In Christopher Sykes' 1959 biography of Orde Wingate, he uncovered Wingate's harsh criticism of T.E. Lawrence. Both Lawrence and Wingate were twentieth-century British officers who favored 'irregular warfare.' Their campaigns in the First and Second World Wars would influence future generations of military leaders, and the ways in which modern armies organize their forces.

Though separated by more than twenty years and two continents, the campaigning 'styles' of Lawrence and Wingate shared some similar features. Both wielded small numbers of men, and avoided sustained combat against larger rival forces. Both took exceptional personal risks. Both fought in foreign lands, and at the head of largely foreign soldiers.

The similarities between the two officers are clear, but the specifics of Wingate's criticisms are not quite as easily discernible. (Besides the Sykes biography, the two best sources for understanding Wingate's critique of Lawrence are two of his Abyssinian soldiers that followed him from Palestine: the officer Anthony 'Tony' Simmonds and the Jewish-Palestinian clerk Avram Akavia.) In his desert campaigns during the First World War, Lawrence had used British money to hire Arab tribesman to conduct irregular warfare against the Ottoman Empire. In Abyssinia in 1940, Wingate sought to use soldiers loyal to the British Empire to inspire Abyssinian 'patriot' forces to rally by his side; Wingate wanted to avoid direct payment and direct distribution of arms. Lawrence appealed to Bedouin patriotism, but he did so with a sense of irony and bemusement: nationalism, he thought, was a paltry motivation for the Bedouin, whereas British gold and war-time honor could provided more effective incentives. Wingate viewed Lawrence's approach as too close to bribery; Wingate wanted to appeal to patriotism and pride, and refused to allow direct payments to Abyssinian militia leaders or their followers.

The puzzling aspect of Wingate's critique is that, despite their technical differences, it seems as if Lawrence still could have served as an advantageous and famous model of successful irregular warfare, thus inspiring Wingate's commanders to devote further resources to his campaign; and Wingate, if nothing else, was obsessed with clawing for more resources. In fact, Field Marshal Archibald Wavell plainly states that Lawrence's previous efforts in WW1 directly influenced Wavell's deployment of Wingate in WW2 (see The Good Soldier, 1948). But instead of substantiating an ostensibly favorable comparison, Wingate denigrated Lawrence's methods as wasteful and ineffective. Why?

First, I want to avoid rarifying 'denigration.' ​Denigration occurs in everyday life on a regular basis. In front of spouses, friends, and partners, human beings denigrate potential rivals to sculpt their own status position relative to that of the rival. Some typical, casual examples include: "He's not that good of a writer." "If only her talent could keep pace with his ambition." "She's pretty, but she doesn't have taste." Denigration occurs for other reasons, however, besides rivalry for status. Other possibilities include 1) a genuine disagreement about strategy 2) Jealousy. 

I think that rivalry over status is the best answer. It doesn't matter that Lawrence was dead; rivalry is not a 'reasonable' thing. It's a basic mechanism that propels us unwittingly forward. It often happens subconsciously, and rarely needs to justify itself. ​

Wingate, however, was a pensive officer, and he was the sort that would search-out a basis for his feelings about Lawrence. I think it's likely that Wingate not only disliked Lawrence's 'methods,' but found fault with Lawrence's personal conduct during military operations. In particular, Wingate probably felt that Lawrence had abdicated his personal responsibilities as an officer to play too-much the desert warrior.

A quick comparison of the two men can highlight their differences in outlook: Whereas Wingate was a career-oriented soldier, Lawrence was an amateur officer. Wingate never lost any family members to war, but Lawrence lost two brothers before embarking on the campaign to take Aqaba. Wingate preferred leading professional soldiers on well-organized campaigns; Lawrence had a respectful but difficult relationship with professional soldiers, and preferred fighting alongside loose bands of Arab raiders. Wingate directed and orchestrated violence in the traditional manner of an officer, whereas Lawrence preferred hands-on violence in the style of a medieval knight (and hated/loved himself for it).
​
​There are no records of Wingate actually shooting an enemy in combat--he was too busy maintaining his erratic supply line and keeping his troops on a relentless march. Lawrence, however, fired his weapon often, and preferred the emotional rush of battle to the more mundane tasks typically required of officers in combat. Lawrence's emphasis on action, in Wingate's view, was an abdication of responsibility. 

