West Point's extraordinary David Marcus Jewish family rebelled during World War II when senior military advisers died on Armistice Day

On a sweltering summer day in June 1948, a military funeral was being held at West Point. The funeral scene seemed ordinary: the trumpeter blew the mournful "lights out", the gun team fired in salute, and a few mourners stood in front of the tomb. However, the discerning can see that this is the most unusual funeral in the history of West Point: the coffin is covered with the American and Israeli flags, and the burial is the first division commander of Israeli origin, David Marcus.

<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > rebel child of Jewish families</h1>

David Marcus was born on February 22, 1902, in the slums of New York, In the Lower East Side. He was the fifth child of the Marcus family, a Romanian Jewish immigrant.

In the United States at the beginning of the 20th century, anti-Semitism was rampant. The eldest son of the Marcus family, Mack, known as "Big Mike," organized a Jewish self-defense group to protect old Jews from street thugs. Little David practiced boxing with his brother with a little understanding, and soon became famous, named "Little Mike", and later everyone affectionately called him "Mickey".

Michi Marcus graduated with honors from high school, but his chosen career disappointed his family. He enrolled at West Point in 1920, a no small rebellion in a business-oriented Jewish society. Marcus was known for his boxing and rugby skills at West Point; by the time he graduated in 1924, he had been promoted to lieutenant in the Cadet Company. Perhaps because his military life in peacetime was too prosaic, he signed up for night school and studied law. In 1927, he married Emma Hurtzenberg and was sent to Puerto Rico. The newlyweds struggled to adjust to a lonely life in a foreign land, and Marcus decided to retire from active duty. He then returned to New York to pursue a legal job.

A year after retiring from active duty, Marcus received his Ph.D. from Brooklyn Law School. From 1930 to 1934, Marcus worked as an assistant prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, and Thomas Dewey, who later became a popular figure in the presidential election, was his colleague and friend. In 1934, the legendary Fyodro LaGuardia was elected mayor of The City. LaGuardia appreciated Marcus's talents and appointed him the first deputy director of the Correctional Bureau, which was responsible for public order and prison management. Marcus's job is to train special police and sweep away the underworld. Marcus worked with Dewey and others to wreak havoc on Lucky Luciano, america's number one gang, in the summer of 1936. Four years later, Marcus was promoted to director of the Correctional Bureau for his outstanding work.

During his busy public duties, Marcus never stopped reservist training. In 1939, because of his legal expertise, the U.S. Military Justice Service lobbied him to return to military service. In 1940, David Marcus's 27th National Guard Division was drafted into the Union Active Duty Division, and David Marcus served as a lieutenant colonel in the division as a military judge. Logically, this position does not require combat command tasks. But in 1941, during the famous "Louisiana Maneuver" exercise of the US military, he volunteered to command a special force. After pearl harbor, the 27th Infantry Division was transferred to Hawaii, and Marcus was appointed chief staff officer of Hawaii's top military commander. As he eagerly awaited a trip overseas to take part in a long-awaited battle, a senior figure in Washington remembered the commander of the special forces who had performed well in the 1941 exercise. In 1942, he was appointed the first principal of the U.S. Army Commando School, and since then, 800 commandos have been trained in special operations under Marcus.

<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the tortuous period of World War II</h1>

In the spring of 1943, Marcus was transferred to the Planning Group of the Civil Division (CAD) of the War Department as a colonel. As military and legal adviser to government departments, Marcus attended almost every meeting of the Allied giants, including the Cairo Conference in November 1943, the Tehran Conference in 1944, the Yalta Conference, and the Potsdam Conference. In the order of commendation of the "Outstanding Service" medal, Marcus was praised for "playing a key role in dealing with the surrender of Italy and Germany".

