Orde Wingate

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Orde Charles Wingate
Orde Charles Wingate

Major General Orde Charles Wingate, DSO (February 26, 1903 – March 24, 1944), was a British major general and creator of two special military units during World War II.

Contents

[edit] Beginnings

Orde Wingate was born 23 February 1903 in Naini Tal, India to a military family. Because his mother came from a missionary family affiliated with the Plymouth Brethren, he received a very religious education and was introduced to Christian Zionist ideas at a very young age.

In 1921 Wingate was accepted into the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich and received his gunnery officer's commission in 1923. He also began to learn Arabic and eventually got himself an assignment to Sudan through an uncle, Sir Reginald Wingate, Governor General of Sudan.

When Wingate arrived in Sudan to join the Sudan Defence Forces in 1928, he was assigned to patrol the Abyssinian border where he was to catch slave traders and ivory poachers. He changed the method of regular patrolling to ambushes. At the end of his tour, he led a short expedition to search for Zerzura, but did not find it. His tour ended in 1933. In 1935 he married Lorna Moncrieff Paterson who was sixteen years old at the time.

[edit] Palestine and the Special Night Squads

In 1936 Wingate was assigned to Palestine to a staff office position and became an intelligence officer. From his arrival, he saw the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine as being a religious duty toward the literal fulfillment of Christian prophecy and he immediately put himself into absolute alliance with Jewish political leaders. Arab guerrillas had at the time of his arrival begun a campaign of attacks against both British mandate officials and Jewish communities, which became known as the Arab Revolt. Wingate became politically involved with a number of Zionist leaders. He formulated an idea of armed groups of British led Jewish commandos, and took his idea personally to Archibald Wavell, who was then a commander of British forces in Palestine. After Wavell gave his permission, Wingate convinced the Zionist Jewish Agency and the leadership of Haganah, the Jewish armed group.

In June 1938 the new British commander, General Haining, gave his permission to create the Special Night Squads, armed groups formed of British and Haganah volunteers. This is the first instance of the British recognising Haganah's legitimacy as a Jewish defense force. [1]The Jewish Agency helped pay salaries and other costs of the Haganah personnel. Wingate trained and commanded them and accompanied them in their patrols. They ambushed Arab saboteurs who attacked oil pipelines of the Iraqi Petroleum Company and raided border villages the attackers had used as bases, imposing severe collective punishments that were sometimes frowned on by Zionist leaders as well as British. His methods were nonetheless effective. However, his deepening direct political involvement with the Zionist cause and an incident where he spoke publicly in favour of formation of a Jewish state during his leave in Britain, caused his superiors in Palestine to remove him from command. He was so deeply associated with political causes in Palestine that his superiors considered him compromised as an intelligence officer in the country. He was promoting his own agenda rather than that of the army or the government. In May 1939, he was transferred back to Britain. Wingate became a hero of the Yishuv (the Jewish Community), and was loved by leaders such as Zvi Brenner and Moshe Dayan who had trained under him, and who claimed that Wingate had "taught us everything we know." Wingate's political attitudes toward Zionism were heavily influenced by his Plymouth Brethren religious views and belief in certain Christian prophecies.

[edit] Abyssinia and the Gideon Force

At the outbreak of World War II, Wingate was the commander of an anti-aircraft unit in Britain. He repeatedly made proposals to the army and government for the creation of a Jewish army in Palestine which would rule over the area and its Arab population in the name of the British. Eventually his friend Wavell, now Commander-in-Chief of Middle East Command which was based in Cairo, invited him to Sudan to begin operations against Italian occupation forces in Ethiopia. He created the Gideon Force, a guerrilla troop composed of British, Sudanese and Ethiopian soldiers. The force was named after the biblical judge Gideon, who defeated a large force with a tiny band. Wingate invited a number of veterans of the Haganah SNS to join him. With the blessing of Haile Selassie, the group began to operate in February 1941. Wingate was temporarily promoted to lieutenant colonel and put in command. He again insisted on leading from the front and accompanied his troops. The Gideon Force, with the aid of local resistance fighters, harassed Italian forts and their supply lines while the regular army took on the main forces of the Italian army. The small Gideon Force of no more than 1,700 men took the surrender of about 20,000 Italians toward the end of the campaign. At the end of the fighting, Wingate and the men of the Gideon Force linked to the Sudan Defence Force led by William Platt and together they accompanied the emperor in his triumphant return to Addis Ababa in May. Wingate was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO).

