Orde Wingate
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Orde Wingate

A Man of Genius, 1903–1944

Trevor Royle

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eBook - ePub

Orde Wingate

A Man of Genius, 1903–1944

Trevor Royle

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About This Book

"A superb biography" of the controversial British Army officer who lead the 77th Indian Infantry Brigade against the Japanese in Burma during World War II ( HistoryOfWar.org ). Winston Churchill described Wingate as a man of genius who might well have become a man of destiny. Tragically, he died in a jungle aircraft crash in 1944. Like his famous kinsman Lawrence of Arabia, Wingate was renowned for being an unorthodox soldier, inclined to reject received patterns of military thought. He was a fundamentalist Christian with a biblical certainty in himself and his mission. He is best-remembered as the charismatic and abrasive leader of the Chindits. With the support of Archibald Wavell, he was responsible for a strategy of using independent groups deep behind enemy lines, supported only by air drops. Wingate was responsible for leading the charge of 2, 000 Ethiopians and the Sudan Defence Force into Italian-occupied Abyssinia. Remarkably, he defeated a 40, 000 strong enemy that was supported by aircraft and artillery, which Wingate did not possess. Despite his achievements, Wingate suffered from illness and depression and in Cairo attempted suicide. He was not universally liked: his romantic Zionism contrasted with the traditional British Arabist notions. He did, however, lead from the front and marched, ate and slept with his men. In this authoritative biography, Royle expertly brings to life a ruthless, complex, arrogant but ultimately admirable general. "An insightful look at the controversies which have dogged Wingate's reputation over the years... strongly recommended to anyone interested in irregular warfare and counterinsurgency operations." —African Armed Forces Journal

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Information

Year
2014
ISBN
9781473816985
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Prologue
ONE: Father to the Man
TWO: Fighting the Good Fight
THREE: Officer and Gentleman
FOUR: Soldiering in the Sudan
FIVE: In the Land of Beulah
SIX: Defender of the Faith
SEVEN: Gideon’s Men
EIGHT: Marching off to War
NINE: With the Lion of Judah
TEN: Watershed
ELEVEN: Stemming the Tide
TWELVE: Planning for Victory
THIRTEEN: Operation Thursday
FOURTEEN: Aftermath
References and Bibliography
Index

Acknowledgements

No book of this kind could have been written without the active help of the Wingate family and I was indeed fortunate in the support and kindnesses offered to me. Lieutenant-Colonel Orde Jonathan Wingate not only allowed me to borrow his father’s personal papers over a lengthy period but he was also engagingly tolerant and understanding when faced by my many queries. I hope that this book has gone some way to repaying that interest and assistance.
Although Judy Wingate, widow of Granville Wingate, never knew her famous brother-in-law she was equally helpful and involved. I am grateful to her for allowing me to borrow many of her husband’s papers and photographs and for commenting on the finished product. Also, I would indeed be blameworthy if I did not thank her for some splendid hospitality and for helping to make the research seem such fun.
Through her I was able to meet Enid ‘Peggy’ Jelley who was engaged to Wingate in the early 1930s. Her frank comments provided me with a better understanding of the man and his mind and I cannot thank her enough for being so candid about her relationship with Wingate.
I would like to make special mention of three writers who agreed to read the manuscript before publication. Brigadier Shelford Bidwell, historian of the Chindit campaign and author of many fine military studies, discussed Wingate with me before I started writing and then read the result. His comments were both encouraging and instructive.
Equally helpful was Lieutenant-Colonel Rex King-Clark who gave me the benefit of his experiences with the Special Night Squads in Palestine and who cast his expert eye on the chapters dealing with those operations. I am also grateful to him for allowing me to quote extensively from his excellent autobiography, Free for a Blast.
Wingate’s friend and colleague Abraham Akavia was kind enough to read and comment upon the chapters relating to Palestine and Ethiopia. His help and advice were beneficial to my understanding of that period of Wingate’s life. Of course, I alone am responsible for any errors or misjudgements which remain in the text.
I am also indebted to Brigadier Michael Calvert, Michael Elliot-Bateman and the late Brigadier Peter Mead for providing me with some keen insights into the Chindit campaigns of 1943 and 1944. I am also grateful to Brigadier Calvert and his publisher Leo Cooper for allowing me to quote from his autobiography Prisoners of Hope.
Lord Weidenfeld kindly gave me the benefit of his personal knowledge of Wingate’s relationship with Chaim Weizmann and other personalities involved in the attempt to raise a Jewish fighting force during the Second World War. I am pleased to acknowledge his interest.
I was fortunate, too, in receiving help from the Chindits Old Comrades’ Association. Through the good offices of Lieutenant-Colonel J. C. White and Captain Baden K. Wilson I was provided with a copy of the appreciation of Wingate’s operations in Burma which contains much useful first-hand information about the two Chindit operations. It is indicative of the respect which Wingate commanded that so many Chindits were prepared to commit their thoughts to paper at a time when his reputation was under threat. Another former Chindit, Dr Leslie Wilson, provided me with some important clues about the circumstances surrounding Wingate’s attempted suicide in 1941.
For their help in interpreting the Jewish missionary work of the Church of Scotland and the Free Church of Scotland I wish to thank my old friend the Rev David Ogston, minister of the Parish Kirk of St John the Baptist, Perth, and Professor Alec Cheyne, late of the Chair of Church History in the University of Edinburgh.
The task of understanding Wingate’s career at Charterhouse and Woolwich was made easier by the assistance granted by Peter Attenborough and Shirley Corke, respectively Headmaster and Archivist of Charterhouse; Brigadier K. A. Timbers, Historical Secretary of the Royal Artillery Historical Trust; and Dr T. A. Heathcote, Curator, Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. They all have my thanks.
Brigadier John Platt and Lord Margadale kindly answered my queries about the South and West Wilts Hunt and about the Larkhill garrison’s links with the hunts in the area. I am grateful to them for their help.
Unravelling the events leading to Wingate’s death in March 1944 would have been made more difficult without the pioneering work undertaken by Dennis Hawley. He kindly made an extended loan of his research papers and gave me early sight of his book, The Death of Wingate.
I also want to thank the following members of the Sudan Defence Force Dinner Club who responded to my requests for information about Wingate’s posting in the Sudan: Duncan Campbell, Sir Douglas Dodds-Parker, W. L. Newell, Harold Skeeles.
For their professional help, advice and guidance I wish to thank the staffs of the Imperial War Museum Library, London; the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester; the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; and the Public Record Office, Kew I also wish to thank Jane Hogan, Assistant Keeper (Archives and Special Collections) at the University of Durham, for guiding me through the Library’s Sudan Archive and Dr Peter Boyden, Head of the Department of Archives at the National Army Museum, for his help with various aspects of the military careers of George and Orde Wingate.
Crown copyright material in the Public Record Office is reproduced by permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.
Extracts from the interviews in the Middle East: British Military Personnel archive are reproduced by permission of the Department of Sound Records, Imperial War Museum. I am also grateful to Major-General H. E. N. Bredin for giving me permission to quote from his interview in the same archive. Similar thanks are due to Miss Mary E. Jelley for permission to quote from her correspondence with Major-General Derek Tulloch.
Every attempt has been made to contact copyright holders and I apologise for any accidental omissions. Due acknowledgement will be made in subsequent editions if the information is forthcoming.
Finally, for making sure that this book saw the light of day I should like to thank my agents, Gloria Ferris and Rivers Scott; my publisher Ion Trewin and my editor Morag Lyall.
Trevor Royle
Edinburgh
October 1994

