What Wingate Wrought

[Valin]

TWS

The astonishing raids of a Special Operations pioneer in Palestine, Abyssinia, and Burma.

Max Boot

12/31/12

 

Everyone still remembers T. E. Lawrence, if only because of David Lean’s magnificent movieLawrence of Arabia and Lawrence’s own literary masterpiece,Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Yet far fewer remember Lawrence’s distant cousin, the British Army officer Orde Wingate, who was in many ways his World War II counterpart​—​not least in his eccentricity, his pungent writing style, his flair for publicity, and his tragic, premature death. A partial exception is to be found in Israel, where he is still remembered asHayedid (the Friend) for his Zionist sympathies. But Wingate remains little known in the United States or even in Burma, the land whose freedom he gave his life for. Last summer while visiting Myanmar, as the country is now known, I asked several well-educated Burmese if they were familiar with Wingate. I drew only blank stares. No doubt his name would draw equally blank looks from well-educated Americans, even those with an interest in military history.

 

That is a shame because Wingate was one of the most interesting, innovative, and influential, if also most aggravating and outrageous, commanders of World War II. He was one of the pioneers in Special Operations. Remember the way that a small number of Green Berets and CIA operatives, with links to indigenous allies and radios to call in airstrikes, helped to overthrow the Taliban in the fall of 2001? Wingate was one of the first to mount such “deep penetration” missions, in his case behind Japanese lines in Burma, Italian lines in Ethiopia, and Arab lines in Palestine. More broadly Wingate was an innovator who helped nascent Special Operations forces win recognition and resources despite skepticism about their utility among conventional soldiers.

 

(Snip)

 

Wingate’s ability to inspire strong feelings, for and against, did not end with his death. Churchill paid glowing tribute to him as “a man of genius who might well have become also a man of destiny.” This was an opinion shared by most of his men. One Chindit wrote, “When you first met him you thought he was a maniac​—​after a week you would have died for him.” Yet not all of his subordinates were in “awe of him.” A Gurkha officer said, “We did not like him. .  .  . We were terrified of him.” Another officer recalled debating with his colleagues, “Is he mad?” The strain of antipathy was much stronger among the staff officers over whom Wingate rode roughshod. One of them penned an acidulous assessment of him in the official British war history; it suggested that “the moment of his death” may have been “propitious for him.” This was the first and probably last time that any official history celebrated the death of a senior officer.

 

(Snip)

[nickydog]

That was interesting. I wonder how such a man would have ended up if the world had not been in such turmoil at that time.