In West Point Cemetery at the United States Military Academy there is only one grave for an American soldier who fell fighting for another country. His gravestone reads: “Colonel David Marcus--a Soldier for Humanity.” David Marcus, known as “Mickey,” was an officer in the U.S. Army who became a volunteer warrior in Israel’s army.

Mickey Marcus was born in 1901 to Rumanian immigrants and, like many young Jews taunted by local anti-Semitic thugs, he learned to box. He was smart and scrappy and after graduating from Boys High School in Brooklyn was accepted at West Point in 1920. On graduating in 1924, he completed his active duty requirements in the United States Army and went on to become a lawyer and subsequently a U.S. Attorney.

He spent almost a decade as a prosecutor in New York City until Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia appointed him as Commissioner for Corrections. It was a post in which he served with honor and integrity. In 1998 the Department of Correction commissioned a biographical plaque in Midwood, Brooklyn. Attendees at the event spoke of Marcus’s heroism and public service. Then chief of the Department of Corrections Edward Reilly said, "It is not surprising that a most memorable Mayor chose a memorable man to lead the boldest uniformed agents of this city."

When war in Europe seemed imminent, Marcus resigned to return to the military. After Pearl Harbor he was appointed as officer to the military governor of Hawaii. In 1942 he became commander of the Army’s Ranger school, created to develop tactics for jungle warfare. Sent to England, he volunteered for the Normandy invasion and parachuted into France with America’s 101st Airborne.

He drew upon his legal training when he participated in drawing up the terms for surrender of the Axis. As part of the occupation government in Germany, he was put in charge of clearing out the concentration camps and rescuing the millions of starving survivors in the Allied liberated areas. Marcus was named chief of the War Crimes Division which planned legal procedures for the Nuremberg trials.

Although he returned to civilian life, the Holocaust, in which one of every three Jews in the world were killed, haunted Marcus. Although he had earlier been indifferent to Zionism, he became a militant advocate for Jewish sovereignty in Palestine.

In 1947, after the United Nations vote for partition, facing the prospect of assault by well-armed and determined Arab enemy states, David Ben Gurion asked for Marcus’s help in recruiting an American officer to serve as military adviser to Israel’s fledgling army. Marcus himself volunteered after receiving reluctant approval from the United States War Department—on condition that he use a pseudonym and disguise his military record.

Thus, in January 1948, “Michael Stone” went to Tel Aviv to confront nearly impossible odds. A nation struggling with the recent trauma of genocide, duplicitous British collusion with the Arabs, ancient artillery, no real air-force, and manpower with no military experience other than the hit and run tactics of the Irgun and the Haganah, was faced with extermination. Marcus applied his skills as a Ranger, designed roads, formulated strategy, printed manuals and conducted training runs. When the assault came, Israel miraculously prevailed and Ben Gurion appointed Marcus to the rank of General—the first General of a sovereign Israel in two thousand years.

“Aluf” (Hebrew for general) Mickey Marcus tragically did not live to see his people’s victory. He died in a “friendly fire” incident. On the battlefield, sleepless and hot, Marcus went for a stroll wrapped in a white bed sheet. A frightened sentry saw a robed figure approaching and fired a deadly shot. His body was returned to the United States for burial at West Point, where he received full military honors for his service to the United States. Many years later, in 1966, Kirk Douglas, then a young Jewish actor, whose real name is Issur Danielovitch Demsky, portrayed Marcus in the movie Cast a Giant Shadow.

There were many other American, British, Australian, South American and European volunteers who did battle for Israel and also deserve honor, respect and gratitude. On May 21, 2006 dozens of cars arrived at the United States Military Academy Jewish Chapel. The American Veteran Volunteers for Israel, whose thinning ranks once numbered over one thousand, had assembled for the fortieth memorial service honoring their Zionist comrades and U.S. Army Colonel David “Mickey” Marcus.

The memorial plaque in honor of Marcus, located in the lobby of Union Temple of Brooklyn where his funeral service was conducted, speaks for them too. After commemorating Marcus who was “killed in action in the hills of Zion while leading Israeli forces as their supreme commander in the struggle for Israel’s freedom,” the following words are added:

“Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its beating for honor's sake.”