Posted on 05/04/2005 10:02:16 PM PDT by SAMWolf
Under the nom de guerre "Michael Stone," Marcus flew to Palestine in January 1948. The United Nations had voted to partition Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states effective October 1, 1948. The British were to remain in control of the mandate until then. Since 1945, both sides had engaged in constant guerrilla warfare against each other and against the British. Many of the Arab countries were determined that the state of Israel would never come into existence.
Opposing the Arabs, the Jews had the clandestine Haganah, with a mobilization strength of about 30,000, commanded by Israel Galili. The crack 2,500-man Palmach, under Colonel Yigael Allon, was the only full-time force within the Haganah. The Haganah was short on weapons and had only a few light observation aircraft and no artillery. What passed for its armored force consisted of locally fabricated armored cars made by bolting steel plates onto trucks.
The situation was made worse by the fact that the British maintained a strict arms embargo while they still controlled Palestine. The embargo hurt the Jews but did not affect the Arab forces outside the country. The Jews had just two things going for them. First, although the Arabs were set to attack from all sides, there was no unity of command or synchronization of effort. Second, with the exception of the Legion, the Arab forces were notoriously poor night fighters.
Reporting directly to future Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, Marcus toured the country, visiting Haganah bases, examining troop dispositions and evaluating training programs. He made recommendations that he believed were necessary to transform the largely underground organization into a modern, effective strike force.
In April, Marcus returned briefly to the United States when his wife fell ill. The British, meanwhile, tired of being caught in the middle of a no-win situation, decided to withdraw their troops from Palestine early, on May 15. The British officer corps in the region, however, remained with the Trans-Jordan Arab Legion.
Marcus returned to Palestine in early May. Israel declared its independence at 4:30 p.m. on May 14. Within hours, as Marcus had predicted, two Egyptian brigades, supported by tanks and artillery, advanced into the Negev. On Marcus' recommendation, Ben-Gurion sent a small element of 30 radio- and machine-gun-equipped jeeps and a company of halftrack-mounted infantry south to reinforce the Haganah defensive outposts and to act as a raiding and harassing force. Marcus accompanied the force as an adviser.
The key to Jerusalem was a series of hill fortifications and a massively fortified police station at Latrun that dominated the Tel AvivJerusalem Road. So long as the Arab Legion held those positions, Jerusalem was effectively cut off. On May 25, the Jewish forces mounted an attack on Latrun but were driven back with heavy casualties. On close examination of the failure, the Israeli leadership realized that the attack had suffered from the lack of a single unified command.
After consulting with his cabinet, Ben-Gurion decided on a bold and unorthodox move. On May 28, the provisional government issued the following order: "Brigadier General Stone is hereby appointed Commander of the Jerusalem front, with command over the Etzioni, Har-El and 7th Brigades." Mickey Marcus finally had his combat command. Up until that time, brigades were the highest level of field command in the Israeli army. Now Marcus was the equivalent of a division commander. His rank title in Hebrew was aluf, and he was the first Jewish soldier to hold that rank since Judas Maccabeus, 2,100 years before.
Marcus then convinced Ben-Gurion it could be done, and the prime minister committed the bulldozers, manpower and other necessary resources. The crews worked day and night on what Marcus wryly called "The Burma Road." In some sectors they had to work within 500 meters of the Arab positions. To protect the construction, and to keep the Arabs from figuring out what the Israelis were doing, Marcus deployed his fighting forces in an aggressive screen between the new road and the Latrun positions. Marcus also ordered another assault on Latrun, but it was more of a spoiling attack to keep the legion off-guard and to divert attention away from the construction. In planning that third attack, Marcus was assisted by the Palmach's chief of operations, Yitzhak Rabin--who later became Israel's prime minister and was tragically assassinated on November 4, 1995.
By June 7, one week after construction began, the road was open and the first truck convoys made the slow, hazardous passage. United Nations mediator Count Folke Bernadotte, meanwhile, had negotiated the cease-fire time for 10:00 a.m. on June 11, 1948. The siege of Jerusalem had been broken, however, and the Israelis had a credible claim on their land link with the city.
