Did the Brits kill Maj. General Orde Wingate,great article part 1,2 and 3

[mord]

http://blogs.jpost.com/content/did-british-kill-orde-wingate-part-i    









Did the British kill Orde Wingate? (Part I)
Orde Wingate is perhaps so famous that there is no need to summarize his life. There are a plethora of good biographies, pro and con, about him for these purposes; but just for the argument, let us summarize a few points here. His father was first cousin to Sir Reginald Wingate, Governor of the Sudan before, during, and after the First World War and one of the key sponsors of T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”)’s military activities in the Hejaz, Jordan, and Syria (Sir Reginald was mainly the supplier of the gold sovereigns Lawrence use so promiscuously to buy his beduin confreres, without which they would hardly ‘lift a finger’ as it were).

Throughout his life, Wingate referred to him as “Cousin Rex” (it was through him too that he was later to find out that he was a distant cousin to Lawrence on his mother’s side) and at key junctures in his career was able to turn to him for a helping hand ‘up the greasy Pole’ as Disraeli was wont to call it.
 
From early youth Wingate, who was at first home-schooled because his parents wished to keep him away from pernicious influences before going as ‘a day boy’ to the famous British Public School of Charterhouse and from there to the British Military Academy at Woolwich, always felt himself “a man of destiny” – a phrase echoed in Churchill’s famous encomium to him at the end of this article – and he was, despite his ill-timed and unhappy death.

Born in India where George, his father, was a colonel and part of ‘the British Raj’; he was brought up with his numerous brothers and sisters in the extreme Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christian sect known as “the Plymouth Brethren” and, not surprisingly, always felt a kinship with Oliver Cromwell as a man destined to do great things related to the Bible, from which he always quoted liberally to his troops before going into battle – but this from The Tanach, never the New, which he felt was unrealistic and unsuited to the choice of profession he had made. The Tanach suited him perfectly.
 
Encouraged by “Cousin Rex” to perfect his Arabic at London University’s prestigious School of Oriental Studies and, under his ‘tutelage’, likewise, posted to the Sudan in the late twenties/early thirties; he learned the ways of tracking and treating his body and his spirit hard in hunting both ivory poachers from Ethiopia and slavers from Somalia.

He had previously, as a bored young officer in England after Military Academy graduation, participated in fox hunting and ultimately, steeple-chasing where he won not a few competitions and cups – developing a demeanor and attitude that was seen to be ‘utterly fearless.’ It was under these circumstances that he developed his ideas of guerrilla warfare, almost always fighting at night, knowing how to track in difficult terrain, driving both man and beast to their limits.
 
At the end of his service in the Sudan, he made the famous “Trek to Zerzura,” which was actually written up by him for the Royal Geographic Society, made famous by the recent English Patient movie and Count Almasy, with whom “Cousin Rex” encouraged him to cooperate; but in his usual manner, he made the trek alone in 1933. On the voyage home, following this show of exploration bravura and totally exhausted, he met his future wife, the lovely and charming 16-year old Lorna, whom he was to marry two years later just as he was being posted to Palestine as an intelligence officer.
 
It was during “the Arab Revolt” in 1936 and, thereafter, that he encountered his true “calling” as it were, which he always knew he had – to lead a Jewish Army into battle; and, while there, many consider that he laid the foundations for the Israeli Army to come – if not totally 'the Army,' certainly many of its future officers like Moshe Dayan and Yigal Allon and its fighting methods. He even said as much at one of the “Training Sessions” he organized in 1938 (with future Field Marshall Archibald Wavell’s blessing), i.e., “we have come here to lay the foundations for the Jewish Army.” Of course, for most run-of-the-mill English officers, who were largely pro-Arab anyhow and against more Jewish immigration to Palestine at this crucial time, such language was blasphemous bordering even on “treason” and just increased the number of enemies he always seemed to accumulate at GHQ’s.