Lawrence, I think it's fair to say, had a much better nose for politics, bureaucratic maneuvering, and power. He could also express his thoughts clearly, eloquently, and in an interesting way. But despite his clear talent for political life, Lawrence prioritized his efforts in the second-half of the First World War towards hands-on participation in violence. His own memoir, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and his letters from that time period show a keen awareness of the ongoing political situation in the Levant. But those same sources also point to the fact that Lawrence was more interested in being involved in raids and ambushes.

Wingate seems to have noticed the peculiarities of Lawrence's behavior as an officer, and he also noticed that Lawrence used direct payment because this was Lawrence's easiest and quickest way to get rid of the resources the British Empire offered him, thereby freeing Lawrence to charge back into the mix on personal terms.

Only once Lawrence was in Damascus did he refocus his energies towards politics; but at that point, it was too late. The Arab forces that he had he supplied and fought with lacked the hierarchical structure and discipline necessary to successfully occupy and manage a city. Lawrence also did not concern himself with the legitimacy of his occupation of Damascus, or how it would be perceived by the locals. (I am not saying that the British Army's occupation of Damascus was legitimate; I am just pointing out that they were better prepared for it.)

Wingate had a bold imagination, and he was unusually lucky in his guesses on how things would turn out. But his writings betray a lack of specificity and accurate knowledge of human behavior. He was very smart, energetic, and imaginative--but he was not as accurate or precise of an observer of human political behavior as Lawrence. Wingate did, however, simply care more about politics: he took steps at every juncture of his planning to build working, useful coalitions. And Wingate bothered to make assessments about whether or not his plans gelled with the local political situation in the Sudan, Palestine, Abyssinia, and Burma. That's not to say that Wingate was a purely strategic animal: like most generals, his goal was not to win the war, but to ensure that his campaign succeeded. The terms of a success in a campaign can be objectively measurable, even if they are also objectively pointless from a wider perspective. Wingate was perfectly comfortable with that paradox; Lawrence tried (and failed) to ignore it, which led to a crises of consciousness for the rest of his life, and to his writing of a Seven Pillars of Wisdom, a memoir seeped in self-searching and unrest.

I think Wingate deserves some credit for his reading of Lawrence's outlook on military affairs. While Lawrence did not deserve the harsh disparagement that he received from Wingate, Wingate did notice Lawrence's unusual motives for war. And he probably saw that Lawrence's personal motives diverged from those of career soldiers and politicians.

​From a distance, the tactical approaches of Wingate and Lawrence still resemble one another. They rode similar horses towards similar objectives, but they rode for different reasons, and these differences materially affected the lives of their men, the results of their campaigns, and their own self-regard at each step of the journey.

Ari Shavit, My Promised Land, New York: Spiegel and Grau of Random House Publishing (2013).

The nation of Israel, the last great colonial enterprise of the Western world, exists in a harsh, hot climate, surrounded by enemies that deny it a right to exist. For years, it served as beacon of democracy and Western military supremacy, but now it threatens to fall into theocracy and political isolation. Israeli journalist Ari Shavit presents his own personal history of Israel with My Promised Land, a fast-reading account of a young nation's struggles along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea.

Shavit drives his narrative forward with extensive interviews. Many of his discussions feature the complex heroes and villains of the Zionist enterprise: settlers, warriors, and spies; capitalists, socialists, and politicians. Though he cuts the interviews with dashes of biography, historical context, and personal reflection, in the main Shavit allows his protagonists to co-author his book, so that they can defend their hopes, dreams, and doubts.

