Tom Derek Bowden was a British army officer noted for his role in 1948 Arab–Israeli War and helping create the Israeli Paratroopers Brigade.
[6][5][3] After six months recovery at the home of the Appel family in Tel Aviv, Bowden volunteered for the Parachute Regiment (United Kingdom).
[2] When his German captors discovered letters from his Israeli girlfriend, kibbutznik, Hannah Appel, in his gear, the officer who examined his papers said to him, "Now you will see how we treat the Jews,'" and sent him to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where he was made to work carting Jewish corpses to disposal pits.
"[4] Bowden entered British Mandatory Palestine clandestinely, through Cyprus, joining the Haganah under a pseudonym, Captain David Appel, although he spoke no Hebrew.
[2] In 1998, Bowden told an interviewer that he, like everyone else, knew that Arab armies would attack the Jews as soon as the British withdrew, "I was going to make sure they didn't get stamped on.