Despite his troubles, Marcus's yearning for the front remained undiminished, and in May 1944 he persuaded his superiors to allow him to travel to London "to act as a liaison officer and observer for the implementation of military government policy after the reconquest of France." At first, Marcus did a few beautiful errands, but in the middle of June, he suddenly found that the capable general seemed to have evaporated from the world. It turned out that Marcus had made a very "flexible" explanation of the authorization of his superiors, coupled with the commander of the 101st Airborne Division, Major General Maxwell Taylor, his old friend at West Point, so he found a place for himself on the C-46 transport plane that landed in Normandy in the first wave. Of all the personnel of the 101st Airborne Division who skydid over Normandy, only two were skydiving for the first time, and Marcus was one of them. After Marcus landed, he led a group of scattered paratroopers to form a temporary patrol, exchanged fire with the Germans several times, and even successfully rescued a group of captured American paratroopers. By this time, his superiors in Washington were furious, and he sent an order to Normandy, "Find Marcus immediately, arrest him if necessary, and send him back immediately." So, before Marcus could change out of his dirty field suit, he was "gifted" on the plane back to China.

Just after the war, Marcus returned to Europe. The Supreme Commander of the U.S. Occupation Forces in Germany, Lucius W. Bush, was forced to resign from the United States. General D. Clay wished to draw on his judicial expertise and organizational experience to deal with the delicate affairs of the Occupied Territories. At that time, General Clay had a special order; all senior officers of the US army in Germany must go to the newly liberated Dachau concentration camp to receive "realistic education", and the tragic situation of the Jews in the Dachau concentration camp touched him for the first time to have a deep reflection on the future of the Jewish nation.

<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > with senior military advisers</h1>

In the eyes of others, Marcus, who has been at the top of the circle for many years, will soar in both the military and his career. In early 1947, the Army nominated him for the rank of brigadier general for the sixth time, and it was rumored in Washington that he had been appointed to the important position of U.S. military attaché in Moscow. Surprisingly, however, Marcus once again chose to retire.

Life surprised Marcus himself, and the peaceful life was soon broken. In December of the same year, Major Shlomo Shamir (later commander of the Israeli Air Force), who called himself the "representative of the Provisional Jewish Government), came to visit. The uninvited guest claimed that he was recruiting senior military advisers in the United States to help train and organize the army of the soon-to-be-formed Jewish state. At first, Marcus promised to help find candidates among his old friends in the military. It didn't take long for him to realize that he was actually the best candidate, so he volunteered again. There is documentation that Marcus's decision was endorsed by the U.S. government in advance, but that he had to change his name and keep a low profile to avoid touching on certain sensitive issues. In January 1948, Marcus, alias "Mike Stone", appeared in front of the British army checkpoint on the Palestinian border, and the absent-minded British soldiers, hastily checked their passports and waved their hands to let them go, but the escorts were frightened into a cold sweat, because they were too hasty to move, Marcus actually forgot to take off the eye-catching West Point graduate ring on his finger.

Although the United Nations adopted a resolution agreeing that Jews and Arabs would separately establish states in Palestine on October 1, 1948, the Arab states vowed never to allow a Jewish state to survive there. Since 1945, guerrilla warfare and terrorist activities on both sides have escalated, and all-out war has become inevitable. In terms of objective strength comparison, the Arab countries have an absolute advantage, and even the so-called "trustee" Britain has to say that with 30 million Arabs against a mere 600,000 Yutai people, there is no suspense in victory or defeat. At that time, the combined forces of Egypt, Iwick, Syria, Lebanon and Transjordan were said to have a combined strength of about 450,000 men, including 6,000 elite Transjordanese legions commanded by British Major General John Grubb and equipped with British equipment. Against this was the Jewish armed force, the Haganah (the predecessor of the Israel Defense Forces), which mobilized about 30,000 troops, but its more regular force, the Palmach, was only 2,500 men. As far as armament is concerned, the gap between the two is even greater. As of May 1948, the Arab army had 40 tanks, 200 armoured armored vehicles, 300 armored personnel carriers, 140 field guns, 220 anti-aircraft guns and 131 warplanes; the Hagana force had only one tank without a main gun, 122 patchwork armored vehicles (only 2 with artillery), 5 artillery, and 28 reconnaissance aircraft.

