Surprised the Italians certainly were in the weeks that followed the start of Gideon Force’s Ethiopian offensive. Finding their remote forts under attack and suffering several ambushes while out on patrol, the Italians began withdrawing. Meanwhile in the south the African divisions advanced almost without resistance, occupying nearly 800 miles of territory in under three weeks.
Wingate continued to press the attacks, leading one assault on the Addis fort on 20 March that ended in hand-to-hand fighting before the Italians surrendered. By April the campaign was all but over, and at the start of May Emperor Haile Selassie entered the capital Addis Ababa to jubilant acclaim.
Hardly had the campaign in Ethiopia run its course than Wingate (who was awarded a Bar to his DSO for his conduct and leadership) was exploring other ideas to attack the enemy. In June 1941 he was in Cairo, as was David Stirling, whose own ideas of Special Forces warfare were being developed from a hospital bed. Wingate drafted his concept for a guerrilla force and presented it to Wavell. A year earlier the commander-in-chief of British forces in the Middle East had authorized Ralph Bagnold to establish the reconnaissance unit that came to be known as the Long Range Desert Group, and any innovative method of striking at the Axis forces would have been welcomed by Wavell. But Wavell was replaced by General Claude Auchinleck in July and so Wingate lost an important ally in MEHQ.
With Wavell gone and no sign of imminent action, Wingate fell into a deep trough of despair, his state of mind worsened by a severe attack of malaria. On 4 July he attempted to kill himself in the exclusive Continental Hotel in Cairo. Fortunately the officer in the adjoining room heard Wingate fall to the floor, and on investigation discovered him lying on the floor with a knife in his throat. Wingate required extensive surgery, and 14 pints of blood, at the General Scottish Hospital (where David Stirling was still a patient following his parachute accident) before he was out of danger.
Nonetheless, suicide attempts were a court-martial offence and though Wingate was not charged for his failure to end his life, he was reduced in rank to a major and shipped back to Britain to recuperate from ‘acute depression’. He was given six months’ leave but by the end of December 1941 Wingate had convinced a War Office medical board to pass him as fit once more for active service.
Delighted with the assessment of his health, Wingate was soon brought back down to earth when on 7 February he received his next posting – to 114 Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, in Wimborne, Dorset. But he did not have long to rage against his superiors, for on 11 February Wingate received a cable from Wavell, now Commander-in-Chief India, instructing him to travel to Rangoon to coordinate guerrilla attacks with the Chinese against Japan.
Those instructions soon changed as the Japanese conquest of south-east Asia continued. Having seized Hong Kong on 25 December 1941, the Japanese Army swept through Malaya and on to Singapore, where the British capitulated on 15 February with the surrender of 130,000 soldiers. Burma, meanwhile, had been invaded in January and the capital, Rangoon, was evacuated by the Allies on 7 March 1942.
Initially Wavell had planned for Wingate to work with the Chinese forces in India (having been prevented from returning to China by the rapid advance of the Japanese) but these soldiers were put under the command of American general Joseph Stilwell. Wingate was diverted instead to India, arriving on 19 March, and was ordered by Wavell to organize a campaign of guerrilla warfare against the Japanese in Burma.
One of the first men Wingate recruited to his nascent force was Major Mike Calvert, a 29-year-old regular army officer who had commanded a Bush Warfare School in Burma prior to the Japanese invasion, where he had taught guerrilla tactics to Allied soldiers. According to a contemporary newspaper report Calvert was ‘a professional wrecker and saboteur, and the look of the artist comes into his eyes when he tells you about the bridges that he has blown … Mad Mike – flattish nose, twinkling eyes, tousled hair.’8
‘Mad Mike’, as Calvert was known to his comrades, had a personality far removed from Wingate’s. Short and stocky, in contrast to the lean, gaunt physique of Wingate, Calvert was a brilliant athlete – he excelled at swimming and boxing – and he was neither religious nor a deep thinker; nonetheless he was a Cambridge graduate and more to the point he was staggeringly brave. On one point he and Wingate were of one mind – they both believed in what Calvert described as ‘unconventional warfare’.
