Major-General Orde Charles Wingate, DSO and two bars (26 February 1903 – 24 March 1944), was a British Army officer and creator of special military units in Palestine in the 1930s and in World War II.

A highly religious Christian, Wingate became a supporter of Zionism, seeing it as his religious duty to help the Jewish community in Palestine form a Jewish state. Assigned to the British Mandate of Palestine in 1936, he set about training members of the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary organization, which became the Israel Defense Forces with the establishment in 1948 of the state of Israel.

At the outbreak of World War II, Wingate was the commander of an anti-aircraft unit in Britain. He repeatedly made proposals to the army and government for the creation of a Jewish army in Palestine which would rule over the area and its Arab population in the name of the British.

He is most famous for his creation of the Chindits, airborne deep-penetration troops trained to work behind enemy lines in the Far East campaigns against the Japanese during World War II. On Wingate's arrival in March 1942 in the Far East, he was appointed colonel once more by General Wavell, and was ordered to organise guerrilla units to fight behind Japanese lines. However, the precipitous collapse of Allied defenses in Burma forestalled further planning, and Wingate flew back to India in April, where he began to promote his ideas for jungle long-range penetration units.

Intrigued by Wingate's theories, Wavell gave Wingate a brigade of troops, the (Indian 77th Infantry Brigade), from which he created a jungle long-range penetration unit. 77 Brigade was eventually named the Chindits, a corrupted version of the name of a mythical Burmese lion, the chinthe. On 6 March 1944, the new long-range jungle penetration brigades, now collectively referred to as Chindits, began arriving in Burma by glider and parachute, establishing base areas and drop zones behind Japanese lines. By fortunate timing, the Japanese launched an invasion of India around the same time. By forcing several pitched battles along their line of march, the Chindit columns were able to disrupt the Japanese offensive, diverting troops from the battles in India.

On 24 March 1944, Wingate flew to assess the situations in three Chindit-held bases in Burma. On his return, flying from Imphal to Lalaghat, the US B-25 Mitchell plane in which he was flying crashed into jungle-covered hills near Thilon Village (Tamenglong -District), Manipur, in the present-day state of Manipur in northeast India, where he died alongside nine others.

Orde Wingate was originally buried at the site of the air crash in the Naga Hills in 1944. In April 1947 his remains and those of other victims of the crash, were moved to the British Military Cemetery in Imphal, India. In November 1950 all the remains were reinterred at Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, in keeping with the custom of repatriating remains in mass graves to the country of origin of the majority of the soldiers.

A memorial to Orde Wingate and the Chindits stands on the north side of the Victoria Embankment, near Ministry of Defence headquarters in London. The facade commemorates the Chindits and the four men awarded the Victoria Cross. The battalions that took part are listed on the sides, with non-infantry units mentioned by their parent formations. The rear of the monument is dedicated to Orde Wingate, and also mentions his contributions to the state of Israel.

To commemorate Wingate's great assistance to the Zionist cause, Israel's National Centre for Physical Education and Sport, the Wingate Institute (Machon Wingate) was named after him. A square in the Rehavia neighborhood of Jerusalem, Wingate Square (Kikar Wingate), also bears his name, as does the Yemin Orde youth village near Haifa. A Jewish football club formed in London in 1946, Wingate F.C. was also named in his honour.

Wikipedia