World Battlefronts: Wing Loses Beard

One evening Major General Wingate, in command of British troops operating behind the Japanese lines in Burma, had to make a rush visit to his air commando force. A terrific tropical storm was raging at his base airstrip,* but he climbed into a Mitchell B-25 and took off. He did not arrive at his destination.

That night a transport plane noted a blazing fire high in the frontier mountains. Next morning General Wingate’s air officer, Colonel Philip Cochran, U.S.A.A.F., sent out search planes which spotted burned-out wreckage on the mountainside. Last week ground searchers reached the spot and reported that all the occupants of the plane, including Orde Charles Wingate, one of the military geniuses of World War II, were dead.

Thus perished Wingate of the bushy beard, originator, trainer, brains and spark plug of the Burma Raiders. Wingate was one of those talented originals that some alchemy of British culture occasionally produces. Like Clive of India, “Chinese” Gordon, Lawrence of Arabia (a distant cousin), Wingate was an eccentric and an artist in unorthodox military operations.

“The Man.” He ate raw onions between meals, frequently carried an alarm clock dangling from his hand in place of a watch, scrubbed his hide regularly with a stiff tooth brush. He followed Yoga, was a physical fitness fanatic, refused to smoke but enjoyed good food and wine. He read widely—from Plato to comic strips—and remembered everything. He loved music and the Bible, was a serious student of philosophy, strategy, religious history. He knew the Army manuals and the lives of all the great generals by heart. He spoke fluent Arabic and Hebrew. He was a formidable and logical argufier and he loved to bait brass hats. He never suffered fools gladly.

Said Charles J. Rolo in Wingate’s Raiders: “The sword, the Bible and ‘the flair for strange races’ are all a part of Wingate’s heritage.” This strange character was born in the Himalayas—not far from where he died—son of a puritanical Indian Army general. Schooled at Charterhouse and Woolwich Military Academy, too late for World War I, he set out to join his unit in the Sudan by cycling across Europe and the Alps.

Lawrence of. … Wingate made his name in strange operations. Given the job of catching the Arab marauders who in 1937 were regularly cutting the Haifa-Mosul oil line, he mixed Jewish and British patrols, beat the Arabs at their own game of ambush, won the title of “Lawrence of Judea” (which his cousin, who fought for the Arabs, might have resented). In 1941, in the British campaign against the Italians in Ethiopia, Wingate directed a strategy of bluff, propaganda and native revolt. With 1,000 Sudanese and 2,000 Ethiopians, he effectively snarled up some 40,000 Italians, won the title of “Lawrence of Ethiopia.”

When Field Marshal Wavell wanted to harry the Japanese, he remembered Ethiopia, sent for Wingate, made him a Brigadier, gave him a free hand to become the Lawrence of Burma.

First Wingate built his force, partly from tenderfoot Tommies (many drafted from soft jobs back of the line), partly from native troops. He whipped them into a lean, knife-happy fighting force that last year slipped deep into Japanese lines, cut railroads, blew bridges, slipped out again two and a half months later.

Wingate’s axioms: shake a civilized white man out of the narrow trough in which he lives and he can beat the Japanese in jungles. Human beings can store up energy as a camel stores up water. Trained men can keep going for weeks with little food and drink.

Long Voyage. One day last year Wingate was summoned urgently to London. Stepping off the plane, still in his tropical bush shirt, he hurried to Downing Street, to lunch with Churchill. The Prime Minister then had a Scottish express train stopped, the astonished Mrs. Wingate* bundled off, took husband & wife aboard ship to the Quebec Conference.

At Quebec Wingate was a hit with President Roosevelt and General Marshall. By invitation he came to the U.S., visited war factories, ate dehydrated food, sampled weapons and aircraft. What he asked for was shipped ahead. For his air chief, Washington assigned Cochran, who named him “The Man,” instantly liked him. Wingate called him “Dear Phil.” To others the pair was “The Beard and the Wing.”

Back in India Wingate briefed his motley crowd of intellectuals and cutthroats. On March 5 and 6 Wingate struck with his main force (bigger than early dispatches indicated) in a way new to the Japanese. Instead of many weeks hacking through jungle as in the first campaign, the Raiders arrived in hours. “The Wing” and his men seized a field behind the Japanese lines, built an airstrip, flew in the Raiders and their supplies. Wingate praised American cooperation in one of his last interviews: “Without it we’d never have been able to accomplish so much.”

At last week’s end the orphaned Raiders had cut the Burma railway between Myitkyina and Katha, controlled the Irrawaddy river in two places, cutting off the Japs who oppose General Stilwell’s advance down the Mogaung Valley from their bases.

*The Burma frontier has almost never before known such weather at this season of the year. With the monsoon not due for at least a month, high winds and tropical downpours, some of them lasting five days at a time, have pelted the area repeatedly in recent weeks. *Strikingly beautiful Mrs. Wingate, reported to be expecting a child shortly, first saw Wingate at the rail of a liner when she was 15 and he 30, introduced herself by saying, “You’re the man I’m going to marry.” Answered Wingate: “You are right. When?” Two years later she wrote to him: “Now.”