Major General Orde Wingate: the Chindits and Burma

Major-General Orde Charles Wingate made his name as an advocate of operations behind enemy lines. In Burma, he led the Chindits on long-range missions that carried British and Indian troops deep into Japanese-held territory. Their campaigns demonstrated the possibilities of air-supplied forces operating in the jungle, but also exposed the strain, sickness and losses such operations could bring. Wingate’s career began well before the Chindits, and his methods—in Palestine as well as in Burma—remain part of a contested history.

From Woolwich to the Sudan

Wingate was born on 26 February 1903 at Naini Tal, in British India, into a military family. His father was a committed member of the Plymouth Brethren, and the children’s upbringing included regular Christian study. The family moved to England, where Wingate attended Charterhouse as a day boy. In 1921 he entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich and, after training, received a Royal Artillery commission in 1923.

His early service took him to Salisbury Plain and, after studying Arabic, to the Sudan. There he served with the Sudan Defence Force from 1928, patrolling the borderlands with Ethiopia. Rather than rely only on regular patrols, he adopted ambushes. In 1933 he led an expedition into the Libyan Desert, searching for the lost oasis of Zerzura and testing his party’s endurance in difficult conditions. He returned to Britain later that year.

Palestine: tactics and controversy

In 1936, Wingate was posted to Mandatory Palestine as an intelligence officer. He supported the establishment of a Jewish state and worked with Jewish political leaders. In 1938, with permission from the British commander, he formed the Special Night Squads, made up of British and Haganah volunteers. Their purpose was to counter attacks on the Iraq Petroleum Company pipeline and the communities around it.

The squads’ operations included ambushes and raids on villages thought to be bases for attackers. Wingate’s methods were not simply forceful or unconventional: accounts describe collective punishment and violence against villagers, including people not involved in attacks. His superiors criticised these methods. His deep political commitment to Zionism, and public advocacy for a Jewish state, also led his superiors to regard him as compromised in his intelligence role. He was transferred to Britain in 1939. The experience helped shape his approach to small-unit operations, but it cannot be reduced to a story of tactical innovation without acknowledging its human cost.

Gideon Force in Ethiopia

At the start of the Second World War, Wingate was serving in Britain. His former superior Archibald Wavell later brought him to Sudan, where he helped create Gideon Force, a small force of British, Sudanese and Ethiopian troops. It worked with local resistance fighters against Italian forces occupying Ethiopia. Wingate led from the front as the force harassed Italian forts and supply routes, while larger regular units fought the main campaign.

Gideon Force played a part in the campaign that restored Emperor Haile Selassie to Addis Ababa in 1941. Wingate was mentioned in despatches and received a bar to his Distinguished Service Order. His command ended with the campaign. Frustrated by the treatment of his men and by what he saw as the authorities’ failure to support Ethiopian independence, he wrote a sharply critical report. He later returned to Britain before taking up a post in the Far East.

The Chindits and the first Burma expedition

Wingate reached the Far East in 1942, after the rapid Allied retreat from Burma had disrupted plans for operations there. Wavell gave him the 77th Indian Infantry Brigade to develop as a long-range penetration force. The brigade became known as the Chindits, from chinthe, a Burmese mythical lion. The plan was to move behind Japanese lines, establish contact by radio and receive supplies by air, while disrupting enemy activity.

Operation Longcloth began in February 1943. The Chindits crossed the Chindwin River in separate columns and damaged a railway before pushing farther into Burma. The terrain and conditions proved more difficult than anticipated. The force faced shortages of water and food, exhaustion and Japanese pressure; supply drops could be intercepted, and the Japanese used roads to move against the columns. Ordered to withdraw, the Chindits broke into smaller groups and returned to India by different routes. They lost approximately a third of their strength.

The operation’s value was disputed. It had shown that a force could penetrate the jungle and disrupted Japanese plans, but its losses raised questions about whether the results justified the cost. It also appears to have influenced Japanese thinking: the possibility of moving through the frontier jungle contributed to plans for an offensive into India. The Chindits were praised in Britain after a series of Allied setbacks, and Wingate’s arguments for a larger operation attracted support. That approval did not settle the debate over their military effectiveness.

Operation Thursday and Wingate’s death

Wingate presented his ideas to Allied leaders in 1943 and was promoted to acting major-general. For the next expedition, gliders offered a way to land troops and equipment behind Japanese lines. Operation Thursday began in March 1944. The plan used gliders to establish landing grounds, followed by the airlift of troops and supplies. After the intended site at Piccadilly was found obstructed by logs, the force used Broadway instead. The initial landings were difficult, but the Chindits established bases from which they could conduct patrols and block Japanese movements.

The operation coincided with Japan’s invasion of India. Chindit columns disrupted the Japanese advance and diverted troops, but the wider value of their operations remains contested. Field Marshal William Slim argued that special forces could draw strong troops away from the main army to harmful effect. Other accounts, including a later statement by Japanese commander Mutaguchi Renya, credited the Chindits with diverting forces that might otherwise have strengthened the fighting around Kohima. Those competing assessments are part of the campaign’s record, not a settled verdict on Wingate’s methods.

On 24 March 1944, Wingate was returning from a visit to Chindit bases when his aircraft crashed in the hills of what is now Manipur, India. He and the other passengers were killed. His remains were later reinterred with those of the other crash victims at Arlington National Cemetery in the United States.

Memory, influence and argument

Wingate’s reputation has never rested on one uncontested account. Admirers have emphasised his courage, persistence and willingness to test new approaches; critics have questioned his judgement, the cost of the campaigns and his treatment of people in Palestine. The Chindit operations were variously judged as costly failures, useful diversions or a combination of both. Their effects should be assessed against the campaign circumstances rather than treated as proof that one method of warfare had been conclusively vindicated.

His name was commemorated in Britain on a memorial to Wingate and the Chindits on Victoria Embankment in London. Tributes also appeared elsewhere, reflecting his different roles in the history of the Second World War and in the Zionist cause. Those commemorations sit alongside sharply different interpretations of his actions. Remembering Wingate therefore means considering both the military experiment associated with his name and the violence and controversy that accompanied his career.

Why Orde Wingate deserves a place in British Legacy

Wingate’s place in British Legacy lies in the significance and complexity of the military ideas he put into practice. In Burma, the Chindits tested whether troops could be supplied from the air and operate for extended periods beyond conventional front lines. Operation Longcloth exposed severe practical limits: sickness, hunger, difficult terrain and heavy losses. Operation Thursday used gliders to establish bases behind Japanese lines, while the Japanese invasion of India gave the Chindits opportunities to disrupt enemy movements. The military value of these operations remains disputed, but their history offers a concrete account of how British and Indian forces experimented with new ways to fight in the Second World War.

His record also deserves careful treatment because it extends beyond Burma. In Ethiopia, Gideon Force worked with local resistance against Italian occupation; in Palestine, Wingate’s counter-insurgency methods involved violence against Arab civilians and drew criticism from his own superiors. These are not incidental details to be hidden behind a portrait of an eccentric innovator. They show the human consequences of his approach and why assessments of his leadership differ so sharply. A British legacy worth preserving need not be a celebration without qualification: Wingate’s career helps readers understand both the ambitions and the costs of irregular warfare, and the enduring difficulty of judging military innovation apart from the people subjected to it.

Sources

Orde Wingate (revision 1379815985)

Adapted in part from Orde Wingate by Wikipedia contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Text has been edited and combined with the existing article; this adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.