With the end of the East African Campaign, on 4 June 1941, Wingate was removed from command of the now-dismantled Gideon Force and his rank was reduced to that of major. During the campaign he was irritated that the British authorities ignored Wingate's request for decorations for his men and obstructed his attempts to get back-pay for his force. He left for Cairo and wrote an official report which was extremely critical of his commanders, fellow officers, government officials and many others. He was angry that he went without praise for his success and without having a chance to give his regards to Selassie before he was ignominiously ordered to leave the country. Wingate was most concerned about British attempts to stifle Ethiopian freedom, writing that attempts to raise future rebellions amongst populations must be honest ones and should appeal to justice. (Thanks to US pressure the British were forced to signed an agreement acknowledging Ethiopian sovereignty in January 1942.) Soon after, he contracted malaria. He sought treatment a local doctor instead of army doctors because he was afraid that the illness would give his detractors another further excuse to undermine him. This doctor gave him a large supply of the drug Atabrine, which can produce a side-effect depression if taken in high dosages. The dementia & depression from the malaria, combined with his already depressed state of mind, helped to produce such a despondency in him that he made an unsuccessful suicide attempt by stabbing himself in the neck.

Wingate was sent to Britain to recuperate. A highly edited version of his report was passed through Wingate's political supporters in London to Winston Churchill, who contacted Wavell, now Commander-in-Chief in India commanding the South-East Asian Theatre. Wavell had Wingate transferred to India.

[edit] Burma and the Chindits

Wingate departed for the Far East on February 27, 1942. He was promoted to colonel and set to Burma to organise a new guerrilla unit. After accomplishing little in Burma, he was flown out to India.

On returning to India, he was given a brigade of troops by General Wavell from which he created a long-range penetration unit he eventually named Chindits (a corrupted version of the name of a mythical Burmese lion, the Chinthe). He attempted to toughen up the men given him by having them camp in the Indian jungle during the rainy season. The result was a very high sick rate among the men. Many of the men were replaced in September 1942 by new drafts of personnel from elsewhere in the army.

Meanwhile, his direct manner of dealing with fellow officers and superiors along with increasingly eccentric personal habits won him few friends among the officer corps; he would consume raw onions because he thought they were healthy and scrub himself with a rubber brush instead of bathing. But his political connections in Britain and the patronage of General Wavell protected him.

The original 1943 Chindit operation was supposed to be a coordinated plan with the field army. When the offensive into Burma by the rest of the army was cancelled, Wingate pleaded to Wavell to be allowed to proceed into Burma anyway. Wavell eventually gave his consent.

Wingate set out with the Chindits on 12 February 1943. The force met with initial success in putting one of the main railways in Burma out of action. But afterward, Wingate led his force deep into Burma and then over the Irrawaddy River. Once the Chindits had crossed over the river, the Japanese were able to box in the force. Wingate was eventually left with no choice but to give the order for the entire force to break up into small parties and return to India however they could. Group by group, the force returned to India by various routes during the spring of 1943, some directly and others through China.

There had been heavy losses and many in the army questioned the value of the operation, which also had the unintended effect of convincing the Japanese that certain sections of the Burma/India Frontier were not as impassable as they thought. The Japanese as a consequence started planning an offensive for 1944 into India.