Shavit begins with a chapter out of his own family history. In the closing moments of the nineteenth century, an English-Jewish ancestor visited Palestine for the first time. He surveyed the countryside, and settled there a few years later. The Jewish settlers of the late 19th century tackled the problem of creating a Jewish homeland in a way similar to other herculean colonial enterprises, such as the Suez Canal; they raised capital from abroad, and then added tremendous amounts of human labor. They bought land from the waning elite of the Ottoman Empire. When necessary, they forced the removal of the serfs and tribes that had occupied the land for centuries. Intellectually, the Jewish immigrants felt tied to Europe, but they knew that Europe no longer wanted them; in the desert they began to forge a new identity, one with less room for the individual spirit and conscience, and much more aggressive than what they inherited from their diaspora ancestors.

The European Jews, imitating European colonial powers, looked at Palestine as a backwards, empty land. They never saw the Arabs as inhabitants. They only saw an empty land open to the aspirations of Jewish nationalism. The Jewish settlers especially sought out the rich coastal soils of Palestine. They wanted collective economic success and secular socialism, not the restoration of Biblical landmarks in the hills to the east. In time, the disenfranchised Arab serfs began to push back against the newcomers with sporadic murders and assaults on Jewish settlements.

The Jews responded to the violence with calls for the forced migration of Arabs out of Palestine. By 1938, the language of David Ben Gurion echoed that of world leaders working elsewhere: "I support compulsory transfer. I do not see anything immoral in it."

Shavit then traces how individuals like Shmaryahu Gutman drew on ancient Jewish symbols of resistance, like the mass suicide at the Masada fortress in 73 CE, thus "using the Hebrew past to give depth to the Hebrew present and enable it to face the Hebrew future." A rootless nation searched for its Hebrew past like a long forgotten spring and, once rediscovered, held onto those ancient waters with emotions that tottered between tenacity and desperation.

Jewish survival in Palestine required collective organization for social, political, and military conquest. The end of the British Mandate heralded a new era of Zionism. The Zionist political leaders rushed into action in 1948 and sliced off a portion of the region designed to ensure a Jewish majority in the newborn country of Israel.

Shavit cannot help but look back at his country's history with awe, love, and pride--and so Shavit's presentation is as personal as it is insightful. As a journalist he expands that history by inserting the memories, fears, and dreams of other Israelis. His emotional exploration of Palestine brings with it a humor and sadness all its own, one that fights against the coldness of a historical narrative.

Perhaps his most effective chapter relates the crisis of Lydda, 1948, in its absolute tragedy. The fatigued, desperate Jewish soldiers scrambled to the very edge of the Arab village of Lydda. And then, assuming the worst, the soldiers (including Moshe Dayan) charged through town with armored vehicles, guns blazing. Israel's founding political leaders abstained from making a clear decision to force the removal of the Arabs from the village, thus preserving their reputation in Europe and America. The absence of oversight turned their young Israeli soldiers into aimless cannons which the Arab civilians had to dodge through flight. The Arabs abandoned their dignity and homes for the sake of momentary security, and straggled out of Lydda (and many other villages) on long, deadly marches. Throughout the early years of Israel, trepidation gnawed at the backbone of Jews and Arabs alike, prompting them to edge deeper into the depths of human behavior.

Interestingly, Shavit mourns the loss of the Israeli character that inspired Zionism in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. "On the one hand [Zionism] was a colonialist enterprise. It intended to save the lives of one people by the dispossession of another. In its first fifty years, Zionism was aware of this complexity and acted accordingly...but after 1967, and after 1973, all that changed...." The victories and traumas of 1967 and 1973 forever altered the political landscape of the Middle East, and the social fabric of Israeli society.

Israel initiated the Six Day War of 1967 to create a political buffer between themselves and the surrounding Arab nations, and in anticipation of an Arab attack just over the horizon. Israel caught its rivals completely off guard, and won the war with superior preparation and complete surprise. The victories of 1967 left Israel drunk with victory, and far more land than they had hoped for at the outset of their enterprise.

The occupied territories soon complicated the problems of Zionism. Many defeated Arabs were unable to immigrate to another country, and to this day they remain imprisoned in small tracts of land in Gaza and the West Bank. Though tragic and inhumane, the experiences in Gaza and the West Bank are not a second Holocaust. As Shavit says, 'no one can seriously think there is any real similarity. The problem is that there isn't enough lack of similarity. The lack of similarity is not strong enough to silence once and for all the evil echoes." And so the Israelis live in close and dangerous proximity to the people they displaced, and those people watch them day after day. The Israelis look back with wary eyes, "the jailers imprisoned by their jail."

