Wounded received a lethal dose or the coup de grace

Orde Charles Wingate is one of the most controversial British commanders of World War II. Prime Minister Winston Churchill praised him as "a man of genius who could have become the embodiment of destiny". Later generations saw him as an eccentric butcher who demanded no less of his people than the Japanese army. When the remnants of his command were evacuated from the jungles of Burma in August 1944, hardly a soldier was fit to fight. It took many survivors months to get back on their feet.

Whether the operations of the Wingate-led Chindit units had a decisive impact on the Pacific War is a matter of debate. What is certain, however, is that in the months following the fall of Malaya and Singapore, they provided the British army with an example of how European soldiers could navigate the rainforest with equal success to their Japanese opponents.

Born in India in 1903 to a military father, Wingate grew up in England. With some difficulty he completed officer training and later had difficulties in regular service. An expedition to the Sudan showed early on where his strengths lay. In 1936 Wingate went to Palestine, where, having been brought up in a strictly free church, he became an ardent partisan of the Zionist movement, for whose Jewish Settlement Police he led commando units.

His unorthodox actions in the guerrilla war against the Italians in Ethiopia drew Churchill's attention. With his support, Wingate put his ideas of jungle warfare into practice as a brigadier in 1942, without caring much about the objections of his superiors.

In order to prove that larger troop movements are also possible in the jungles of Burma (today Myanmar), Wingate drilled the British, Indian and Gurkha soldiers of his 77th Indian Brigade in bayonet and guerrilla combat, had them clear the jungle with machetes and blow up practice bridges. Wearing only a pith helmet, Wingate trudged naked through camp, munching raw onions and straining tea through his socks. Manic-depressive as he was, he knew no pity, neither for his people nor for himself.

His creed was later summed up by one of his commanders: “Most Europeans don't realize how much their bodies can endure; the psyche and willpower are often the first to give way. Most soldiers never realized they were capable of the things they did... If you've marched 50 kilometers in a day, you can walk 40 kilometers easily.” be brought in by air.

In order to neutralize the threat to India from the Japanese army, Wingate launched Operation Longcloth on February 13, 1943. With 3000 Chindits - the origin of the name has not been finally clarified to this day - he overcame the Chindwin. His goal was some railway lines and junctions.

It took some time for the Japanese command to realize that it was not a small raiding party but several columns of brigade strength operating behind their lines. But then troops the size of a division gave chase. True, Wingate managed to blow up some bridges. But under the tropical conditions, the radio communications broke down. However, this meant that replenishment by plane could no longer be guaranteed. Because the donkeys were slaughtered, a lot of material had to be given up.

After all, the Chindits proved that Europeans could also wage large-scale wars in the jungle. But the price was appalling. Wounded and stragglers were left behind. One soldier "whose feet were in very bad shape decided he couldn't march any further... He just wanted to be left behind with as many hand grenades as we could spare... After a while we forgot about him ' quoted the British historian Andrew Roberts from the recollections of a participant. Wingate mercilessly urged his men forward.

After more than 1,000 kilometers on foot, 2,100 men returned to India at the end of April, exhausted, starved and sick with fever. A quarter of them took months to get back on their feet. While one officer noted in his war diary, "We blew up sections of railroad that were quickly repaired... we killed a few hundred enemies out of a population of 80 million," Wingate told the press, "The expedition was an unrestricted one Success."

An admiring Churchill saw it that way too. He had Wingate present his theories at the strategy summit with US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Quebec in August 1943. Other judgments were less euphoric. The Chindits would have provided an example of jungle warfare not only to the Allies but also to the Japanese. With that, however, Wingate would only have provided the blueprint for the U-go offensive, with which the Imperial Army attempted to advance into India in the spring of 1944.

In March 1944, a curious situation arose on the Chindwin, which marked the border between Burma and the Indian region of Assam. On March 5, three brigades with 9,000 chindits and 1,000 pack mules crossed the river to poke behind the Japanese lines like a hornet's nest, as Wingate put it. The goal of Operation Thursday was to eliminate the supply routes and air bases that threatened Chiang Kai-shek's troops in China.

Only three days later, the Japanese 15th Army opened its offensive against the British troops in Assam. A large proportion of the 85,000 soldiers belonged to the Indian National Army, which Hitler's Indian ally Subhash Chandra Bose had recruited from among Empire prisoners in Southeast Asia. While the Japanese advanced on the British positions at Imphal and Kohima, the Chindits made their way through the jungle in grueling marches. "We walked in single file in a line 100 kilometers long because the roads and trails were so narrow," reported a brigade commander.

monsoon rains that could turn foxholes into a mud flat in minutes; diarrhea, malaria and other tropical diseases; booby traps and ambushes; inaccurate maps and poor communications; malnutrition, leeches and foul water; Primeval forest, in which one sometimes only made progress of around 100 meters per hour: This is how Andrew Roberts describes the combat zone. Those seriously wounded received a lethal dose of morphine or a coup de grace, reports military historian Antony Beevor.

Attempts to reinforce the Chindits with gliders led to further losses. Many planes crashed when landing in the difficult terrain, the wrecks with the dead stayed in the jungle. Wingate was also a victim of the difficult flight conditions. On March 24, his plane crashed while visiting the Assam Front. He was 41 years old.

In June, his exhausted troops, in cooperation with national Chinese and US units, finally managed to capture the important Mogaung base, from where the Ledo Strait could be opened for supplies to China. The commando units were flown out by August. The Japanese offensive in Assam had long since failed. The remnants of the 15th Army withdrew to Burma. Bose's Indian National Army was annihilated.

Operation Thursday cost the Chindits 1,000 dead and 3,000 wounded and missing. Around half of the survivors spent months in the hospital. Once again the unit was equipped for a mission, but the action planned for February 1945 was called off. Their spectacular operations have given the chindits a place of honor in British remembrance culture. The Americans remained more cautious, measuring the achievements of their allies primarily by tangible results.

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