Major General Orde Wingate Reflecting upon Veteran's Day, there existed a British officer, Brigadier General Orde Wingate (Feb. 26, 1903-March 24, 1944), who is relatively unknown considering his exploits exceed anything T.E. Lawrence (Of Arabia) was credited for in M i d d lEastern nation building.

So who was this m a nWingate? Born to an extremely religious Christian family in Naini Tal, India Wingate's father was a British officer and his mother, a missionary. They belonged to a nondenominational "born again" Christian church.

As a youth, Wingate's father was ordered back to England, and it was here where Orde spent many a day reading and memorizing Old Testament Scripture.

In 1916 the once and future warrior enrolled at Charterhouse School as a day boy.

In 1921, Wingate turned 18, and he was accepted into Woolrich, the Royal Military Academy. This was the Royal Artillery's officer training school. In 1923 he became a gunnery officer and began the study of Arabic and Hebrew.

Like T.E. Lawrence, he thumbed his nose at authority and it was indeed a wonder, perhaps a miracle, that Wingate became a successful career officer.

A skilled equestrian, Wingate challenged his instructors to breakneck feats, and often bested those who accepted his unusual tests.

As a Gunnery Officer in 1928, Wingate was given his fist command of 300 men in the Sudan and Ethiopia, policing ivory poachers and slave traders. He immediately changed the old standard of patrolling to ambushing. Poaching and slave trading slowed in his sector of influence.

But it was in 1936 that Wingate was greeted by destiny. As a Captain in Military Intelligence, he was sent to Palestine. At this tumultuous time, the Grand Mufti of

Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Al Husseini, was provoking pogroms against the Jews from atop The Dome of the Rock Mosque in Jerusalem. Husseini was an apostle of Hitler's. He was feted by Der Fuehrer more than once in Berlin.

According to Wingate, most British officers were Anti- Semitic, but he was an ardent Zionist. So it was indeed difficult for him, a junior British officer and a Christian, to gain the confidence of Hagana ( literally-The Defense in Hebrew) leaders. These underground Jews were fighting both the British and the Arabs.

The Hagana, to countless readers were freedom fighters, but to others, terrorists. Irregardless, The Hagana and Irgun were the forerunners to today's Israeli Defense Forces.

Wingate Learned Hebrew and was soon friends with such Zionist leaders as Chaim Weizmann and Moshe Sharett. With the approval and trust of these Jewish leaders, Wingate designed the Special Night Squads, small assault divisions led by his own hand picked Brits and Jewish commandos.

The border Arab villages sheltered the fetayeen, who crossed over to murder Jews, were now having the fight taken to them. Preemptive strikes and night fighting were designed by Wingate. It was noted by Wingate and his men that the Arabs did not like to fight at night. Today The Israeli Defense Forces utilize this man's military strategies. The attacks against the Zionists were stilled for a time.

Moshe Dayan became a soldier under Wingate's command and had only praise and trust for the man soon to be known by the Jewish people as "hayedid" or friend. It was also Wingate's belief that officers must lead from the front, a practice instilled for decades by the Israeli Defense Forces.

Wingate was an eccentric. He could be found in the Negev Desert, naked, reading from the Old Testament and munching on an onion. But it would be safe to say he was not the exhibitionist T.E. Lawrence was. Wingate didn't make such a spectacle of himself.

The British high command became increasingly disturbed with Wingate's Zionist tendencies. He and his wife were accused of being Jews. Their allegiance to king and country smeared. In May of 1939, Wingate was reassigned back to Britain. His passport was stamped ,forbidding him entry to Palestine.

In Bierman and Smith's 1999 biography, FIRE IN THE NIGHT: WINGATE OF BURMA, ETHIOPIA AND ZION, Random House, one anonymous highly placed British Officer stated, "His (Wingate's) rebellious scorn, his arrogance, his paranoid touchiness, his reckless rudeness, his flouting of convention, his personal scruffiness, his leftist ideas, and (dare one suggest it?) his strange obsession with Zionism and the Jews was too much."

But such a gifted officer as Wingate was in demand in September of 1939. He was

to command an anti-aircraft unit against Italian forces in Ethiopia. Wingate then formed the Gideon Force comprised of Ethiopian, Sudanese and British commandos. But they lacked in medical aid, so Lieutenant Colonel Wingate forbidden to enter Palestine, had Israel come to him. He sent for Jewish doctors.

He favored the Jews and had no use for the Arabs. This flew in the face of commonly accepted British Mandate policy.

Leading 2,000 Ethiopian troops, Wingate captured 14,000 Italian soldiers. Always the maverick, Wingate performed this action without proper orders. His Gideon Force was taken from him and Wingate was relegated to the position of Major. But his successes did not go unnoticed and he soon found himself Commander-in-Chief of the South-East Asian Theatre. He was back home in India, but his heart and soul yearned for Palestine.

It was 1941 and Wingate couldn't bear the thought of Rommel's Nazi forces entering Palestine. However, They were defeated in Egypt by General Montgomery's desert forces. But sadly, Wingate would never return to the land and people he fell in deep love with.

In February of '42 Wingate was promoted to Colonel and sent to Burma to fight the Japanese. Here he formed a unit known as the Chindits, named after the mythical Burmese lion. Here he developed a strategy involving fighting far behind enemy lines complete with airstrips. Gliders were often used for stealth purposes. After many successes against the Japanese, Wingate found himself promoted to Brigadier General.

Taking the war to the Japanese in preemptive strikes, not unlike his Palestine campaigns, Wingate boarded a plane with American crew and British journalists

on march 24, 1944. Assessing his Chindit movements, the plane flew into a storm and crashed onto a hillside in Northeast India. All perished.

But it is to the Israelis, in particular, who honor General Wingate. Moshe Dayan, the legendary, eye patched Israeli General said, "he taught us everything we know."

Israel's first prime minister, David Ben Gurion wrote that Wingate would have been Israel's first military chief of staff had he survived WWII. "There was a man of genius who might well have become also a man of destiny" Winston Churchill was quoted as saying.

In Netanya, The Wingate Institute (Machon Wingate), Israel's National Centre for Physical Education and Sport, was named after this righteous gentile.

In Jerusalem, there is a square in the Rehavia neighborhood called The Wingate Square or Kikar Wingate. And there seems to be a street named after Wingate in virtually every Israeli town and city.

Wingate's remains were reinterred to Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia.

It is customary to repatriate combat dead in mass graves to the country of origin

of the majority of soldiers. It was with nine American crew with whom Wingate went down with.

One has to wonder what more Brigadier General Wingate would have accomplished had he lived. This can be said about every fallen war veteran.