Israelis desperately want to believe in their country--their nation--as established fact. They want release from the terrible fear that haunts the low-land orchards, the ancient alleys of Jerusalem, and the drug-soaked discotechs of Tel Aviv. But Shavit sees no release from the fear. Modern Israelis lack the secular hardness of their grandparents and great-grandparents. The melting pot of 1948 now congeals into separate small-minded elements: right-wing, left-wing, Oriental Jew, ultra-orthodox, capitalists, settlers, and rootless Palestinian refugees. The soft selfishness of individualism undermines the collective consciousness necessary for survival in the Middle East. He anticipates a second Holocaust, easier than the first due to the small spot of land upon which the Jews now live, and the tools of nuclear destruction that he believes will soon sprout among Israel's many Arab neighbors.

Shavit repeatedly calls his book a personal history. He offers somewhat skewed interpretations of many key events. For example, he calls the 1936 Arab revolt "a collective uprising of a national Arab-Palestinian movement," but leaves the revolt poorly explained and poorly reasoned, ignoring the way that economic modernization can threaten tribal honor; he also never identifies the key leaders of the revolt, or their localized motives.

Yet Shavit writes with a journalistic candor, and he conveys epic history. To tell his story, he chooses certain perspectives and subjects as stepping stones along the path. My Promised Land, therefore, never presumes to be a comprehensive volume. It assumes knowledge of pivotal figures like David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan, and Golda Meir. It also assumes a familiarity with British colonialism, the First and Second Worlds Wars, and the conflicts of 1948, 1967, and 1973. Yet Shavit's use of expanded, effusive stanzas of dialogue help paint the story of Israel in powerful, nuanced strokes of darkness and light.  

Latimer, J. (2004). Burma: The forgotten war. London: John Murray. 610 pages.

The longest land campaign of the Second World War took place from 1942 to 1945 in the villages, cities, plains, jungles, wetlands, rice paddies, and mountains of Burma, a British colonial holding crushed in its turn after the Japanese ripped Singapore from Britain's tired imperial hands. Jon Latimer recounts the story of that campaign in Burma: The forgotten war. The British soldiers fighting in the campaign rightly felt overshadowed by the exploits of the Allies in Europe, Africa, and the Pacific. History gives little attention to the campaign. The Allies won the war against Japan in the Pacific. And they won the war against Germany and Italy in Europe. Perhaps more accurately, they dominated the Axis powers with superior industrial capacity and manpower. In Burma, resources remained limited for all involved, though the Americans sent a relative fortune over 'the hump' of mountains between Burma and China to reinforce the static army of Chang Kai-Shek; but all that wealth never encouraged his active participation in the war against Japan; instead, he harbored his resources for the slow-burning fight against domestic communist forces. Meanwhile, the British and Japanese scrapped together whatever forces they could muster and uselessly grappled for control over a country that wanted nothing to do with them. Though the Japanese conquered Burma, they never gained a significant foothold along the east Indian frontier.

Yet Latimer's reuse of the phrase 'forgotten war' seems a misnomer. His book makes use of characters that captured the popular imagination for years. Mountbatten, Aulincheck, Wavell, and Slim were the last great generals of the British Empire. American general 'Vinegar' Joe Stilwell spat at the 'limeys' and hacked at the 'Japs' in a largely fruitless attempt to stir the Chinese forces into action. Orde Wingate made enemies with nearly every other British officer in the Indian Army, but while fighting deep behind the Japanese lines with his 'Chindit' guerrilla forces; after his death, Stilwell gained command of the Chindits and threw them against some of the strongest Japanese defenses. And the Japanese Lieutenant General Mutaguchi drove his 65,000 strong force so incessantly against the Indian frontier that 50,000 of his soldiers died, mostly of starvation and disease. The remnants of the Japanese forces dug in throughout Burma but put up little effective resistance. These characters do not speak softly. Nor are they easily forgotten. Yet the horror and meaninglessness of the campaign speaks to a nihilism so aware and so sharp that it must be human, and so incessant that it trivializes the heroics of its participants.

