Zion Mule Corps

The Zion Mule Corps was a military transportation unit within the British Army during World War I, established in 1915 and called the Corps Mule Zion.

When Ottoman Turkey joined Imperial Germany and its allies in the war against Britain and its allies, the Turks, who then ruled Palestine, expelled many Jews whom they considered “enemy subjects” from the land. Among the deportees, who were placed in refugee camps in Egypt, a group of young men organized themselves and conceived the idea of ​​establishing a Jewish military unit that would fight within the British Army to liberate Palestine from the Turks. The British Army’s Near East Command in Egypt agreed to establish a non-combatant force that would serve as a transport unit on the front in the Middle East, but not on the front in Palestine... Most of the young men saw this proposal as offensive and humiliating and opposed it. However, Joseph Trumpeldor insisted that it was necessary to involve the Jews of Palestine, even if not in a fighting unit on the front line as they suggested. Six hundred young men volunteered for the battalion that was established and it was sent to the Gallipoli front. The language of command was Hebrew. The well-known British Colonel J. Paterson was appointed as the battalion's commander; his deputy was Joseph Trumpeldor. After the failure of the Gallipoli campaign and the evacuation of the remnants of the exhausted British army, the battalion was disbanded in 1916. The British refused the Jews’ proposal to preserve the batallion and use it in other fronts. 20 members of the Mule Drivers Battalion later joined the Jewish Legion.