# Looking for Book recommmendation- Wingate in Ethiopia



## jeffb (19 Apr 2012)

Recently I have been reading about Maj General Wingate’s “Chindits” in Burma and I was interested to find out that Wingate also led a successful liberation of Ethiopia despite being severely outnumbered.

I'd like to read more about the Ethiopian campaign but I can't find anything. Does anyone have a book recommendation?


----------



## daftandbarmy (20 Apr 2012)

jeffb said:
			
		

> Recently I have been reading about Maj General Wingate’s “Chindits” in Burma and I was interested to find out that Wingate also led a successful liberation of Ethiopia despite being severely outnumbered.
> 
> I'd like to read more about the Ethiopian campaign but I can't find anything. Does anyone have a book recommendation?



W.E.D Allen: Guerilla War in Africa... if you can find it

http://www.jpress.org.il/Repository/getimage.dll?path=PLS/1944/12/22/7/Img/Pg007_122.png

I like this one:

"After four years Wingate left Charterhouse and in 1921 he was accepted into the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, the Royal Artillery's officers' training school. For committing a minor offence against the rules, a first-year student would be subjected to a ragging ritual named “running”. This ritual consisted of the first-year being stripped and forced to run a gauntlet of senior students, all of whom wielded a knotted towel, which they used to hit the accused on his journey along the line. On reaching the end, the first-year would then be thrown into an icy-cold cistern of water. When it came time for Wingate to run the gauntlet, for allegedly having returned a horse to the stables too late, he walked to the senior student at the head of the gauntlet, stared at him and dared him to strike. The senior refused. Wingate moved to the next senior and did the same; he too refused. In turn, each senior declined to strike; coming to the end of the line, Wingate walked to the cistern and dived straight into the icy-cold water."


----------



## jeffb (21 Apr 2012)

That's an amazing anecdote and thanks for the book recommendation. I'll try and find it.


----------



## Rifleman62 (22 Apr 2012)

http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Night-Wingate-Burma-Ethiopia/dp/0375500618

*Fire in the Night: Wingate of Burma, Ethiopia, and Zion* [Hardcover]
John Bierman (Author), Colin Smith (Author) 

Published in 1999. Approx $25.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/01/16/reviews/000116.16kobakt.html


----------



## Infanteer (22 Apr 2012)

Wingate was definitely a character.  Slim doesn't think his tactics were of much value....


----------



## Edward Campbell (27 May 2012)

Infanteer said:
			
		

> Wingate was definitely a character.  Slim doesn't think his tactics were of much value....




In fairness to both Slim and Wingate, Wingate's _Chindits_ were a sideshow of a sideshow - Burma (Slim) was chronically short of resources and Wingate never had what he felt he needed. Additionally, Slim was almost certainly correct in saying that, when all was said and done, Wingate's division did not produce an Indian division's worth of military outcome; but Wingate, like most special force commanders, was a colourful master of the media and there is no doubt that the (exaggerated?) reports of his successes raised moral (always a useful thing) and the _Chindits_ (probably?) did tie up some Japanese combat forces with unnecessary rear area security tasks.

The costs (resources and lives - often of the "best' men) of _special_ forces are always high and the returns are hard to measure. I think that _raiding_ by Combined Operations and SOE, in both France and Yugoslavia, were worth the high costs, but they employed, relatively, few people. Larger scale _special_ forces have, it seems to me, spottier records.


----------



## AmmoTech90 (27 May 2012)

Gideon Goes to War by Leonard Mosley, written by a friend of Wingate's, but it doesn't pull many punches on how messed up he could be.  Covers the Ethiopia campaign quite well.

http://www.amazon.ca/Gideon-Goes-War-Story-Wingate/dp/B0007DUQO0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338143797&sr=8-1

I first read about him in the Chindit chapter of The Imperial War Museum Book of War Behind Enemy Lines: Special Forces in Action, 1940-45, can't recall if it had anything on Ethopia.

http://www.amazon.ca/Imperial-Museum-Behind-Enemy-Lines/dp/0330367617/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338144254&sr=8-1


----------

