Orde Wingate

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Orde Wingate bigraphy, stories - British Army General

Orde Wingate : biography

26 February 1903 – 24 March 1944

Major-General Orde Charles Wingate, DSO and two bars (26 February 1903 – 24 March 1944), was a British Army officer known for creating special military units in Palestine in the 1930s, and in Abyssinia, Sudan and Burma during World War II. He is most famous for his creation of the Chindits, airborne deep-penetration troops trained to work behind enemy lines in the Far East campaigns against the Japanese during World War II.

Wingate is regarded as one of the founders of modern guerrilla warfare. His early ideas on the use of unconventional irregular troops in guerrilla warfare during the successful Abyssinia campaign were later developed by special forces in North Africa, where the newly formed Special Air Service worked behind enemy lines in a similar fashion. Wingate later used the same techniques in Burma. His long-range penetration techniques influenced military strategy and tactics.

Wingate was also noted for his support of Zionism. A highly religious Christian, Wingate saw it as his religious and moral. duty to help the Jewish community in Palestine form a Jewish state. Assigned to the British Mandate of Palestine in 1936, he set about training members of the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary organization, which became the Israel Defense Forces with the establishment in 1948 of the state of Israel. Wingate became known to the Jewish men he commanded during the Arab Revolt as "The Friend".

Commemoration

A memorial to Orde Wingate and the Chindits stands on the north side of the Victoria Embankment, near Ministry of Defence headquarters in London. The facade commemorates the Chindits and the four men awarded the Victoria Cross. The battalions that took part are listed on the sides, with non-infantry units mentioned by their parent formations. The rear of the monument is dedicated to Orde Wingate, and also mentions his contributions to the state of Israel.

To commemorate Wingate’s great assistance to the Zionist cause, Israel’s National Centre for Physical Education and Sport, the Wingate Institute (Machon Wingate) was named after him. A square in the Talbiya neighborhood of Jerusalem, Wingate Square (Kikar Wingate), also bears his name, as does the Yemin Orde youth village near Haifa. A Jewish football club formed in London in 1946, Wingate F.C. was also named in his honour.

The prestigious General Wingate School, on the western city limit of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, commemorates Orde Wingate’s contribution (along with the Gideon Force and the Ethiopian Patriots) to the liberation of Ethiopia in 1941, following the defeat of the Italian forces in that country.

A memorial stone in his honour stands in Charlton Cemetery, London SE7, where other members of the Orde Browne family are buried.

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 had raw onions and garlic on a string around his neck, which he would occasionally bite into as a snack (the reason he used to give for this was to ward off mosquitoes). 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."Wilson, Charles McMoran. Churchill: Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966. Likewise, referring to Churchill’s meeting with Wingate in Quebec, Max Hastings wrote that, "Wingate proved a short-lived protegé: closer acquaintance caused Churchill to realise that he was too mad for high command."Hastings, Max. Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord, 1940–45. London, HarperPress, 2009, p. 388. ISBN 978-0-00-726367-7

Ethiopia 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, by this time 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. Under William Platt, the British commander in Sudan, he created the Gideon Force, a guerrilla force 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 the Emperor of Ethiopia, 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 with the force of Lt. Gen. Alan Cunningham which had advanced from Kenya to the south and accompanied the emperor in his triumphant return to Addis Ababa in May. Wingate was mentioned in dispatches in April 1941 and was awarded a second DSO in December.