Orde Wingate
Orde Charles Wingate DSO with two clasps (born February 26, 1903 in Naini Tal near Almora , British India , † March 24, 1944 in Manipur ) was a British major general and commander of the Chindits special unit .
Life
Wingate was born on February 26, 1903 in the Indian Naini Valley into a family with military tradition - u. a. Second uncle was General Reginald Wingate . His parents were members of the Brethren movement and raised him according to its strict rules. From 1916 he attended the Charterhouse School in Godalming . From 1921 he attended the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich . After graduating, he joined the Royal Artillery in August 1923 .
From October 1926 he attended an Arabic course at the School of Oriental Studies in London with good success . From April 1928 he commanded a company in the Sudan Defense Force. In 1932 he went on a camel expedition to the Libyan desert with the support of the Royal Geographical Society . In 1933 he returned to Great Britain, where he married Lorna Moncrieff Patterson on January 24, 1935 after breaking off an already existing engagement. The marriage resulted in the son Orde Jonathan Wingate, who was born after the death of his father.
In 1936 he was transferred to Palestine , where he organized the Special Night Squads , a paramilitary command unit made up of British soldiers and members of the Jewish Settlement Police . Here he was mainly active in the north, in Galilee and especially in the region around the mountains Tabor and Gilboa . Here he felt particularly close to Kibbutz En Harod : On the one hand, it was strategically located, but for him as a Christian it also had a biblical meaning (Judges' Book 7.1): "En Harod also exerted a special spiritual attraction on Wingate: .. here ... was Gideon's grave ". Wingate's special activities in Palestine are only fully understandable through his inner motivation: "His love for Zion was based on diligent study of the Old Testament ." For his military success there he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO).
In his book Exodus, Leon Uris describes the role of Orde Wingate as the literary figure "PP Malcolm" who, as a supporter and military strategist, helps Jewish combat troops in Palestine during the Arab uprising . In the novel "Hajj" by the same author, Wingate is involved in the plot under his name and with the Special Night Squads.
After the outbreak of World War II , he created the Gideon Force in Sudan (see previous paragraph), which began guerrilla action against the Italian occupying forces in Ethiopia from February 1941 . For his achievements during the campaign in East Africa , he was awarded a Distinguished Service Order clasp, which corresponds to a renewed award.
On July 4, 1941, after an overdose of mepacrine, he fell into depression and attempted suicide .
After his recovery, Wingate, now a colonel , was posted to Burma , where he arrived on March 22, 1942. After the collapse of the Allied resistance in this region, he went to India , where he trained as a brigadier for the Indian 77th Infantry Brigade . It was the first unit of the special unit later known as the Chindits. This was to carry out operations behind the Japanese lines as a special unit made up of British and Indian troops.
The first use of the chindits was Operation Longcloth . But it had to be broken off with heavy losses.
Winston Churchill was taken with Wingate and took it to the Quadrant Conference in August 1943 , where he was given the opportunity to present his plans for another use of the Chindits. In the same month Wingate received another clasp for the Distinguished Service Order.
Upon his return to India, he was promoted to major general.
The plans eventually led to Operation Thursday . On March 24, 1944 Wingate flew into the combat area to investigate the situation of three Chindit bases. On the return flight from Imphal to Lalaghat, his North American B-25 crashed in the hilly jungle near Thilon (now in the Indian state of Manipur ). Besides him, all of the other nine passengers, mostly Americans, died. The remains were buried first at the crash site and in 1947 in a mass grave at the British military cemetery in Imphal. In November 1950, Wingate's body was exhumed and on the Arlington National Cemetery in the US state of Virginia buried.
A memorial to Wingate and the Chindits is on the north side of the Victoria Embankment in London.
literature
- Raymond Callahan: Wingate, Orde Charles (1903-1944). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of January 2011
- Wilfred Burchett: Wingate Adventure . Cheshire, Melbourne 1944.
- John W. Gordon: Major-General Orde Wingate . In: John Keegan (Ed.): Churchill's Generals . London 1991, ISBN 0-297-82066-4 .
- Gerd Linde: Burma 1943 and 1944. The Expeditions Orde C. Wingates (= individual publications on the military history of the Second World War, vol. 10). Verlag Rombach, Freiburg 1972, ISBN 3-7930-0169-5 .
- Charles Rolo: Wingate's Raiders: An account of the incredible adventure that raised the curtain on the battle for Burma . George G. Harrap, London 1944.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Michael J. Pragai: They should live again in their country - The role of Christians in the return of the Jews to the land of Israel , Bleicher Verlag, Gerlingen 1990, ISBN 3-88350-027-5 , p. 143.
- ↑ Michael Krupp: Zionism and State of Israel - A historical outline , Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 3rd edition, Gütersloh 1992, ISBN 3-579-00791-2 , p. 101.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wingate, Orde |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Wingate, Orde Charles (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British Major General |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 26, 1903 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Naini Valley , India |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 24, 1944 |
| Place of death | Manipur |