Fire in the Night: Wingate of Burma, Ethiopia, and Zion [Hardcover]

John Bierman (Author), Colin Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 28, 1999

Winston Churchill thought he was a military genius; others considered him greatly overrated; a few even thought him mad. Almost sixty years after his death at age forty-four in an airplane crash, Orde Wingate remains perhaps the most controversial of all World War II commanders.

        Born into a fundamentalist Christian sect and raised in the Cromwellian tradition of Sword and Bible, Wingate was an odd mixture of religious mystic and idealist, combining an unshakable belief in an Old Testament God with an insatiable interest in music, literature, history, philosophy, and the politics of his day.

        But his overriding and enduring passion was for Zionism, a cause that--although he had no Jewish blood--he embraced when posted to British-ruled Palestine in 1936. There he raised the Special Night Squads, an irregular force that decimated Arab rebel bands and taught a future generation of Israeli generals how to fight.

        In 1941, Wingate led another guerrilla-style force, this time into Italian-occupied Ethiopia, where he was instrumental in restoring Emperor Haile Selassie to his throne. But the campaign that was to bring him world fame was conducted behind enemy lines in Burma, where his Chindits shattered the myth of Japanese invincibility in jungle fighting, giving Allied morale a much-needed boost at a crucial point in World War II.

        Throughout his career, Wingate's unconventionality and disdain for the superiors he dismissed as "military apes" marked him as a difficult if not impossible subordinate. He was that, but also, as this vigorous new study reveals, an inspiring leader.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Few men have made as outstanding contributions to their country's cause as Orde Wingate, yet few have divided opinion so completely. "We don't want any more Wingates in the British Army," says an Army Council minute written after the end of the Second World War, and after his death. In contrast, no less than Winston Churchill himself said, before the House of Commons, "There was a man of genius, who might well have become a man of destiny."

John Bierman and Colin Smith's enlightening and rigorous biography of this brilliant man amply demonstrates how the conservative establishment of the British Army could come to adopt such an ungracious attitude to one of their most dynamic sons, who contributed so much to the war effort with dazzling performances in Abyssinia and Burma, and so much to future strategic thinking with his bold formulation of new methods. He ruffled feathers with his uncompromising style, unconventional thinking, and eccentric nature (perhaps most memorably expressed in his unaffected penchant for receiving visitors in the nude). Together with an acute intelligence and great breadth of learning, Wingate was a man possessed of awe-inspiring will and single-minded application, and he was often seen flying into a rage when things were not done as he thought they should be. Many, regardless of rank, felt the lash of his tongue. His almost fanatical commitment to the cause of Zionism, a highly sensitive and ambivalent political hot potato for the British at the time, seems also to have rankled many who simply could not understand a man so unlike the typical public-school-educated officer. Although not Jewish himself, to this day he is widely honored in Israel. Zvi Brenner, his Jewish bodyguard in Palestine before the war when he was commanding the Special Night Squads, elegantly encapsulated the man when, in describing Wingate's uncanny ability to negotiate all terrain in darkness, he said, "Wingate didn't follow any paths but walked in straight lines." A truly exceptional man; there is, unfortunately, little chance of the British Army's having any more Wingates. --Alisdair Bowles, Amazon.co.uk

From Publishers Weekly

The English General Orde Wingate is the only foreign officer to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. He is revered in Israel. In his native U.K., there are still those who resent him. Bierman (Righteous Gentile, a biography of Raoul Wallenberg) and Smith (Carlos: Portrait of a Terrorist) sympathetically portray Wingate's eccentric and combative personality and his equally remarkable, although short, career at arms. There is a distinctly Lawrence of Arabia flavor to Wingate's story. He fetches up in impossibly remote corners of the world, rallies a poorly armed but elusive force and attacks the enemy behind their own lines. This pattern was established in the Sudan, recurred in Palestine and Abyssinia and finally in Burma, where Wingate fought the Japanese until his death in a plane crash in March 1943. The Wingate summoned up in this book was hard on his men, harder on himself and hardest of all on his superiors. He emerges as arrogant, bitterly resentful of anyone who dared advance contrary ideas or question his monopolizing of scarce resources. Wingate's detractors are given their say, as are those who revered him, including Chaim Weizmann and Winston Churchill, whose patronage made Wingate's career possible. The authors obviously admire Wingate's accomplishments, especially his role in prewar Palestine, where, as an ardent Zionist, he instilled professionalism in what would become the Israeli army. With balanced judgment and a sharp eye for revealing details, Bierman and Smith bring a neglected warrior back to life. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (December 28, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375500618
• ISBN-13: 978-0375500619
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,126,241 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One good read begets two, June 28, 2002

