One of the more controversial figures of WWII was Orde Wingate. Known by most for his Burma campaigns with the Chindits, Wingate was not one of your more standard British officers. Much paper has been used to discuss his command tactics, his personality, and this development of guerilla warfare as an accepted method of operations for certain situations. It is due to Wingate's tactics and ideas on long range penetration (LRP) that we now have similar units in most large militaries. We call them Special Forces.

Wingate entered the British Army at a time when the army was a mere shadow of what was around during WWI. He was trained in artillery, but wanted something more. One thing in which Wingate was proficient was finding people who could help him out, one of the first being a cousin. Thanks to this influence, he was assigned to the Sudan where he could experiment with is ideals of guerilla tactics against Ethiopian poachers and slave traders. Using his local infantry group, he trained his men to accept the hardships of long time away from fixed bases and survival. He was quite successful and this let to a posting in Palestine where Arab groups were destroying sections of the oil pipeline from Iraq, through Palestine. He applied the same tactics to attack these Arab groups before they had a chance to disrupt the oil flow. During this time, he trained Jewish Haganah units for this same mission of ambush and attack and was quite successful. In fact, the modern Israeli Army in many ways considers Wingate to be the father of the IDF Army as many of these trained men went on to importance during the 1948 war of independence and passed on what they had been taught to others. So fervent was his pro-Zionist outlook that it caused him to be removed from the area, never again to return.

His next command was in late 1940 helping to drive out the Italians from Ethiopia. Again, he used his theories and tactics of LRP which included ambush and deception to defeat much larger Italian forces who thought they were up against superior numbers. All during this time, he continued to find favor with the politically influential, and that included Winston Churchill. Wingate was either loved or loathed. His manner was abrupt and he often skirted the chain of command to get what he wanted. He had quite a few detractors, but also many who appreciated his abilities and ideas. This led him to Burma and the Chindits. In fact, much of the book is about Chindit operations from the time Wingate got to Burma until his death in a plane crash in March of 1944.

It makes for a superb read and while does not answer everyone's questions about this enigmatic leader, does shed light on him in a way that other, more biased books have overlooked. I found it an engrossing read and a book that I can highly recommend to you. 

 December 2012

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