Marcus was Israel’s first general

 

By Joe Spier

CALGARY, Alberta, Canada –Colonel, David Daniel “Mickey” Marcus (U.S. Army), having parachuted into Normandy on D-day, having participated in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp and having assisted in the Nuremberg Trial of Major Nazi War Criminals, retired into civilian life in 1947, settled in New York with his wife, Emma and commenced the practice of law. Then Shlomo Shamir, emissary from David Ben-Gurion came calling.

Mickey Marcus was born on February 22, 1902 in New York’s Lower East Side, the son of an immigrant Jewish pushcart peddler.

As a youth, he excelled in both scholastics and athletics. Following high school, to his family’s chagrin, Marcus entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point from where he graduated in 1924 as a second lieutenant.

After completing his active duty requirements, Marcus obtained a law degree following which he held successive posts leading to Commissioner of Corrections for New York. He was one of those responsible for bringing Mafia boss, Charlie Luciano to justice.

Marcus, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, returned to active duty. He yearned for a field command but that was not to be. He was sent to Hawaii to head a Ranger school and later, a full colonel, was posted to Washington as chief of planning for the War Department’s Civil Affairs Division.

Marcus still chafed for combat and schemingly convinced his superiors to send him to England on temporary duty just prior to the invasion of France. On D-day, he talked his way onto an aircraft and foolhardily, because he had never parachuted before, jumped into Normandy with the first wave of troops. He finally saw the combat he had desired, leading patrols in firefights with German units and on one occasion freeing a group of captured G.Is. His superiors, having found him out, ordered Marcus back to Washington under threat of court-marshal.

Following the cessation of hostilities, Marcus became part of the occupation government in Berlin. His duties included the clearing of the Nazi concentration camps. Marcus was at the recently liberated Dachau where he saw piles of uncounted Jewish corpses and the skeletal, disease-ridden survivors, a sight that turned a previously ambivalent Jew into an ardent Zionist.

In 1946, Marcus headed the Pentagon’s War Crimes Division working on major war crimes trials. He ensured that the Nuremberg Trials were fully documented to expose the Nazi atrocities for future generations.

Marcus did not know it yet, but soon he would be fighting to preserve the existence of the State of Israel.

The year 1947 was a heartening time for the Jews of the Palestinian territory. The British Mandate would be ending and the United Nations had voted to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab State. Joy was tempered by the knowledge that the Arab nations would not accept a Jewish State in their midst and that almost certainly the future Jewish State would be invaded by surrounding Arab countries as soon as the British left.

David Ben-Gurion, head of the Provisional Jewish Government, had to prepare for probable war. He realized that what his armed forces had in ingenuity, adaptability and daring they lacked in structure, strategy and tactics. His forces had no experience as a regular army. What Ben-Gurion needed was a classically trained senior officer to serve as a military advisor and to organize his army. He sent Shlomo Shamir to America to find the military expert.

When Shamir approached Mickey Marcus in December 1947, it was with the idea that Marcus, with his contacts in the Pentagon, would assist in recruiting a suitable candidate. It soon became apparent that Marcus was the suitable candidate. With the memory of the horror of Dachau embedded in his mind, Marcus did not hesitate to volunteer himself. The only impediment was that Marcus, as a reserve officer, required the consent of the War Department to serve in a foreign army. He received permission but only on condition that he not use his own name. Michael Stone, with forged papers, set off for Palestine.

Upon arrival, (Marcus) Stone visited settlements, Haganah bases and evaluated the training of the troops. What he saw was disheartening. There were no defensible borders, the Jewish settlements were widely separated and surrounded by hostile Arabs, the Air Force consisted of light observation aircraft, and there were only a few tanks, old artillery pieces, and a shortage of weapons and ammunition.

Undaunted, Marcus set about transforming an untrained and unorganized force into a modern army. He designed a command and control structure, wrote training manuals, adopted the self-contained brigade as the basic combat unit and taught hit and run guerrilla tactics as a defense against a vastly outnumbering force.

The British Mandate was to end on midnight, May 14, 1948 by which time all British troops would have left and the Jewish State would come into existence. At 4 PM, David Ben-Gurion stood in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff House and read the Declaration of Independence proclaiming “the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel to be known as the State of Israel”. Hatikvah was sung. Next morning, the armies of six Arab countries invaded the less than 24-hour old Jewish State.