Introduction

In the 1930s, when Orde Wingate was learning the soldier’s craft, the legend of Lawrence of Arabia was nearing its height, and he drank deep of it. What could be better than to be a dashing young British officer fighting deep behind enemy lines, disrupting lines of communication in uncompromisingly harsh territory? What Lawrence achieved in the desert, Wingate would achieve in the jungle. It must have seemed almost Kismet when Wingate discovered that his maternal great-great-grandmother had been Laurence’s aunt. Although Lawrence chose to lionise the Arabs and Wingate the Jews, close connectivity was undoubtedly there, not least in the high regard in which both men were held by Lawrence’s friend Winston Churchill, who called Wingate ‘this man of genius who might well have become a man of destiny’.
As this excellent book shows, Wingate was just as strange a personality as T.E. Lawrence, who used to cycle up hills and walk down them while at Oxford, rather than the other way around. Some of Wingate’s habits, views, training practices and military decisions – let alone his suicide attempt in Cairo in July 1941 – might seem almost unhinged, fully justifying Royle’s subtitle for the original edition of the book, Irregular Soldier. His irregularity made him an object of ridicule and derision, but occasionally also deep respect to his contemporaries in the British Army officer corps, and Trevor Royle ably demonstrates why.
Few people could be better qualified to write Wingate’s biography than Royle, who has spent a lifetime immersed in the story of warfare with many distinguished works to his name. He was given access and help by the subject’s family, who were understandably keen that the name of Orde Wingate should be rescued from the calumny that some soldiers and historians heaped upon it surprisingly soon after his tragically early death. Originally published in 1995, the author was also able to hear first-hand account accounts of the Chindit expeditions from Wingate’s comrades who are sadly no longer with us. In that sense, this book could not have been written today, and it is far-sighted of Frontline Books to republish it.
There is a central problem about Wingate, which military historians have debated for decades and which this book successfully solves. Essentially the question revolves about whether he was a genius and hero who single-mindedly pioneered a new form of jungle warfare that beat the Japanese at their own game, or whether he was an egomaniacal maverick whose two great Burmese expeditions of 1943 and 1944 cost more Allied lives than their meagre military returns were worth. Trevor Royle’s conclusions are unambiguous, convincing and backed up with first-rate historical research.
Wingate made a fair number of enemies in the 14th Army in building up his command from a brigade to a division, but for all the sometimes bitter criticisms of him he was undoubtedly one of the true originals. On 31 August 1940, lunching at the War Office, ‘He said he had acquired quite a taste for boiled python, which tasted like chicken,’ the Director of Military Operations’ Major General John Kennedy recorded. ‘His men kept remarkably fit – he thought chiefly because they knew they would fall into the hands of the Japanese if they didn’t. He is a man of great character, a good talker and a very good writer too.’ A naturist who frequently wore only a pith helmet and fly-whisk in camp, someone who never bathed but instead cleaned himself by vigorous scrubbing of his body with a stiff brush, Wingate ate raw onions for pleasure. Small wonder he was controversial.
The fighting that Wingate’s Chindits had to undertake, and the appalling conditions they had to contend with in the jungle, made their two expeditions far behind Japanese lines amongst the great military feats of the Second World War, whether one ends up admiring Wingate as a military strategist or not. A passage from Major-General Bernard Fergusson’s war diary dated 30 March 1943 underlines the harshness of the situation by the end of the first expedition:
Party now consists of 9 officers, 109 other ranks, of which 3 officers, 2 other ranks wounded. All weak and hungry in varying degrees. Addressed all ranks and told them: (a) only absolute discipline would get us out. I would shoot anybody who pilfered comrades or villages, or who grumbled (b) Anybody who lost his rifle or equipment I would expel from the party, unless I ...

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