J H Patterson With The Zionists in GallipoliLondon, Hutchinson and Co, 1916, 1916. Hardcover.

London, Hutchinson and Co, 1916, 1916. Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. 1st Edition. 1st Edition. 316 pages. Elegantly bound in half leather with marbled boards. Contents fine. Frontis folding map and sketch (facsimile ) map at rear of book.

J. H. Patterson was an eminent British soldier, hunter, author and Christian Zionist. Patterson was the commander of both the Zion Mule Corps and later the 38th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers (also known as the Jewish Legion). The Zion Mule Corps and Jewish Legion would eventually serve as the foundation of the Israeli Defence Force decades later. 

General Sir John Maxwell, the Commander-in-Chief, was looking out for a suitable officer to raise and command a Jewish unit. Now, such a thing as a Jewish unit had been unknown in the annals of the world for some two thousand years--since the days of the Maccabees, those heroic Sons of Israel who fought so valiantly, and for a time so successfully, to wrest Jerusalem from the grasp of the Roman legions. It had happened that there had come down to Egypt out of Palestine many hundreds of people who had fled from thence to escape the wrath of the Turks. These people were of Russian nationality but of Jewish faith, and many of them strongly desired to band themselves together into a fighting host and place their lives at the disposal of England, whom the Jews have recognised as their friend and protector from time immemorial.