 
 Orde Wingate
 
Not for Wingate. He taught Jewish settlers and Haganah enlistees to go out from their previous closed-in and defensive-like stockade enclosures, fearlessly at night like their enemies, to often blindly track the land with nothing but a compass, a flashlight, and a topographical map, to hunt and ambush marauders and terrorists. He felt that Jewish soldiers could be as good or better than any of their British counterparts; and, reporting the same to “Cousin Rex,” he founded the combined units known as “Special Night Squads” (SNS) composed of mixed Jewish and British personnel.
 
Always hated a GHQ, too, for his sloppy dress, his lack of respect for authority, his eccentricity (often he would sit in his tent naked with nothing but a pith helmet or stand in front of his recruits reading passages from the Bible – usually about his favorite character Gideon, who only wanted to fight with ‘picked men’ and, in whose environs, Daburiyyah, he did much of his fighting – and actually called his force in Ethiopia, when he arrived there “Gideon Force”), and seemed to revel in either shocking or affronting his superiors; he was so successful in protecting the pipelines and stopping cross-border raids that he was finally expelled from Palestine at the instigation of the Mufti and his confreres and most of the other anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish-settlement Headquarters rank and file officers in 1939, just at the time it was most needed – with the proviso, never to return to Palestine.
 
He never did, but before he left, he even urged his Jewish friends and associates, by whom he was called “the Yedid” – “the Friend” (he was very close to Chaim Weizmann) – to start the Uprising against the British right then and there by themselves raiding the oil refinery at Haifa – again virtual “treason”; but in the face of Hitler’s pronouncements and depredations, he felt this was the only way they would be able to “save” their European Jewish brethren. In this, he turned out to be, sadly, almost completely correct – even prophetic. He even volunteered to lead them – he felt that strongly about the situation.
 
Who knows, perhaps if he had known or made contact with the Jabotinsky Revisionist faction at the time, he might have been more successful. Even the later Altalena tragedy or fiasco between Labor and Revisionist Zionists might have been avoided – again, who knows? But he did not. He left the country in disgrace, never to return (except on one airplane-refueling stop on his way to India and Burma later); but he never gave up the idea of returning to found a Jewish Army, which he thought would be the best in the world since he considered the Jewish fighting man, when properly trained, to be the best; and perhaps under his leadership it would have. Wingate never lost a battle in his life.

This was in May, 1939 just at the time Hitler’s armies were advancing across Europe. In London, Wingate continued working feverishly through everyone he knew, including Weizmann and Ben Gurion (who were much more phlegmatic and less impetuous and incautious than he), to get a Jewish Army into action.
 
His next action was to be Ethiopia. It was to be the first British victory in the Second World War and he did it all with irregulars, including kibbutz volunteers, he had trained in Palestine and had specially brought down at his request; and it was done, once again, through his old protector Archibald Wavell, whom at this point had become a full General and Commander-in-Chief of all British Forces in the Middle East. Apparently Wingate had already predicted to one of his sisters that one day he would restore Haile Selassie to his throne in Ethiopia. He also apparently told the same thing during their courtship to his future wife Lorna – whom he married in 1936, the same year he was posted to Palestine.
 
The Italian invasion there (in collusion with the French) had begun in 1934, just after Wingate had left the Sudan and finished his Zerzura Expedition. By 1936, despite League of Nations condemnation and native resistance, Mussolini had succeeded in expelling the Emperor. Wingate was sent in by Wavell, who remembered his earlier effectiveness with irregular forces in Palestine, in November, 1940. By May 5th, 1941 after a series of engagements fought by mixed British, Palestinian, and native forces in Northern Ethiopia, Wingate mounted on a white charger was escorting Haile Selessie who, frazzled and weary, preferred riding in a Ford convertible into Addis Ababa six years after his discomfiture.
 
Now the events that led to Wingate’s greatest fame and demise were about to unfold. First of all, it was in Ethiopia that Wingate had his first encounter with then Colonel, later Field Marshall, William Slim who had command of a small mechanized unit, which had suffered many reverses coming up from the South with a mixed group of Kenyans, British, and Indian Army units, which had also been badly mauled. Wingate’s extraordinary success doubtlessly did not sit very well with these groups or these commanders. Once back in Cairo, Wingate’s report of the Ethiopian Campaign (Wavell now having departed) was flatly rejected at GHQ and all those he recommended for DSO’s denied. In turn, Wingate considered that his extraordinary success there entitled him, once more, to return to Palestine and raise an Army of Jewish Volunteers (this did eventually transpire, but much smaller and later than Wingate envisioned – called, as everyone now knows, “the Jewish Brigade”).
 
