[Author: Michel Levine, Vol. 81, #1, Autumn-Winter 2026]
Shortly after the outbreak of World War I, in December 1914 the Ottoman Empire – allied with the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary – decided to expel from its colony of Palestine the nationals of enemy countries belonging to the opposing Entente comprising Russia, France and Great Britain. These included thousands of Jews, who found refuge in neighboring Egypt, a British protectorate.
Among the displaced Jews was Josef Trumpeldor. Born in the Caucasus 35 years earlier, this colossus had already knocked about quite a bit: After gloriously fighting Japan in the Russian army, he returned from the war with his left arm amputated. These military exploits earned him the gold cross of Saint George and admission to the rank of officer, an extremely rare feat for a Jew. Returned to civilian life after obtaining his dentistry degree and undertaking some university studies he finally decided, in 1912, to leave the Tzarist empire in the midst of revolutionary turmoil to come and lead a peaceful life at last in Galilee, on a kibbutz called Dagania. Now he found himself among the “displaced persons,” confined in a camp near Alexandria…
It was in that camp that Trumpeldor met Vladimir (Zeev) Jabotinsky, who had come to report on it for a Russian newspaper. This small man with a passionate gaze behind thick round glasses enjoyed a certain notoriety at the time. A renowned journalist, poet and translator of Baudelaire and Poe into Russian, he had been traveling European capitals for years to spread a conception of Zionism then considered very new. According to Jabotinsky, the state dreamed of by Theodor Herzl could only come into being once Jews stopped linking their fate to nations that had despised and enslaved them for centuries and established their own army to create their own nation. Now, in this Egyptian DP camp, Jabotinsky affirmed that a historic opportunity was presenting itself. His coreligionists must seize it by participating, weapons in hand, in the battles currently being waged by the United Kingdom to liberate Palestine from the Ottoman yoke. Without doubt, once victory was achieved the British would show their gratitude by supporting the Zionist cause.
This ambitious project, called “revisionist,” was far from being approved by the entire Diaspora. As many Jews, as many synagogues… Certainly, the right-leaning tendency of the Zionist movement viewed it sympathetically, as it obeyed the concept of Hadar (dignity and honor). However, other currents feared that an open commitment alongside the Allies would harm Jewish citizens residing in the Central Empires. This reproach also applied to the supporters of David Ben Gurion who, while also opting for armed struggle, had decided to ally themselves with the Ottoman Empire.[1] The messianic Zionist, for his part, affirmed that the creation of a state in Palestine could only be achieved through Divine intervention. Of course, the Bund (the Jewish socialist party), which refused to accord any legitimacy to the Zionist thesis, was resolutely hostile to the idea. Other left-wing Zionist movements finally asserted that Jabotinsky’s conception betrayed the thought of Zionism’s founder Theodor Herzl, according to whom the future state should under no circumstances possess an army.
Soldier Trumpeldor was seduced by Jabotinsky’s project. In his eyes, not only would this armed commitment offer the world the image of Jews fighting with weapons in hand, but it would enable the birth, in the near future, of the much-dreamed-of Jewish homeland. Volunteers from the camp won over to this cause made contact with Jewish personalities in Alexandria and won them over in turn. Thus, a support committee was formed to obtain the agreement of the British authorities.
In Cairo on 15 March 1915 General Sir John G Maxwell, head of British forces in Egypt, received Jabotinsky and Trumpeldor along with representatives of the support committee.[2] Would he accept their request to welcome a Jewish unit within the British army? Their project, they knew, had aroused many reactions in the region when rumors of it spread. Arab sovereigns had made known that they were violently hostile to the idea, while the Russian consul in Alexandria suggested that if Jews from his country really wanted to take up arms, they need only enlist in the Tsarist forces.
General Maxwell, after consulting his government and the War Office, shared his proposal: as British forces were currently encountering difficulties in their confrontation with the Turks in the Dardanelles, they would have great need of food and ammunition supplies in that region. Thus, he proposed that the volunteers constitute a unit… of muleteers.
Heavy silence. The delegation asked for time to reflect and took their leave.
