Jewish Legion commander’s ashes brought to Israel

The commander of the Jewish Legion, Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson, who died in 1947, was exhumed and his ashes brought to Israel, in a fulfillment of the Christian Zionist’s final wish to be buried in the Holy Land, the Prime Minister’s Office announced Sunday.

“Patterson was one of the founders of the Jewish Legion, the first Jewish military force since the Bar Kochba revolt, and the basis for what would become the Israel Defense Forces,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.

Netanyahu said his parents, who were acquainted with Patterson, “spoke warmly” of the man “who worked with my father for the Zionist cause in the 1940s in the United States.”

The prime minister added that his late brother, Yoni Netanyahu, was named for Patterson, who was his godfather. Patterson gave Yoni Netanyahu a silver chalice, which “linked the commander of the renascent Jewish fighting force with one of Israel’s future military commanders,” he wrote.

Patterson will be reinterred along with his wife, Frances Helena, at the military cemetery in Moshav Avihayil, where many of his former Jewish Legion comrades are buried. The funeral was set to take place some time in November, while the nearby Jewish Legion Museum will hold a memorial service in his honor, which will be attended by the prime minister and president, representatives from the Israeli and British armies, relatives, and members of the moshav.

Patterson’s grandson turned to the Jabotinsky Institute a few years ago to ask that his grandfather’s last wish be respected. The request was later transferred to the Prime Minister’s Office, but the bureaucratic hurdles took some three years to surmount. Patterson’s remains were handed over to Israeli representatives at a Los Angeles mausoleum several weeks ago.

The Irish-born British soldier, author, and hunter oversaw two battalions of the Jewish Legion, the 38th Battalion and the Gallipoli Front, and commanded Zionist leaders Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Joseph Trumpeldor. Patterson later voiced support for the Jewish state, but died a year before it was established.

“As Prime Minister of Israel, I am privileged to honor Colonel Patterson’s wish that his final resting place be in the land of Israel next to the Jewish Legion soldiers he commanded,” Netanyahu wrote. “His return to Israel will do historic justice to the man about whom Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote, ‘Never in Jewish history has there been in our midst a Christian friend of his understanding and devotion.'”