Then in despair, all his hopes having been dashed; on July 4th, 1941Wingate did the unthinkable for a British Officer – he tried to commit suicide, plunging a bayonet into his throat in his room at Shepheard’s Hotel and only being saved from cutting both his carotid artery and jugular vein (he had stabbed himself from both sides) by the involuntary tightening of his neck muscles. By September, he was on a Hospital ship on his way back to England – he was later determined to have been suffering from severe cerebral malaria – which docked in his family’s native Northern Scotland in mid-November.
 
Now in disgrace for the second time, though people like the famous explorer Sir Wilfred Thesiger, who had served under him in Ethiopia, thought he deserved a Knighthood for his achievements there (by a twist of fate, the General Cunningham of the unsuccessful British/Kenyan Southern Forces and Slim’s superior too  – who had Wingate banished from Ethiopia – was ultimately the last British Governor of Palestine when Jewish Independence was declared in 1948); nevertheless Wingate did not have to wait long for the final triumph and tragedy of his life.  

(To be continued and concluded in Part II).

[mord]

http://blogs.jpost.com/content/did-british-kill-orde-wingate-part-i

part 2                   http://blogs.jpost.com/content/did-british-kill-orde-wingate-part-ii      





Wavell was now Commander-in-Chief in India and on the Governor’s Council and the Japanese were pouring through the Malay Peninsula, Singapore, and Burma. Again, he realized he needed Wingate seconded to him in Rangoon as soon as possible. The latter, who was still fighting for his command of a Jewish Army which would strike Rommel “on the left flank” and dreaming of commanding Jews in action (for him, as he put it “the best Army in the World”), was still begging Weizmann to act. Having no desire to go to Burma and India, he held out until the last moment.

Burma: The First Chindit Campaign 1942-1943
 
Finally when everything was lost, in despair, he set out on February 27th, 1942 for Burma, Assam, and India. Rangoon fell on March 8th. Wingate moved a unit of Gurkhas and Burmese riflemen, called “The Bush Warfare School” (founded by a Colonel Michael Calvert,  also an alumnus of Woolwich, who now became his trusted second-in-command and a legend second in irregular warfare only to David Sterling. To these, later, was added a third Woolwich comrade, Derek Tulloch, Wingate’s bosom companion ever since fox-hunting days), to Sagar near Bangalore in Central India. To these were added an assortment of Scottish, Welsh, and English volunteers; and, by early 1943, he had his ”First Chindit Campaign” – a name conjured up by Wingate based on a Burmese Temple Guardian-mythological winged creature (and now generally know as “Wingate’s Raiders”) – ready to go.

As in Ethiopia, thus ensued the first major victories of the British over the Japanese in the East, blowing up rail lines, disrupting communications, fighting pitched battles, and then dispersing; and the creation of a new style of warfare behind enemy lines that became known as “Long Range Penetration” – groups working through the land but supplied by parachute drops from the air (later usually American). Though costly, the Japanese were befuddled and Wingate came to the notice of Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, the US Air Commander Henry "Hap" Arnold, and even Philip “Flip” Cochran (the model for the famous World War II comic strip – Terry and the Pirates).

 
 

A Chindit column crossing a river in Burma, 1943

Then came the Second Chindit Campaign and this on a major scale. By May, Wingate and the remnants of his forces had re-crossed the Irrawaddy and were back in India. By June, his name was famous throughout the land and Churchill was already dictating a memo calling him “a man of genius” and stating he “should command the Army against the Japanese in Burma.” Promoted to Major General – the youngest Major General in the British Army – by July, he had been personally sent back to England at Churchill’s request because he wanted him to accompany him aboard the Queen Mary to meet Roosevelt and the American Chiefs-of-Staff at the Quebec Conference in Canada the next month.

