An official Israeli plane flew today to Zaire to bring home the body of Lt. Col. Tuvia Aryeh, 58, head of an Israeli advisory mission to the West African state, who was killed yesterday in a parachute accident. Col. Aryeh, also known as Marcel Tobias, was one of the most decorated and most colorful professional soldiers in Israel’s armed forces. A former commandant of Israel’s paratroopers training school, he lost his life when his chute failed to open during a demonstration jump with cadets of his command. His son and two daughters, all paratroopers, were with him when he died.
Col. Aryeh was born in Austria where he attended a military school and served as an officer in the Austrian Army. After World War I he joined the French Foreign Legion. He went to Palestine in 1938 as an illegal immigrant, became a member of the Betar youth movement and served with British commando units in the Western desert during World War II. In the latter years of the war he switched to the Jewish Brigade which was incorporated into the Allied armed forces and fought the Germans in Italy and Western Europe.
Col. Aryeh fought in Israel’s war for independence in 1948 and was among the first officers to join Israel’s newly formed paratroop units. He served as deputy commander of a paratroop brigade before taking over the paratroop school. He went to Zaire on a special mission last year after completing six years service in Nepal where he established paratroop units and won the praise of the Nepalese King for his part in dangerous rescue operations in the Himalaya mountains.
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