Orde Wingate: Irregular Soldier

Orde Wingate: Irregular Soldier by Royle, Trevor. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780297815358.

Like his equally famous kinsman Lawrence of Arabia, Orde Wingate was one of that select handful of military prodigies who influenced the development of modern warfare. His Chindit campaigns in Burma helped to lay the foundations of victory in the Far East. Churchill called him a man of genius who might well have become also a man of destiny. But Wingate died in an aircraft crash in 1944 and the official war historians blackened his reputation by denigrating the achievements of the Chindits. This controversial new biography is based on previously unseen sources including those of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) which Wingate joined in 1940. It traces Wingates development as a soldier and guerrilla leader in Palestine and Ethiopia and shows how his strict religious upbringing had a lasting effect on his military career.