Tom Derek Bowden

London-born Tom Derek Bowden, who died in 2019 at the age of 97, had fought in Palestine during World War II alongside Jewish soldiers before being captured in Europe by the Germans and forced to clear bodies at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp — an experience that helped drive him to return after the war to fight for Israel.

As a British solider, Bowden participated in military campaigns in Palestine, fighting in the same unit as Israel’s famed Moshe Dayan, who went on to become the Israel Defense Forces commander and then defense minister. Bowden was seriously injured in the same battle in which Dayan lost his eye, but recovered and returned to action.

Machalniks at Ramat David Air Base (Bill Katz far left, Ben Gurion, Derek Bowden behind Ben Gurion, Chaim Laskov, Head of Training Command of Army, far right)

When Bowden was captured by the Germans in 1944 after parachuting into Arnhem, he was found with diaries and letters from Jewish friends and girlfriends in Palestine. Bowden later admitted he shouldn’t have taken them with him, because when his SS interrogator saw the papers he told Bowden he “would show me how the Germans treated Jews, and he was sent for a month to Bergen-Belsen.”

Bowden was not Jewish, but the combination of fighting alongside Jews in Palestine and the anti-Semitism of the Nazis was seared into his psyche. He returned to Palestine in 1948 to join thousands of other volunteers when Arab armies attacked following the UN declaration of the State of Israel.

In 1949, Chaim Laskov asked Captain Bowden to create a paratroop school, and to establish the predecessor of the Paratroopers Brigade. He did so, writing a training manual with the help of his Hebrew-speaking secretary, and later wife, Eva Heilbronner and training soldiers with British Army surplus equipment.