Jewish Legion

The Jewish Legion was an unofficial name used to refer to five battalions of the British Army's Royal Fusiliers regiment, which consisted of Jewish volunteers recruited during World War I. In 1915, the British Army raised the Zion Mule Corps, a transportation unit of Jewish volunteers, for service in the Gallipoli campaign. Two years later in August 1917, the decision was made to raise an infantry battalion of Jewish soldiers which would be integrated into an existing British Army regiment. Eventually, due to large recruitment numbers, including Jews from Russia and the United States, five battalions were raised and integrated into the Royal Fusiliers; collectively, they were referred to as the "Jewish Legion". The new units raised were designated as the 38th, 39th, 40th, 41st and 42nd battalions of the regiment. The Jewish Legion saw action during the Sinai and Palestine campaign, where they fought at the Battle of Megiddo before being reduced to one battalion, nicknamed the "First Judaeans". In November 1914, David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi proposed to the Ottoman commander in Jerusalem that a Jewish Legion could be raised to fight with the Ottoman Army. The proposal was approved and training began but was soon cancelled by Djemal Pasha, who became known for persecuting Zionists. Ben-Gurion and Ben-Zvi were among thousands of Jews deported. In February 1915, a small committee in Alexandria approved a plan of Zeev Jabotinsky and Joseph Trumpeldor to form a military unit from Russian Jewish émigrés from Palestine that would participate in the British effort to seize Palestine from the Ottoman Empire. The British commander General Maxwell met a delegation, led by Jabotinsky, on 15 March. The General said he was unable, under the Army Act, to enlist foreign nationals as fighting troops, but that he could form them into a volunteer transport Mule Corps. Jabotinsky rejected the idea and left for Europe to seek other support for a Jewish unit, but Trumpeldor accepted it and began recruiting volunteers from among the local Jews in Egypt and those who had been deported there by the Ottomans in the previous year.