With The Judaeans In The Palestine Campaign: With The Judaeans In The Palestine Campaign - Softcover

Patterson, LCol J. H.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1843428296 ISBN 13: 9781843428299

Verlag: Naval and Military Press, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

This is an extraordinary account of one of the most unusual units ever to have fought in the ranks of the British army. ‘The Judeans’ were a battalion of Jewish soldiers raised during the Great War specifically to serve in Palestine, which, then as now, was a politically and racially sensitive area. Set agains the background of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which pledged British support for establishing a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, this is the account of the Judeans by its outspoken (non-Jewish) Commanding Officer, Col. J. H. Patterson, who is palpably proud of having led the Judeans, which he rightly describes as a ‘unique unit’ whose formation was ‘unprecedented in our annals’. As Patterson recognises, the Judeans were Zionists, fighting not only for the British cause against the Ottoman Turks who then held sway over the Holy Land, but also ‘for the restoration of the Jewish people to the Promised Land’. Patterson’s account of the victyorious 1918 campaign that swept the Turks out of what is now Israel, Palestine and Jordan, is shot through both with his pride in his men, when he goes as far as claiming that the campaign ‘was actually pivoted on the sons of Israel who were once again fightinbg the enemy, not far from the spot where their forefathers had croosed the Jordan under Joshua’. Patterson is also - unusually, given the high degree of anti-Semitism then prevalent in Britain’s officer class - highly critical of his fellow officers for discriminating against the Judeans, and other Jewish settlers in Palestine. This book is a rare insight into a remarkable episode in Anglo-Jewish histlory, and should interest anyone wishing to know more of the background to current conflicts in the Middle East. It is illustrated with 22 photographs of officers of the Judeans and Palestinian scenes, including Biblical sites.

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Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson, DSO (10 November 1867 - 18 June 1947), known as J. H. Patterson, was a British soldier, hunter, author and Christian Zionist, best known for his book The Man-Eaters of Tsavo (1907), which details his experiences while building a railway bridge over the Tsavo river in British East Africa (now Kenya) in 1898-99. The book has inspired three Hollywood films - Bwana Devil (1952), Killers of Kilimanjaro (1959) and The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) in which he was portrayed by Val Kilmer. In the First World War, Patterson was the commander of the Jewish Legion, "the first Jewish fighting force in nearly two millennia", and has been described as the godfather of the modern Israel Defense Forces. Patterson was born in 1867 in Forgney, Ballymahon, County Longford, Ireland, to a Protestant father and Roman Catholic mother.[2] He joined the British Army at the age of seventeen and eventually attained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel[3] and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). He finally retired from the military in 1920. In 1898, Patterson was commissioned by the Uganda Railway committee in London to oversee the construction of a railway bridge over the Tsavo River in present-day Kenya. He arrived at the site in March of that year. Almost immediately after Patterson's arrival, lion attacks began to take place on the workforce, with the lions dragging men out of their tents at night and feeding on their victims. Despite the building of thorn barriers (bomas) around the camps, bonfires at night, and strict after-dark curfews, the attacks escalated dramatically, to the point where the bridge construction eventually ceased due to a fearful, mass departure by the workers. Along with the obvious financial consequences of the work stoppage, Patterson faced the challenge of maintaining his authority and even his personal safety at this remote site against the increasingly hostile and superstitious workers, many of whom were convinced that the lions were in fact evil spirits, come to punish those who worked at Tsavo, and that he was the cause of the misfortune because the attacks had coincided with his arrival.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Naval and Military Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1843428296
• ISBN 13: 9781843428299
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland