Wingate, Maj-General Orde

Wingate, Maj-General Orde (1903–44),British Army officer whose methods of irregular warfare led to the formation of the Chindits during the Burma campaign.

Wingate was born in India of parents who were Plymouth Brethren. Between the wars he gained experience of guerrilla warfare in Palestine and became a fervent Zionist. In January 1941, as a lt-colonel and a member of SOE, he accompanied the exiled Emperor Haile Selassie back into Italian-occupied Abyssinia. At the head of a mixed band of troops, which he called Gideon Force, Wingate fought a series of brilliant guerrilla actions, marked by sheer bluff and guile, which ended with Haile Selassie being returned to his capital. But by achieving this feat of arms Wingate had stepped beyond his military brief and, after writing a report that was less than flattering about higher authority, he was virtually dismissed from his command. Exhausted by his efforts, he attempted suicide and spent some months in hospital.

In March 1942 Wavell, under whom Wingate had served in Palestine and East Africa, summoned him to India to organize guerrilla warfare behind Japanese lines in Burma. Wingate proposed self-contained ‘long range penetration’ groups, or Chindits, which would operate while being totally supplied by air. His plans were accepted and in June 1942 he was promoted brigadier and given a force to train with which he operated behind Japanese lines in Burma between February and June 1943. A third of the force was lost but he was hailed as a hero and Churchill asked to meet him. ‘We had not talked for half an hour before I felt myself in the presence of a man of the highest quality’, the prime minister later wrote (The Second World War, Vol. 5, p. 62), and at the time he thought Wingate should command the army in Burma. He took him to the QUADRANT conference (see also Grand Alliance) in Quebec in August 1943 where Wingate created such a favourable impression that he was given more resources than he could ever have expected. He returned to India a maj-general, trained his new, much larger, force during the winter of 1943–4, and, after many political vicissitudes and a severe bout of typhoid, took it behind the lines of the Japanese then moving forward for their Imphal offensive. But on 24 March 1944 he was killed in an air crash and in the months that followed his Chindits, through no fault of their own, failed to achieve the grand designs Wingate had planned for them.

Wingate's personality and the originality of his thinking—some would say genius—have made him one of the most controversial military figures of his time, and one who continues to cause conflicts among historians. Churchill, always drawn to the more unorthodox methods of warfare, was intrigued by his fervour and vision, and his men were devoted to him. By supplying his troops totally by air, and substituting air support for artillery, he showed himself to be a brilliant innovator. But the multitude of books on the Burma campaign nearly all have comments to make on his insubordination, ruthless ambition, calculated rudeness, and emotional instability.

Bibliography

Sykes, C. , Orde Wingate (London, 1959).
Tulloch, D. , Wingate in Peace and War (London, 1972).