The Name Patterson Ring a Bell?

Well, for us Jabotinsky followers, JH Patterson was the commander of the Jewish Legion (*) which fought in World War I in the effort by Jews to participate in the military liberation of our national homeland (a land no Arab specifically fought for).(**)



Well, he was also a lion hunter. A famous one, too.

Read on:-

Kenya wants Tsavo man-eaters back

Kenya is trying to recover the remains of two infamous lions which killed 140 railway workers in the 19th Century.

They are the legendary man-eaters of Tsavo who caused havoc among the Indian labourers who built the railway line between Mombasa and Lake Victoria.

The lions' skulls and hides are housed at a museum in the US city of Chicago.

But Kenya's National Museum says they represent an important part of Kenya's history and heritage - and it wants them back.

The two lions struck over a nine-month period in 1898, bringing construction of the line to a halt.

An Oscar-winning film was made about the Tsavo man-eaters in 1996.

They were eventually shot by a British engineer, Lieutenant Colonel John Patterson, who later sold the skulls and hides to the Chicago Field Museum.

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(*) On the urging of Russian Zionist Vladimir Zeʾev Jabotinsky, Jewish units were formed to serve in the British army during World War I. The "Zion Mule Corps" consisted of 650 Palestinian Jews; it served in Gallipoli and was disbanded in 1916. The Thirty-eighth Battalion Royal Fusiliers (800 men) was recruited in England mainly from Russian immigrants, and was sent to Egypt and then Palestine in February 1918. The Thirty-ninth Battalion Royal Fusiliers enlisted some 2,000 men in the United States under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion, Yizhak Ben-Zvi, and Pinhas Rutenberg. It arrived in Egypt in August 1918 and was sent to Palestine. The Fortieth Battalion Royal Fusiliers was recruited from Palestinian Jews in British-controlled southern Palestine in July 1918. Commanded by Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson, these units of the Jewish Legion participated in Edmund Allenby's campaigns in Palestine and Syria in 1918. At the end of the war, the Thirty-eighth and Thirty-ninth battalions were disbanded, but the 1,000 men of the Fortieth Battalion remained in active service as part of the British forces in Palestine until after the riots of May 1921.

(**) Although he was himself a Protestant, he became a major figure in Zionism as the commander of both the Zion Mule Corps and the 38th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers (aka Jewish Legion of the British Army) in World War One, which would eventually serve as the foundation of the Israeli Defence Force decades later. He was promoted to the rank of full Colonel in 1917, and retired from the British Army in 1920 after thirty-five years of service. His last two books, With the Zionists at Gallipoli (1916) and With the Judeans in Palestine (1922) are based on his experiences during these times. After his military career, Patterson continued his support of Zionism as a strong advocate toward the establishment of a separate Jewish state in the Middle East, which became a reality with the statehood of Israel on May 14, 1948, less than a year after his death...Patterson was cremated, his ashes being returned to present day Israel – the exact location of his grave remains unknown to this day.