By 

Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Fire in the Night: Wingate of Burma, Ethiopia, and Zion (Hardcover)

Some time ago, I read QUARTERED SAFE OUT HERE, the wartime memoirs of George MacDonald Fraser concerning the time he spent in the Other Ranks of the British imperial army that recaptured Burma from the Japanese in World War II. In his book, Fraser mentions the high regard the troops had for the army commander, William Slim. I subsequently read DEFEAT INTO VICTORY by Field-Marshal Viscount Slim, a personal account by the man who commanded the Fourteenth Indian Army during its bitter retreat from, and its glorious return march through, Burma. In his volume, Slim mentions the unorthodox British general Orde Wingate's contributions to the Japanese defeat in Southeast Asia. Thus, FIRE IN THE NIGHT, Wingate's biography.

Co-authored by John Bierman and Colin Smith, FIRE IN THE NIGHT is the immensely readable life story of an incredibly complex man. In a nutshell, after several brief chapters on Wingate's early life, the narrative sequentially covers his postings in Palestine, Ethiopia and, finally, India/Burma, during which time (1936-1944) he rose in rank from Lieutenant to Major General. In the British Mandate of Palestine, Orde became an ardent Zionist while fighting Arab "gangs" with Special Night Squads, the armed detachments of British regulars and Jews which he himself brought into being. In Ethiopia, his was a key role in the British victorious military effort to drive the Italians from the country and return Haile Selassie to the thrown. In India, Wingate's ultimate triumph before an untimely death was to conceive, form, train and deploy the Third Indian Division, the "Chindits", as a Special Force to insert behind Japanese lines in Northern Burma to destroy the enemy's means of communication and supply.

To my mind, the strength of this book is that it gives the reader an excellent overview of Wingate the man and soldier without getting bogged down in an overabundance of detail. Certainly, the subject of Wingate's character, obsessions and eccentricities could fill volumes. He was admired and loved by the men he literally led into battle. (He drove them hard, but he drove himself even harder.) Conversely, he was loathed by many of his officer peers and superiors for his arrogance, outspokenness, rudeness and personal slovenliness. (He was on record as calling some of his more Blimpish superiors "military apes".) But, he also had his admirers in high places, most notably Winston Churchill and Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Supreme Commander of all allied forces in Southeast Asia.

Perhaps the most endearing of Wingate's traits were his eccentricities. For example, he carried a wind-up alarm clock on his person because he considered watches unreliable. And then there was his attitude to personal nudity best illustrated by an incident during the wide press acclaim following his first Chindit campaign. An Australian correspondent invited to the general's hotel room in Delhi wrote:

"I found him sitting naked on his bed, eyes buried deep in a book. He hardly glanced up as I entered and rather gruffly asked what I wanted. ... He wasn't interested in me or my requirements, but seemed most excited about the book he was reading ... a critical commentary of Emily Bronte and her work."

Can you imagine those media hogs of the Second World War - Patton, Montgomery and MacArthur - doing that?

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars NOT THE STANDARD WARRIOR GENTLEMAN, March 17, 2004

By 

R. J Szasz "Rod Szasz" (Tokyo, Japan Japan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fire in the Night: Wingate of Burma, Ethiopia, and Zion (Hardcover)

Having been brought up on stories from my early years about the brave and often forgotten exploits of the Chindits I was very enthused to tuck into this book. Orde Wingate has been the hero of many, not so much because he was a military successful warrior, but because he was wildly unconventional at a time when staid ethics and methods of war were leading to defeats of the western allies on all fronts.

A fierce Old Testament fear and learning of the bible bread in what would now be called a fundementalist christian family, he blended this with [...] eccentricities like, indifference to appearing nude before his collegues and newspapermen, a complete indifference to British Monarchy and the hierarchical class-bound society and way of thinking. An appreciator of new ideas and probably quite to the left of many of his superiors, he had no hestation in punishing and physically striking his recruits (no matter their colour), and could kill the enemy mercilessly, or order large groups knowingly to their death without a blink.