But now Earl Mountbatten had become Chief of Combined Operations in India and he was invited to the meeting too, Wavell having been reduced to the role of civilian Governor General only. William Slim – an inveterate Wingate critic from Ethiopian days – had for his part now also risen to the rank of Lieutenant General in the Indian Army based at Imphal and Cohima in Assam on the Southern Burma/Indian border commanding that part of the Army fighting the Japanese there and, needless to say, suffering the usual reverses.

A special train was sent for Lorna to take her up to Northern Scotland and the Queen Mary as a special courtesy to Wingate for the Atlantic crossing. At that time, their first and only child, Orde Jonathan, was conceived – a child who, as it turned out, never saw his father. Needless to say, as well, Wingate was one of the ‘big hits’ of the conference and a huge amount of American supplies, equipment, and forces were allotted directly to him, including gliders, runway-building equipment for use after having established  “strongholds,” transport aircraft, and even Mustangs.

Basically, so impressed was everyone that he was given ‘carte-blanche’ and a direct line to Churchill in case of obstruction – which as per his habit he never hesitates to use which infuriates people at GHQ, including Mountbatten and Slim. The final War Reports written after the War (not without interest, by a General on Mountbatten's staff whom, in an inadvertent moment Wingate had recommended "should be sacked for iniquitous and unpatriotic behaviour" because of his obsructionism) confirm all this.
 
The Second Chindit Campaign

Finally on March 5th, 1944, well before D-Day, “the Second Chindit Campaign” is on, approximately a year after the First, but this time it is a huge fly-in. Though there are many difficulties and much confusion, on the whole it is very successful, all objectives having been met. Wingate is kept terribly busy flying around in an American B-25 with an American crew from old airbase to new airbase, old runway to new runway. As noted, he has the complete support of the entire American Air Force in the East. They are dropping all his supplies, they are taking in his gliders, just as later at D-Day and at Arnhem, though here more successfully. Churchill even sends his personal congratulations.

But meanwhile in the South, Slim is having his usual difficulties, as the Japanese have stepped up their efforts to advance in Assam on Imphal and Cohima – partially as a response to Wingate. But in the midst of these grand airborne successes, Slim quietly convinces Mountbatten to hold back two of Wingate’s Reserve Chindit Brigades, the 14th and the 23rd. He also wants the use of Wingate’s American Air force Dakotas (C-47's) and fighter aircraft (in this case, Mustangs) to help him in his own situation, rather than allow Wingate to use them to proceed with what is about to become a crushing blow to the Japanese all over Northern Burma.

That this is true is confirmed by the testimony of the Japanese Commander at the time, Lt. Gen. Renya Mutaguchi who, in a tribute to Wingate after the War, called him "a man in whom I had found my match." Nevertheless, argument develops over the allotment of these two Brigades – the men at Headquarters seeming to be in something of a panic. For his part, hearing of these things, Wingate avails himself of his right to communicate directly with Churchill, wiring him to the effect that “situation most promising if exploited” – a cable which may have played a part in his ultimate fate.

Friction at GHQ also exacerbates over press coverage which omits any mention of Wingate’s successes, including even the British Army Magazine, which further angers Wingate, who refuses to allow it to be flown into his men and, according to reports, is on the verge of resigning. The 'tipping point' comes when the RAF bring in six Spitfires into an airstrip named “Broadway,” just built by the Americans behind Japanese lines. Now Cochran is infuriated and goes in to protest to Wingate that even the Americans themselves have not yet had the opportunity to introduce their own Mustangs into the first airstrip to be opened behind Japanese lines in Burma! Within hearing of RAF officers on the ground, he (Cochran) heaps scorn on their appetite for publicity and literally demands they be “bounced.”

