Haapalah / Aliyah Bet

Until 1864, when the unit disappeared from the Army List, Jews were prominent as volunteers in the 11th Tower Hamlets Rifle,

In the Anglo-Boer War South African War, between 3,000-4,000 British Jews served, and 127 are listed as killed in action.
Many were colonials, such as Colonel Sir David Harris, who fought in the Diamond Fields in 1878., while an estimated 300 Jews, mainly from Russia, fought on the side of the Boers.

It was estimated that around 50,000 enlisted Jews in World War I, and a high proportion of them were foreign-born (including those who had arrived in Britain as children) or, if British-born, had foreign-born parents.
In World War I, five Jewish soldiers won the Victoria Cross; one of these men was Sergeant Issy Shmulevitch Smith who was the son of immigrants from Eastern Europe, while others who were the sons of immigrants from Eastern Europe included Captain Robert Gee, Lieutenant Frank Alexander de Pass, Private J Weiss White and Leonard Keysor.
Fifty Jewish soldiers received the Distinguished Service Order.

Jews formed their own unit, the Zion Mule Corps, and fought at Gallipoli and the Dardanelles in 1915.

In 1918, three Jewish units, the 38th, 39th and 40th battalions of the Royal Fusiliers were in the Jewish Legion under General Allenby in Palestine, and were disbanded after World War I.
Many Eastern European Jews were in the Pioneer Corps, working as labourers on the trenches.
The number of foreign Jews in the Labour Corps was estimated, from the British Jewry Book of Honour, at over 4,600, including those who served in the Middlesex Alien Companies and the Egyptian Labour Corps.
In November, 1921, the Jewish Chronicle published an article to commemorate the Zion Mule Corps and the Jewish Battalion who fought in Palestine.

In 1933, after the Nazis took power in Germany, Jewish immigration to Palestine increased, and within five years; the Jews from Germany and Austria increased the Jewish population to 450, 000, or one third of the total population.
This shift in demographics catalyzed Arab resistance, launching an armed insurrection in 1936, which the British Army, with assistance from trained Jewish units, took three years to suppress.

In World War ll, Palestinian Jews served with the Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force.
They were in France in 1940, in the campaigns in Greece and Crete, in the Western Desert and again in Europe.
The Jewish Infantry Brigade Group, commanded by Brigadier E.F. Benjamin CBE, fought in Italy, and its members won 4 MCs, 7 MMs, 2 OBEs, 4 MBEs, 2 American awards and 72 Mentions in Dispatches.
Polish Jews served with the British Army and Royal Air Force; many fought in the Battle of Britain and at Monte Cassino.

In 1940, on his 18th birthday, Aryeh Chaikind joined the 544th Company of the Royal Engineers and went to train in Egypt.