World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseOrde Charles Wingate was born in Naini Tal, India to a professional soldier. He received a religious upbringing because of his relation with a missionary family on his mother's side, and entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, England, United Kingdom in 1921. He was posted to Sudan and served under his uncle, Sir Reginald Wingate, Governor General of Sudan; at Sudan, he led troops in patrolling and ambushing slave traders and ivory poachers on the Abyssinian border. He married Lorna Moncrieff Paterson in 1935. In 1936, he was assigned to an intelligence position in Palestine. He believed that this assignment reflected his religious duty to help the establishment of a Jewish Zionist state. With the permission of Archibald Wavell, he organized Jewish commando forces to fight against the Arab Revolt. Yossi Harel, later of SS Exodus fame, fought under Wingate during this time. Harel described Wingate as charismatic, skilled at map reading, and eccentric; in one instance, Wingate said that it was the Bible that had taught him battle tactics, seemingly placing his military academy education second. His eccentricity went beyond his military career. He often carried around raw onions to snack on, and he sometimes replaced bathing with scrubbings with a rubber brush. "[Wingate] seemed to me hardly sane", commented Churchill's personal physician later. At Palestine, he gained valuable experience in unconventional warfare that was to be valuable for his future career, but his close involvement with the Zionist movement put him in political isolation and led to his recall back to Britain in May 1939.

ww2dbaseWhen the European War began, Wingate was the commander of an anti-aircraft unit in Britain. He was soon transferred to East Africa on request of Wavell. Lieutenant Colonel Wingate formed and commanded the Gideon force, which was consisted of British, Sudanese, and Abyssinian nationals, as well as some of the Jewish commandos he had trained in Palestine. The Gideon Force began operating in Feb 1941 at the strength of 1,700 men, disrupting supply and communications lines of the much larger Italian army. During the British invasion of Italian East Africa, his units linked up with William Platt's Sudan Force and operated closely with it in the Gojjam Province. On 5 May, Emperor of Abyssinia Haile Selassie, previously exiled by Italian troops in 1936, returned to Addis Ababa under the escort of Wingate's troops. On 4 Jun 1941, the Gideon Force was disbanded and Wingate was returned to his peace time rank of major. After the East Africa campaign, he contracted malaria. A local doctor provided him a supply of the drug Atabrine, which caused a side effect of depression. Coupled with his disappointment of how Britain conducted the war in Abyssinia, the depression led to an unsuccessful suicide attempt by stabbing himself in the neck. He was brought back to Britain to receive medical treatment.

ww2dbaseOn 27 Feb 1942, again on recommendation of Wavell, Wingate departed for Burma and India to leverage his experiences gained in Palestine and Abyssinia to organize a guerilla unit there. When it came to naming this brigade-sized unit, he thought of the word "chindit", which was what he thought was "tiger" in Burmese; when he was corrected by his Burmese aide Sao Man Hpa that the correct pronunciation should be "chinthe", Wingate chose to go with his incorrect version instead, citing that any of the two words meant little to his British colleagues anyway, failing to realize that his original thought of giving the unit a Burmese name was actually to inspire his own troops. After a harsh training period in which many men had to be replaced, the Chindits began operating in Burma beginning in Feb 1943. The first mission met with success as it took out a major Japanese railroad, but the overwhelming Japanese defenses forced the force to break up and retreat back into India with heavy casualties. Although the Chindit operations did not go as well as he had hoped, it was nevertheless a small victory against the Japanese forces in the region, and as a result he was noticed by Winston Churchill. Churchill requested Wingate to accompany him to the Octagon Conference so that Wingate could explain to the Allied leaders his theories of deep penetration warfare. Air superiority, radio, and other Allied technological advantages made deep penetration warfare beneficial for the war effort, he argued, and the Allied leaders agreed. He was returned to India after the conference and was promoted to the rank of major general. On 6 Mar 1944, the new Chindits began arriving in Burma via airborne operations. By chance, the deployment coincided with the Japanese invasion of India, and Wingate's troops were able to seriously disrupt the Japanese offensive capabilities. The new Chindit operations were markedly different than the original attempt, in particular strongholds were set up deep within enemy territory from which the penetration missions were sent out from.

ww2dbaseOn 24 Mar 1944, Wingate performed an inspection on Chindit strongholds in Burma. He arrived at Imphal, India at 1823 hours, and then took off for Hailakandi, India at about 2000 hours. The B-25 bomber he was traveling in cashed into the Naga Hills, killing all 10 aboard. He was originally buried at the site of the crash, but was eventually moved to the Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, United States; this was due to the fact that most of the 10 aboard the aircraft were Americans, and all remains were charred beyond recognition, thus it was not possible to tell which body belonged to which passenger or crew.

ww2dbaseLouis Mountbatten, Allied Supreme Commander in Southeastern Asia, did not always get along with Wingate, but he wrote his wife Edwina Ashley "I cannot tell you how much I am going to miss Wingate.... He was a pain in the neck to the generals over him, but I loved his wild enthusiasm and it will be difficult for me to try to inculcate it from above." William Slim, who worked with Wingate in India and Burma, thought Wingate's biggest fault was that Wingate "regarded himself as a prophet, and that always leads to a single-centeredness that verges on fanaticism, with all his faults. Yet had he not done so, his leadership could not have been so dynamic, nor his personal magnetism so striking."

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