The Story of the Jewish Legion

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Chapter X - The Joy of Hebrew Palestine

IMMEDIATELY on our return to Helmieh, Colonel Patterson formed a "recruiting squad" for Palestine, consisting of officers with a knowledge of Hebrew; at the head of the group he placed Lieutenant Lipsey, with the order: "In one month you must be speaking Hebrew like Isaiah himself." He laughingly added that he had himself learned "Hebrew" in Gallipoli. And indeed, the men of the Zion Mule Corps would often quote some of the gems which fell from his lips, like "Lishtot et hasusim" ("to drink the horses"). But Lipsey's knowledge was sufficient-he was a member of an Orthodox Glasgow family and knew his prayer-book. "Quite enough," said the padre. "All that you need can be found in the Eighteen Benedictions."

Lipsey, however, also taught the men the Hebrew command-terminology, which had been compiled in Platoon 16, and his recruiting squad began its work with gusto. The colonel considered it not a moment too soon: he was convinced that with the Lord of Hosts General Allenby's opinion was of just as little importance as that of Lord Kitchener. And he was right. Shortly before Passover, the second Jewish battalion, commanded by Colonel Margolin and consisting more than half of Americans, arrived. Shortly afterward the "Zionist Commission" came, with Dr. Weizmann at its head and with Captain Ormsby-Gore as official intermediary between the Commission and G.H.O. Major James Rothschild was also a member of the Commission and at the same time an officer in Margolin's battalion. General Allenby had to admit that Whitehall had set its face firmly toward Zionism and a Legion and that there was no help for it. But for a long time the volunteer movement remained "unpopular" and even "dangerous." Friends of the G.H.Q. tendered the Zionist.

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of such a thin - in the fourth year of war too! And so many! I saw them marching - there seemed to be no end of them. How many of them were there? Three thousand?" "H'm," I answered "carefully," "I didn't count, but a good many." "Fine fellows," he said, "and they can march. I must send in a report." So they did "come" to headquarters after all, though only on paper.

Of the volunteer movement - which released a wave of enthusiasm the like of which even its opponents admit Was not seen either before or afterward--I unfortunately saw very little. At the beginning of , une my battalion was already at the front, in the Mountains of Ephraim between Jerusalem and Shechem. For three days I was in Jerusalem delivering addresses which were quite superfluous and there I saw just a little of this unforgettable phenomenon. I was approached by old mothers, young mothers, sephardim and Ashkenazim, who complained that the doctors had "shamed" their sons-by not accepting them for service. "I daren't show myself in the street for shame" was their plaint. A sickly Jew, who looked like Methuselah's grandfather, came to protest that he had not been able to deceive the doctor: he had said that he was forty, but the doctor was most un-kind.... As for the youngsters, there was nothing that could stop them. Yet I heard that what I saw in Jerusalem was as nothing compared to the excitement which raged in affa and among the workers in the colonies.

Major Rothschild, the leader of the recruiting campaign, asked me to visit Jaffa before returning to my battalion. At the meeting there I saw all my friends of the meeting at Rehovoth: Smilansky, Hos, Golomb, Berl Katzenelson with his Poale Zionists, Swerdlow with his Zeire-Zion minority, Yavnieli with his Yemenites, young Beilis, the son of Mendel Beilis, Uziel, the son of the Sephardic Rabbi of Jaffa, with a fine group of Sephardim.... And among them the recruting party, many old friends who had endured the black and bitter years of loneliness and disillusionnent - Arshavsky, now a corporal, Harry First, a private, and the oldest, the first of them all, the Gabbari and Zion Mule Corps men - Sergeant Nissel Rosenberg, the converts from the Volga, the Georgian "shvilis"; and everywhere, on the galleries roundabout, a mass of Jaffa citizens, men, women and children,

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dressed in their poor Sabbath best; girls with flowers in their hair or carrying Zionist flags; English officers, Italian officers of a detachment stationed at Tel-Aviv, Arab spectators-all as excited as we. I gave these volunteers some advice which may not have been quite unnecessary. "My friends, that you will be brave I know; but it is not the danger to life and limb which is the most difficult thing for a soldier to endure. Much more difficult are two other troubles of army life monotony and rudeness. You see danger only once a month; but between attacks you must sit for weeks in the trenches, repeating again and again hateful, monotonous routine jobs, without any excitement, without any change and then the sergeant, even your own sergeant, will add uncomplimentary appellations, like 'bloody fools' or its Hebrew equivalent. You must be able to stand this. Not the man who can shoot best is the best soldier. The best soldier is the man who can endure the most. And when the British N.C.O. swears, it does not mean that he is rude. The Englishman is our partner today, and to him, unlike us, life is a game. But perhaps his philosophy is also a useful one. For in sport the average man is more patient and more honest than in everyday life. A merchant may cheat his customer, but he will not cheat at cards. For at games, if not in life, everybody likes to be a gentle-man. And you all remember how, as children, you used to play a game in which the loser had to get a fillip on the tip of his nose. Should anybody hit you on the tip of your nose in the street, you would hit back, but in play you swallow the blow and laugh. That is the Englishman's outlook. Everything is a game, especially war. The sergeant swears at you? It is only a playful fillip; don't be annoyed. You have to founder in deep mud? Regard it as a bad card in a game; have patience. :A bullet, a bomb? It is also a part of the game. I do not believe in their philosophy generally, but in war it is best— play the game like good players, and hold on...." Before I left Tel-Aviv I saw Weizmann. He was excited and somewhat dissatisfied. "You have cleaned out the country," he said to James Rothschild. "Where are we to find workers and teachers and officials?" But later, when the volunteers had to leave to do their military exercises, he attended a grand parade and presenting them with a Jewish flag, made a moving speech; he thanked them in the name of the