Orde Wingate

Who was Orde Wingate?

Major-General Orde Charles Wingate DSO**, was a British Army officer known for creating special military units in Palestine in the 1930s, and in Abyssinia, Sudan and Burma during World War II. He is most famous for his creation of the Chindits, airborne deep-penetration troops trained to work behind enemy lines in the Far East campaigns against the Japanese during World War II.

Wingate is regarded as one of the founders of modern guerrilla warfare. His early ideas on the use of unconventional irregular troops in guerrilla warfare during the successful Abyssinia campaign were later developed by special forces in North Africa, where the newly formed Special Air Service worked behind enemy lines in a similar fashion. Wingate later used the same techniques in Burma. His long-range penetration techniques influenced military strategy and tactics.

Wingate was also noted for his support of Zionism. A highly religious Christian, Wingate saw it as his religious and moral duty to help the Jewish community in Palestine form a Jewish state. Assigned to the British Mandate of Palestine in 1936, he set about training members of the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary organization, which became the Israel Defense Forces with the establishment in 1948 of the state of Israel. Wingate became known to the Jewish men he commanded during the Arab Revolt as "The Friend".