In the opening pages, Latimer explicitly ties himself to the theme of budding Burmese nationalism, but the subsequent chapters only lightly pursue that topic. In the main, the book examines the four year land and air campaign waged across the Burmese landscape, principally by British and Japanese forces. Without a doubt, Latimer shows that the multi-ethnic citizens of Burma suffered tremendously during the course of the war, but Latimer's gaze usually focuses on colorfully rendered wartime experiences of soldiers, usually at their most dramatic moments of their lives. Thus, Latimer fills page after page with farewells to dying friends and rapid-fire character sketches gleaned from diaries, reports, and published memoirs of the war. He also conveys the multi-ethnic nature of the British forces, and the hardships faced by the poorly equipped Chinese forces that Stilwell dragged into Burma. Yet contrary to the author's stated theme, the Burmese people make almost no appearance.

The book contains no maps. The absence of maps proves a boon for spurring the reader to imagine the terrain from the ground, rather than like a god. But maps helpfully express the relationship between martial forces, as well as political, social, and geographic variations. When properly prepared, maps can also dispel any notion of a linear battlefield narrative, which certainly did not occur in Burma. So the decision seems puzzling. [The BBC, however, has produced a useful series of animated maps about the campaign.]

While not quite a comprehensive study of the Burma campaign, Latimer's volume proves both able and useful for any scholar interested in the 'feel' of the fighting. He strongly depicts the horrors of close combat, as well as the wild emotional swings between defeat and victory that each side faced in turn. He deserves credit for his depictions of Japanese soldiers; he never shies away from their brutality, but also reveals their humanity. His explicit theme--the Burmese struggle for independence--hides too much in the corners of the book, but the hefty remainder proves worthwhile.

In the critique above, I did not integrate some of the most engaging ideas I found in Latimer's volume. I will list a few of them here in the form of quotations. 

"While what is presented here is fundamentally a military history, the war in Burma does not lend itself well to a single treatment. Nevertheless, a single theme runs through it: the struggle of the Burmese people for independence after sixty years of occupation" (1).

"Some time after the war a memorial was unveiled near Rangoon dedicated to the '27,000 men of the Commonwealth forces who died in Assam and Burma in the defence of freedom ...'. Given the terrible regime in Burma for most of the time since, one might question whether the war fought between 1941 and 1945 was for 'freedom.'" (1-2).

"By 1941, with 1 1/4 million men in China and 1 million in Formosa, Korea and the home islands, Japan lacked large manpower reserves and to provide five armies (corps) to strike south meant scraping the sides of the barrel, with age limits widened in both directions and student deferments cancelled. Brutality in training became yet more harsh and standards of discipline diluted, resulting in an attitude that crime against superiors was far more serious than crimes against natives. Despite its modernity, much Japanese equipment compared unfavourably with Western models ... funnelling of manpower into the infantry and their ability to live off the land meant the Japanese appeared far more numerous than Allied forces ... Plainly the Imperial Japanese Army was not on a par with that of 1905, or even 1937" (39). 

"Although overshadowed by the fall of Singapore, the battle of the Sittang on 22/23 February ranks as a defining moment in the decline and fall of the British Empire" (58).
[While it's true that Slim called the defeat at Sittang bridge the 'decisive battle of the first campaign,' Latimer's rhetoric overstates the case. The importance of Sittang bridge cannot measure up to Singapore, the largest capitulation in British military history.]

*This isn't a quote, but it seems like an important point of emphasis in Latimer's book. Churchill swapped Auchinleck and Wavell in 1941. Auchinleck won a fresh round of North African victories shortly thereafter. Back in Burma, the Japanese declaration of war forced Wavell into a fighting retreat while at the head of soldiers he barely knew. Wavell insisted that his forces maintain an aggressive posture, and that they counter-attack at every opportunity. Latimer finds Wavell out of touch with the situation on the ground, as offensive action was virtually impossible for the poorly prepared British Indian Army; to some extent, Latimer sneers at what he considers Wavell's foolish refusal to organize a more effective retreat. But the British Indian Army was a totally different force that that on the shores up North Africa, whatever the similarities on paper. Both commands featured imperial forces of mixed ethnicity. Both were motorized. The language barriers might be the same, and pose similar problems of command, but the appropriateness of the training, equipment, and logistics for the particular environment differed completely. AJP Taylor suggested in Warlords that Churchill's sacking of commanders helped spur action and relieve exhaustion. True. But Churchill's action also inspired massive confusion. 