Marcus' troops brought him back to Tel Aviv in a coffin strapped to the hood of a jeep. Robert Capa, the internationally famous war photographer, accompanied the body. When they returned him to New York City, Marcus was escorted by Moshe Dayan and Yosef Hamburger, the Haganah commander of the blockade-running ship Exodus. After a funeral service at Union Temple, they took Marcus back to West Point, where he was buried on July 2, 1948--28 years to the day after he first reported there as a plebe. Among the mourners were Thomas E. Dewey, then governor of New York, and Maxwell Taylor, the superintendent of West Point.
In 1962, author Ted Berkman wrote Marcus' story in Cast a Giant Shadow. Four years later, the book was made into a movie, starring Kirk Douglas. Although the film's story line typified Hollywood's general lack of respect for historical fact, Douglas' portrayal of the irrepressible Marcus vividly captured the fiery spirit of the man.
David Ben-Gurion later said of Marcus: "He was the best man we had." His gravestone at West Point reads: "Colonel David Marcus--A Soldier for All Humanity."
Additional Sources:
www.dean.usma.edu
www.stateofisrael.com
en.wikipedia.org
info.jpost.com
www.jerusalem-archives.org
www.jr.co.il
amichai.com
One of the most visited graves in the West Point Cemetery is that of Colonel David "Mickey" Marcus, Class of 1924, subject of the movie "Cast a Giant Shadow." He is the only West Point graduate buried in the cemetery who died in the service of a foreign government. During World War II he served as a military adviser to President Roosevelt and on Patton's staff, and afterwards he helped set up the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials. His experience with those trials and liberating concentration camps inspired the Jewish Marcus to accept a position with Israel to train their new Defense Forces. During the Israeli War for Independence in 1948 he commanded the Jerusalem Front with the rank of general, the first officer of such rank in a Jewish army in 2000 years. Marcus was mistakenly killed by one of his own sentries six hours before a UN-negotiated cease-fire went into effect. His marker, inscribed "A Soldier for All Humanity," is carved out of rock from the cliffs overlooking Jerusalem, and it is always topped with rocks placed there as a sign of respect by Jewish visitors. |
HOWDY!!!
Sad end to his life.
First in! Congrats. :-)
That's another incredible bit of history. Again, I'd only heard little smidgeons before. Fascinating. What a great man!
~grin~
That's what happens when I stay up too late Snippy! :-)
I'm about to turn in. We had an early start to our day and I'm whooped.
Good night.
Night Snippy! Have a wonderful day tomorrow if I don't see ya!
Though I was aware of the vaguest outlines of this story, I didn't know the details in depth until this post. Once again, the Foxhole is a treasure trove of historical information--thank you both.
Fascinating to me is the wonderful juxtaposition of two fulfilled duties, both with honor: a hero fighting on behalf of the fledgling state of Israel circa 1948, and buried at West Point for his distinctive service to the United States of America during World War II.
What a life! Not just to witness so many of the disparate Tides of History in that era, but to be such a positive part of it at the same time; that's something else, again.
May he Rest In Peace.
Good morning, snippy and everyone at the Foxhole.
Good morning all, promising to be a BEAUTIFUL 78 and sunny today.
Old Testament scholar Sir George Adam Smith says that when he visited the Holy Land he came upon a shepherd and his sheep standing before a stockade. There was no door in that protective enclosure, only an opening the width of a man's body. Smith asked the shepherd why there was no door, and he explained: "I am the way in. I stand in the opening, and the sheep pass under me into the stockade. When they are all safely inside, I lie down across that opening. No thief can get in and no sheep can get out except over my body. I am the entrance." We are like sheep who need a Shepherd (1 Peter 2:25). For entrance into heaven, a place of eternal bliss, Jesus gave this amazing claim: "I am the door of the sheep. . . . If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved" (John 10:7-9). The people listening to Him that day didn't think of a wooden gate swinging on hinges. They understood that He was really saying, "I am the entrance into the homeland of God." He could claim to be the way into that eternal blessedness, the exclusive way into God's glory, because He is the incarnate Son of God. Jesus is the only way into heaven (John 14:6). We gain entrance only by putting our faith in Him. -Vernon Grounds
Here in His Word He's shown us the way; Here in our midst He's standing today, Tenderly saying, "Come!" -Root There are many ways to hell, but only one way to heaven.
Religion Or Christ: What's The Difference? |
Thursday AM bump for an interesting Freeper Foxhole
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
Btttttttttt Good one. Fighting Jewboy bump!!!
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