Orde Charles Wingate

Wingate, Maj Gen Orde (1903-44). Wingate was born in India on 26 February 1903 and educated at Charterhouse school and the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, where he was picked upon by his peers but ultimately respected for his physical and mental toughness. He served in the Sudan from 1928 to 1933 and was sent as special adviser to the Jewish settlements police in Palestine. He helped train the ‘special night squads’, later the Palmach, and became such a devoted Zionist that he was recalled. In 1940 he was sent to advise the Ethiopian patriots to form what he called the ‘Gideon force’ in Abyssinia and became the trusted adviser to the Emperor Haile Selassie. Once again he was judged to have ‘gone native’ and not only recalled but demoted. He seems to have been a manic depressive, and this along with malaria and exhaustion led him to attempt suicide in June 1941 while in Egypt. While he was recovering in Britain, his old commander Wavell requested that he join him in his new command in the Burma campaign and eventually promoted him major general. Wingate is best remembered for the pioneering concept of creating strongholds behind enemy lines to create disruption, and the Chindits were the outcome. He was killed in an air crash during their second deployment. Neither Slim nor Stilwell shared Wavell's high opinion of him, though Churchill did, and most Anglo-Saxons distrusted an enthusiasm bordering on religious fanaticism.

Bibliography

• Royle, Trevor, Orde Wingate: Irregular Soldier (London, 1995).
• Sykes, Christopher, Orde Wingate (London, 1959)

— Christopher Bellamy

Wingate, Orde (1903-44). Soldier. Wingate's father was a colonel in the Indian army and Wingate was born in India. Commissioned in the Royal Artillery in 1923, he was sent to the Sudan in 1940 to lead an invasion of Italian-held Abyssinia, and with a small force, assisted by supporters of Haile Selassie, captured Addis Ababa in May 1941. He was then put in charge of the Chindit force to operate in Burma behind the Japanese lines. A successful sortie in 1943 led to a more ambitious campaign for 1944, but Wingate was killed in an air crash in the jungle early in the operation.

1903 - 1944

British military officer who supported Zionism.

A Scot fluent in Arabic, Charles Orde Wingate was sent to Palestine in 1936 as an intelligence officer in the British army, where he translated his Protestant millenarian sentiments into support for Zionism. Ordered by the commander of British forces in Palestine, General Sir Archibald Wavell, to train mixed British and Zionist units in night fighting and guerrilla tactics during the Arab revolt (1936 - 1939), Wingate implemented the doctrine of "active defense." His "special night squads" were organized to protect the Iraq Petroleum Company pipeline. They inflicted casualties on the rebels and attacked guerrilla villages in Syria and Lebanon.

Heroic to the Zionists and ruthless to the Arabs, Wingate's actions appeared to cement a British - Zionist alliance. Wingate was removed from Palestine in 1939 by the British, who considered his Zionist sympathies an embarrassment. During World War II he served as a brigadier in Ethiopia and Burma. He died in an airplane crash in Burma.

Bibliography

Bierman, John, and Smith, Colin. Fire in the Night: Wingate of Burma, Ethiopia, and Zion. New York: Random House, 2000.

Mead, Peter. Orde Wingate and the Historians. Braunton, U.K.: Merlin, 1987.

Rossetto, Arthur L. Major General Orde Charles Wingate and theDevelopment of Long-Range Penetration. Lexington, VA: Military Affairs, 1982.

Royle, Trevor. Orde Wingate: Irregular Soldier. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1995.

Tulloch, Derek. Wingate in Peace and War. London: Macdonald and Co., 1972.

— REEVA S. SIMON