Mickey Marcus

I found less than I expected and more than I hoped for

Imagine if your life were defined by your tendency boldly to leap into unknown circumstances and do the best you could do with as little as possible.  Now imagine that you're pretty good at it.  In a capsule, that's the story of Mickey Marcus.

Not too long ago, I was at the Thayer Hotel in West Point on a brutally hot evening, even the hotel's air conditioning couldn't take it and had broken down, waiting for a very slow elevator that was similarly challenged by the heat.

As I had time to kill, I was walking up and down the hallway reading the plaques near the rooms dedicated to graduates of the United States Military Academy [West Point's real name] who exemplified the best of the corps of cadets.  I was staying in the Buzz Aldrin room and, as it was July 20th, the anniversary of his moon walk, I was appreciating the weight of history and accomplishment in that promenade.

There were a few others in the hallway, each listing the accomplishments, medals, and citations earned by the honoree.  On the other end of the hallway was a room dedicated to Mickey Marcus.  Not a well known name, which is a pity.  As I began to read of his story, I became so engrossed that I missed the sluggish elevator.

David Daniel Marcus, known as "Mickey" in his Hester Street neighborhood in New York's Lower East Side, was born in 1901 to parents who had fled oppression in Romania.  He was a scrappy kid who excelled in both sports and academics to the extent that he was appointed to West Point.  While it is common for first generation Americans to be patriotically committed to their new country, it was not common in the early part of the 20th century to find Jews among the officer class.

This may have been his first jump into unknown circumstances.  It would by no means be his last.

Marcus graduated in 1924 and satisfied his required service, remained in the Army reserve while graduating from Brooklyn Law School, and became one of the assistant United States attorneys for New York.  In that role, he participated in some high-profile prosecutions, such as that of the gangster, Charles "Lucky" Luciano.  He eventually became a staff member of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia's, serving as the mayor's Commissioner of the Department of Correction and the judge advocate for New York's National Guard division.

These, alone, are achievements worthy of a lifetime, but his finest service was yet to come.

Upon the attack on Pearl Harbor, New York's National Guard was activated as a standard unit of the Army and, along with Marcus, sent to Hawaii.  Being as he was a graduate of West Point assigned only the petty legal matters associated with a divisional office, the bored Marcus heard of the new Ranger battalion that was being formed in the European Theater of Operations and gained permission to organize a similar group in the Pacific, becoming the commander of Fort Shafter's Ranger Combat Training School.

Hopeful of gaining an infantry, rather than legal, command, Marcus had his hopes dashed when he was transferred to Washington D.C. to help prepare the documents for the various conferences between the heads of state during the war, including participating in the drafting of the surrender treaty with Italy in 1943.

The scrappy kid from Hester Street was then transferred to England to help with continuing developments in military diplomacy while seated behind a desk in London.  This would not do.  As it was May of 1944, and everyone knew that the invasion of France was imminent, Marcus prevailed upon one of his West Point classmates, who was now the commanding general of an airborne division, to be included in Operation Overlord.

Here's where he jumps, again; this time with particular drama.  Oh, and a parachute.

If you haven't had the experience, let me describe a small portion of what it's like to commit to a combat parachute jump.  Remember now, this isn't skydiving with an instructor Velcroed to one's backside.  This is stepping out of a plane into the remarkable propeller wash that blows grit into your eyes and teeth, loaded with fifty pounds of supplies, a rifle, one hundred rounds of military ammo, and a hand grenade or two.  If lucky, no one is shooting at you on the way down.

Now imagine you're doing so with the 101st Airborne Division.  You know, the "Band of Brothers".  Further imagine that it is D-Day in the first wave of the invasion and you're 43-years-old and have never been trained to para-jump!

Upon his thudding, but successful, landing in France, Marcus gathered a collection of soldiers who had been separated from their various units and formed them into an informal group that aided the disorganized Allied forces for the remainder of that week.

Col. Marcus, West Point '24, finally had his first infantry command.  It would also be his last for the U.S. Army.  Upon discovery of what he had been doing, the general staff wagged their collective finger at him and sent him back to a desk in the United States to help aid in the repatriation of those displaced in Europe and organize and otherwise prepare for the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes tribunals. 

During Nuremberg, Marcus was sent to Germany to ensure the proper documentation of the Nazi atrocities.  This new assignment included a mandatory tour of Dachau.  Marcus' Judaism, dormant during his days of legal and actual warfare, began to deepen in response to what he saw of the death camp and what he heard in the Nuremberg trials.  Suffice it to note, he was no longer blasé or secular in his religious practice from that time forward.

Tired of war and shocked by the gross inhumanity of the Holocaust, and despite the offer of a promotion to brigadier [or "one-star"] general, Marcus left the Army and returned to his private, and lucrative, civilian law practice.  It was time for peace and prosperity.  Well, at least in the United States.

The post-war world was disrupted, certainly, at this time, with new governments, new political boundaries, and very old animosities once again animated.  Given their experience, the Jews in Palestine now began to build their own state, a process that was proving inflammatory to their neighboring populations.  With the influx of refugees from Europe, the early days of modern Israel were dire.  If they were to solidify their borders, or merely survive, they were going to need to have a proper army.  However, a proper army needs proper leadership, and despite the surplus of experienced battlefield commanders in Europe, none were willing to help the Jews.

So, the leaders of Israel turned to the United States, asking Mickey Marcus to find for them Jewish officers who would be willing to come to Israel to organize an army.  Marcus approached them all; none were willing.  So, it was time for Marcus, settled Manhattan attorney and political hopeful, whose spiritual sense had been awakened during a tour of a death camp, to once again jump into a battlefield.

In January of 1948, Col. David Marcus boarded a ship in New York City and disappeared.  A few weeks later, "Michael Stone", private citizen, arrived in Jerusalem and enlisted in the Haganah, which is to the modern Israeli army what the Minutemen were to our U.S. Army Special Forces.  Shortly after his arrival, when Israel was surrounded by the Arab Legion, he was appointed the general [not "a general"] of the Israeli army, the first since Judas Maccabees in the 2nd century B.C.

There were sieges and battles, and more sieges and more battles, in which Marcus adapted everything he had learned and experienced into enabling a small, un-trained, and under-armed force to resist and, eventually, prevail against their enemies.  The modern reputation enjoyed by the Israeli Defense Forces in our era can be traced to Marcus' efforts.

Finally, once it appeared that Israel was not going to be destroyed, the United Nations, itself a new organization, organized a cease fire.  General Marcus had succeeded.  However, there is this reality known to any combat soldier as "the fog of war".  Battlefields are messy and unclear, with battle lines changing from moment to moment and victory or defeat resting on a razor's edge.  Sometimes, soldiers can find themselves unwittingly fighting against their own colleagues.  Sometimes, this can lead to horrific accidents.

Shortly after the cease fire, General Marcus was killed by one of his own sentries, apparently mistaken for an enemy attempting to sneak into the base.

There is a cemetery in West Point that is worth a visit for anyone interested in American history.  In it are interred the remains of George Custer, Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr., Winfield Scott, and Ed White, the first astronaut to walk in space.  There are others, too, of course, lesser known but of similar courage.  But of them all, there is only one who died while in the service of a military other than that of the United States'.

Marcus' gravestone proclaims him "A Soldier for All Humanity".  Had I had anything to do with it, a simple quote from the Book of the Maccabees would have served:

“As for Judas Maccabeus, he hath been mighty and strong, even from his youth up: let him be your captain, and fight the battle of the people.” - 1 Maccabees 2:66