suspicious in June 1944, because he hadn’t heard from Marcus in a couple of weeks, and after a few inquiries he was told that he ‘was somewhere in France’(he wasn’t permitted to go the front lines because of the fear that he may give away secrets if he was captured). He had jumped with the 101^st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles, in the predawn hours of June 6, D-Day, and was one of only two men to jump that night without ever having jumped before. When the commanding general of the 101^st asked him what he was doing there, Marcus replied, “Oh, just looking around”. He had distinguished himself in firefights with Germans and had rescued American paratroopers that had been captured. Hilldring ordered him back to the States and thus ended his only front line duty of the war.

            After the war, Marcus was sent to join the occupation force in Germany and was assigned to the general staff. His boss, General Lucius Clay, wanted his staff to see the German atrocities and ordered his men to travel to the Dachau Concentration Camp. Marcus always knew that he was Jewish but this trip opened up a new chapter for him and he became a Zionist. In 1946, he was posted back to Washington where he became head of the Pentagon’s War Crimes Division. It was his job to select the judges, prosecutors and lawyers for the upcoming trials of Nazi and Japanese war criminals. One of these trials was the Nuremberg trials, which he attended. He wanted everything documented so that future generations would be able to see the atrocities and destruction that these animals had done.

            In December 1947, he was approached by Major Shamir and the only obstacle that he needed to overcome was the opposition from his wife. He convinced by telling her that he was like the foreign generals helping the Americans during the American Revolution. He traveled to Israel under the name of Michael Stone.

            On his arrival, Marcus met with Ben-Gurion and visited the existing Hagana bases while suggesting improvements for each one. He discovered that the problem with the Hagana was that it was an effective underground force but it couldn’t translate those skills into a conventional army. Marcus tried his best to change that and employed his knowledge and skills leant while teaching the Rangers in Hawaii to the fledgling Israeli Army.

            Two hours after the announcement of the creation of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, the Arabs attacked and with Marcus leading them the Israelis were ready. The soldiers attacked at night, when the Arabs were least expecting them but through all of this fighting the Arabs still held the road between Tel Aviv and Yerushalyim. In between the two cities was Latrun- a fortified police station that the Israelis had failed once to capture. Following Marcus’s suggestion that all the Israeli forces be untied under one command, Ben-Gurion appointed Marcus as the country’s first aluf (general). Five days later, Marcus was prepared and ready for another attack on Latrun. However, this attack failed and Marcus needed to find another way to get to Yerushalyim.

            During the China-India-Burma theater of operations in World War II, the Americans had built a road to get supplies to the Chinese who were in desperate need of provisions while fighting the Japanese Army. It was an enormous engineering feat but it was done and it helped push back the Japanese. It was called the Burma Road and Marcus wanted to use the same idea to get to Yerushalyim. The idea, it was also called the Burma Road, worked and the siege around the city was broken hours before a cease-fire was called on June 11.

            However, Mickey Marcus did not survive to see the cease-fire. He had left his quarters in the middle of the night to get a bit of fresh air and was returning at 4 AM when the sentry called out for the password. However, since Marcus, who was wearing a uniform without showing his rank, didn’t know much Hebrew, he responded in English. The sentry, a 19-year-old recruit who didn’t speak any English, shot and killed Marcus. He was last Israeli casualty before the cease-fire.

            Marcus’s body was flown back to New York, where he was buried in the West Point Cemetery. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion said of him,” He was the best man we had”. It was a fitting remark for a man whose gravestone reads “Colonel David Marcus-A Soldier for All Humanity”.