J.M. MEYER, PH.D.
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book review: Orde Wingate by Christopher Sykes

7/8/2013

2 Comments

 
Christopher Sykes, Orde Wingate: A Biography. The World Publishing Company, 1959.    
         
  In his biography of Orde Wingate (1903-1944), Christopher Sykes recounts the life of one of the great practical and theoretical progenitors of unconventional warfare within the British military. Wingate’s tactical innovations still proliferate military training manuals around the world, but the innovations came at a great cost in men and material—and possibly Wingate’s sanity. His eccentricities bloomed from a feverish compost of aristocratic upbringing and dogmatic Evangelical religiosity. With a brand of pride and whip of faith, he learned "to assert the right of the exceptional man over the beliefs, conventions, hopes, and even the morality of 'the herd.'" Despite his enduring dislike for conventional behavior, Wingate joined the British officer corps, and then spent the rest of his short life fighting against its every tradition. He quickly demonstrated an eccentric degree of originality, including a moment in which he sat naked in the desert sun for hours to conduct "an experiment in endurance, ascertaining the point at which sunstroke might be expected to intervene." His subsequent actions equally astonish. Despite Wingate's taste for the irregular, the chaos of the Second World War allowed Wingate to use his keen intelligence, quick anger, and fierce determination to successfully implement new methods of operating behind enemy lines. Sykes’ biography relates the beginnings of a Zionist army, the restoration of the Ethiopian empire, a knife-point suicide attempt, dinners with Churchill, exhaustive training, and decimating campaigns into the jungles of Burma. His life ended with a mysterious plane crash during the second Chindit expedition, his demise just as inexplicable as his life.

It is one hell of a story. As a veteran of the British special operations, Christopher Sykes’ 1959 biography ably navigates Wingate's boyhood and military life. Yet a few problems arise as well. First, Sykes' Wingate makes an effort to disparage the character and methods of T.E. Lawrence, an unconventional warrior of the previous generation. Given the similarities in the work of Lawrence and Wingate, a close examination of the actual differences in their theories and methods would help delineate each soldier's unique brand of combat operations. Lawrence, for all his troubles, led a virtuous life—one cannot necessarily say the same for Wingate, an impossibly difficult man with few sustained friendships. Wingate stands accused of war-crimes in some circles, as well as ruthlessly spending the lives of his men for minor victories of questionable merit. Furthermore, Sykes' incessant use of weak verbs and the passive voice slow the writing to an awkward trot. And yet, while the amendment of the just mentioned shortcomings would make for a better book, Skyes' work nevertheless compels due to its riveting subject matter and the author's instinct for placing anecdotes within a wider moral and philosophical perspective. The author successfully proves Wingate's ambition, and his unique brand of eccentricity that Churchill called "genius." "This is a moment to live in history," Wingate tells us. "It is an enterprise in which every man who takes part may feel proud one day to say I WAS THERE."

***

PUZZLES

I originally wrote this review a few months ago, and I want to flesh out a few of my concerns regarding Orde Wingate and T.E. Lawrence. Have you ever looked in the mirror, and wished that you were a little leaner, stronger, or tougher? Perhaps a touch more beautiful, or more distinct looking? Or maybe less dependent on others, or more friendly to other people. We all search for a better version of ourselves. We can also project a part of ourselves onto other figures, and so when we critique the other we really critique ourselves. Did Wingate do this Lawrence? Did he see someone like himself, and so reject the 'other' even as he attempted to sculpt his own persona? Perhaps, but such "construct building" obscures the underlying mechanisms that operate on more familiar ground. 

Why did Orde Wingate denigrate the work of T. E. Lawrence, rather than argue Lawrence as a successful model for conducting insurgency operations? In the latter approach, Wingate could go to his superiors, point to the success of Lawrence, and then draw resources towards a successful approach. When reading Sykes' account, the opposite occurred. Wingate denigrated the methods of Lawrence as wasteful and ineffective. Denigration occurs in every day 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. "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 status. Other possibilities include 1) Strategy. 2) Jealousy over Rex Wingate’s knowledge and/or affinity of/for Lawrence. 3) Status. 4) Everyone always talking about that damned Lawrence. Or some combination thereof.  I wonder if Cousin Rex, Orde’s relation and supporter, actually disliked (or was jealous of) both Allenby and Lawrence, and if his opinions influenced Orde. I travel to London in a couple of weeks, and hope to sort some of this out. 

2 Comments
Philip Danks
5/21/2015 08:05:49 pm

Following on from your trip to London, do you have further insights into What might have been the reason(s) for Wingate's disparagement of Lawrence's guerrilla tactics during the Arab Revolt?

Reply
John M. Meyer
10/16/2015 03:45:45 pm

Hi Philip. Thank you for the question. I will be writing more about Wingate's disparagement of Lawrence in my dissertation, but I can offer an answer here.

While I still think concerns about 'status' provide the best explanation of Wingate's vehemence towards Lawrence, further investigation suggests that Wingate truly disapproved of Lawrence's methods, and Lawrence's orientation towards violence and war.
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).

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 he 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.
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 correctly assess Lawrence's motives for war. And he 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.

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    J. M. Meyer is a playwright and social scientist studying at the University of Texas at Austin.

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