 

Philip Cochran

Wingate himself, clearly favoring the Americans and dependent on them for his future activities, takes Cochran’s side. For his part, Slim now definitively refuses to release Wingate’s 14th and 23rd Brigades – HQ scuttlebutt centering on Wingate’s “megalomania” and how he is “jeopardizing” the War effort. Again, Wingate protests to Churchill about the “distorted” accounts of his operation, demanding that “the truth” be told. He also asks for four more squadrons of American Dakotas to support the gains he has already made – this, in the face of the reversals Slim is currently encountering in the south at Imphal. As Wingate sees it, he can swing around right behind the Japanese into the Malay Penninsula, which is what in the end Slim eventually does without him. Churchill, as usual, backs Wingate, just as he had Lawrence in earlier days; and the order for the planes is made – though, after Wingate's death, the Chindits never actually receive them.
 
Wingate's B-25 Plane Crash Anomalies

On the morning of March 24th, 1944, after a flying inspection of "the first Scottish Airport in Burma” – the “Stronghold” at “Aberdeen” – he flies back to Imphal in his American B-25 with his American crew to discuss with either British Air Marshall Baldwin or Air Commodore Vincent (reports vary here) Cochran’s complaints about the British Spitfires being sent into “Broadway“ even before their American counterparts and another insult, just tendered Wingate by either Baldwin or Vincent, insisting in the future that he route any communications – this is typical – through RAF Wing Commanders on the ground – meaning those at “Broadway”! For its part, his American crew leave the Mitchell unattended to go out of the sun inside the tower for soft drinks. It should be remembered that this is the home base of almost all of Wingate’s detractors; and, though the meeting with Baldwin or Vincent was said to have ended amicably, no agreement seems to have been reached.  

It is a beautiful afternoon, blue sky and white puffy clouds and at 5 PM, anyhow, there was not a plane in sight. Some say that Wingate’s plane did not take off till 8 PM. Once again, there is some difference of opinion here but it is of little import. Two journalists, Stuart Emery of The News Chronicle and Stanley Wills of The Daily Herald, ask if they can come along on the plane and Wingate graciously agrees. Baldwin (according to the Baldwin testifiers) suggests Wingate go first as Wingate's plane is the faster. Wingate climbs into the co-pilot's seat as per his wont and his B-25 takes off, but allegedly never makes it over the first chain of hills. Nor was there any sign of enemy activity in the sky that day at all. Some argue that the American pilot had been concerned about some issues in the right engine earlier, but had declined to mention it to Wingate. Still, a Mitchell has two engines and should be able to stay aloft on one, even if a little less effectively.

When the wreckage was located, however, it was not on a mountain at all. Rather, it turned out that it had made it over the first ridge of around 8000 feet and had only crashed a mile or so outside one of the simple villages about 3000 feet up, called Thilon, that dot the areas along the ridges. Moreover, the crash was seen to have been so violent as to dig a pit eighteen feet into the ground. No identifications are possible and only the remains of Wingate’s telltale sun helmet are found, which is why the whole crew with Wingate are buried in a mass grave at Arlington National Cemetery in the USA today.

It is hard to imagine that this could be the result of the poor performance or failure of one engine. It was quite a bit more violent than that; nor was there any evidence of enemy fire on the plane, either aerial or ground. If the plane had experienced trouble climbing over the first ridge, the pilot would have jettisoned either some supplies or equipment, but there was no evidence of that either. Nor were there any extant radio messages indicating any trouble.

There were many suspicious deaths during and after WWII, principal among which are the Katyn Forest massacres in Byelorussia at the beginning of the War, not to mention those of the Polish Delegation that came to honor them last year, the troublesome Polish General Wladyslaw Sikorski who had signed a pact with Stalin in 1941 and who died in a plane crash in 1943 much like Wingate's, but this time in an American B-24 Liberator after taking off from the British Base in Gibraltar the year before, George Patton at the end of the War, and even the British movie actor and star of Gone with the Wind, Leslie Howard, on his way back to England after leaving Portugal on a propaganda Mission there.
 
"A Man of Genius" whose "Spirit Lives on"

Even, aside from anti-Semitism, Wingate’s eccentricity and religiosity, and his support of the Jewish enterprise of settlement in Palestine; it should be appreciated that the feeling against him at this time at GHQ ran so high that the nurse Matron MacGeary, who had nursed him back to health after a bout of typhoid fever from drinking contaminated water from a flower bowl (again at Shepheards Hotel as he passed through Cairo on his final return to India), was sacked after his death as “a dangerous person” even though she had just been awarded an MBE on the King’s Honor List.

