Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The Doctrinal Background
- 2 Wingate before Palestine, 1923–36
- 3 Wingate and Counterterrorism in Palestine, 1937–9
- 4 Wingate in Ethiopia, 1940–1
- 5 Wingate in Burma (1) – the Origins of the Chindits, 1942–3
- 6 Wingate in Burma (2) – Operations Longcloth and Thursday, and the Subsequent Development of Long Range Penetration
- 7 The ‘Wingate Myth’ Reassessed
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
4 - Wingate in Ethiopia, 1940–1
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The Doctrinal Background
- 2 Wingate before Palestine, 1923–36
- 3 Wingate and Counterterrorism in Palestine, 1937–9
- 4 Wingate in Ethiopia, 1940–1
- 5 Wingate in Burma (1) – the Origins of the Chindits, 1942–3
- 6 Wingate in Burma (2) – Operations Longcloth and Thursday, and the Subsequent Development of Long Range Penetration
- 7 The ‘Wingate Myth’ Reassessed
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
This brilliant action.…as a feat of arms carried out by a minute regular force supporting irregulars in very difficult country against an enemy greatly superior in numbers and armament can have few parallels.
Lieutenant General Sir Harry Wetherall.Wingate took me round various offices at Headquarters. As he shambled from one to another, in his creased, ill-fitting uniform and out-of-date Wolseley helmet, carrying an alarm clock instead of wearing a watch, and a fly-whisk instead of a cane, I could sense the irritation and resentment he left in his wake. His behaviour certainly exasperated [General Sir William] Platt, who anyway had little sympathy with irregular operations. I once heard Platt remark … ‘The curse of this war is Lawrence in the last’
Sir Wilfred ThesigerIntroduction
Wingate's operations in Italian-occupied Ethiopia, in 1940–1, contributed significantly to the apocrypha about him. The most persistent story is that Wingate ‘restored’ the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, to his rightful throne by coup de main, under the noses of the British Government and Army, who planned to turn Ethiopia into a British protectorate. This is taken for granted in Ethiopia but has also entered the literature, predictably, via Leonard Mosley and David Rooney, who, in a paper given to the British Commission for Military History in 1997, stated explicitly that:
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- Orde Wingate and the British Army, 1922–1944 , pp. 101 - 144Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014