Wingate went to see Calvert at his base in Mayamo in the east of Mandalay. An instant rapport grew between the two men and Wingate outlined what he had in mind – deep penetration patrols into Burma to harass the Japanese. What Wingate needed from Calvert was his expertise on jungle fighting. Wingate had used guerrilla tactics in the Sudan, Palestine and Ethiopia but not in the fearsome terrain of south-east Asia with its mountainous jungles. Few people in the British Army knew the jungle like Calvert, who in the 1930s had served in Hong Kong with the Royal Engineers and witnessed the Japanese attacks on Shanghai and Nanking. Calvert told Wingate what he would later tell the British public in a wartime radio broadcast on the BBC: ‘Burma gives far greater chances for individual initiative and responsibility to junior leaders than in any other theatre of war. A keen young soldier has greater chances there to show his powers than anywhere.’9
Calvert then tackled what he considered a gross misconception, that the jungle was hostile and cruel to all who entered. ‘It frightens some people as a placid ocean is frightening,’ said Calvert,
because it is so large and so deep, but it is not in itself dangerous. It is like being in an aeroplane where, within reason, the higher up you are the safer you are. In the jungle, with a compass and map, there is nothing to fear … the way to behave in the jungle is as the tiger behaves – as king of the jungle. The tiger only creeps and crawls when he is stalking his prey. He is only silent when he wishes to surprise his enemy. At other times he relaxes, well camouflaged, with a wary eye open and with what one may call a battle drill ready for any emergency.10
Calvert took Wingate on a tour of Mayamo, demonstrating some of the techniques he had taught in his Bush Warfare school. He explained to Wingate that the best defence in the jungle is to ‘seek out the enemy and attack him, and thus impose your will on him’. In addition Calvert passed on his thoughts of the average Japanese fighting man, ‘a keen, hard, vigorous soldier, usually well versed in his training pamphlets, but not particularly well blessed with much imagination, common sense or knowledge of the world. This makes him an easy person to lead up the garden path, a pastime which I, for one, thoroughly enjoy’.11
Inspired by his meeting with Calvert, Wingate’s idea for a Special Forces unit to fight the Japanese behind their lines in Burma was committed to paper in a memorandum entitled ‘Notes on Penetration Warfare – Burma Command’. He opened his memo thus:
Modern war is war of penetration in almost all its phases. This may be of two types. Tactical or strategic. Penetration is tactical where armed forces carrying it out are directly supported by the operations of the main armies. It is strategic when no such support is possible. That is when a penetration group is living and operating 100 miles or more in front of its own armies. Of the two types Long Range Penetration pays by far the larger dividends on the forces employed. These forces operating with small columns are able, wherever a friendly population exists, to live and move under the enemies’ ribs and thus to deliver fatal blows at his military organisation by attacking vital objectives which he is unable to defend from such attacks. In the past such warfare has been impossible owing to the fact that control over such columns, indispensable both for their safety and their effectual use, was not possible until the age of the easily portable wireless set. Further the supply of certain indispensable materials such as ammunition, petrol, wireless sets and spare parts is impossible until the appearance of communications aircraft.
Wavell was impressed and, as he had done two years before with Ralph Bagnold’s idea for the Long Range Patrol in Italian-occupied Libya, so the commander-in-chi
ef in India sanctioned a full-scale trial of Wingate’s proposal. A training camp was established at Saugor in the Central Provinces for what was designated the 77th Indian Infantry Brigade, comprising the 13th Battalion, The King’s Liverpool Regiment, the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Gurkha Rifles, the 2nd Burma Rifles and 142 Commando Company, most of whom had been resident at Calvert’s Bush Warfare School. There was also a signal section, a mule transport company from the Royal Indian Army Service and eight RAF sections to provide air support.