Wingate pioneered unconventional warfare with his notion that large unit groups can function in the rear of the enemy for long periods of time if they were self-sufficient and well trained. He eschewed the entire idea of "special forces" as they are often called nowadays. In the end I do not think that he squared the circle large unit action and special forces --- he wanted both and got really neither. His tactics worked rather well against the Italians (but that was no surprise he realised), but they were problematic against the Japanese. The first operation, "Long Cloth" was an unmitigated disaster, with enough adventures from its many participants to fill an entire library (they still make some of the most heart thumping reads available). The entire operation broke down and became in some cases, every man for himself. Wingate himself giving the order.

His second operation was more problematic. No doubt these operations had significant effect on the enemy and no doubt were very helpful in the taking of Myikyena and Mogang, but I really think that 14th Army would have rolled up the Japanese flank nicely anyway, as they did and win the Battle of Burma with overwhelming firepower and troops as well unmitigated air superiority.

In the end the Japanese in Burma were beaten by traditional large unit engagements.

That is not a defeat of the ideas of Orde Wingate, nor do they negate the incredible bravery of the men who served with him. What it does DO however is to put to rest the idea that Orde Wingate was a purveyor of "Truth" -- his ideas were worthy, but they were not the be-all end-all of jungle combat. His developments were prodigeous and his personal bravery never in doubt. But I think that, like Moses, he got involved too much in fanatical devotion to one idea and was willing to sacrifice a lot for an idea. In the case of Moses, his people --- in the case of Wingate, it was often his own troops.

This books admirably chronicles the multifacted nature of Wingate. It is factual and comes across as neutral as possible, often citing critical sources and those men (also of incredible courage) that did not fall under his spell.

The narrative is tight and WELL EDITED. Unlike your regular 1000 page biography Smith and Beirman are able to deal with the subject adequately in 400 pages with nothing substantive missing. Also there is just enough detail of almost all of his life. The final 150 pages deals with the Burma campaign the authors are very skillful in their use of detail. They include all of the crucial elements necessary of his many campaigns.

I found the book to be a very admirable read. I think that it only deepened the questions I have about Wingate --- was he a daring experimenter or a madman? --- I think that one can add, bitterly-troubled person to the heap of other appelations surrounding this man.

I still ask myself, if this man were my commander would I succumb and become a convert? Would I stand aloof and protest that something is terribly wrong? I do not know, and cannot judge because I was not born at the time these events transpired. I was not a part of this great crusade, the glory they gained or the horrors they endured.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Objective Treatise on Wingate, Man and General, October 30, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Fire in the Night: Wingate of Burma, Ethiopia, and Zion (Hardcover)

Orde Wingate was a man of extremes and those whose lives he touched either loved him or hated him. Books written about him have largely reflected this, usually taking one side or the other. At last, here is a book that allows readers to decide for themselves in a brilliant, thoroughly researched work, that presents all the extreme facets of General Wingate. It is well argued, with its conclusions backed by documented evidence, and beautifully written in a fashion that makes it appealing to read as a book, rather than just a reference.

From Wingate's early days at Harrow and the beginning of his military career, the reader follows his personal battles with himself and with others. The reader is launched after Wingate as he finds his feet in Palestine in with little regard for convention, either social or military. His first forays in to guerilla warfare, both successful and not, are embellished with personal evidence from credible historical witnesses. His subsequent banishment from Palestine, following policital dabbling above his station, is described, backed by his utter conviction about Zionism that was to colour the rest of his career.

The reader is then invited to rejoin the fray with Wingate as he develops his guerilla techniques, restoring Haile Selassie to his Ethiopian throne. Throughout, the impression of Wingate as a inspirational leader who was a thorn in the side of his superiors in re-inforced.

The final chapter in Wingate's life begins with an unexpected and unwelcome posting to Burma at Wavell's behest to harry to Japanese as they over-run Burma in a bid to drive the British from India. Spendid, accounts of Wingate's audacious cultivation of senior figures, including Churchill and Mountbatten, lie alongside his uncanny ability to forge enemies as he bullies and cajoles the system in to supporting his Chindit operations.

The demise of the Chindits after Wingate's untimely death and subsequent attempts to besmirch him, his techniques and achievements, form the epilogue of this outstanding book.