A quote from Wavell: "It is lack of this knowledge of the principles and practice of military movement and administration--the 'logistics' of war, some people call it--which puts what we call amateur strategists wrong, not the principles of strategy themselves, which can be apprehended in a very short time by any reasonable intelligence." (121 in Latimer; also in Wavell's 'The Good Soldier).

"The Japanese did not penetrate as far as Tamu, even with patrols ... In reality no more than a village, it was strewn with hundreds of abandoned vehicles ... filled with grisly emaciated figures who had reached the village after the monsoon had broken" (121).

"Japanese victory was devastatingly complete: British prestige had suffered another hammer blow, discrediting their concept of protecting, civilizing and supervising in Asia" (121).

"[Wavell] was experiencing difficulties with Stilwell, who planned operations without reference to Wavell, 'and I think, without much reference to his staff here who seem to know little ... His senior staff officers here gives me the impression of being overawed by Stilwell and afraid of representing the true administrative picture.' Wavell felt he was effectively communicating with Stilwell through Washington. Certainly Stilwell never showed any interest in administration or logistics, realities that constantly exercised Wavell's mind ..." (131).

"... Orde Charles Wingate's character was a blend of mysticism, passion and complete self-confidence tinged with darkest depression; he was obsessive rude and overbearing. But as things stood, the scheme proposed by this 'broad-shouldered, uncouth, almost simian officer', as Major Bernard Fergusson noted, offered the only prospect of action. In 1946 Fergusson wrote: 'Wingate would do any evil that good might come. He saw his object very clearly in front of him, and to achieve it he would spare no friend or enemy; he would lie; he would intrigue; he would bully, cajole and deceive. He was a hell of a great man and few people liked him.'" (Latimer 155-156; Fergusson, Beyond the Chindwin, pp.20-21). 

"It was Burma's misfortune to have been used as a base for the Japanese 'March on Delhi' and to have suffered from concentrated Allied air attacks against railways and other transportation facilities from 1943 onwards. All the cities along the main north-south axis suffered partial demolition, and the countryside was strewn with ordnance left by both sides ... the Burmese who sought to lead their country to the sunny uplands of Independence found they had to take over a ruined country" (431).

Sometimes Latimer's historical opinion lacks a clear perspective. When writing about allied victories at Mandalay and Meiktila, for example, he notes that the Japanese defenders "had orders to resist to the last--orders that were largely futile since, as Kimura admitted later, 'the only reason it was held at all was for its prestige value'" (392). In what sense is prestige ever futile? He seems to imply 'prestige' lacks strategic value. But it seems to me that prestige is a fundamental spur to war-like action. His writing seems strange, or possibly meaningless in the wider context of the Burma campaign. 

David Rooney, Wingate and the Chindits: Redressing the Balance. Arms and Armour Press, 1994.

Orde Wingate served in the British military as a determined battlefield commander, but he found himself drawn to the uneven virtues of his Old Testament heroes: David and Saul, Job and Moses. He lived a life close to the earth. He chose tactics and strategies that ensured his own body would drip sweat and blood—along with those of his men. Despite the unequivocal support of Winston Churchill, Wingate remains one of the most controversial generals of the Second World War, and David Rooney directs his squarely at the center of Wingate’s historical reputation.

Rooney argues that Wingate’s memory suffered a posthumous attack from jealous officers in the Indian Army. The chief offender, Major-General Stanley Woodburn Kirby, wrote the Official History of the war against Japan, shaped Field Marshal Slim’s autobiography, and marked and altered Christopher Sykes’ biography of Wingate; in brief, he held exceptional influence and dramatically effected the memory of Wingate’s strategic and tactical prowess, as well as his psychological fitness. Rooney aims to correct the record, and show that a smear campaign did in fact take place.