One of the officers who joined Wingate’s newly formed brigade was Denis Gudgeon, a 22-year-old from Wimbledon who had worked as a banker in Paris prior to the war. A young subaltern in the 1st Battalion, 2nd Gurkha Rifles, he found himself attached to 77th Indian Infantry Brigade without having any say in the matter. ‘We’d heard about Wingate and heard he’d been successful against Italians in Abyssinia,’ recalled Gudgeon many years later. ‘We knew that he was a very ruthless man but also very eccentric so we were a little wary.’12
Though Wingate was an admirer of the Karens, Chins and Kachins who made up the Burma Rifles, he had little time for the average Gurkha soldier, whom he considered tough but slow-witted. Similarly he found most of their British officers ‘ignorant of infantry tactics and inexperienced’. Gudgeon recalled that the dislike was mutual during their time at Saugor. ‘I don’t think many of the Gurkha officers liked him, he wasn’t popular,’ he said. ‘He was a very ascetic man, not very tall and he had a slight stoop… You couldn’t have a rapport with him, he was a very aloof man. He never said very much. He used to issue reams and reams of instructions. We were quite honestly all terrified of him.’13
Then there were Wingate’s little eccentricities, derided by some as showmanship and others as proof he was a little touched. ‘He carried a fly gun with him everywhere, which was a bit disconcerting when one was eating one’s lunch,’ remembered Gudgeon. ‘He also carried an alarm clock with him the whole time. We used to think he was mad quite simply.’14
During the training at Saugor, Wingate pushed the men hard, and particularly the officers. Experience of guerrilla fighting in the Sudan and Palestine had taught him that the officers operating in small units must be fitter, tougher, and confident in everything they did if they were to retain the respect of the men. ‘TETS (tactical exercises without troops) were dreaded because he would pick a hill several hundred feet high and we had to run up it,’ recalled Gudgeon. ‘The last officer up the hill would have to run down the hill and up again. I always managed to avoid being the last officer. And I was always terrified of being asked some detailed military rules question on these TETS as he would point his ruler at you and fix you with these beady, very clear blue eyes and my mind would go a total blank.’15
Wingate had hoped to have his men trained and ready for the first operation within eight weeks; he soon realized that was entirely unfeasible. Obtaining equipment and men proved more problematic than he had envisaged, and there was a further setback in August 1942 when monsoons flooded their camp and washed away equipment and the odd soldier.
Nonetheless the brigade began to take shape, with Wingate dividing it into seven columns of approximately 300 men and 100 mules, all armed with heavy machine guns, mortars, anti-tank rifles and small arms. Supplies would be dropped by air although it wouldn’t be possible to evacuate any wounded.
As the training and preparation progressed, so the brigade took on its own identity. Their standard Far East battledress was dyed green and they wore bush hats. Wingate designed their shoulder patch, a yellow Chinthe guarding a small yellow pagoda on a blue background. The Chinthe – a mythical half-lion, half-dragon creature, which guarded Burmese pagodas – was later corrupted into ‘Chindits’.
By the end of 1942 Wingate had been briefed by Wavell on the brigade’s first mission; they were to cross into Japanese-held Burma at Imphal and penetrate 200 miles east towards Indaw, attacking the enemy’s supply and communication lines, as well as laying waste to bridges, railways and depots. While Wingate’s men were tying up Japanese forces in a guerrilla campaign, Wavell would launch his main three-pronged offensive towards the river Chindwin with the British 4th Corps. Further north the Chinese forces under General Stilwell would advance towards Myitkyina and the 15th Corps would push east towards Akyab in the Arakan. The aim of the offensive was to open the Burma Road, the main supply route to China, so that the full potential of the Chinese forces could be unleashed on the Japanese.
In January 1943 the 77th Indian Infantry Brigade broke camp and went by paddle-steamer and rail to Dimapur. ‘We eventually arrived at Dimapur where we were met on the platform by Major Calvert, who was to be our column commander,’ recalled Denis Gudgeon. ‘I was immensely impressed by him. He was a very dynamic character indeed. You could tell at a glance that he’d been a professional army boxer by his flat nose and cauliflower ears.’16 Calvert marched with the brigade the 130 miles south to Imphal.