Jabotinsky, upon leaving, let his anger explode at what he considered a degrading proposal. Trumpeldor for his part remained serene, as was his habit. Back at the camp, the rest of the group was informed of the proposal and discussions ensued. Trumpeldor argued: after all, most armies used pack mules. Those who led them were soldiers like any others, and besides, Maxwell had clearly specified that the unit would be equipped with weapons, like infantrymen. Therefore, nothing prevented them from engaging in this combat. Certainly, it would take place in Turkey and not in Palestine, but the Jewish commitment would not lose its symbolic dimension. “Any front leads to Zion,” he concluded soberly. Jabotinsky nonetheless violently rejected the project and decided that he would leave to continue his Zionist crusade around the world. Most of the group members, however, eventually rallied to the old soldier’s opinion. So be it for the Turks and the mules. They would therefore resume contact with General Maxwell.
Thus it was that between December 1914 and March 1915, for the first time in the history of the British army a unit was created that was composed neither of British citizens nor of nationals of colonized countries but of Russian and Polish Jews. Integrated into the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, the unit took the name of Zion Mule Corps (Z.M.C.). The name was given to it by the British officer designated to take command, Colonel of Engineers John Henry Patterson DSO. A veteran of the Anglo-Boer War, he was also a renowned lion hunter, having published several works on the subject.[3] By chance or not, Patterson’s appointment was providential: this Welsh Protestant happened to be passionate about biblical studies. He considered the birth of a Hebrew fighting unit as an event of high symbolic significance, linking it to Jewish history through the centuries, particularly to those fighters who in the year 132 CE had revolted against the Roman Empire in the province of Judea.[4]
It was in the Egyptian desert, for a short period of three months, that 500 young Russian and Polish Jewish volunteers from all strata of yishuv society found themselves. Civil servants, doctors, or workers (including a precious tinsmith), they were housed in a vast camp of tents and a disused barracks near Wardian. Wearing British uniforms whose sleeves were adorned with a Magen David, they were taught the profession of arms by British instructors. The days were spent, in addition to handling rifles taken from the Turkish army, learning the art of harnessing, covering, feeding, shoeing, changing litter, brushing, supplying and accustoming the mules to combat by firing shots. The 700 long-eared quadrupeds would henceforth be their docile combat companions.
On 25 April 1915, after a long sea crossing during which their boat escaped the torpedoes of an enemy submarine (but not the haughty refusal of British officers to share their mess meals with Jewish officers) the muleteers landed on the Gallipoli peninsula under the deafening fire of Ottoman coastal batteries. The situation of the Allied forces was hardly favourable. British, French, Australian, and New Zealand forces had attempted a first crossing of the strait without succeeding. The troops now found themselves bogged down in a war of position, identical to that taking place at that very moment on the Western Front. The men of the Z.M.C. had the perilous mission of supplying the trenches with ammunition, water, and food. With their heavily loaded animals made very restive by the noise of gunfire, they would courageously make their way under enemy fire directed by among others a young Turkish officer by the name of Mustapha Kemal, the future Ataturk. For days and nights, these novice soldiers, in addition to their primary mission, would integrate into the war by treating wounded from other units and participating in relief actions. General Hamilton, commanding the expeditionary corps, would later write: “They led their mules, calmly and orderly, under heavy fire and manifested a form of courage even higher than that required by soldiers posted in advanced trenches.” Rapidly, the unit acquired great popularity among Jewish communities scattered around the world, where Trumpeldor was celebrated as a hero. The Z.M.C. had provided living proof that Jews could, like all other men, behave as soldiers.[5]
In January 1916, after the evacuation of Allied troops from the Dardanelles, the Z.M.C. was brought back to Egypt. When the order was given to embark for Ireland with the mission of maintaining British order there in the face of local Republican revolt movements, the muleteers refused as one to board the boat destined for them: if they had enlisted, it was to fight the Turks and not these Irish patriots who, like them, dreamed of a new state. The Zion Mule Corps was then dissolved.
While Trumpeldor returned to Russia to try to convince the Kerensky government to constitute a Jewish unit (but the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk would put an end to this initiative), Jabotinsky contacted the British government with the same project. With this difference that this one would take shape, because the United Kingdom’s army needed new forces to fight in Palestine and now knew it could count on Jewish soldiers…
In 1917, the first Jewish regiment of the British army was officially created, the 38th (Service) Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, generally called the Jewish Legion. Colonel Patterson logically took command of its five battalions, assisted by Trumpeldor and Jabotinsky – the latter, for the first time in his life donning a uniform, first as a simple soldier then as lieutenant after victoriously leading an attack. Joining the Z.M.C. veterans were volunteers from England, the United States, Canada, Argentina, and Palestine, the latter including future leaders of the country David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi.