Why does this matter? For the present writer, it matters absolutely. For modern Evangelicals and Fundamentalist Christians (including Plymouth Brethren), Wingate and his love for Jewish causes and the Jewish return and up building of Palestine, has assumed almost the proportions of a “Saint." After his death, “the Chindits” who had and were succeeding so marvelously, building and completing many airstrips behind enemy lines and flying in tens of thousands of soldiers, were with very little fanfare ‘wound down’ and disbanded; and all their assets transferred to Slim. Not only were all their gains abandoned, but many persons suffered grievously for their association with him – not the least of whom, eventually guerrilla-fighter Michael Calvert himself.

Slim who was at some of these meetings and after the War wrote a blistering attack on Wingate, accusing him of incompetence and even indecisiveness (sic), went on to bigger and better things, using all the American aircraft that had been earmarked for Wingate and many of his methods – including the two disputed Reserve Chindit Battalions, to say nothing of all the rest – became a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, Viscount Slim of Burma, Field Marshall and Chief of the Imperial Staff (under the succeeding Attlee Labour Government), a Knight Commander of the Order of the Garter, a Knight of the Order of St. John, a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, a U.S. Chief Commander of the Order of Merit, a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, etc., etc.

Curiously enough, during the recently-exposed scandal over the export of small children from England to Australia, partially during the time of Slim’s tenure as Governor-General there from 1953-1960; he was latterly accused (2007-2009) by three of those who had been sent to one of the 'Child Migration Homes' called “Fairbridge Farms” (of which Slim was an official “patron”) of sexually assaulting them during his visits there – accusations vehemently denied by his son, the Second Viscount Slim while at the same time being aired on the ABC Television Special, “The Long Journey Home" (11/17/09).

But one last little point of information – it was pointed out by Dennis Hawley or one of his ‘friends,’ both in a telephone call to the author (after I had placed an ad in The London Times in 1986-87, asking for information on the death of Wingate) or in his book The Death of Wingate (Merlin Books, 1994) that, as a young  radio officer in the British Army on the then Indian Burmese frontier in Assam in 1947; one of the first things Earl Mountbatten did – upon being appointed by this same Labour Government to replace General Wavell as Governor General of India and prior to the process of the disastrous partitions there which so trouble the world even till today – which seemed curiously suspicious to him at the time and thereafter, was to immediately send a team up to the site of Wingate's American B-25 crash, which had already been thoroughly inspected and scoured for bodies three years before and, for some reason, take away all the still extant wreckage there to some undisclosed disposal locale. This was how he or one of his colleagues described it to me in a phone call – accompanied by a warning.
 
Why does it interest me? Because, as trivial as these events may seem to the rest of the world, for me, had Wingate survived and lived, not only would he have also been the recipient of many of these honors and the father of many sons or daughters; but he would have gone on to successfully command and lead the very Jewish Army he had always dreamed of commanding and leading; and, under such a Commander – who had never lost a battle in his whole career – the entire history of the modern Middle East would have probably been a good deal different. The 1948 War between the Arabs and the Jews would have been a short one indeed, nor would it have ended upon the so-called “1948 Cease-Fire Lines” now so much in the news and probably there would have been no Palestinian "Problem” – at least as many have come to understand it and think of it today.

With Wingate in command, I believe, Jerusalem would have been taken. It could have been no other way and, with it, the Temple Mount and probably “Palestine” up to the Jordan River and the border with the then “Transjordan” – called this by the British, because it had been unilaterally “cut away,” namely by Churchill and Lawrence themselves, in 1925 from the original Palestine Mandate and given to the “Hashemite” family of the Sherif of Mecca for services rendered in the First World War. And who knows what would have happened after that?