The first Prime Minister of the Provisional Government, David Ben-Gurion, ordered Marcus to leave immediately to inspect the troops. In the months that followed, Marcus traveled to every barracks of the Hagana unit, checking equipment and supervising training. Marcus first noted that the Hagana forces were, at best, a number of loosely organized guerrilla forces with no clear command lines, loose discipline and, above all, a lack of formal military training. To this end, Marcus wanted to "smuggle" a batch of U.S. Army field doctrines, but the plan did not succeed. So he simply relied on his memory, coupled with his on-the-spot feelings, to compile a set of field rules, which was also the first batch of regular military textbooks for the Israeli army. Under his direct organization, the "Hagana" had the first formal unified command structure and the first batch of full-time staff officers and logistics personnel. His emphasis on pre-emptive strikes and proactive offensive spirit was thus instilled throughout the army. For the imminent war, Marcus accurately foresaw that the Negev Desert south of Jerusalem would become the first decisive battlefield.

On May 14, 1948, at 4:30 p.m., Israel declared its statehood. Within 2 hours, 2 Egyptian infantry brigades (later Egyptian President Nasser was a major staff officer in the attacking force), supported by tanks and artillery, advanced rapidly toward the Negev region, and the First Middle East War broke out. At Marcus's suggestion, Ben-Gurion sent a rapid detachment of 30 jeeps and a company of infantry to attack the flanks and supply lines of the Egyptian front at night. Marcus accompanied the team as a front-line military adviser. The Egyptian army, which was suddenly attacked, stopped advancing. The battle was a turning point on the southern front, and Tel Aviv was never seriously threatened.

Almost at the same time, Moses Dayan commanded the Palmach forces to stubbornly block the Syrian army's advance into the Jordan River. By mid-May, the focus of the front had shifted to the holy city of Jerusalem. The Arab legions besieged the old city after occupying it. Since the Albanian army occupied Tralen, cutting off Tel Aviv's road to the new city, the Jewish army trapped in the city could be completely annihilated at any time. On 25 May, the Israeli army organized a strong attack on Tralon, suffering heavy losses. At this very moment, the Ben-Gurion cabinet made a very special decision: "Brigadier Stone will be appointed commander-in-chief of the Jerusalem Front, with unified command of Ezion, Harrell and the departments of the Seventh Brigade." The brigade was the highest-built combat unit in the Israeli army at the time, so Marcus's new position, equivalent to the rank of divisional command palace, is "alluf" in Hebrew, and Marcus is the first person in 2100 years since the legendary Jewish general Judas Maccabee held the title.

Five days later, Marcus organized the Second Battle of Rutlon, which was still unfavorable. So Marcus led a team of elite men to a meticulous reconnaissance, and the rugged path made by the goats soon caught his attention. Marcus immediately advised Ben-Gurion to use all manpower and material resources to quickly expand the trails into emergency passages for trucks. After that, Marcus organized troops (his deputy was The Palmach Chief of Operations, Yitzhak Rabin), to continue to feint the Afghan positions, covering the rush of the repair troops day and night. On 7 June, just a week after the start of the rush repairs, the first reinforcement convoys entered Jerusalem and lifted the siege of the new city. Marcus excitedly refers to the highway as the Myanmar Highway." At this point, Israel had thwarted its opponents' offensive on all fronts.

<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > died on Armistice Day</h1>

After United Nations mediation, the parties to the fire exchange finally agreed to cease fire at 10 a.m. on June 11. The news reached the front, and Marcus and his staff held a grand celebration feast in the ancient city of Abu Gush. In the early morning of the 11th, Marcus, who was still in extreme excitement, was in a difficult mood and could not sleep, he walked out of the command post and walked quietly in the wilderness, and the sentry not far away waved to the commander to salute the master of history who created an unexpected ending. Marcus's back had just disappeared into the morning mist when an overzealous sentry came to pick him up, 25 minutes earlier than usual. The new sentry was completely unaware that his commander was walking. When he saw a faint black shadow approaching, he asked for the password. Marcus didn't speak Hebrew, and the new sentries couldn't understand English. The sentry's gunshots rang out. The bullet went right through Marcus's heart. The time was 3:50 a.m. on the 11th. It was also the last of the dead before the first ceasefire.