An unexpected surprise awaits the casual visitor: the Jewish grave of the only officer in the entire cemetery who died fighting under another nation’s flag

Title: The Long Gray Line Ends in Israel

Location: West Point, New York

Document: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Time: June 1948

Rising above the picturesque Hudson River Valley, immortalized in the stories of Washington Irving, is the United States Military Academy at West Point. Its sprawling campus encompasses the hallowed grounds of the West Point cemetery, historic final resting place for war heroes, decorated officers, academy graduates, and those who fell in the line of duty.

A stroll through the monuments, tombstones, and cenotaphs gives a who’s who of US military history: Lieutenant General Winfield Scott, who led US forces to victory in the Mexican War; Major General Robert Anderson, who commanded Fort Sumter at the outbreak of the Civil War; cavalry officer George Armstrong Custer, killed in the ill-fated battle of Little Bighorn; Lieutenant General James Gavin, “the jumping general” of the legendary 82nd Airborne Division in World War II; the controversial Chief of Staff William Westmoreland, blamed for many setbacks in the Vietnam War; and immensely popular General Norman Schwarzkopf Jr., who commanded US troops during the First Gulf War.

An unexpected surprise awaits the casual visitor, however: the Jewish grave of the only officer in the entire cemetery who died fighting under another nation’s flag. This is the final resting place of David “Mickey” Marcus (1901–1948), who achieved the rank of colonel in the US Army and that of general in the Israel Defense Forces. A child of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, West Point graduate, lawyer, World War II combat veteran, planner of the legal procedures during the Nuremberg Trials, and first general of the nascent IDF, Mickey Marcus lived an adventurous life before tragically falling to friendly fire in Israel’s War of Independence.

Mordechai and Leah Marcus came to the United States from Iasi, Romania, at the end of the 19th century. Settling on Hester Street on the Lower East Side, their son David, known as Mickey, was not observant but grew up with a strong Jewish identity and quickly integrated into American society. Graduating from West Point in 1924, he served for several years on active duty before continuing in the reserves. He then attended law school, and subsequently worked as an attorney in New York, where he prosecuted Mafia bosses such as Lucky Luciano.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Mickey returned to active duty, and was deployed to Hawaii with the 27th Infantry Division. Due to his legal training, he was soon transferred to Washington, D.C., where his expertise was utilized in drafting procedures for the occupation in Allied-liberated areas. As a result of this prestigious position, he was a member of the wartime delegations who accompanied President Roosevelt to the Cairo, Teheran, and Yalta conferences, and President Truman to Potsdam. Colonel Marcus also was a member of the team who drafted Italy’s surrender terms after the 1943 overthrow of Benito Mussolini.

Shortly prior to the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944, Marcus convinced his former West Point classmate General Maxwell Taylor, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, to allow him to parachute into Normandy with the first wave of paratroopers on D-Day. He assumed informal command of a group of scattered paratroopers on the ground, and served in combat for a week before he was returned to the United States.

After the cessation of hostilities, he was pressed into service once again by General Lucius Clay, this time to assist with the management of the network of displaced persons camps in the US occupation zone of Germany. In that capacity, he visited the liberated Dachau concentration camp and was shocked by what he saw. His flickering Jewish identity was electrified as he confronted the immense tragedy that had decimated European Jewry, and he ordered all soldiers under his command to conduct a mandatory tour of Dachau to bear witness to the Nazi atrocities. His confrontation with Dachau led to his embracing his Jewishness, and he slowly transformed into a committed Zionist.

In 1946, he was once again tapped for his legal expertise as chief of the Army War Crimes division. In that capacity, he drew up the legal procedures for prosecuting Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials, and Japanese war criminals at the Tokyo war crimes tribunal. He personally attended the Nuremberg trials, and once again confronted the full extent of the horrific Nazi crimes. Over the course of his honorable service, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, the Bronze Star, and several other decorations.

Upon returning to the US, he attempted to resettle back into civilian life and a law practice in New York. But tranquility was to elude Mickey Marcus, and once again he would be thrust onto center stage of Jewish history. In 1946, David Ben-Gurion dispatched Shlomo Shamir, future commander of the Israeli Navy and Air Force, to the US on behalf of the Haganah. He was to surreptitiously purchase weapons, machinery, and attempt to convince Jewish American military officers to join the Haganah and help properly organize it as a fighting force. These efforts would produce the legendary Machal fighters, Jewish (and even some non-Jewish) World War II veterans who volunteered to fight for the fledgling State of Israel during its War of Independence.

Shamir reached out to Marcus to see if he’d assist in recruiting a senior Jewish officer with extensive combat experience who could serve as a professional military adviser to the emerging Israeli army. Shamir and Marcus were unsuccessful in this specific recruitment effort, so Marcus decided to volunteer his own services. Arriving in Palestine in the last months of the British Mandate in January 1948, he used the name Mickey Stone to avoid attention. Very quickly, he assumed control and used his US military experience to revamp the Haganah’s command structure. He identified and reinforced weak points and helped make the Haganah battle-ready.

With the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, Mickey Marcus was given direct command of IDF forces on the Jerusalem front. As the first ranking general (aluf) in Israeli history, he organized two ultimately unsuccessful attacks on the Arab-held Latrun fortress. Yerushalayim was besieged, the main road blocked, and the imposing Latrun fortifications obstructed vital supplies from reaching the beleaguered capital.

General Marcus endeavored to create an Israeli version of the Burma Road supply line in World War II, through which the US replenished Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese divisions to bypass the Japanese naval blockade. Cutting through the forests of the Judean Hills, Israeli army engineers succeeded in opening this supply route, dubbing it the “Burma Road” for its historic antecedent, and relieving besieged Yerushalayim from the Jordanians. Vehicles began using the Burma Road on June 10, one day prior to the implementation of the first ceasefire.

At 4 a.m. that very day, Marcus returned to his headquarters in Abu Ghosh. At his approach, an 18-year-old sentry called out for the password. There seems to have been a tragic miscommunication — Marcus didn’t really understand Hebrew, and the young guard didn’t know English. The haphazard Israeli army didn’t yet have proper officer’s insignia on their uniforms, so he couldn’t be visually identified by security either. The guard opened fire on what he thought was an intruder.

When word of his death got out, the security establishment was devastated. Ben-Gurion suspected foul play due to internal factional rivalries within the Haganah establishment, but a subsequent investigation uncovered no wrongdoing.

Celebrity Funeral

Future defense minister Moshe Dayan personally escorted Mickey Marcus’s body back to New York for burial at West Point. Despite having died fighting for a foreign flag, as a graduate of the academy who had served honorably in the US military, he was still eligible for burial there. His military funeral at West Point drew New York governor Thomas Dewey, the Jewish former secretary of the treasury Henry Morgenthau, and Marcus’s former West Point classmate General Maxwell Taylor.

Israeli Leaders at West Point

David Ben-Gurion himself visited Marcus’s grave at West Point. On a state visit to the US in May 1951, Ben-Gurion was accompanied by widow Emma Marcus as he paid his respects. He told her, “He was the best man we had.” In 2015, Israeli president Reuven Rivlin paid a visit to the West Point grave of Mickey Marcus, observing that he was the first general of the IDF and deserved much of the credit for the professionalization of the Israeli military.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1060)