It is difficult to talk about the “what ifs” or tragedies of history, but I believe Christians, that is, Evangelical (a representative of whom was even one of Theodore Herzl’s principal intimates) /Noahic/ Fundamentalist – even Plymouth Brethren – would know, as just suggested, better probably even than Jews. For them, there would have been no Palestinian "Problem" as such and probably a “Third Temple” would already be in the process of construction and well on its way to completion.

Perhaps Churchill in the tribute he gave Wingate in Parliament following the announcement of his death put it best: "We placed our hopes at Quebec in the new Supreme Commander, Admiral Mountbatten and in his brilliant lieutenant Major-General Wingate who, alas, has paid a soldier's debt. There was a man of genius who might well have become also a man of destiny. He has gone, but his spirit lives on...”

One thing is sure, given the hatred, intolerance, jealousy, and animosity that surrounded Orde Wingate throughout his entire professional life, the present writer does not credit the ‘official' story of his death for a moment. It’s just too convenient












part 3      

http://blogs.jpost.com/content/orde-wingate-bibliography-and-poem   







An Orde Wingate bibliography and a poem
 
For those who wish to know more about Orde Wingate, the SNS Squads, Gideon Force, and the Chindits, the following books should be helpful (there are many):

Christopher Sykes (the son of the famous Mark Sykes of the equally famous Sykes-Picot Treaty and the 'official' biography), Orde Wingate, 1959

Leonard Mosely (of the famous Sir Oswald Mosely family, but the son was no fascist!), Gideon Goes to War, 1955

John Bierman and Colin Smith, Fire in the Night, 1999 (a title taken from one of the last lines of a poem written by Wingate's sister Sybil on April 24th, 1944 when she heard of Wingate's tragic death). The latest is by Trevor Royle, Orde Wingate: Man of Genius, 2010.

Of course the first was by T. E. Lawrence's collaborator and publicist, Lowell Thomas (always 'Johnny-on-the-spot' -- he seemed to have had a penchant for getting where the most romantic action was and continued his journalistic career into the late 60's as the voice of Movietone News), The Road to Mandalay, 1951. His book, too, is very heavy on the feats of the American Air Commandos under the leadership of Flip Cochran and Col. (later Major General) John Alison, and their respect and love for Wingate.

There are also books by Wingate's closest friends and companions: Michael ("Mad Mike") Calvert, the famous guerrilla-fighter and fellow Woolwich alum, Prisoners of Hope, 1971 and Derech Tulloch, his Chief-of-Staff and closest friend from early fox-hunting and post-Woolwich days, Wingate in Peace and War, 1972.
 
There are also books by Wingate's column commanders and those who fought with him in the field, whose authors -- though not his personal friends -- are always fair: John Masters, The Road Past Mandalay, 1961, Sir Bernard Fergusson, Beyond the Chindwin, 1945 and The Wild Green Earth, 1946, and Sir Wilfred Thesiger (who fought under him in Ethiopia), The Life of my Choice, 1987. There are even books that try to redress the balance of the 'official' calumnies leveled against him, David Rooney, Wingate and the Chindits: Redressing the Balance, 1994.

Moreover, I myself, wrote my own poem to him on June 6th at the outset of The Six-Day War in 1967. Today, perhaps, I might take back the line reading "perhaps it is better that way," but I will reproduce its lines here just as it was written then, some 45 years ago.

It can also be found in my collection of "anti-Beat Road Poetry": The New Jersusalem: A Millennium Prophetic/Poetic Travel Diario, 1959-62 with An Afterword on the Six-Day War, April-June, 1967, published by North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California, 2007, p. 463; and reads:


                                      To Orde Wingate -- June 6th, 1967

                       Orde Wingate, this is your day --
                       It is you who foresaw what we could become,
                       It is you who foresaw the tremendous fighting strength
                                                   latent in a Jewish Army;
                       And it is you who wished to lead us before your life
                                                   was cut short.
                       But never fear, you are with us, you are leading us --
                       And perhaps it is better that way;
                       May God forgive me for having uttered those words --
                       Through the brave fighting men you prepared,
                       Through the men you trained, even at our Command.
                       Thank you, Orde Wingate, for we owe a great debt to
                                                     you.