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Bierman, John and, Smith, Colin Fire in the Night. Wingate of Burma, Ethiopia, and Zion.
New York Random House 1999 0375500618 / 9780375500619 Hardcover Good in Good dust jacket
434 pages, [2] pages, 8 plates, cloth, bottom of dust jacket spine frayed otherwise fine. From the dust jacket: "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. " 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. " EDG_170 ; 434 pages
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35.00 USD
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