The Jewish Legion distinguished itself during the crossing of the Jordan, then during the war in Syria. Officially dissolved in May 1921, it would contribute, as after the Battle of Gallipoli, to popularizing the idea that Jews could be good fighters and would persuade many of them to choose military careers in their own country or to leave to defend Jewish settlements in Palestine. At the end of hostilities, some of its members joined a clandestine formation created in Palestine, the Haganah (“the defense”) which succeeded the Palmach militia (“shock unit”) and would take in 1948 the name Tzahal (acronym for “Israel Defense Forces”). In 1920, at the San Remo conference, the Western powers designated Great Britain as the mandatory authority for Palestine, with the specific mission of implementing the Balfour Declaration.
Returned to civilian life, Jabotinsky took the head of a self-defense movement that distinguished itself during the Jerusalem riots of 1920, and which earned him a stay in prison. Trumpeldor, meanwhile, having remained in Russia, founded He-Halutz (“the Pioneer”), a Zionist youth organization. The scale of Jewish engagements in armed struggle aroused the interest of certain British leaders. It also reinforced the action of the Zionist delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, which would use this aspiration to a “Jewish national home” in Palestine to obtain its international legal recognition at the San Remo conference of 1920.
During World War II, despite the opposition of Arab governments, the British army created units composed of Jews from Palestine to ensure the strategic defense of the Middle East. These units fought alongside the Allies in Egypt, then in North Africa and Greece, suffering significant losses. In 1942, a Jewish Brigade of more than 5000 volunteers was constituted under the orders of General Ernest Benjamin. It would continue the fight against the Germans in Italy until May 1945. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (19 April – 16 May 1943), which saw 750 Jews fight the Nazi war machine with weapons in hand – in the absence of any support from the Allies, though perfectly aware of the foreseeable extermination of the ghetto – played a decisive role in Jewish collective consciousness: the state they wanted to create would have to count only on its own forces to exist and endure.
Peace restored, many former members of the British Jewish forces enlisted in the clandestine networks that allowed Holocaust survivors to settle in Palestine, in the face of British opposition that included the imposition of a blockade and the deportation to Greece of passengers from wandering boats, particularly of the famed Exodus.
In 1948, the State of Israel was created.
The three founders of the Z.M.C. would not witness its birth.
Trumpeldor met his death in 1920 in the defense of his kibbutz at Tel Hai in upper Galilee, then besieged by gangs from neighboring Lebanon. Jabotinsky succumbed to a heart attack in the United States while pursuing his tireless Zionist activities. Colonel Patterson died in California in 1947. According to his wishes, his ashes were placed in Israel.
* Michel Levine, a regular contributor to Jewish Affairs, is a human rights historian and the author of a book devoted to the major cases of the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme (Affaires non classées. Archives inédites de la Liguecdes Droits de l’Homme, Paris, Fayard, 1973). He has also published a historical investigation into the repression of Algerian demonstrations in Paris in October 1961 (Les Ratonnades d’octobre. Un meurtre collectif àcParis en 1961, Paris, Ramsay, 1985; republished by Jean-Claude Gawsewitch Éditeur, 2011). The above article originally appeared, in French, in the magazine “Témoigner” N°140 april 2025. published by the Auschwitz Foundation. Éditions du Centre d’études et de documentation de l’ASBL Mémoire d’Auschwitz.
NOTES
[1] A fatal commitment that they were already paying dearly for, as the reformist movement of the “Young Turks” within the Ottoman Empire not only rejected the request for alliance but organized the massive deportation of many Jews to Anatolia and Egypt.
[2] The writer Israel Zangwill, Vera Weizmann, the wife of the future President of Israel (and one of the first female doctors in Manchester), and the Chief Rabbi of Egypt are part of this committe
[3] Ten years earlier, during one of his hunts in East Africa, a tragedy occurred that would inspire Ernest Hemingway to write his short story ‘The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,’ published in 1936
[4] Led by their charismatic leader Bar Kokhba, they had driven the Roman occupiers out of Jerusalem and established an independent Jewish state that minted its own currency. After three years of resistance against twelve Roman legions, Bar Kokhba had retreated to the fortress of Betar, where he met his death among the fighters. As punishment for this revolt, Jerusalem was then razed by Emperor Hadrian and forbidden to Jews. This marked the beginning of the Diaspora. The peoples in exile and those who remained living in Palestine (forming what is known as the Yishuv) would lead revolts for their freedom and faith, and would only bear arms for the nations that had welcomed them, never in the name of their own identity. This would remain the case for twenty centuries.
[5] Several tombs on the Mount of Olives will commemorate this commitment.
