Marcus the Soldier (1897-1924), also known in his shtetl as Private Marcus Bold-Ear, fought briefly with the ill-fated Slupsk Royal Polish Fusiliers during the bloody morning hours of June 14, 1913, when the unit was overrun as it attempted to quell a disorder among fishmongers angered by a local gentleman's attempt to purchase his Friday fish directly from a youthful wholesaler who obtained the fish in the course of a skinny-dipping frolic. Marcus escaped the mild beating suffered by many of his compatriots by posing as an itinerant fiddler, thus presaging the periodic attempts of the J.M.R.G.'s membership to pass themselves off as musically talented. Marcus apparently went on to live through the First World War, though there is no record of his participation in that conflagration.

The only remaining record of Marcus's life concerns his death, which once again vaulted Marcus into the local public's eye. On December 17, 1924, Marcus died in Breslau when a mule kicked him so hard in the head that the rabbi of a neighboring village heard the sound and observed that even the famous Golem of Worms could not have farted so flamboyantly. It is likely that the fatal mule was in fact provoked by Marcus's voluble recitation of one of the pastoral poems of Mordecai Manuel Noah, a rare vellum-bound edition of which was found in the Bold-Ear's pocket.