by Aaron Leibel

Arts Editor

One morning in 1914, three Turkish policemen knocked on the door of the Levi home in Tel Aviv and took away David, 18, and his father. The two, along with 700 other Jews from Tel Aviv, were taken by ship to Alexandria, Egypt. Turkish authorities apparently feared that the Jews of Palestine might side with the Allies in the war that had recently begun and expelled many Tel Aviv Jews of military age.

Thus began Levi's great adventure as the main character in this historical novel.

He joined the Zion Mule Corps, a 700-man, all-Jewish supply unit in the British Army, which took part in the ill-fated Galipolli campaign in 1915.

As the unit, whose second in command was the legendary Zionist hero Joseph Trumpeldor, approached the Galipolli Peninsula in Turkey, the Turks fired artillery shells at their ship. Several soldiers were wounded and one died.

"I think it was there and then that I grew up or at least was no longer a carefree youth," author D. Lawrence-Young writes in the words of Levi. "The war, fighting and armies were no longer a game, an exciting adventure, a big international team game. Fighting and dying for your country were suddenly no longer just patriotic words and phrases. Men were being killed and bloodied for these ideas."

The boy who had died, Benny Goldman, "had died because of pure misfortune. Fate had placed him in the wrong place at the wrong time. ... Bad luck had killed him. Simply put, a heavy lump of jagged red hot shrapnel had landed on him ... ."

The British secure a beachhead, and the ZMC hauls supplies up the hill on mules to support the British attacks and then brings the wounded back down the mountain.

After the British Army's debacle at Galipolli, the unit is disbanded and Levi goes to England to be trained as an ordinary British soldier. When the British finally form the Jewish Legion, a fighting unit, he and his comrades join.

The legion is sent to Egypt and then to Lod in Palestine. Later, they take part in battles near the Jordan River to expel the Turks from the area.

Once again, Levi is disillusioned. He had seen himself as a conquering hero, liberating eretz Yisrael while "riding a proud high-stepping horse."

Reality was less glorious. Instead, he was "marching along a dusty and rocky track, keeping an eye out for enemy snipers and high-explosive shrapnel filled shells. My mouth was dry and my feet were baking."

Unfortunately, this book is meager literary fare, replete with stick-like characters, stilted dialogue and almost no plot.

But the author is a history and English teacher who lists the books and articles he read as research for his true-to-life novel. So, if you're interested in the Jewish Legion and its exploits during World War I, but not enough to confront a history book, this is an easy, quick read.

And it provides some background for understanding the hardships and achievements of the first organized Jewish fighting force to take the field since Bar Kochba about 1,800 years earlier.