Rooney’s book begins with a conventional biography of Wingate. The story opens with the trauma of Wingate's birth in India, which very nearly killed his mother when she suffered a dangerous hemorrhage. She recovered, and they moved to England. Wingate’s family belonged to the Plymouth Brethren, where he and his brothers and sisters received love and encouragement from their parents even as the Bible threatened them with eternal damnation. 

Wingate attended Charterhouse as a young man, and later the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. Rooney then passes through the many distinct phases of Wingate’s life, and usually agrees with Christopher Sykes and other Wingate biographers in his interpretations. As a young officer, Wingate's first loves were hunting, horses, and brashness. He loaned money freely, especially to his own soldiers. He developed his best male friendship to David Tulloch, who later served under him in the Chindits in Burma. Wingate dragged one young woman, Peggy Jolly, through a multi-year engagement, before bashfully abandoning her to marry a much younger woman. With the help of family connections, he escaped the doldrums of artillery camp life through a course in Arabic and a trip to Sudan. There he gained valuable leadership experience directing patrols against poachers.

Wingate eventually posted to Palestine as an intelligence officer, and this is where his life accelerated into violence at a drastic pace. Upon reaching Palestine in 1936, he found the country in the midst of an Arab revolt against British governance and Jewish settlements. Unlike the British establishment, his sympathies stood with the Jews, rather than the Arabs. He began actively campaigning for the Zionist cause. With the support of General Archibald Wavell he formed tactical units known as Special Night Squads to protect Jewish settlements. The Special Night Squads consisted of British officers, British non-commissioned officers, and Jewish soldiers. They met with some success, at least tactically, and represented one of the first serious uses of force on the part of Jewish settlers. He proved an outstanding battlefield leader.

“You have a lot to learn,” Wingate told his soldiers, “and a lot to forget, but I shall give you a basis for your study of the art of war. Do not take notes—just listen and digest. Great soldiers are serious, diligent and of outstanding moral character. In war personal qualities are the most important—a coarse and savage man makes a bad soldier.”

Wingate stressed surprise, economy of force, and security as the principles of SNS warfare—in fact, he would insist on these three elements throughout his remaining campaigns. Of course, nearly all battlefield commanders say something to similar effect. But Wingate met his principles with a disciplined set of operating procedures that personally showed his men how to conduct such warfare with modern weapons. He loved the details of map-reading and the employment of machine guns, but he could also step back and offer an appreciation of the wider strategic picture.

From there on out, a short-lived pattern emerged: Wavell posted to a new assignment, and tasked Wingate with finding a way to take the fight to the enemy. Shortly after deploying Wingate, Wavell would find himself reassigned, and Wingate’s support from GHQ would slowly evaporate.

As the Second World War began to grip the world, Wingate aggressively took the fight to the enemy during a time when the much of the world found itself back on its heels. He possessed uncanny powers of imagination that allowed him to see the enemy’s blind spots, as well as Britain’s own untested strengths. He did so with the SNS in Palestine, and then Gideon Force in Ethiopia.

His most famous battles came with the units he formed in India and took into the jungles of Burma—the “Chindits.” After his first Chindit campaign, his fame exploded and Churchill took Wingate to Quebec to meet the American military leaders as an example of a British officer eager to fight the Japanese. The Americans (at least in Quebec) loved Wingate, and offered him tremendous support via aircraft; the Americans also formed a unit later known as ‘Merrill’s Marauders’ as their own version of Wingate’s “long range penetration” columns.

Wingate returned to Burma and led an expanded Chindit force back into the jungles. The forces at his disposal reached their height—he began executing the largest Allied airborne operation prior to D-Day, and disrupted Japanese operations throughout the area.

