‘Aharai!’ to Afghanistan:
By Shoshana Bryen, The Times of Israel
A small group gathered Sunday at Arlington National Cemetery to commemorate the life and work of British Maj. Gen. Orde Wingate of blessed memory, who is interred there with the Americans with whom he was flying when his plane crashed in Burma in 1945.
Israel and the Jewish War Veterans led the annual commemoration of Wingate, a passionate Zionist and a believer in Jewish military capability long before it was a proven commodity. But it would be unsurprising to find that CIA Director David Petraeus was a Wingate acolyte. His Iraq surge owes much to Wingate’s style of thinking, and the British general might well have lessons for Afghanistan.
Sent to Palestine by the British government in 1936 to put down an Arab insurgency, Wingate was an egalitarian, responsible for the fact that Israeli soldiers don’t salute. He taught the Jews of the Yishuv, as well as his British soldiers, counterinsurgency tactics to defeat marauders who were attacking villages and British installations including the Baghdad-Haifa oil pipeline. Night operations to keep the insurgents off guard; ambushes rather than fixed defense; and living among the people to engender trust and gather intelligence – these were all part of his textbook. Most important, he gave the Jews what remains the battle cry of the IDF: “aharai!” – after me.
Wingate – and especially “aharai” – was a rebuke to the British military hierarchy that sent young soldiers “over the top” in World War I while their officers remained in the trenches. His love of Zion was a rebuke to the British political hierarchy that was uncomfortable with the Mandate to establish a Jewish State in Palestine.
A master at doing more with less – too few soldiers, weapons and supplies, and never enough time – Wingate established the spirit that makes the IDF and Israel leaders in innovative technology and weapons that he could only have dreamed of. It is hard to imagine his response to the rifle that shoots around corners, or to the missile defense system that distinguishes between those that will hit populated areas and those that will fall harmlessly and takes out the former.
A devout Christian, he used the Bible as a map and history as a guide.
An Arabic and Hebrew speaker, he understood the language and the nature of both his adversaries and his friends. Unfortunately, his British superiors believed they needed Arabs more than Jews, and were not pleased that he encouraged this “Night Squads” to undertake offensive operations.
(Perhaps that explains why, although the program announced the appearance of the British Defense Attaché along with Israeli and American representatives, the British Embassy was a complete no-show. Too bad, the children’s choir sang an enthusiastic “God Save the Queen.”)
Removed unhappily from Palestine in 1939 (according to a witness, his passport was stamped, “The holder of this passport is not allowed to enter Palestine or Trans-Jordan”), Wingate went on to serve his country with distinction, creating the Gideon force in Africa, where fewer than 1,700 men in Ethiopia captured more than 20,000 Italian soldiers. In Asia he created the Chindits, airborne jungle units that fought the Japanese far behind the lines. Winston Churchill eulogized him as “a man of great genius who might well have become a man of destiny.”
Professor Nicholas Kittrie of American University met Wingate in Cairo during the War. At Sunday’s memorial service, he brought Wingate into the present, noting the main points of a recent letter of agreement between the United States and Afghanistan. According to the terms, the Americans will no longer take the lead on night missions and American forces will be increasingly confined to bases, rather than operating among the people. These, said Kittrie, violate Wingate’s prescription for winning a war against insurgents. “And this is,” he said, “a war against an insurgency.”
Quite right.
But Wingate need not be applied directly to America’s current wars to be relevant. It should be enough that his work helped to organize and direct the army of the Yishuv – which became the IDF, a model for citizen-soldiers — and became a friend, a partner and an ally to the United States armed forces.
I will cherish this one.
In Israel, to this day, Wingate is fondly remembered in many circles as ha-Yedid
— the Friend.
“There is only one important book on the subject [of Zionism], the Bible, and I have read it thoroughly.” — Orde Charles Wingate.
Born in India to a Plymouth Brethren family of military background, Wingate believed that the British were descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes, and took it upon himself to learn the Hebrew language.
For Israel, the second-most significant individual of Scots heritage after Balfour, and as much appreciated in his day.
He organized, trained, and coached some 3000 British-authorized Haganah “ghaffirs” (incl Yitzhak Sadeh, Yigal Allon, & a very young Moshe Dayan) for his Special Night Squads (SNS) against Arab rioters & the Grand Mufti’s assassination teams. Get a load of the flavor, the passion, of this fellow:
Wingate was a keen observer, who had noted that
Capt. Wingate’s resourcefulness, his leadership skills, his readiness to lead PERSONALLY & to train personally, as well as his tactical adaptability, particularly his vision of preemption & “active defense”: i.e., counterassault — tracking down & destroying attackers — were frequently recalled by the bear-like & often flamboyant Sadeh, who later became the commander of the Palmach — the permanently mobilized, striking arm of the Haganah [p’lu-GOHT mahkh-AHTZ — “shock platoons”]:
“Eventually we would have done by ourselves what Wingate did, but we would have done it on a smaller scale and without his talent.” [cited in Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, 2nd Revised Edition (Alfred A. Knopf, NY, 1996), p. 216; see also Christopher Sykes, Orde Wingate (London, 1959)]
Wingate was one piece of work; a real character. Had a thing for eating raw onions as a matter of personal discipline (part of his take on asceticism, it seems; hoo-hah!).
“Described by Weizmann as “my favorite madman,” Wingate became, after a few months in Palestine, the most popular British personality since Balfour among Palestinian Jews, a sort of Lawrence of the Hebrews.” [Ahron Bregman, A History of Israel (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2003), p. 29]
Yes, quite. He remained in Palestine for the three years of the Arab rebellion, until in 1939, HMG — under Arab pressure for Wingate’s intense, unashamed, & controversial support of the cause of Jewish restoration — transferred him out of the country.
Upon leaving, he said, b’Ivrit, to his SNS unit & the Haganah leadership:
It was not to be. He would never again set foot on the Land before he died.
When his plane went down over Burma six years later [actually, not “1945,” as stated above, but rather, 1944 — March 24 of that year]
— Wingate, now Major-General Wingate, had just turned 41 years of age the previous month.
The sports institute for Israel is named the Wingate Institute.
I wish I had known about the commemoration at the Arlington Cemetery. The weather was lousy on Sunday, but I would not have missed it.
Wingate was truly an eccentric genius. He was a thorn in the side of his own British military. When in Burma, he would walk around camp in the nude with an alarm clock hanging from his neck. He was deeply devoted to the Zionist cause as a believing Christian.
I doubt that very many American Jews know the importance to Jewish history of this Righteous Gentile. Of course, many American Jews know very little of Jewish history, anyway.
AZA in Toronto in the 50’s had a chapter named “Wingate”. There was also a “Wingate House” for Jewish WW2 veterans just off Bathurst street.
My copy of his biography disappeared into some relative’s library.