Orde Wingate
Major General Orde Charles Wingate, DSO (February 26, 1903 – March 24, 1944), was a British major general and creator of two special military units during World War II.
Beginnings
Orde Wingate was born 26 February 1903 in Naini Tal, India to a military family. Because his mother came from a missionary family affiliated with the Plymouth Brethren, he received a very religious education and was introduced to Christian Zionist ideas at a very young age.
In 1921 Wingate was accepted into the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich and received his gunnery officer's commission in 1923. He also began to learn Arabic and eventually got himself an assignment to Sudan through an uncle, Sir Reginald Wingate, Governor General of Sudan.
When Wingate arrived in Sudan to join the Sudan Defence Forces in 1928, he was assigned to patrol the Abyssinian border where he was to catch slave traders and ivory poachers. He changed the method of regular patrolling to ambushes. At the end of his tour, he led a short expedition to search for Zerzura, but did not find it. His tour ended in 1933. In 1935 he married Lorna Moncrieff Paterson who was sixteen years old at the time.
[edit] Palestine and the Special Night Squads
In 1936 Wingate was assigned to Palestine to a staff office position and became an intelligence officer. From his arrival, he saw the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine as being a religious duty toward the literal fulfillment of Christian prophecy and he immediately put himself into absolute alliance with Jewish political leaders.
Arab guerrillas had at the time of his arrival begun a campaign of attacks against both British mandate officials and Jewish communities, which became known as the Arab Revolt.
Wingate became politically involved with a number of Zionist leaders. He formulated an idea of armed groups of British led Jewish commandos, and took his idea personally to Archibald Wavell, who was then a commander of British forces in Palestine. After Wavell gave his permission, Wingate convinced the Zionist Jewish Agency and the leadership of Haganah, the Jewish armed group.
In June 1938 the new British commander, General Haining, gave his permission to create the Special Night Squads, armed groups formed of British and Haganah volunteers. This is the first instance of the British recognising Haganah's legitimacy as a Jewish defence force.[1] The Jewish Agency helped pay salaries and other costs of the Haganah personnel.
Wingate trained, commanded and accompanied them in their patrols. They ambushed Arab saboteurs who attacked oil pipelines of the Iraq Petroleum Company and raided border villages the attackers had used as bases, imposing severe collective punishments that were sometimes frowned on by Zionist leaders as well as British. His methods were nonetheless effective.
However, his deepening direct political involvement with the Zionist cause and an incident where he spoke publicly in favour of formation of a Jewish state during his leave in Britain, caused his superiors in Palestine to remove him from command. He was so deeply associated with political causes in Palestine that his superiors considered him compromised as an intelligence officer in the country. He was promoting his own agenda rather than that of the army or the government.
In May 1939, he was transferred back to Britain. Wingate became a hero of the Yishuv (the Jewish Community), and was loved by leaders such as Zvi Brenner and Moshe Dayan who had trained under him, and who claimed that Wingate had "taught us everything we know."
Wingate's political attitudes toward Zionism were heavily influenced by his Plymouth Brethren religious views and belief in certain eschatological doctrines.