His battlefield opportunities as a commander, however, met with a sudden end. Travelling back and forth over the jungles of Burma, his transport aircraft crashed into a mountainside. The impact killed all aboard. Command of Wingate's Chindit forces fell into the hands of detractors and ineffective military leaders; many died in the subsequent battles. Time and again, outsiders such as General Joseph Stillwell ordered the Chindits into battlefield actions that defied Wingate’s strict procedures of engagement, which he designed to minimize exposure and maximize concentration of firepower. Curiously, Wingate’s best friend, Brigadier Tulloch, foolishly recommended one General Lentaigne as Wingate’s successor. Lentaigne despised Chindit tactics. Morale plummeted as Lentaigne repeatedly denigrated the Chindit approach and grew ‘windy’ to the tempestuous orders that inevitably fall from above during any battle.

While the bulk of Rooney’s book simply recounts the story of Wingate’s biography, his critical contribution manifests itself at the end of the book, as he shows the influence Kirby had on British history. For Rooney, Kirby stands as the most obvious example of jealousy within British forces for the fame and success of Orde Wingate, a man who rose in ranks from captain to major general in less than eight years. Kirby and the Indian army military establishment accused Wingate of forming a ‘private army.’ Kirby also discounted Wingate’s strategic and tactical innovations, and undermined his reputation through a series of sleight-of-hand psychological portrayals of Wingate as a madman and loose cannon, a man with poor grip on strategic possibility. Rooney shows that Kirby’s version of Wingate appears not only in the official history, but also in General Slim’s autobiography, and—most importantly—in the Christopher Sykes biography of Orde Wingate, perhaps the most thorough and detailed record of Wingate’s life. If Rooney is right, then Sykes’ biography—which appears objective at first glance—actually misleads. Rooney found, among other items of evidence, record of Sykes thanking Kirby for his careful reading of a draft of the Wingate biography, and his numerous corrections.

Rooney won the match with Kirby. Wingate was not a loose cannon. He worked hard to work with others, though not to get along well or be liked. It remains a little less clear if Wingate had quite the positive impact on modern strategy that his supporters insist upon. Rooney notes that Wingate’s strategies served as forerunners to the strategies used extensively in Vietnam. Vietnam, of course, was no more successful than the Chindit campaigns. Wingate's strategies also make an appearance in the modern firebases in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet again, one cannot call these operations victories without outrageous equivocation. Such operations work best when used in conjunction with standard, sweeping campaigns of organized political violence designed to uproot and annihilate opposing political positions by any means necessary, but that’s not what happened in Burma (not while Wingate lived), and did not happen in Vietnam nor Iraq nor Afghanistan. In each case, scattered patrols supported with air power and good logistics failed to destroy the political opposition. I am not arguing that Wingate anticipated any of these campaigns—he kept his eyes on the battle in front of him, so much so that he did not have a plan ready in case of his own death, much less any serious shift in the strategic outlook in Burma (or world politics). I argue that Wingate introduced tactics that seem effective only within a hopeless strategic environment. His methods buy time, and bring out courage and willfulness in the troops involved. But clear political victory must remain elusive without stronger methods involving greater material resources. Wingate’s tactics tempt political leaders into initiating conflicts they lack the strategic vision to win.

Hence it is possible that Wingate was a good commander, and yet that his military innovations did not actually contribute to winning any war. Wingate’s battlefield maneuvers, however, represent an instance of aggressive action at the height of British difficulties in the Middle East and Far East. Churchill was not mistaken about that, and that is why Churchill found Wingate such an attractive figure, one worth taking to Quebec and granting personal support. If an interesting brand of madness effected Wingate’s mind, it did not lessen the psychological usefulness of Wingate’s actions. Men and material (and mostly material) win wars, but human beings need leaders with confidence and verve who possess the guts to say that victory remains possible. Courage invents confidence, and confidence begets courage; the two characteristics loop together among the minds of the many.

Rooney’s book provides a welcome correction to the history of Orde Wingate. Rooney’s most important contribution probably rests in showing the extent of the smear campaign that discredits Wingate as a human being and effective leader. It represents a tragedy of written record that such distortions influenced the Sykes’ biography of Orde Wingate. (Even with the distortions, Sykes' biography probably remains the best available). Wingate stands as one of the most interesting soldiers of the Second World War, one who died in action for his country and earned the respect of both his commanders and his men. He deserved better than he got.