The initial advance of Arab forces was on three fronts; the north where they made little headway; the south where they were slightly more successful but were constantly thrown off balance by the hit and run tactics taught by Marcus who accompanied the harassing forces as an advisor; and the central front, the battle for Jerusalem, which was going badly for the Israeli forces.

On May 28, after a 12-day battle, the Haganah defenders of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem surrendered to the attacking Arab Legion. The fighters were taken prisoner and all non-combatants were permitted to flee. Arab mobs looted and burned the Jewish Quarter and in the process destroyed some 58 synagogues.

The attention of the Arab Legion then turned to the New City. The Arabs decided, rather than a direct assault, that they would starve the Jewish City into submission as the only way for Jewish troops to bring supplies into Jerusalem was through a road controlled by the fortress of Latrun left in the hands of the Arab Legion by the departing British garrison.  So long as the Arabs held Latrun, Jerusalem was cut off. If Jerusalem fell, the Zionist dream would collapse. Latrun had to be taken.

The first attack on Latrun by Jewish forces failed with heavy casualties. At the same time, the Jews of Jerusalem were fast running out of food and water. The situation was desperate.

Ben-Gurion called upon Mickey Marcus, appointing him Commander of the Jerusalem front with the rank of Brigadier General. Marcus finally had the field command he so long craved. He became the first General of a Jewish army in over 2,000 years.

Upon his arrival at the Jerusalem front, Marcus attempted an assault upon Latrun that also failed. He then knew that Latrun could not be captured by force and if Jerusalem were to be relieved, it would have to be with ingenuity, cleverness and stealth.

Marcus was told of an ancient goat trail that led up to Jerusalem. Jumping into a jeep with two other officers, they slowly climbed the tortuous Judean hills following the shepard’s path sometimes having to get out to push. They discovered that there was a way to Jerusalem that bypassed Latrun, but jeeps were not going to save Jerusalem. Trucks laden with supplies, food and arms could only save Jerusalem. What was needed was a road, a real road. Could such a road be built? Marcus responded to skeptics that the people who crossed the Red Sea could surely traverse the Judean hills.

Starting with one bulldozer and then a second, working mostly at night, slowly earth was moved aside, stones were pushed away, trees were uprooted and switchbacks were carved. A road was being built in an area concealed from Arab Legion observation but within mortar range of Latrun. To maintain secrecy and in order to pin down Arab troops, Marcus initiated a feinting attack against Latrun and used other diversionary tactics. The Arabs never discovered the road until it was too late. The road was completed on June 10 after which convoys of trucks laden with foodstuffs and arms poured into Jerusalem. The siege was lifted.

Marcus’s road was dubbed The Burma Road named after the famous twisting road from Burma to China. Today it is known as The Road of Heroism.  The New City of Jerusalem would never fall into Arab hands and 19 years later all of Jerusalem would be united under Israeli control.

Tragically, Mickey Marcus did not live to see the inauguration of his road. The night before, being unable to sleep, he went for a walk wrapped in a bed sheet outside the perimeter of his headquarters. Upon his return, he was challenged, in Hebrew, by a sentry who saw a white-robed figure that appeared to be an Arab approaching him. Marcus responded, probably in English, words unintelligible to the sentry who first fired a warning shot and when Marcus continued to approach a second shot that was fatal. Marcus would never know that he was the rescuer of Jerusalem.

Two Haganah officers, Yossi Harel, who had been captain of the famous illegal immigration ship, Exodus and Moshe Dayan, legendary warrior who would become Chief of Staff and later Defense Minister, accompanied the body of Mickey Marcus to the United States for burial at West Point. His is the only grave in that cemetery for an American who died fighting under a foreign flag. The headstone reads, “Colonel David Marcus – a Soldier for all Humanity”.

As you travel up to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, you notice beside the highway the rusted-out remnant of several trucks purposely left in silent testament to Mickey Marcus and those under his command who broke the siege of Jerusalem.

Of Mickey Marcus, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion wrote, “He was the best man we had”.

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Spier is a retired lawyer with a keen interest in Jewish history.  You may contact him via joe.spier@sdjewishworld.com.  Comments below MUST be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and his or her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the U.S.)