However, the operation was still a success after a long string of disasters in the Far East. As publicity, it was used to prove to the army and those at home that the Japanese could be beaten and that British/Indian Troops could fight in the jungle and win. On his return, Wingate wrote an operations report, in which he again was highly critical of the army and of some of his own men. He also promoted unorthodox ideas, for example that British soldiers had become weak by having too easy an access to doctors in civilian life. The report was again passed through back-channels by Wingate's political friends in London directly to Churchill. Churchill then invited Wingate to London. Soon after Wingate arrived, Churchill decided to take him and his wife along to the Quebec Conference. There, Wingate explained his ideas of deep penetration warfare to Churchill, Roosevelt and many of the allied military leaders. Air power and radio, recent developments in warfare, would allow units to establish bases deep in enemy territory, breaching the outer defences and extend the range of conventional forces. The leaders were impressed, and larger scale deep penetration attacks were approved.

Once back in India, Wingate was promoted to acting major general, given six brigades and set out to plan the next mission. He contracted typhoid by drinking bad water on his way back to India. This hindered both his training of the next batch of the Chindits, as well as the development of a plan for their use. The next mission was originally to have been an operation coordinated with offensive operations into North Burma by the rest of the army. When these operations were cancelled, Wingate decided to proceed into Burma anyway. The character of the 1944 operations were totally different to those of 1943. The new operations would establish fortified bases in Burma out of which the Chindits would conduct operations. A similar strategy was used by the French in Indochina years later at Dien Bien Phu.

On 6 March 1944, new Chindits began arriving in Burma by glider and parachute to establish base areas in Japanese territory. By fortune of timing, the Japanese launched an invasion of India around the same time. The Chindit operations were able to disrupt the offensive and divert troops from the battles in India.

On 24 March Wingate flew to assess the situations in three Chindit-held bases in Burma. On his way back to India, the US B-25 Mitchell plane, in which he was flying, crashed into a jungle-covered mountain, where he died alongside nine others.

[edit] Eccentricities

Wingate was known for various eccentricities. For instance, he often wore an alarm clock around his wrist, which would go off at times, and a raw onion on a string around his neck, which he would occasionally bite into as a snack. He often went about without clothing. In Palestine, recruits were used to having him come out of the shower to give them orders, wearing nothing but a shower cap, and continuing to scrub himself with a shower brush. Lord Moran, Winston Churchill's personal physician wrote in his diaries that "[Wingate] seemed to me hardly sane --- in medical jargon a borderline case."[2]

[edit] Memorials

The remains of Orde Wingate were originally buried at the site of the air crash in the Naga Hills in 1944. In April 1947, some of the remains of Wingate and the others involved were removed and reburied the same month at the British Military Cemetery at Imphal, India. Finally, in November 1950, these remains were removed a final time and brought to Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia.

This was done because the remains of the different men could no longer be separated out and under allied rules the remains were repatriated/buried in the country of the majority of those who had died.

There is a memorial to Orde Wingate and to the Chindits on the north side of the Victoria Embankment next to the Ministry of Defence headquarters in London. The front of the monument is in memory of the Chindits and also mentions the four men of the Chindits awarded the Victoria Cross. The battalions which took part are listed on the sides of the monument. Non-infantry units are mentioned by their parent formations only. The rear of the monument is exclusively dedicated to Orde Wingate and also mentions his contributions to the state of Israel.[3]

In honour of Major General Orde Charles Wingate's great assistance to the Zionist cause, Israel has named its National Centre for Physical Education and Sport as "The Wingate Institute". He is still known today by Israelis as "The Friend", which was his secret calling name during the years of his stay in Palestine.

[edit] Family

Orde Wingate's son, Orde Jonathan Wingate, joined the Honourable Artillery Company and rose through the ranks to become the regiment's Commanding Officer and later Regimental Colonel. He passed away in 2000 at the age of 56, and is survived by his wife and two daughters. Other members of the Wingate family live around England.

[edit] See also

[edit] Further reading

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Bickerton, Ian J. & Klausner, Carla L. A history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Upper Saddle River New Jersey, Prentice Hall. 2007.
  2. ^ Wilson, Charles McMoran. Churchill: Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran Boston, Houghton Mifflin. 1966
  3. ^ Chindit Memorial, London

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