Soon Wavell arrived at the brigade’s new camp bearing bad news – the offensive was postponed because the Chinese had withdrawn cooperation at the last minute. Wingate was dismayed but not downhearted, writing subsequently: ‘The brigade had been raised and trained for operations in the winter of 42/43 and the whole tempo, physical and psychological, set to that tune. Not to use [it] was to lose it.’17 Wingate also feared that his detractors at headquarters – the ‘fossilized shits’, as David Stirling referred to senior officers who looked askance at irregular units – would use the postponement to try and break up his brigade.
Initially Wavell insisted that the Long Range Penetration operation must be postponed but he was won round in the end by Wingate, who pointed out that the mission would provide valuable information on the quality of the enemy soldier as well as the practicability of operating deep behind enemy lines. On 6 February Wingate’s force marched out of Imphal south-east towards Tamu on the Assam–Burma border; they were to cross the river Chindwin and then embark on a series of guerrilla attacks, cutting railway lines and ambushing Japanese forces in the Shwebo region.
Wingate split his brigade into two forces, a northern force consisting of five columns and HQ, and a small southern force comprising No. 1 Column and No. 2 Column. The latter’s task was to draw Japanese forces away from the main force by launching a series of diversionary raids on selected targets before making for a rendezvous point 250 miles to the east at Mongmit. On the eve of the operation – codenamed Longcloth – Wingate issued his Order of the Day:
Today we stand on the threshold of battle. The time of preparation is over, and we are moving on the enemy to prove ourselves and our methods. At this moment we stand beside the soldiers of the United Nations in the front line trenches throughout the world. It is always a minority that occupies the front line. It is still a smaller minority that accepts with a good heart tasks like this that we have chosen to carry out. We need not, therefore, as we go forward into the conflict, suspect ourselves of selfish or interested motives. We have all had opportunity of withdrawing and we are here because we have chosen to be here; that is, we have chosen to bear the burden and heat of the day. Men who make this choice are above the average in courage. We need therefore have no fear for the staunchness and guts of our comrades.
The motive which has led each and all of us to devote ourselves to what lies ahead cannot conceivably have been a bad motive. Comfort and security are not sacrificed voluntarily for the sake of others by ill-disposed people. Our motive, therefore, may be taken to be the desire to serve our day and generation in the way that seems nearest to our hand. The battle is not always to the strong nor the race to the swift. Victory in war cannot be counted upon, but what can be counted upon is that we shall go forward determined to do what we can to bring this war to the end which we believe best for our friends and comrades in arms, without boastfulness or forgetting our duty, resolved to do the right so far as we can see the right.
Our aim is to make possible a government of the world in which all men can live at peace
and with equal opportunity of service.
Finally, knowing the vanity of man’s effort and the confusion of his purpose, let us pray that God may accept our services and direct our endeavours, so that when we shall have done all we shall see the fruit of our labours and be satisfied.
O.C. Wingate, Commander,
77th Indian Infantry Brigade.18
The next day, 14 February 1943, the brigade began moving across the Chindwin, each of the 1,000 soldiers weighed down by a 60lb pack. The two forces moved south and received an RAF air drop the following day before splitting. For several days the Chindits’ greatest foe was the teak forests infesting the area between the rivers of the Chindwin and the Irrawaddy; they encountered no Japanese, much to the chagrin of Calvert (commanding No. 3 Column), who devised his own method of harassing the enemy, in light of their absence. ‘We carried plenty of explosives with us and as we moved about we mined jungle paths if the local Burmese told us the Japs would pass that way,’ he wrote in his memoirs. ‘With the help of my Burma Rifles chaps we also wrote out various signs and warnings in Burmese and Japanese, “signed” them with the names of Japanese commanders and pinned them up at convenient points to add to the general confusion of the enemy. For example some of them said “Follow this path for –”, the nearest village. But any Jap who took them at their word would have ended up either a very puzzled man or a very dead one.’19
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