“In a place where there are no men, be the man”- Hillel the Younger
“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall we send?”
“And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here I am. Send me.” Isaiah 6:1
Even in today’s haze of inflated definitions, the words, ‘leader’ and ‘hero,’ still can have some sense of meaning for our society. On the anniversary of Israel’s birth here’s the story of one, man, Mickey Marcus, who in 1948, did go when he didn’t have to, because for him, it was just the right thing to do.
Imagine a dessert land, the last promised stop for the refuse of a maligned and mangled vestige of a brilliant and pious people, cast out of their homes for thousands of years, six million of them, humiliated, degraded, defiled and finally butchered in so many horrific ways that there are no words to describe it but one: holocaust.
Now, imagine that these people are trying to live in a hard-scrabble land where few signposts say “ mercy,” threatened by five armies with thousands upon thousands of solders swearing to push them into the sea because they’ve been told they don’t deserve to live. Why? Because they simply are who they are, because after thousands of years they just wanted to come home.
This is not some nightmare. It really happened, and there are many in the world today who think it should still happen.
New York City to West Point
A young, bright-eyed boy from a Romanian Jewish family, raised in New York, just after the turn of the 20th century could never have known his destiny would take him to that distant land where he would lead an army to save a country from being butchered before it was born.
A graduate of West Point, who rose through the ranks of the US Army to become a brilliant colonel in the Second World War, led the Army Ranger School; appointed as the Chief of Planning for the War Department’s Civil Affairs Division, prepared the Nuremberg trials and administered post-war Germany, David ‘Mickey’ Marcus had just mustered out of the army to start a career as a lawyer in New York, where, prior to the war, as youngest judge on the New York bench, Fiorello LaGuardia had appointed him to be the youngest head of the Department of Corrections. Despite his one-time taste of field combat when he convinced Major General Maxwell Taylor to allow him to parachute behind the German lines the night before D-Day; because of his brilliance in administration and logistics, the US military leadership in DC kept a tight rein on Mickey, and any hope of field command.
Mickey’s intelligence was complimented by his physical strength. New York was no stranger to antisemitism in his younger days, and Mickey dealt with it using his fists to defend the defenseless in his Brooklyn neighborhood, later becoming Welterweight Boxing Champion at West Point.
To the “Promised Land”
Mickey Marcus always had a soft spot for someone in need, and in trouble.
In 1947 Shlomo Shamir, representing the ‘Provisional Jewish Government,’ approached him on behalf of David Ben Gurion with a short list of potential officers with a depth of knowledge to train the non-existent Israeli Army. In fact, Mickey was the prime candidate. Mickey took it on, under the nom de guerre, Michael Stone, because the US Army wanted to maintain its neutrality and distance before the coming explosion.
Mickey was taken by the heart and guts of those young Israelis, given the daunting goal to hold back the sea of enemy troops preparing to annihilate the still-born nation.
He trained those young, dedicated solders from memorized US military manuals he had dictated. Thanks to his advisory leadership the army adopted many of the strategies and tactics that led to a victory no one expected, led by an American Jew who spoke no Hebrew.
Saving Jerusalem
The zenith of his leadership and the fate of Jerusalem came in the final days before the 1948 truce.
Ben Gurion appointed him Brigadier General-” Aluf”- of the Jerusalem front. He devised a strategy to bypass the strangle-hold of the crack Jordanian Arab Legion, starving the citizens of Jerusalem, to keep it in Israeli hands. Known as the “Burma Road,” it was a precarious, tiny lane that gave the Israelis access to the city. If for no other reason, Marcus should be remembered for this single act of leadership that saved Jerusalem for Israel to this day.
Tragically, he died from friendly fire the night before the final truce was declared.
The last line of David Ben Gurion’s telegram informing Mickey’s wife, Emma, of his death read: “Emma, he was the best man we had.”
The first general of the army of Israel in 2,000 years was an American, the only solder buried at West Point who fought under two flags. His epitaph: “Mickey Marcus- A Solder for All Humanity.”
It has been said that the IDF (The Israeli Defense Force) is an army that happens to have a country attached to it. .That army is not only one of the finest in the world; the attributes it instills contributes to Israel’s innovation and economic growth. We remember so many heroes of the IDF-men and women, officers and soldiers-living and dead; some famous like Yonny Netanyahu, others unknown and just as brave. Much of this began with the leadership of one American Jew who finally found himself “home” in Israel the last year of his life: Mickey Marcus.
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Photo Mickey Marcus – Courtesy of Author
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