In a special operation, the ashes of Lt.-Col. John Henry Patterson, the commander of World War I’s Jewish Legion, and his wife Frances Helena, were recently brought to Israel in fulfillment of the former’s dying request to be buried in Israel alongside his former Jewish Legion soldiers.

Patterson’s ashes will be interred in a special plot at Moshav Avichayil, overlooking the military section of the local cemetery, which holds the remains of numerous Jewish Legion veterans, near his birthday on November 10. A memorial ceremony will then be held, under the sponsorship of the Prime Minister’s Office plan to strengthen national heritage sites, at the Jewish Battalions Museum in Avichayil. President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, IDF and UK armed forces representatives, members of the Patterson family and Avichayil residents are due to attend the ceremony.

The effort to bring the Patterson’s remains to Israel – led by the Prime Minister’s Office – took three years and involved obtaining the approval of the Patterson’s grandson Alan as well as the permission of a US court.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, who initiated the idea and instructed Cabinet Secretary Avichai Mandelblit to deal with the issue, noted in a letter to all those who were involved: “Lt.-Col. Patterson was one of the founders of the Jewish Legion, the first Jewish military force since the Bar Kochba Revolt and the basis upon which the IDF was established. My parents always spoke warmly of Lt.-Col. Patterson, who worked alongside my father in the 1940s in the US to promote the Zionist idea. When my older brother was born, my father called him Yonatan [Jonathan] after Lt.-Col. Patterson and my grandfather Natan. Lt.-Col. Patterson attended Yoni’s circumcision and gave him a silver cup engraved with the words ‘To my beloved godson Yonatan from Lt.-Col. John Henry Patterson.’ This was a link between the commander of the renewed Jewish force and one of the future military commanders of the State of Israel. As Prime Minister of Israel, I deem it to be a privilege to realize Lt.-Col. Patterson’s wish to rest in the Land of Israel alongside the soldiers of the Jewish Legion whom he commanded. His return to Israel does historic justice to the man about whom Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote about ‘Never in Jewish history has there been in our midst a Christian friend of his understanding and devotion.'” Prime Minister Netanyahu added, “Patterson’s Jewish Legion, like the movements that arose in the Land – Hashomer and others – created for us the military force to realize Herzl’s vision of a Jewish army alongside a Jewish state. This is the existence of our state. It has always been the case but it is especially true now. It is impossible to imagine the country without the IDF.”

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)